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Railway, greenway, or disused line? The tangled, uncertain future of the Western Rail Corridor

The government is at a crossroads on the future of the disused track which could link counties in the west of Ireland.

ALONG THE WEST of Ireland is a stretch of railway line spanning from Athenry in Galway through to Claremorris in Mayo.

It crosses 52km – more than the length of Dublin’s two Luas lines combined – of towns, villages, and rural land but has been out of use for decades.

The section of track, which is part of the 240km, mostly-disused Western Rail Corridor running from Limerick to Sligo, stopped carrying scheduled passenger trains in 1976, aside from a few exceptions that ceased in the 1990s. 

Many say the line should be revived as a railway and some suggest it be converted to a greenway for cyclists and pedestrians – but a report commissioned by the government last year argued that a “do nothing” approach would be the best financial choice.

Now, the government is at a crossroads on the future of the corridor, which, for its supporters, has become emblematic of the fight for regional development in the west of Ireland as it lies unused. 

The Western Railway Corridor

In its entirety, the Western Railway Corridor runs from Limerick as far north as Collooney in Sligo.

The line is mostly disused, which means that a trip from Athenry to Castlebar, for instance, requires taking a train along the Galway-Dublin line to Athlone and changing to the Dublin-Westport line instead of a direct link between the towns.

Campaigners have long called for the return of trains to the track – or, if not of trains, then for the repurposing of the line for cyclists.

In 2010, a section of the track was reopened between Limerick and Athenry, dubbed phase one of the project.

The next development that is being considered, which would be phases two and three, would see the connection from Athenry to Claremorris revived.

A fourth proposed phase, which wasn’t under the scope of recent reports, would reconnect Claremorris to Collooney in Sligo. 

Rail network WOT The Western Rail Corridor and the proposed redevelopment stages West On Track West On Track

However, a report by EY said that the costs of reviving the line between Athenry and Claremorris would be greater than the financial benefits and that the “‘do nothing’ option of leaving the line inactive” would be preferable.

After an analysis of the costs and benefits, the report said that the “reactivation of the WRC is not considered value for money under a reasonable range of demand and pricing assumptions”. 

It concluded that there would be no positive return on investment in the line – that is, that restoring it as a railway would lose more money than it would generate.

The EY report was reviewed by JASPERS, an EU agency, which said that EY’s findings are “not unreasonable” and that the “project in its current form is likely to present a very weak justification for investment”.

JASPERS said that a “fundamental review of the basis for the project and the regional context” and a “more detailed assessment of the ability to support climate objectives” should be taken before any financing of the project.

But local campaigners and politicians say the line would bring acutely-needed connections and development to the west of Ireland and want the government to embed the corridor in the next National Development Plan.

Mayo TD Rose Conway-Walsh told The Journal that opening the corridor is “the key step to addressing regional imbalance in the west of Ireland”.

She said that the corridor “must be included in the National Development Plan” if the government is “serious” about balanced regional development and employment in the west.

Since the publication of the EY and JASPERS reports, a separate report by a campaign group has suggested that there is a strong business case for reopening the line between Galway and Mayo, which the TD said the government “cannot ignore”.

An alternative look

In the wake of the EY report, campaign group West on Track, which has been petitioning for the revival of the Western Rail Corridor since 2003, commissioned an alternative appraisal of the line.

Dr John Bradley, a former research professor at the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) involved with the campaign group, authored the report and concluded that there was a “strong business case” to move forward with the project.

Speaking to The Journal, Dr Bradley said that the West on Track report arrived at a significantly different finding from EY’s.

Dr Bradley said the EY report put the track at a much highere cost than the phase one project which reopened the line between Ennis and Athenry. The WOT report looked at the costs of the earlier phase, which he said has “almost identical” characteristics to the proposed link between Athenry and Claremorris, and upgraded those for inflation and enhanced security and safety standards.

“We had assistance from rail experts within Ireland. We came up with a capital cost less than half of what EY had come up with,” he said.

“The bottom line of the EY report was the benefit-cost ratio was .21:1, which would mean that for every euro the government would invest, they would get back 21 cent. That’s a no-no, you don’t go ahead with a project like that.”

