Galway <---> Limerick: The slowest train in Europe?

[Alan French]

Actually, I would call Bilbao-San Sebastián an inter-city route. That’s the one that averages 40km/h, and where the buses are twice as fast. But the trains don’t run empty.

I’m not disputing the slow speed of the WRC; I’m just not sure what everyone is trying to prove. But my line of reason comes from being familiar with the flawed logic behind the arguments used for closing railways. The theory was always that buses could do the job adequately at lower cost. What actually happened was that less people used the replacement bus, since some now went by car and others travelled less often. Connecting traffic on the adjoining lines was also lost. This is why replacement buses were often withdrawn subsequently. Closures undermined the system as a whole.

So the result was more car journeys, less travelling overall, and perhaps not even a saving in public funds. Notice that the period of the most closures (1958-63) was also a time of rapidly increasing deficit. We as taxpayers might not even have gained anything from the closures.

Transport theories of that era, sometimes called “predict and provide”, assumed that the demand for any service was independent of its quality. They thought that a service could deteriorate and everyone would still have to use it. Aspects of quality obviously include journey time and fares, but they also include comfort, reliability, frequency, minimum number of changes, and regularity (whether the timetable is clock-face or not). Experience also shows that a train has a definite advantage over a bus in perceived quality. Curiously, this seems to be true no matter how good the bus service is.

This has lots of implications. One is that where trains and buses run parallel, they have distinct but overlapping markets. The growth in inter-city buses hasn’t destroyed the market for the parallel railways – even when the buses are faster. You may say, “No one will use the train if the bus is cheaper and quicker”, but experience shows otherwise. Trains have a lot more success in getting people out of their cars.

So in re-opening services, we are trying to reverse the process that happens in closures. Where a route is well served by buses, and it looks like we should leave things as they are, the two main motives for introducing a train service are:

1. Connections with adjoining lines mean more people making longer journeys. This may go a long way to covering costs, and

2. There will be a benefit to the wider community in reducing car journeys.

This is very much a summary, but there is a range of factors that RUI members should be familiar with. There was a mentality and a set of mistaken assumptions that led to the closures. Too many economists, sadly, still cling to this mentality, with their predict-and-provide approach and their dreams of a bus-only system. Let us make sure we don’t unwittingly make the same mistaken assumptions.

Much needs to be done on the WRC. In the short term this means improving frequency and regularity, running through trains to other lines, and improving connections generally (see my contribution to the timetable consultation). This will not all be negated just because road journeys can be faster.

[Sealink]

Don't want to take this off topic, but have "done" the Bilbao-San Sebastien route. Bayjaysus it's slow!!!!

[ACustomer]

Yesterday at Limerick station, there were timetables posted up for all routes except Limerick-Galway. (There were however some Limerick-Galway little booklet timetables on a shelf).

There is no excuse for this.

[corktina]

Originally Posted by Alan French

Actually, I would call Bilbao-San Sebastián an inter-city route. That’s the one that averages 40km/h, and where the buses are twice as fast. But the trains don’t run empty.

I’m not disputing the slow speed of the WRC; I’m just not sure what everyone is trying to prove. But my line of reason comes from being familiar with the flawed logic behind the arguments used for closing railways. The theory was always that buses could do the job adequately at lower cost. What actually happened was that less people used the replacement bus, since some now went by car and others travelled less often. Connecting traffic on the adjoining lines was also lost. This is why replacement buses were often withdrawn subsequently. Closures undermined the system as a whole.

So the result was more car journeys, less travelling overall, and perhaps not even a saving in public funds. Notice that the period of the most closures (1958-63) was also a time of rapidly increasing deficit. We as taxpayers might not even have gained anything from the closures.

Transport theories of that era, sometimes called “predict and provide”, assumed that the demand for any service was independent of its quality. They thought that a service could deteriorate and everyone would still have to use it. Aspects of quality obviously include journey time and fares, but they also include comfort, reliability, frequency, minimum number of changes, and regularity (whether the timetable is clock-face or not). Experience also shows that a train has a definite advantage over a bus in perceived quality. Curiously, this seems to be true no matter how good the bus service is.

This has lots of implications. One is that where trains and buses run parallel, they have distinct but overlapping markets. The growth in inter-city buses hasn’t destroyed the market for the parallel railways – even when the buses are faster. You may say, “No one will use the train if the bus is cheaper and quicker”, but experience shows otherwise. Trains have a lot more success in getting people out of their cars.

So in re-opening services, we are trying to reverse the process that happens in closures. Where a route is well served by buses, and it looks like we should leave things as they are, the two main motives for introducing a train service are:

1. Connections with adjoining lines mean more people making longer journeys. This may go a long way to covering costs, and

2. There will be a benefit to the wider community in reducing car journeys.

This is very much a summary, but there is a range of factors that RUI members should be familiar with. There was a mentality and a set of mistaken assumptions that led to the closures. Too many economists, sadly, still cling to this mentality, with their predict-and-provide approach and their dreams of a bus-only system. Let us make sure we don’t unwittingly make the same mistaken assumptions.

Much needs to be done on the WRC. In the short term this means improving frequency and regularity, running through trains to other lines, and improving connections generally (see my contribution to the timetable consultation). This will not all be negated just because road journeys can be faster.

The reality is millions of euro of OUR taxes have been spent building a second rate line. Theres not much you can do to imrove a moribund existing line perhaps but to WASTE it on this project is ridiculous and unforgivable and whats more it will now cost us countless millions in subsidies to keep it going to the detriment of other (perhaps more viable) bits of the system.

[Mark Gleeson]

Exactly thats why we should have looked at Galway commuter services first.

