EC critical of capital spending

[ThomasJ]

Telling us what we already know

The European Commission's annual country report on Ireland warns that the Government's capital spending programme is inadequate for the country's needs.

The Commission has said that over the next three years in particular, capital spending will be underfunded because the Government has chosen to prioritise tax cuts and current spending increases over investment.

This report is critical of the Government for prioritising tax cuts over investment spending, particularly in education, public transport, energy and water infrastructure.

It says seven years of sharply reduced spending has taken a toll on the quality and adequacy of infrastructure.

The report also says the new capital programme for the next government term will, even at its maximum point, leave spending one third lower than what it calls the already depressed EU average.

This, it warns, could negatively affect the country's growth prospects and the delivery of key public services.


It says a key weakness for the country is public transport in the car-dependent Dublin region.

The city is now ranked the ninth most congested of 200 cities worldwide at peak times - worse than Los Angeles, Beijing and Rio de Janeiro.

More here

http://www.rte.ie/news/business/2016/0301/771785-european-commission-report/

[Thomas J Stamp]

yes, it is stuff we already know, but we also know that DART Underground was scrapped to enable the Government to use the money to fund tax cuts and spending elsewhere.

Like extending Luas Red Line trams, Luas Cross City, DART to Malahide, replacing traffic light roundabouts on the M50, the PPT, DART Underground will one day happen, or else the city will lose its competitiveness. This week Garmin/Tom Tom reported that Dublin is the 9th most congested city in the world, great for the advertising.

[Inniskeen]

Problem with DART Underground is that it will signigantly degrade services for a large coterie of existing users due to inadequate capacity and infrastructure. It is an element but without additional tracks on the northern line and elsewhere it is of limited net benefit

[James Shields]

Problem with DART Underground is that it will signigantly degrade services for a large coterie of existing users due to inadequate capacity and infrastructure. It is an element but without additional tracks on the northern line and elsewhere it is of limited net benefit

What utter tosh. If you are travelling from somewhere on the northern DART line to somewhere on the southern DART line, you'll have a change at Pearse, but should still see a significant benefit from increased train paths and reduced conflicts. I agree that widening the northern line would be massively beneficial, and will eventually be necessary, but extra tracks without the interconnector will only provide limited benefit as there's nowhere for extra trains to go at present, while the interconnector would provide huge benefit to the existing network and open up a huge area of the city centre to rail users.

Sorry to dismiss your assertion, but a minor inconvenience to your current journey is not a significant degradation of service.

James

[James Howard]

The thing is that Dublin has the bones of great infrastructure in place, it's just that without a proper plan, we can't really benefit from it.

Present industrial strife notwithstanding, LUAS has been the real success story in Dublin transport over the last 20 years. It carries roughly the same load as Irish Rail in Dublin and the whole system was built for around a billion euro. Much as I'd like to see stuff like DART underground built, on previous evidence, all I see as a result of investment in Irish Rail is further deterioration in journey times and reliability.

As Inniskeen said, DART underground won't really solve any problems that can't be solved between the PPT and LUAS without doubling down and sorting out the northern line. So without a plan to continue on, it is a waste of money.

[Inniskeen]

What utter tosh. If you are travelling from somewhere on the northern DART line to somewhere on the southern DART line, you'll have a change at Pearse, but should still see a significant benefit from increased train paths and reduced conflicts. I agree that widening the northern line would be massively beneficial, and will eventually be necessary, but extra tracks without the interconnector will only provide limited benefit as there's nowhere for extra trains to go at present, while the interconnector would provide huge benefit to the existing network and open up a huge area of the city centre to rail users.

Sorry to dismiss your assertion, but a minor inconvenience to your current journey is not a significant degradation of service.

James

Well James if you are travelling from Howth, Sutton or Bayside to Lansdowne Road you would change twice as I understand these proposals, once at Howth Junction and again at Pearse.

We need a little bit of honesty around DART Underground. Let us see the proposed timetables and journey times. It is mathematically obvious from reading the business plan that passengers from Malahide northwards can anticipate journey time increases to/from the City Centre ranging from a few minutes in the case of Malahide to anything up to half an hour in the case of Drogheda, Dundalk and points north.