But the change in calculating the capital cost shifted the benefit in the benefit-cost ratio to about 0.9.

Next, the WOT report looked at the prospective benefits of restoring the line.

“When you compare cars, buses and rail, the key benefits come from which is the speediest,” Dr Bradley said.

“We found that EY, for travel from Claremorris to Athenry and onwards to Galway, had imposed a lengthy delay at Athenry where you would get off the train and wait 20 mins for another to arrive. The whole design of route would be that it would be through traffic, you would get on a train in Westport and travel to Claremorris, turn south to Athenry and to Galway – you don’t break the journey at any stage,” he said.

“In the EY report, rail was the least speedy, it was the slowest of the three modes of transport, and what that meant was very few people would shift from cars or buses to rail.

“We redid the capital costs and benefits and came up with a benefit-costs ratio of about 1.04, which is above 1, which means it’s in the category of projects that are economically feasible, even by these narrow conditions.”

The group wrote to Iarnród Eireann and the Department of Transport to request access to background information that was provided to EY, but did not receive those details, which meant there were additional potential benefits they could not account for in their calculations, Dr Bradley said.

One benefit that wasn’t accounted for was that the link would open up connections to towns like Castlebar, Westport and Ballina in addition to the link between Claremorris and Athenry.

“We felt we couldn’t include those because when EY did their point-to-point travel analysis, they had access to the model that the National Transport Authority had given them access to and we didn’t have that access,” Dr Bradley said.

“We couldn’t include an enhanced passenger travel which would have driven the benefit-cost ratio even higher. We had our hands tied.”

“When it came to the issues around the role of the rail line in enhancing regional development and connectivity, once again, we couldn’t monetise those benefits because we wouldn’t have access to official data.”

EY declined to give a comment to The Journal.

Additionally, Dr Bradley said the “real climate change benefit of switching to rail is that it will cut down car journeys, which at the moment and for foreseeable future are going to be driven by fossil fuels, but massively, it will cut down road freight, because that’s where the heavy pollution comes from”.

Greenway

Many of Ireland’s existing greenways – routes set aside for cyclists and pedestrians that aren’t accessible to cars – were built along disused railway lines, like the the Great Southern Trail from west Limerick to north Kerry and the Old Rail Trail from Mullingar to Athlone.

With trains long absent from the Western Rail Corridor, some say that the most valuable option for the region would be to convert the track into a greenway.

In Sligo, Councillor and former mayor Marie Casserly says a greenway along the corridor line could connect to other greenways that are planned for the county and ultimately join up with a national cycle route.

“There are two different greenway projects that we’re working on. There’s the SLNCR [Sligo Leitrim Northern Counties Railway greenway] which goes from Enniskillen to Collooney on the old railway line and the Sligo greenway that goes from Collooney to Ballahy on the Mayo border,” Casserly told The Journal.

“That’s a lot of greenway that we can link up to the proposed greenway from Claremorris to Athenry,” she said.

“It’s like a jigsaw puzzle – ultimately the aim is to put all the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle together to have a national greenway that you can cycle throughout the whole country of Ireland.”

Casserly said that the economic value for greenways is “absolutely massive”, but that a railway might not provide the same benefit.

“Nobody is anti-railway, but you have to be pragmatic and realistic,” she said.

“We can hardly keep the potholes filled in our roads, so I don’t know where we would get the money to sustain a new railway line.”

A better investment for rail, she said, would be in the existing Sligo to Dublin line to make it faster. 

If the Western Rail Corridor was restored in the future, building a greenway in the short-term could help preserve the line in the interim, the councillor said.

“What would happen is the line is kept intact and it prevents further encroachment,” Casserly said.

“Should there be funding and a population available to make a railway sustainable, then that line is still intact,” she said.

The greenway preserves the line and my argument would be that in the meantime, since it’s decades since there was a train on the track, until it becomes economically feasible to have a railway line, why not have a greenway so we can benefit like they’re benefiting in other counties?”

Casserly said it would be “a huge prize for Sligo and for the northwest if you could start in Collooney, go through Mayo, cycle on to Galway, to Athenry, cycle across to Dublin and up to Belfast, to Enniskillen and back home to Sligo – that’s the ten-year vision I would have”.

