Sixmilebridge to Shannon rail study money announced
 

Why is it that lobbying for railway investment is in inverse proportion to any likely ratio of benefits to costs?

At the moment any money spent on this study would be better given as a direct support to Shannon as it struggles to survive with minimal traffic.

This was studied previously and thrown out

Sadly Shannon is just too small an airport to justify a rail link, it has ZERO scheduled passenger flights today and likely to remain depressed in demand for 3-5 years.

Toronto has 3 million people in the city proper and the rail link failed; it only continues now because it was retooled with additional stops to facilitate commuting. I’ve often thought that rail is better from an airport than to it, given how stressed people get about the possibility of missing their flight because of a broken signal or level crossing.

To my mind, getting Shannon Town/Industrial Estate, and if a way could be found to effectively squeeze it in, Bunratty* plus additional Ennis line stations at Moyross (LIT) and The Parkway are the way to make it work. If calling it an airport train is how you get the budget for it, well, that’s showbiz...

*Bunratty implies a Cratloe alignment which is significantly shorter as a Limerick-Shannon option but I can’t see an effective way to thread the line through Shannon from the east without a northern detour - perhaps someone else has sharper eyes. But Sixmilebridge seems to me a detour too far to be effective as a service given the limited likelihood of significant speed increases on the existing line, even if routing via open country and the N19 right of way does have a lower degree of difficulty.

Airport rail
 

Yes Shannon is to small for a rail link, Dublin needs one. Kerry has one it's Farranfore, 600 metres form the airport as good as any other airport station for walking. I did see it once advertised in Are Lingus as a rail connected airport.

Google Maps shows it as 1400m.
https://goo.gl/maps/MupBzTTKMkGUHEiU7

The idea of Farranfore as a rail-connected airport is a total joke and its almost a waste of time discussing it.
There is a train to Killarney or Tralee roughly every 2 hours. Do you really expect someone to walk 1.4km with luggage or take a taxi, for a mean expected wait time of one hour?
I don't expect Farranfore to handle any significant level of traffic making long-distance onward land connections: it's basically a Co Kerry airport and getting to anywhere in Kerry by train from Farranfore is likely to appeal to very few people.
Why is it that so much agitation for rail projects are for totally hopeless ones? The greater Dublin area is crying out for increased capacity yet we hear about people in the middle of nowhere complaining about things like the DART getting more money than the WRC.