Everyone is waiting for passenger numbers which are real, not guesswork

The numbers onboard on departure from Athenry for Limerick and on arrival from Limerick at Athenry are what we are interested in. Business is good Galway Athenry but that didn't need 100+ million spent to achieve.

[corktina]

I fully agree.A park and Ride stattion at Oranmore would seem a good idea but the plans i have heard of do not include a passing loop there and have only a small car park whereas at least a site should be chosen with potential for a larger car park. It wouls make sense to me if there were also P&R buses from here to parts of the city not served by the railway.

[Colm Moore]

Originally Posted by corktina

The reality is millions of euro of OUR taxes have been spent building a second rate line. Theres not much you can do to imrove a moribund existing line perhaps but to WASTE it on this project is ridiculous and unforgivable and whats more it will now cost us countless millions in subsidies to keep it going to the detriment of other (perhaps more viable) bits of the system.

Given that the money has been spent aleady, surely we should give it a chance? Better to promote the service and see it try to break even than just give up.

[corktina]

break even? even IE concede it will lose millions per year. Even with an efficent owner it can't thrive given the ham-strung way it is built with the Motorway covering the same route only shorter. It would be cheaper to shut it down and hire the existing passengers taxis!

[Ronald Binge]

I've just seen an empty coach running from the Airport to Rosslare at the Port Tunnel.

[parody]This route must be scrapped IMMEDIATELY [/parody]

[Alan French]

Colm Moore is right – the service could break even, provided that we define breaking even as making a net contribution to the system as a whole.

I said that my understanding of the transport market “has lots of implications” (#15). One of them is that the traditional profit/loss account for each line is wildly misleading. For a closure, the relevant figure is not what the line itself is losing, but the saving made to the whole system (and to the whole country) when all effects of the closure are allowed for. Staff redeployed elsewhere, for example, are not a saving. But most importantly, loss of revenue to connecting services is a real loss to the whole system. So the real saving will always be less than the losses shown in an itemised account.

So I am applying the reverse of this logic to re-openings. If the WRC, with an improved timetable and connections, will contribute to the rest of the network more than it loses on operating costs, then the entire argument about being a drain on taxpayers’ money collapses. It is possible, given a few years, that the line may be a net contributor. Then where will all this rhetoric about saving taxpayers’ money be?

Of course, the contribution to the rest of the network is difficult to estimate, and needs to be based on actual experience. But the traditional profit/loss account is not the “next best thing”: it is seriously wide of the mark. Quoting such figures in the media is misleading, and I would even call it fraudulent accounting.

So if you resent tax money going on the WRC, ask yourself this. Of all the dubious spending by Government, why pick on this line (which might yet make a net contribution), and not, for example, the motorway system? In particular, have the same people protested against the Limerick-Galway motorway as an extravagance? There is something strange in the way that railway projects attract more white-elephant type comments than almost any other area of public expenditure. This “presumption of extravagance” needs to be explored further.

Ronald Binge’s parody (#23) hits the nail on the head: it shows how differently people think about railways as against other public services.

[Colm Moore]

That is much how Luas work out their figures "If we add this, how many extra passengers on the system?".

[dowlingm]

Alan French - criticism of the WRC on this forum and others does not come down to "we should build a motorway instead" and you shouldn't imply that the critics here believe that. This is a rail passenger forum, after all. I doubt there's many here who don't think the rail-road funding levels are imbalanced - one of the reasons I think NRA should assume the role of rail infrastructure operator is in part to force them to produce alternatives analyses to new roads in addition to more design and engineering resources as part of a larger organisation.

It comes down to the fact that Clonsilla-Pace is opening now and not last year - Pace-Navan should have been on the way to being done. It comes down to Oranmore, Hansfield, Longpavement and Blarney having no stations, Sixmilebridge no passing loop and Craughwell no passengers. It's about the line being done on the cheap to match the bullsh!t cost estimates coming from West On Track meaning there's a 5mph limit out of Ennis and the sight of an LC underwater at Kiltartan.

If it wasn't for political sleeveens, we would have more track, more stations and more passengers on the rails today - just not north of Ennis, yet.

[Colm Moore]

Originally Posted by Alan French

I take Dowlingm’s point about the line being done “on the cheap”, but this raises a more general issue. A few years ago, when we were Platform 11, there was a lot of talk about “Rolls-Royce” schemes – quality projects where there was always a suspicion that someone had over-designed or over-priced them, to make them less likely to happen. So do you design for high quality from the start, or do you build cheap and improve things later? There are pros and cons on both sides; consequently both methods can be criticised. But starting cheap puts places on the railway map.

One needs to be more careful about what is gold plated and what isn't.

Its important to get the basics right, spend money on them. Be more careful on spending money on shiny things. So declining the use of Mark 2s on the Sligo line because commuter trains were newer / shinier(sp?) or putting stations were very few people live or want to go - at the expense of places where many more people live or want to go - is succumbing to the shiny front end syndrome.

[corktina]

Like putting a station in Craughwell (well in a field outside it) instead of Oranmore you mean.... have to agree there. It amazes me that the stattion wasnt built alongside the level crossing just west of Craughwell on the old N road. I get the feeling it was built where theold station USED to be for no better reason than thats was where it used to be. A station west of the village would be on the mainline and have far more potential.


disclaimer...I'm not 100% sure of my geography here, so feel free to shoot me down.

[Colm Moore]

Station is here: http://maps.osi.ie/publicviewer/#V1,550840,719812,5 Level crossing further north.

I imagine its down to they owned the land and they weren't going buying new land.

I was going to say its nearer more of the housing, but every boreen in the area is full of houses.

Operationally, its probably better to have the level crossing slightly away from the level crossing to cut down gate time, but I'll defer to others on that point.

Interchange-wise it is retrograde to have to drag buses off the N6.