“This is a perfect opportunity to reinvigorate the north west and bring tourists, bring jobs, and create an environment where people want to live,” she said.

“Greenways aren’t only for tourists either, they can run between schools, between villages, and you’re cutting down on traffic that way.”

What happens now?

Ireland and Northern Ireland have recently commissioned a joint review of railways across the island.

In a statement to The Journal, a spokesperson for the Department of Transport said that the government has “noted the conclusions of both the EY Report and the JASPERS Review in December 2020 and have also noted Minister [Eamon] Ryan’s plan to conduct a Strategic Rail Review of the rail network on an all-island basis”.

The spokesperson said the review will examine the “potential scope for improved rail services and infrastructure along the various existing, or future potential, corridors of the network, including disused and closed lines such as the Western Rail Corridor”.

The department has awarded the tender for conducting the review to ARUP, with the study due to begin in September and be completed within a year.

However, West on Track is concerned that the review could impede on the potential inclusion of the corridor in the National Development Plan.

“On the one hand, we’re delighted that they’re actually doing a strategic review, but on other hand, it delays everything,” Dr Bradley said.

“If they started tomorrow, it [Athenry to Claremorris] could be operating in two or two and half years.

“There’s nothing West on Track would like better than for the Western Rail Corridor link from Athenry to Claremorris to be put into the NDP which they’re revising at the moment. They’ll wrap it up probably in September, and this is the decade-long implementation of the longer projects in the 2040 strategy,” he said.

“They’re having a look at it and putting extra projects into it and we would like them to put the WRC in and get phase two and three going. We fear that they will not because they will have a perfect excuse – ‘we can’t do until the all-island SRR is carried out’.”

Dr Bradley said that campaigners are afraid the review will focus largely on intercity connections and “gloss over the rail corridor issues that connect the western regions on a north-south axis”, that “not only will Galway-Mayo-Sligo region suffer, but Donegal won’t even be on the table – that’s our worry”.

“If an area hasn’t had a rail line for decades, people don’t think about trains anymore,” he said.

“There’s a mind shift needed, and until it comes, people will say ‘oh rail, it’s just for intercity city stuff where there’s big numbers, for urban commuting’ – no, it’s not! But it’s an uphill struggle to persuade people.”

This work is co-funded by Journal Media and a grant programme from the European Parliament. Any opinions or conclusions expressed in this work is the author’s own. The European Parliament has no involvement in nor responsibility for the editorial content published by the project. For more information, see here

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    Mute Hugo Bugo
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    Aug 9th 2021, 8:16 PM

    Invest the money, fix the line and restart the train service, this government has thrown our money away on a lot worse projects than this

    265
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    Mute thesaltyurchin
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    Aug 9th 2021, 8:39 PM

    @Hugo Bugo: And force transport companies to pay to ship their goods on it.

    59
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    Mute Mjhint
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    Aug 9th 2021, 9:22 PM

    @thesaltyurchin: ya that’s a great idea. There wouldn’t be a company left in the country if we had to depend on rail. Even in Europe its not the answer roas transport.

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    Mute thesaltyurchin
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    Aug 10th 2021, 8:37 AM

    @Mjhint: Works fine in London, Rail and barge all day and night. No one said ‘depend’ like you’ll suddenly ‘pass out’ if there’s no jeans in your size at the local ‘mans’ shop, its about offsetting so our roads don’t have to be like a port que.

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    Mute pat seery
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    Aug 9th 2021, 8:11 PM

    Ask The Company Building The Children’s Hospital to Cost it They seem to hav All The ANSWERS

    131
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    Mute thesaltyurchin
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    Aug 9th 2021, 8:38 PM

    @pat seery: Maybe the people who built the Luas? on time and under budget, or was it ahead of time and on budget, I cant remember it was so long ago.

    68
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    Mute Fiona Fitzgerald
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    Aug 10th 2021, 6:21 PM

    I think that was the Port Tunnel.

