Cross-border review of rail network officially launched

New Rail Census out would seem to indicate that Ennis is more of a trip generator than Oranmore, even if you include both Heuston and Regional services in Oranmore.

Meanwhile, we're about to sign off on 600m in a small partial upgrade of the N17. Our spending priorities are really odd in this country.

https://www.con-telegraph.ie/2023/02/02/construction-of-new-n17-route-in-mayo-wont-start-until-2030s/

Letterkenny to Derry, probably a pretty good project on its own merit, the road between them is busy, its a regular commuter journey so I'd agree with it, most of the other new line proposals are bonkers though.

Not In our jurisdiction but I always wondered why a small rail station was never built at Derry Airport, especially since the line goes around the perimeter of it. It along with a new line to LK could provide a great shuttle service for folk heading away.

I'm a little confused by your post. Porobably because the responsibility of various entities is so difficult to understand. Road and light rail projects are under TII, and I suspect that for light rail TII is only responsible for carrying out projects approved by the DoT and/or the NTA. How Councils and cycling infrastructure fits into the TII and NTA responsibilities is not clear to me.

Does anyone have a decent organisational chart showing the decision-maing, operating ane reporting roles of the DoT, DPER, TII, NTA, Local Authorities (and whatever Department they answer to)? And of course TII seems to have no role in heavy rail, which in my opinion is mad.

Time for a rationalisation and possible cull of these quangos.

This kind of carry on is often reported in cycling groups.

If its under a certain amount I think they can spend without getting direct approval from NTA so I'd expect to see a lot of small road schemes, resurfaces etc paid for like this. The NTA ignored its own design guidance when designing the bus connects corridors and instead has sent several car oriented schemes for planning so you can't just blame councils wedged with culchie councilors and lackies, there's problems at the top too

A lot of what was historically billed as "sustainable transport" schemes I've seen have done this. A large number of the older sustainable transport were resurfacing gigs. I don't want to pick on any one LA, as I believe that most have done this but I know the two Cork LA's best. Here's a list of Cork City completed sustainable transport schemes, and you can judge for yourself.

Thankfully not many schemes over the years actively downgraded the pedestrian and cycle infrastructure but there were a few around the country.

Also NTA and TII themselves directly oversaw some right clangers like the Tivoli/Silversprings scheme but not all of these came from the "Sustainable" bucket. And the "inaccuracy" doesn't seem to fly as easily now, from what I can tell.

I have personally spoken to people high up in the NTA who justified narrowing of footpaths to fit in road lanes, who suggested that cyclists should cycle on footpaths etc.

And some here are criticising councils, but some of the people fighting the hardest to put in good pedestrian and cycle designs are the council engineers, who are pooped on by the councillors and the "public submissions" process (read: rage-click media is determining scheme approvals). I have seen some councillors openly state that they will agree or disagree with active travel schemes based on the NUMBER of submissions they receive in favour or against a scheme.

So the rot is from top to bottom. There's some great attitudes and some terrible attitudes right through the system. I can't go into detail here but some mega-projects have some seriously backwards teams involved, who pretend they're doing things by the book by citing standards incorrectly.

All off-topic, but I know the sustainable transport side is not being spent fully, and I believe that a large part of what has been spent to-date has been spent on roads resurfacing, traffic control and bridge repairs.

If TII took over heavy rail as the Infrastructure Manager, Irish Rail would still continue to exist as a Railway Operator.