Galway-Limerick slow speeds

[Thomas J Stamp]

Originally Posted by Inniskeen

So remind me what lines in Ireland don't exist for "political reasons". If the same political approach to railways was taken in the Republic as in Northern Ireland, you might now have services from Dublin to Cork, Limerick, Galway and Killarney as well as DART (not necessarily electrified).

Yes, performance of the WRC (by definition including Limerick/Ennis) is a disappointment, but then so is the service frequency, quality, speed and marketing. So what would be saved closing Ennis/Athenry - one two piece railcar (add to scrap line) ?, fuel, some staff costs (drivers and pw). Given the age of the infrastructure maintainence costs can't be that high so not too much savings there either. I imagine total savings would be very minor in the overall scheme of things - could probably save more by cutting lightly used off peak Dublin DART and suburban services.

Well, we know its 3 million a year, but we also know that it is not going to close. Its a part of the network now and it must be made either profitable or as close to profitable as possible, same as any other part of the network. You seem to have a bee in your bonnet about lightly used off peak DART/surburban services but I would wager that the sets used off peak work for hours on end and over the totality of their rota they would use far more then a peak service on the WRC.

Besides, this isnt a "Whatbouthim" argument. Those services have been established for years. This is a new service which before it was even opened was predicted to be an EXTRA loss maker to a company that cannot assume any extra loss making activities. This is why we (and anyone else looking objectivley at it) said it was a bad idea.

[dowlingm]

Originally Posted by Mark Gleeson

The best thing that could happen to rail in this country is to close Athenry Ennis.

Can't believe it's not at least second to the Nenagh Branch. At least the Ennis-Athenry section must need minimal staff to do its thing compared to the Branch, plus everything is basically new and presumably much of it won't be worth relocating.

The reality is though that the Oranmore station will be basically Castleconnell or Hansfield redux unless IE can, among other things, get the 410 and 402 bus services extended through the station vicinity so that people coming up from south and east Galway would have the option to access Merlin Park Hospital and Galway Clinic.