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    Mute Tom Kelly
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    Aug 9th 2021, 8:57 PM

    Spent the first week of our holidays in Dungarvan and used the greenaway 3 of the days.. the amount of tourism that the greenway has brought to waterford is amazing! To say do nothing with the western corridor is letting the people of the area down.

    122
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    Mute der Fussballmeister
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    Aug 9th 2021, 8:14 PM

    There is a motorway connecting Athenry and Tuam with an upgraded N17 heading north, there is absolutely no demand for the reinstatement of the rail on this alignment and won’t be for several decades. The believers of the ‘pie in the sky’ nonsense at county council and government level have stymied the proposed greenway that would keep the alignment in state hands.

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    Mute thesaltyurchin
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    Aug 9th 2021, 8:37 PM

    @der Fussballmeister: Be great for people and goods alike. Too many HGVs on winding narrow roads… How would you even know where the sky is, looking down all the time! lol!

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    Mute Conor Egan
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    Aug 9th 2021, 9:17 PM

    @thesaltyurchin: how do you get the freight from the train to their final destination? HGV perhaps?

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    Mute Mjhint
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    Aug 9th 2021, 9:24 PM

    @thesaltyurchin: clearly you have no idea how transport works. That’s twice now you claim rail can replace road transport. It can’t.

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    Mute The Firestarter
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    Aug 9th 2021, 10:45 PM

    @der Fussballmeister: They’d be far better off building the bypass of Galway city, it’s an absolute joke that over 30 years after a bypass of Galway was proposed, they are still talking about it. Galway city is choked and has been for decades, yet the imbe**les in Galway City Council sit on their fat salaries and pensions allowing one of Ireland’s great cities to have the dubious distinction of the worst traffic in Ireland.

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    Mute der Fussballmeister
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    Aug 10th 2021, 7:19 AM

    @The Firestarter: It would be money better spent than a worthless railway.

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    Mute ed w
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    Aug 10th 2021, 8:29 AM

    @der Fussballmeister: that’s the problem. roads were upgraded whilst the railway lines weren’t. hence its quicker to drive. at some point there will have to be electrified rail. the west coast needs public transportation

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    Mute thesaltyurchin
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    Aug 10th 2021, 8:38 AM

    @Mjhint: Never said replace pal, but this is really about your imagined argument than the actual topic eh?

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    Mute thesaltyurchin
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    Aug 10th 2021, 8:41 AM

    @Conor Egan: Maybe electric delivery trucks that operate at night. Like they do in Stockholm. But you’re not looking for solutions eh? Just more problems. Classic.

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    Mute Simon Spellman
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    Aug 10th 2021, 10:54 AM

    @ed w: driving from sligo to dublin 2hr 20min, train is 3hr 30min, nó wonder the trains are empty apart from a big match day when people want to be able to have a few drinks for the day out

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    Mute Fiona Fitzgerald
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    Aug 10th 2021, 6:20 PM

    @The Firestarter: Fair point, often thought Galway council was waiting for the sea to rise before they build a bypass on higher ground.

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    Mute Máire Daly
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    Aug 26th 2021, 11:21 PM

    @der Fussballmeister: 1) not everyone drives. 2) Building motorways is not the answer to Galway citys’ traffic problem. 3) Trains are easier for the disabled especially those with mobility issues. 4) Bikes are free on trains hence cycling advocates support rail

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    Mute Jules
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    Aug 9th 2021, 8:16 PM

    Short term thinking is the route of the problem (no pun intended) millions spent ripping up tramlines in Dublin, billions spent partially replacing the network. The same is likely to happen here. Building infrastructure is progressive in the long term.

    69
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    Mute Incasin
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    Aug 10th 2021, 11:27 AM

    @Jules: that would be the root of the problem – unless you were using word play to engineer a pun :)

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    Mute Hugh Mc Donnell
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    Aug 9th 2021, 8:34 PM

    All talk, look at the navan rail line and the amount of committees costings advisor’s etc. Massive population and catchment area from navan to Dublin permanent way still in place but nobody including sitting government TD’s seem to support the idea of phased reopening of the line. Unless there is a hung Dail and some local independents hold the balance of power like what mildred fox back in the 90′s did for greystones it won’t happen

    52
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    Mute John McSweeney
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    Aug 9th 2021, 11:29 PM

    “Do nothing would be preferable”

    And that ladies and gentlemen is Ireland’s approach to infrastructure in a nutshell.

