Naas/Sallins area
 

Naas Sallins Rail Users Group will hopefully be joining us shortly on the board and web site.

In the meantime a public meeting has been organised by Fianna Fail to discuss the key issues of Transport and Health for Naas. I suspect we'll see the T21 AV presentation rolled out again as we did in Navan.

Date : Tuesday 7th March.
Location : Town House Hotel, Naas, Co. Kildare.
Time : 8pm.

Guest Speakers

Martin Cullen TD
Minister for Transport (they must be worried):D

Sean Power TD
Minister of State at the Dept. of Health and Children.

Along with election hopefulls, Aine Brady, Anthony Creevey(no relation) and Michael Fitzpatrick.

Im going along with one question, maybe more, but definetly one. Anyone from the Naas, Newbridge, Kildare area should try to get there, just to put the rail transport questions across.

Current situation in which the KRP cannot be dished out as a solution for.....
No Sunday services on Sallins/Naas line
and No DART for Sallins/Naas under T21 as previously promised by IE in their Dublin Rail Plan as recently as September 2005.

Please PUSH for a DART-type solution for Sallins/Naas.
It makes NO commuter sense to have trains turn back at Hazlehatch, depriving the Naas/Newbride conurbation of frequent, day-long service.
Naas + Newbridge have been commuter towns for over 40 years!
If you think this decision is purely politically-motivated (because it certainly is NOT a "KILDARE-line-friendly" decision), I hope someone in attendance asks straight out just WHAT the rationale is/was.
Thanks!

We know what killed DART to Kildare it was the DTO, the entire Kildare Route Project is contained within the county of Dublin only a few hundred meters are in Kildare in fact the border is on the west end of Hazelhatch

Iarnrod Eireann where very clearly talking Kildare for DART and we have the maps, transcripts etc to prove it we even have the costings

Sorry, Mark, I don't quite follow... are you saying Naas/Newbridge DART-type rail service gets chopped because of a county border?
If that's the logic, what will happen with Maynooth (also in Co.Kildare)?
Why was inter-county rapid transit OK not once, but TWICE, for neighboring Co. Wicklow?
First DART to Bray.
Then DART to Greystones...
Are their border guards less severe than Kildare's?
And Neither Bray nor Greystones has the population of Naas/Newbridge.
Since WHEN did country borders become an issue?
Mmmm, to me, it doesn't add up...
Thanks again for any light you can shed on this.

Bray is bit like Hazelhatch its on the border that said it has been a rail commuter town for 150 years and was a logical terminus. That said Bray can fill every seat on a 6 coach train in the morning rush, Kildare can't do that neither can Newbridge, the 1845 to Newbridge has plently of seats empty on a 4 car train with only 184 seats

Greystones has a political move by Michael Lowry to win a by election for FG. Everyone accepts it was a bad idea and destroyed the reliability of the DART service. A simple railcar shuttling to Wicklow from Bray would have done the gig for a fraction of the cost. FG of course lost

The DTO for possibly the first time ever insisted the expansion of the DART to Kildare town would have led to continuation of urban sprawl bit late for that.

The other reason is the zonal map, look how neatly Greystones, Hazelhatch, Maynooth and Ballbrigan are all on the short hop zone boundary. Work that out

OK, I see. Thanks for that.
That said, Naas has a far bigger population than Maynooth, which may yet get DART - I hope so for them.
The problem is this large population is now CAR-bound.
I guess it's still too much to expect Planners in Ireland to actually plan (i.e. do some forward thinking); our "Planners" are deployed to resolving issues that should've/could've been PLANNED, but were not, though they were there for all to see.
First, we, the public, are meant to suffer (AND pay) for 20 years.
THEN, maybe, we get something.
If Naas/Newbridge had had some kind of a reliable commuter service since they first began to boom 15 years ago, maybe the people there would by now be Train Travelers, instead of road-hoggers.
It's hard to unlearn bad habits.