[Article] Galway light rail lobby queries report

[Colm Moore]

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/...264201661.html

Galway light rail lobby queries report
LORNA SIGGINS Western Correspondent

LOBBYISTS FOR a light rail system in Galway have pledged to continue their campaign despite a consultancy study which says it is too costly.

Brendan Holland of the Gluas campaign said yesterday his group planned to make a case to Galway City Council next month which would challenge the findings made by the consultancy study.

The MVA consultancy report for Galway City Council, published this month, says a light rail system would cost almost €700 million – 80 per cent more than the cost of a rapid bus network.

An improved bus system, initiated in tandem with park-and-ride facilities and traffic restrictions, would almost treble use of public transport in Galway to 14 per cent of road users by 2020.

It says light rail would take 10 years to start work on and would cause significant disruption.

However, the Gluas campaign believes a “light-touch” rail system could be provided for one-third of the cost. This system requires less road excavation, while Gluas maintains installation would cost a maximum of €210 million. However, the MVA consultants describe light-touch rail as a “high-risk strategy” as it has not been widely tested or used.

The consultancy report estimates that Galway’s population is too small to sustain the cost and running of a light rail, working on a city population estimate of 72,000 and a city/county commuting population with a 30km radius of almost 170,000.

It says a “bendy bus” network for Galway would cost €115 million, with an extra €89 million recommended to improve the current bus system.Green Party senator Niall Ó Brolcháin said more buses “will not entice people to get out of their cars”.

[Colm Moore]

http://www.advertiser.ie/galway/article/22056

You never gave light rail a chance — GLUAS backers lash City Hall
Galway Advertiser, February 11, 2010.

By Kernan Andrews

The GLUAS light rail system was “never given a real chance” by City Hall or its transport feasibility study, but it remains a valid option for Galway city and is nowhere near as expensive as is being alleged.

This is the view of Brendan Holland, chairperson of the GLUAS group, who was reacting to Robust Foundations - Galway Public Transport Feasibility Study.

The study was carried out for the Galway City Council by MVA Consultants to “make recommendations the feasibility of developing and augmenting an integrated public transport network, which may include Park and Ride, and Bus Rapid Transit and/or Light Rail”.

The report came down in favour of a Bus Rapid Transit system, which could cost €114 million. It raised questions over the validity of light rail for Galway, given that it’s calculations showed it could cost €698,600,000 - in contrast to the GLUAS’ estimation of €250 million.

Mr Holland said he was “disappointed, but not surprised, with the findings” as “buses have been the preference of the city council from the start”. However he was critical of MVA consultants in how it approached the costing of light rail for the city.

He alleges that there are “areas of concern” and “serious shortcomings” in the report, such as costings which “incorrectly compare 21km of GLUAS with 14.6km of BRT and that there was “no consultation” with the Rail Procurement Agency.

“The consultants never gave GLUAS a real chance,” he said. “The GLUAS approach is based on new technology in light rail which, coupled with more competitive construction costs, results in a system that could be delivered for €250 million. The MVA report labels this as high risk and suggests an overall cost at €699 million, but this is based on the very expensive methodologies employed in LUAS Dublin.”

He said the report also “ignores the economic and environmental factors associated with the carbon credits from use of light rail” and that there are “admission of errors within the report from the consultants themselves”.

However Mr Holland welcomed the statement in the MVA report which says, “In order to develop a better appreciation of any benefits which may be available form such an innovative system (GLUAS), funding for further development and research in regard to this Light Touch LRT type installation would be appropriate”.

The GLUAS group wants the city council to take this recommendation and “look seriously at the comprehensive case for the GLUAS”. Mr Holland added: “We have a strong financial case to fund the GLUAS while sources of finance for the €115 million Bus Rapid Transit are not even mentioned in the MVA report”.