    55
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    Mute Fiona Fitzgerald
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    Aug 9th 2021, 8:14 PM

    Wondering if it would cost less to add light rail for now? That would keep the track in use, and it could always be scaled up if the passenger numbers grow.

    35
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    Mute John Mulligan
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    Aug 9th 2021, 10:02 PM

    @Fiona Fitzgerald: it would be cheaper to give everybody a car.
    There is a sensible proposal to put a greenway on the slignment. That would protect the route, and the license under which Irish Rail allows greenways is issued on the premise that future rail use is paramount.
    But some of the councillors who oppose greenways on the route are against tourism, particularly tourists from Dublin, and are on record as saying that. It only takes a small number of councillors to block investment, given the way councils operate.

    25
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    Mute John Mulligan
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    Aug 9th 2021, 10:07 PM

    @John Mulligan: Ballinasloe councillor Michael Connolly is on record as saying it was important that Galway was a place people can live and work and not a location where people go on their holidays.

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    Mute Fiona Fitzgerald
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    Aug 10th 2021, 6:29 PM

    @John Mulligan: The greenway option sounds good too. A bit short-sighted of those councillors to be against local tourism, given that most tourists land at Dublin Airport first. Maybe they’d do better in a less popular city?

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    Mute Brendan Quinn
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    Aug 9th 2021, 10:08 PM

    Well said Marie Casserly, the west on track report written by John Bradley was little more than a lobbyist document, the EY report and Jaspers (European Investment Bank) said it as it is; West on Track welcomed the Western Rail Corridor report when it was announced and when they didn’t like what it said they decided to write their own report, a bit like Cadburys getting a report saying a chocolate based diet is good for you. It’s a joke and should be dismissed. There is no evidence at the moment to support the railway, a greenway is likely to contribute more to the economy. The rail freight argument is at best fragile, you don’t build new freight lines on the speculative forecasts of freight trains in the future. In the future exports will be transmitted not transported. However this issue needs resolving, doing nothing means no one gets the blame. Build the greenway, protect the route in public ownwership and if per chance we can afford it or need it build the railway in the future with a greenway alongside it, but please lets put this rusting heap to use now, by the way it has been closed 40 years not 20 years as stated in this article.

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    Mute der Fussballmeister
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    Aug 10th 2021, 7:59 AM

    @Brendan Quinn: It is indeed 40 years, and as a former Tuam sugar factory worker it would have been 50 or more if not for the beet freight to supply Tuam’s factory.

    5
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    Mute Shane De Paor
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    Aug 9th 2021, 9:23 PM

    Irish rail have no interest in these lines! Limerick to Waterford line has two trains a day and non on a sunday. They make the lines not suitable for commuters and then cry wolf that they are loosing money and have low passenger numbers. The same would happen on this line if it was reopened. Time for a radical change.

    35
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    Mute Ronan McKeon
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    Aug 9th 2021, 10:20 PM

    @Shane De Paor: They won’t close them for fear of making the same mistake as they didn’t with the closures and sales of land and buildings in the 60′s. They’ll just be left idle.

    9
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    Mute Luan Willis
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    Aug 9th 2021, 10:52 PM

    @Shane De Paor: *none *Sunday *losing

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    Mute Shane De Paor
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    Aug 10th 2021, 2:34 PM

    @Luan Willis: Good observation.

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    Mute Brendan Quinn
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    Aug 12th 2021, 11:04 AM

    @Shane De Paor: It is not an Irish Rail decision, and they can only operate within the constraints of budget. If this line was re-opened it would place greater strain on the irish rail budget; it would need subvention on a level of €50 per passenger journey it would be economic madness to re-open this line. Public transport does not need to make a profit but there has to be a cut off point on level of subvention per passenger journey required. The long distance greenway Athernry to Collooney and onto Enniskillen would bring untold economic benefits to the region, but the cllrs who oppose it hav buried their heads in the sand on this issue.