Look at what has happened on the south side, what is happenning with Sligo services, almost every timetable produces journey time increases making the railway less and less attractive to longer distance commuters. DART Underground will comprehensively congest the northern line and reduce everything to the average speed of DART, barely 20 mph. Not a great prospect, I am afraid.

[Colm Moore]

Present industrial strife notwithstanding, LUAS has been the real success story in Dublin transport over the last 20 years. It carries roughly the same load as Irish Rail in Dublin and the whole system was built for around a billion euro.I think its closer to about €1.2 billion

If I'm correct:
Luas A, B, C, C(S) €780 million
Luas A1 €90 million
Luas B1 €300 million
Luas C1 €45 million
Luas BXD €375 million
Minor works and extra trams ???

[James Howard]

If you're talking about adding half an hour to Drogheda, that would wipe out the northern commuter service. Already, the railway is only barely competitive with bus services from Drogheda.

[Inniskeen]

There is considerable potential in the Dublin rail network but lack of game changing investment is a major impediment to making rail seriously relevant in the GDA and beyond. Lowest common denominator operations (governed by the slowest service) on inflexible double track infrastructure is of limited economic value as it is impossible to offer both frequent inner suburban services, fast outer suburban services, inter-city and a worthwhile airport service, all of which are required to maximise potential.

[Thomas J Stamp]

its worth pointing out that we have advocated a tunneled line to Dublin airport and not just DARTU from Heuston to Connolly. The European Investment Bank would surely see this as something to put funding into (and I have seen an argument being made that to future proof the entire GDA you have DARTU, the Outer Orbital Motorway and the eastern bypass all of which could be packaged up for EU funding/investment)

then again, how long as the City Centre Resignalling project being going on for? I seem to remember posting about it here over a decade ago, back when we had DASH and DASH II

[James Shields]

If you're talking about adding half an hour to Drogheda, that would wipe out the northern commuter service. Already, the railway is only barely competitive with bus services from Drogheda.

If we were talking about adding half an hour, I'd agree that would be a disaster. However, I don't that has ever been proposed. In the original Interconnector proposal, as I understand it, the plan was for electrification to Drogheda, with 100MPH electric DARTs taking 45 min from Drogheda to Pearse. I'm sceptical about these journey times actually being achieved, but I certainly don't believe there's any reason for Drogheda to city centre to be slower than it is now.

[Inniskeen]

James can you provide a reference for the 100 mph DART/ 45 minute journey time proposal ?

Could you explain how it would be possible to reach Drogheda in the undemanding 30 minutes currently scheduled for some Belfast services if the frequencies proposed in the DART underground business plan were implemented ?

[James Shields]

James can you provide a reference for the 100 mph DART/ 45 minute journey time proposal ?

Could you explain how it would be possible to reach Drogheda in the undemanding 30 minutes currently scheduled for some Belfast services if the frequencies proposed in the DART underground business plan were implemented ?

I'll see if I can find it, but it could be tricky to nail down. Mark usually has these things at his fingertips.

Are there still Enterprises managing Connolly-Drogheda in 30 mins? There's not many under 35 mins these days (I was on the 20:50 the other night, but I didn't check what time it arrived). I do think that peak time Enterprises are going to be a few minutes slower, but I would think 35-40 mins should still be achievable. Bear in mind that these services aren't designed with Drogheda commuters in mind, and I suspect the best hope for maintaining Dublin-Belfast journey times in the medium term is improving line speeds north of Drogheda.

However, some of the timetabling decisions in recent years have been appalling, and have left faster services following immediately behind stopping services. If the timetable is laid out something like this:

Drogheda commuter
(3 min gap)
Malahide DART
(3 min gap)
Howth DART
(3 min gap)
Malahide DART
(3 min gap)
Howth DART
(6 min gap)
Belfast Enterprise

That should mean that by the time the Enterprise is catching up with each train ahead of it, that train is reaching it's destination.