Cross-border review of rail network officially launched

That is short-term thinking. If you do not invest in the other towns and cities, then businesses will be drawn only to Dublin, and their employees will live in and around Dublin, and Dublin's infrastructure will be strained further.

The government has had decent success in bulding Cork as a second population magnet in the country, but it would be better long term to allow people to live in a town near to where they grew up, rather than ending up in the orbit of Dublin or Cork. Providing better connectivity between these places allows more balanced growth.

But, when it comes to rail in particular: there is no point in creating a rural rail service unless it can be operated at a competitive speed. My idea of a competitive speed would be an average journey speed (including stops) better than 100 km/h - anything slower than this will not be as attractive as the perceived end-to-end convenience of car travel. The Ennis-Oranmore line, with a journey speed of 40 km/h (1h20 for 53 km) is a complete failure on this measure.

I don't think you could say "particularly": It's not like anywhere else has been getting money while Dublin languished. The truth is, in terms of rail transport infrastructure, the whole country has been starved of investment. IE literally (and I mean literally) received zero in capital funding from the government between 2012 and 2022. Zero. Any work that was done was scrounged out of operational budgets.

Luckily for Dublin, the nature of mass transportation means that now that investment has come, most of it will be in and around Dublin. And that will be the right decision.

But other parts of the country also need investment, and sometimes the per-capita cost makes it look like bad value, but it's necessary to create a usable network.

Wow, a lot of people would disagree that we've 'over' invested in rural Ireland.

That's fair about Tuam, but it is the largest town in Galway.

Yeah the lack of funding since the crash is the real issue. It's easy to forget the crash only happened 15years ago, and we only came out of the bailout a decade ago in 2013.

What annoys me here is that people constantly use WRC phase 1 to "show" why we shouldn't invest in rural rail, purporting this idea that the line is a complete and utter failure and a money pit.

Fact is, the Ennis-Athenry line is the same speed as the Mallow-Killarney (65km/h) line and significantly faster than the Nenagh line (52km/h). But there are no suggestions about closing those lines. Improvements on these lines are 10s to 100s of millions magnitude versus 1000s of millions for the larger rail projects closer to the cities. Both types of projects can happen simultaneously without hindering the other.

Yes but I mean infrastructure of all kinds, Dublin is particularly starved of investment on a per head basis.

Only if you insist on using per-capita measurements. Cities can be provided with the same level of services for less money because there are always more people within the catchment area of whatever you build. Public transport is the extreme example, but it happens with all kinds of infrastructure: one 200-pupil primary school is cheaper to build and run than two 100-pupil schools, but in a rural area, you need the two to provide reasonable distance to the facility. Same level of service (actually, worse in the rural situation, as the school is not going to be walkable for most families), but more expensive to provide.

I’m not from a rural background (and I really mean that: I’d have to go back to the 1850s to find an ancestor that didn’t live in a town or city), but I know people who are, or have moved there through marriage, so I’m not blind to the difficulties that exist in rural communities. Those problems are different to the ones faced by cities, but they still exist, and fixing them generally costs more than it would in a city (population density makes infrastructure provision cheaper). But playing “us versus them” is a game that doesn’t help anyone.

It's not factually a terrible idea. It's a terrible idea only in the opinion of some people.

If all the proposed investments in commuter rail in, say, the Greater Dublin Area Transport Strategy(which proposes DART Underground and a Luas network more than twice the size of the current one), had to be delivered before any investments in intercity rail, it would be decades before any significant improvements are made in intercity rail, let alone rural rail.

Is it really a terrible idea to deliver any significant improvements to railways in Ireland outside of Dublin until Dublin has the metro, DART+, DART Underground, the DART further extended to Kilcock, Sallins and Wicklow, and Luas lines to Clongriffin, Balgriffin, Finglas, Tyrrelstown, Blanchardstown, Lucan, Clondalkin, Kimmage, Knocklyon and Sandyford(via a different route to the Luas green line) and to Poolbeg????????

I don't think anyone is looking for a strict sequence of investment like you suggest. A total upgrade of our whole network is needed and typically such work starts at the centre of that network, at least thats the global experience. The Kingston to Westland Row railway was built long before the Achil line for the same reason.

In present day terms that Just means that we ought to see physical work on DART+ to relieve the long running chronic congestion and overcrowding before pissing money at a railway to Tuam for the 12 people who might use it, sure it might be a good investment for the future but DART+ was required 30-40 years ago, there has to be priority given.

You talk as if it isn't being given priority. Right now the west has one piece of infrastructure at an advanced stage, a simple passing loop at Oranmore. Meanwhile Dublin has 4 Dart projects, a Metro line, a Luas line and 16 Bus corridors.

Simple fact is a country can't function politically if all investment is hogged by the capital city. There has to be a balance of regional investment. WRC phase 2 is 500m versus, what, 20billion for the projects already in planning for Dublin??? That's 2.4% versus 97.6%.

Yes, I know about Cork commuter rail improvements, the level crossing closures and the upgrades to Kent Station.

I was saying that there should still be investment in railways in Ireland outside of Dublin even before all the rail projects in the Greater Dublin Area Transport Strategy are completed, even though Dublin rail projects should get more investment. I was not saying that this wasn't happening.

Also, when I say "investment in rural railways" I mean improving rural railways that are currently operational, such as Dublin-Sligo or Limerick-Nenagh-Ballybrophy, more than I mean reopening disused or abandoned rural railways (I mean the former should take priority).

I agree that most investment in railways in Ireland should be made in Dublin, but I don't agree that railways elsewhere in Ireland should be denied investment until the rail system in Dublin is near-perfect. I know this isn't actually happening, so I was just saying it shouldn't be.

Rail is only suitable for high density populations.

All investment isn't being hogged by the capital city. There is now virtually zero investment in road projects within the four Dublin local authorities. A few access roads are all that is being built. All investment in Dublin is in public transport, as it should be.

Well, I think there should be more funding allocated to public transport, including rail transport, than the amount of funding that is currently allocated. That would mean that railway projects further down the priority list would get done quicker. I know that funding will have to come from somewhere, like an increase in taxes, which would annoy lots of people, but I do not accept it's a factually terrible idea.