    1
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    Mute Clurichaun
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    Aug 9th 2021, 8:17 PM

    How about a Hyperloop? Time to think outside the banana!

    29
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    Mute Vonvonic
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    Aug 9th 2021, 8:24 PM

    @Clurichaun: I totally agree. And a pair of state of the art reggae boots for everyone.

    15
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    Mute Clurichaun
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    Aug 9th 2021, 8:35 PM

    @Vonvonic: reggae boots are old hat, why live in the past? As Henry Ford put it, “if i asked what the customer wanted, they would say faster horses”. Its time we pulled up our bootstraps!

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    Mute This time its personable!
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    Aug 10th 2021, 12:53 AM

    @Clurichaun: why quote Henry Ford from the past? Just a question?

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    Mute Hugh Morris
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    Aug 9th 2021, 8:30 PM

    Monorail!

    22
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    Mute Hugh Morris
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    Aug 9th 2021, 8:31 PM

    @Hugh Morris: I hear those things are awfully loud.
    It glides as softly as a cloud.
    Is there a chance the track could bend?
    Not on your life, my Hindu friend.

    What about us brain-dead slobs?
    You’ll be given cushy jobs.
    Were you sent here by the Devil?
    No, good sir, I’m on the level.

    39
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    Mute Richard Slattery
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    Aug 9th 2021, 8:42 PM

    I give you the West of Ireland Monorail! I’ve sold monorails to Brockway, Ogdenville, and North Haverbrook, and, by gum, it put them on the map! Well, sir, there’s nothin’ on Earth like a genuine bona-fide electrified six-car monorail!

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    Mute Stephen Small
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    Aug 9th 2021, 8:45 PM

    @Hugh Morris: Ah man, ruining it for everyone! You know how that comment is supposed to play out here….

    9
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    Mute Gavin Linden
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    Aug 9th 2021, 8:48 PM

    @Hugh Morris: Sligo Mayor,

    “Now, wait just a minute. We’re twice as smart as the people of Navan. Just tell us your idea and we’ll vote for it”

    11
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    Mute aDubinMayo
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    Aug 9th 2021, 11:29 PM

    Few simple questions for any potential rail users:

    How much are you willing to pay for a train from (eg) Swinford to Galway?
    How often will you actually use it?

    What if that train regularly took over an hour?

    How will you get to the station? In your taxed and insured car? You won’t save any money here.

    No one wants to pay to use this train. It could be a greenway within a couple of years.

    21
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    Mute John Mulligan
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    Aug 9th 2021, 9:56 PM

    Yes, build a railway to replace one that closed because nobody was using it, and subsidise every passenger journey by around 50 euro, not even counting the capital cost. That sounds like a plan.
    The western rail corridor proposal is one of the daftest proposals ever to get traction. It’s based on nothing but drawing a line on map and saying ‘shur they have the LUAS in Dublin, we should have the same in Mayo.’
    It might make some kind of sense if everybody in the west lived in towns and cities, if population numbers were twice to three times what they are, and if economic traffic was between those towns and cities, but this daft piece of populist nonsense has no basis in reality.

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    Mute John Mulligan
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    Aug 9th 2021, 9:57 PM

    The only sensible comment in this article is from Councillor Casserly, when she says that the route should be protected by a greenway to stop it being lost, the same as many other rail alignments were in the past, and that the Dublin Sligo route should attract the investment that it is proposed to bury in a bog in Mayo.
    The latter route is painfully slow, taking three hours compared to just over two by road now that the Castlebaldwin section is open. The train should be faster, should make driving less attractive, but that route will be allowed to die for lack of investment and the money put into this daft white elephant, if the nutters behind it get their way.

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    Mute John Martyn
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    Aug 9th 2021, 9:16 PM

    Would be great to see but reality is that the population is very spread out and more suited to bus options using the m17. It’s important to have balanced development for the West but in the end that motorway was built when there would have been many other routes in the country far more justifying in terms of traffic volumes.