A number of city councillors have come out in support of GLUAS and said City Hall should “not reject it out of hand”. They said there needs to be an examination into the difference between the MVA figure and the GLUAS group’s figure. As a result the GLUAS group have been asked to address the next council meeting in March on the matter

[Colm Moore]

http://www.galwaynews.ie/11093-tram-...ransport-study

Tram campaigners dispute findings of Transport Study
February 5, 2010 - 9:49am
Consultants opt for bendy-bus system for Galway

The company behind the new-generation tram proposal for Galway has disputed the findings of a year-long transport study, insisting its system would cost the exchequer nothing to set up and prompt a five-fold increase in public transport users who would never be persuaded out of their cars and onto buses.

The final report of the Public Transport Feasibility Study has come firmly down on the side of an upgraded bus network, effectively ruling out a tram system for the city as too expensive.

The report – which has taken a year to complete and was presented to Galway’s City Council’s special policy committee this week – found that a light rail transit (LRT) system would cost nearly €700m or 80% more to build than a bus rapid transit network (BRT), would take ten years to start and cause significant disruption to services during construction and beyond.

According to the consultants MVA, which carried out the study on behalf of the Galway City Council, it would cost €699m to set up a light rail system, as opposed to €115m to get a ‘bendy bus’ network off the ground, with a further €89m required to enhance the current bus system.
A proposal for a Light

Touch LRT – or the so called GLUAS proposal – which supporters have claimed would cost a maximum €250m to set up – was dismissed by the consultants as a “very high risk approach” to fixing our congestion woes.

The backers of GLUAS claim the new technology rail installations would involve less excavation of the road surface, going down just 300mm, which would result in less road disruption during installation. The trams would weigh just 22 tons, compared to over 30 tons that the more common trams weigh.

The system would involve renewable power generation facilities to supply power locally and any surplus would be sold back to the electricity grid. They point to a 40m critical section of the Sheffield Supertram, where 300 trams a day were using the same technology, which had operated without a hitch for 14 years.

However the MVA consultants were unimpressed.

“To date, the light touch LRT has not been widely tested or used and as such would represent a high risk strategy for addressing Galway City’s public transport deficiencies.” However they recommend further research into the system, which would require further funding.

Professor Lewis Lesley of Tram Power said the consultants had not carried out any in-depth examination of the GLUAS submission and had only examined the heavy-duty tram option.

He said these same consultants had recommended that a railway line be converted to a busway in Preston, which would have taken until 2028 to get up and running. Tram Power was now installing their system on this project.

“A more cynical person might ask the City Council if they appointed MVA to carry out the study because they wanted to sink the GLUAS option. Gift horse and mouth comes to mind – we are offering to set this up for free in the city, which we would pay for out of the fare box,” said Prof Lesley.

Their feasibility study found that they could get private investors and a loan to finance two lines running from Barna to Merlin Park over the Quincentenary Bridge, paying for a bridge to be built beside the Salmon Weir Bridge, with a second line to run from Dangan along Eglinton Street to Briarhill.

For more, read page 6 of this week's City Tribune.

[Mark Gleeson]

Its just like the WRC, someone dreams up some crazy numbers then the independent consultants go in and put a real number on it.

In the case of the first leg of the WRC the actual cost is within a few % of the consultants report and at least 2 twice the initial pie in the sky number.

There are of course much cheaper and more effective solutions

[Colm Moore]

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/...265795049.html

Galway campaigners question consultants' report on cost
LORNA SIGGINS Western Correspondent

GALWAY’S LIGHT rail campaign is urging Galway City Council to become a partner in a €240 million public transport project.

Councillors will be asked to back the light rail project tonight at a presentation for the local authority.

The Gluas campaign says its project would cost a fraction of the estimate quoted in a recent consultancy report for the local authority, which opted for “bendy buses” over light rail for Galway.

The MVA consultancy report for Galway City Council claimed a light rail system would cost almost €700 million – 80 per cent more than the cost of a rapid bus network.

It said an improved bus system, initiated in tandem with park-and-ride facilities and traffic restrictions, would almost treble the use of public transport in Galway to 14 per cent of road users by 2020. It said light rail would take 10 years to start work on, and would cause significant disruption.

However, the Gluas campaign, comprising key city businesses and academics from NUI Galway, argues that a “light-touch” rail system could be provided at one-third of the cost.