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    Mute XvSv
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    Aug 9th 2021, 11:36 PM

    @John Martyn: The M17 took 25,000 vehicles daily out of the village of Claregalway, relating to large numbers of people to both Work , attend Hospital and go to College in Galway. To put that into perspective, when M9 opened from Naas to Waterford it only had 9,000 vehicle movements on the full distance and 18,000 in total. It has now risen , as enabled to live in Carlow and Kilkenny and commute to Dublin ( not I’m a fan of that option but that’s Reality) . Under strict investment rules M9 should never have been built but I doubt anyone in KK , Carlow or Waterford would agree . By the way 75% of all government in the past 20 years was inside “The Pale” … we need balanced nationwide infrastructural development to allow all regions achieve their potential . It should not be Mayo v Meath !

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    Mute Wade Wilson
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    Aug 9th 2021, 8:27 PM

    It will be cheaper than a children’s hospital

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    Mute Brendan Quinn
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    Aug 12th 2021, 11:00 AM

    @Wade Wilson: and the relevance of this comment is?

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    Mute Garreth Byrne
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    Aug 9th 2021, 9:31 PM

    Get the Chinese working on an elevated super train going from Derry to Raphoe and down the center of Ireland via Sligo, Athlone, Cashel and Cobh harbour.

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    Mute fergalmoore
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    Aug 9th 2021, 10:46 PM

    Needs to be electrified if anything. The rail infrastructure is so backwards in Ireland people can’t be assed getting it. Too hub and spoke. To get most places you have to go via Dublin. In Cork, want to go to sligo via train…Dublin first. In Belfast and want to go to Galway…Dublin first. In Waterford and want to get to tralee …Dublin first (or kildare)

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    Mute Clonagh Ri
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    Aug 10th 2021, 7:34 AM

    If those who want Greenways why don’t they fund themselves and pay a usage fee to
    CIE’s Irish Rails holding company for the use of the infrastructure, why are carbon taxes exclusively been used for Greenways and not being applied to rehabilitate disused
    rail corridors and public roads not under county council responsibility

    How come in County Sligo the County Council in one example are asking local residents
    to pay almost 12 thousand Euros contribution out a projected cost of 92 thousand Euros for upgrading a 1.2 Km county road ……yet the same County Council can project to expend under their Bellaghy to Collooney ‘Project Execution Plan’ almost a half a million Euro per Km and at several ‘pinch points’ up to a million.

    Most people in rural Ireland regard some Greenway projects as ‘Vanity projects for Yuppies’ when they have put up with rural roads littered with potholes, indeed some that last seen a coat of tar 45 years ago…there will be a day of reckoning.

    Going back to funding transport particularly in Dublin if the full cost of its use had be
    bourne the user, the cost of a fare would be at least 5 times the current price, given that
    DART, LUAS and indeed Dublin Bus were and still been provided national and EU
    Infrastructure funding…..the eventual cost for DART ran to over 300 million punts and
    that was for the initial stage, yet Dublin 4 complained bitterly about 11 spent on Knock
    Airport at the time, the same cohort are now whinging about the Western Rail Corridor
    restoration…… Yes economic aphartied is alive and well in present day Ireland.

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    Mute Leonard Barry
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    Aug 9th 2021, 9:30 PM

    How did the tourist get to Waterford? did they walk or cycle from all over Ireland especially to use this Greenway, my guess is that they didn’t but came by car and some with bicycles attached to the rear of their vehicles.

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    Mute Brendan Quinn
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    Aug 12th 2021, 10:58 AM

    @Leonard Barry: A lot of them hire bikes from the new businesses that grow out of greenways, then they stop and eat at the new cafes and restaurants that also appeared when the greenway got going. Greenway-nomics are amazing, You will monetize a greenway tourist a lot more than the ocassional tourist sitting on a train looking out at Tuam.

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    Mute Sean
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    Aug 9th 2021, 11:56 PM

    The reality is that capital costs tend to double or triple on projects like this so saying they redid the cost:benefit analysis on the basis of a reduced capital cost estimate offers cold comfort.

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    Mute Kevin Duff
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    Aug 10th 2021, 12:19 PM

    It doesn’t have to be one or the other. You can have a greenway running alongside the railway, as you often see in European countries

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    Mute wholetthedogsout
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    Aug 9th 2021, 10:38 PM

    Privatise it all like in the UK.

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    Mute AJ Con
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    Aug 10th 2021, 11:29 PM

    The west of Ireland is one of the most underdeveloped regions in Europe, and the western greenway is already in the region, along with this there seems to be a manorhamilton and connemara greenway on the cards. I think it would be silly to jeopardise regional infrastructure for a greenway that would no doubt be an obstacle when reviewing starting rail again. Shocking that we don’t have a north South western rail access connecting the 5 western cities and two airports in 2021.

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    Mute Gavin Tobin
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    Aug 10th 2021, 8:52 PM

    Do both.

    Renovate rail line from Athenry to Claremorris which would allow direct trains from Westport/Castlebar or Ballina to Galway or Limerick and would also allow the liners to run from Ballina to Bellview via Limerick rather than Kildare as they currently do.

    Then do a Greenway from Claremorris through Kiltimagh, Swinford, Charlestown & Tobercurry to Collooney.

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    Mute Brian Lenehan
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    Aug 17th 2021, 7:27 AM

    The existing railway route should of course be turned into a Greenway. It would bring a huge economic benefit to each town and village along its route, whereas the railway would actually bring the reverse – taking local money out of the local economy and into the cities.

    Unlike 150 years ago, the presence of a railway station isn’t going to bring new industry to any town anymore.

    Instead, the NTA should implement or subsidise a daisy-chain of LocalLink bus routes all the way along the N17/N19 with a parallel arterial route along the N17/M18 stopping off at Shannon, Ennis, Gort, Athenry, Tuam, Claremorris, Charlestown and Sligo to meet it.

    One of the only benefits a train would bring to any route is it’s ease of access for wheelchair users and the elderly. The private scheduled coach operators have not helped by buying fleets with steep steps to climb at the very front of the bus. All of these buses should really be of a low-floor, accessable design (e.g. Plaxton Panther LE https://www.alexander-dennis.com/products/plaxton-coaches/panther-le/) for the motorway route and low-floor single-deck city-bus or “imp” for the local service. Ideally, all would have wheelchair priority but with some space available for bicycles when wheelchair or pram space isn’t used. This bicycle carrying ability would also make the Greenway more accessible for a larger audience, allowing cyclists to come off the route at any stage and take the bus home.

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    Mute Richard Ove
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    Aug 16th 2021, 2:20 PM

    You can have a railway AND a greenway. It doesn’t have to be one or the other. The greenway can run alongside the railway. You often see this in Europe.

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    Mute Paul Holland
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    Aug 4th 2022, 7:47 PM

    Moral of the story is – when you close a railway, rip it apart and distribute the land immediately. Save us this debate

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    Mute Máire Daly
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    Oct 9th 2021, 6:20 PM

    I took the train from Athenry to Limerick this morning & from the comments on this thread, I suspected it’d be empty. It had about a 55% capacity, passengers at each stop, especially Gort & six mile bridge buzzing. Train from Limerick to Galway that was also in Athenry as I boarded, was wedged.
    Just boarded the 6:15 back, 60% capacity & 2 bikes. Lotsof young people. If you can’t drive, motorways aren’t the answer

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    Mute Daithí Marc
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    Aug 10th 2021, 9:12 PM
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    Mute feminystopia
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    Aug 10th 2021, 5:27 PM

    Donate it to journal.ie to be used as management headquarters. Then run some trains through it again.

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    Mute James Pelow
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    Aug 16th 2021, 12:37 PM

    People need to get real about railways in Ireland – we need very high speed (~310km/h), high frequency rail between major population centres and strategic commuter towns, and then we need to forget about the rest. The reality is that people will never use these slow, low frequency services because it’s cheaper, more convenient and far quicker to go by car. If you want proof, look at the passenger numbers for the part of the WRC which opened in 2010. You’re literally talking about 1 or 2 people per service!

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    Mute Máire Daly
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    Aug 26th 2021, 11:31 PM

    @James Pelow: Some people simply don’t drive & the roads into Galway city are wedged, so even if one is commuting by bus…. yer still in traffic.

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