It says the private sector would deliver on much of the cost, estimated at between €210 million and €240 million for a three-line system on 21km of track.

The campaign also questions how the MVA consultants could have come up with a cost for light rail almost equivalent to that spent on the Luas in Dublin when Galway is a city of only 80,000 people.

The disclosed cost of building the Red and Green Luas lines in Dublin was €770 million, three times the original prediction of €254 million.

“In Dublin a key part of the Luas construction and some 40 per cent of the budget involved moving services, which we don’t have to do here,” said Gluas campaign chairman Brendan Holland at the weekend. “We are hoping to construct three lines here with a mixture of EU and private funding.”

The campaign has been working with TramPower Ltd in England on a light-touch system which would be fuelled by electric power generates from the city’s canal system and wind turbines

“The European Investment Bank said we would qualify for 50 per cent funding, so we just have to ask the Government to introduce a tax incentive which will encourage private companies to back us,” said Mr Holland.

The MVA consultancy report estimates that Galway’s population is too small to sustain the cost and running of a light rail, working on a city population estimate of 72,000 and a city/county commuting population within a 30km radius of almost 170,000.

It favours a “bendy bus” network for Galway at a cost €115 million, with an extra €89 million recommended to improve the current bus system.

The consultants described the light-touch rail proposal as a “high-risk strategy” which had not been widely tested or used.

An Taisce’s Galway branch spokesman Derrick Hambleton said: “MVA has carried out similar reports for other local authorities, and has taken a similar approach to downgrading light rail in favour of buses, which we would question.

“We firmly believe light rail on an east-west axis in Galway would solve the city’s transport issues, given that people live on the west and work in the east, and would contribute to positive development of the city,” he said.

The Gluas group cites Freiburg in Germany and Valenciennes in France as cities which can provide transport models for Galway.

Valenciennes in northern France is smaller than Galway with only 43,000 residents. Freiburg in southwest Germany, which has been described as the “greenest city in the world”, has a population of 200,000 which is equivalent to Galway city and its hinterland.

Photo http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/...65795049_1.jpg

An image of Gluas in action. Campaigners say the private sector could deliver much of the estimated cost of between €210 million and €240 million for the three-line system on 21km of track

[Colm Moore]

I wouldn't trust anyone's design skills if their photoshops are that bad.

I understand the report will be made public after tonight's meeting.

[ACustomer]

Its the same old story: virtually all the benefits of GLUAS would go to Galway residents and they would pay virtually none of the costs, so of course they will lobby for pie in the sky.

The absence of a proper local tax base means that cargo-cult economics rules.

[dowlingm]

It's worse - the State would be picking up the tab for debugging a development light rail system and tram not in full service anywhere and which fell at the first fence when offered to Toronto. The Trampower website itself notes that Galway is as close as they have come to an in-service system!

Lewis Lesley has been hither and thither selling this thing and no-one's buying. Hard to believe that if this thing had legs it wouldn't be picked up.

[Colm Moore]

If its will only cost €200m-ish perhaps the private sector will pick up the entire price tag and offer a completion guarantee also?

It says the private sector would deliver on much of the cost, estimated at between €210 million and €240 million for a three-line system on 21km of track.

The campaign also questions how the MVA consultants could have come up with a cost for light rail almost equivalent to that spent on the Luas in Dublin when Galway is a city of only 80,000 people.

Consider that we are 10 years on in inflation terms and that Luas is something like 28km (36 stops) compared to 21km (29 stops) - in other words, the proposal is almost as big as Luas.

[ccos]

Sounds a bit like that Springfield Monorail system

[Colm Moore]

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/...266109585.html

Galway council supports light rail proposal
LORNA SIGGINS

Galway City Council has agreed to develop a “working relationship” with a campaign to develop a light rail system in the city.

The “Gluas” campaign says its project would cost a fraction of the estimate quoted in a consultants’ report for the council, which opted for buses.

Councillors agreed to support the study’s emphasis on public transport, but said their preference is a light rail system.

The campaign, involving businesses and academics from NUI Galway, believes it could secure private funding of €210-€240 million for a light-rail system.