[16-5-2012] Just four people on board new train route costing €250,000 a year to run
 

http://www.independent.ie/national-n...n-3140007.html

The FOI records, which we have seen show no record of any correspondence between the NTA and IE until Feb 16th 2012. The very first email is actually one sent by RUI to the NTA expressing concern at the proposed changes, lack of consultation and the impact on existing passengers. All other emails followed this.

Regardless of the passenger numbers what Paul Meila in the Indo has discovered there was no formal procedure, no records and no assessment of the proposal

I know for a fact that IE met the NTA in early Feb 2012 to discuss but no trace of this was found.

The next question is if RUI had not sent an email on Feb 16 would there be any record at all?

Our understanding having spoken to IE staff is the numbers barely ever make double digits.

Note also that again Alan Kelly's story on cost has been shown to be misleading by a huge margin

Irish Rail also failed to notify the NTA of the subsequent timetable changes, the NTA had to email Irish Rail asking them to formally apply, again no assessment was carried out despite the significant extension to journey times.

There are many many Irish Rail services that run for most of their journey with little more than 30 passengers. There mighn't be much left of the system if all such services were weeded out.

If your ambition for the closure of the Nenagh road (and the WRC) is realised you might just see the flood gates opened to other line closures and service curtailments.

Then there is the issue of the huge new stations and facilities in the Dublin area which may not be fully utilised for decades, if ever - KRP, Dunboyne, Docklands, doubling of DART capacity etc etc ...

This reads to me as a case of lies, damned lies and statistics.

Essentially, you can quote the lowest figure and make it sound like it's an average of some sort. That scenario matches the words written, but doesn't match the impression that's given by those words.

I have to say, I find the Indo to be the worst for that sort of behaviour by some margin. I haven't bought it for 5 or 6 years and I couldn't even be bothered checking out their website now. Everything is to suit some agenda (which seems to be anti-Labour at the moment).

Anyway, I was on the 18:00 to Cork last Friday and there were at least 25 connected to the branch line train at Ballybrophy. Not ideal, but not disasterous. The train to Cork pulled out before the (late) branch train had arrived. Hopefully, there was nobody trying to make the connection.

For comparison, last summer, I took a train from Bristol to Melksham. Melksham is on a branch that involves changing off London-Bristol-London trains at Chippenham. Despite being on a train that left Bristol around 6pm, you could count the numbers making the connection on two hands. This was with the benefit of a London-Bristol train also delivering passengers to it.

No, we've had a case where an RUI member was the only person on the train from Nenagh(?) to Heuston - it was running so late they put on an extra train from Portlaoise.

ah now jack, speaking as someone who actually uses this service, we both know that the numbers up to Ballybrophy are in the region of 1-8. Your 153 people misleadingly counts in all the others who get on post brophy, and who would be getting other services within 10-15 mins of this train anyway.

the most i have ever counted on that train as it pulled out of roscrea, inclusing myself, was 8.

the fact is, the indo reporter got onto the train and counted heads on the branch. this is what i have done and posted about here. on your figure of 23, it aint breaking even on the branch, and that is what this is all about.

it was brophy to heuston. it was the other limerick train which took them on board at brophy. also seen it jumping stations to make up time. the fact that it can jump stations and the numbers form them can be easily accomodated on other services shows hwo redundant it actually is.

on an aside point, when this train gets into newbridge, it gets jammed with passengers whilst a six car sits empty waiting to trundle into Heuston half an hour later empty.

You can dream all you want but the head count Tom has is a fair and accurate sample, the Indo numbers also match up (two days were checked at random) as do Irish Rail's numbers

Last week and a bit had the Eucharistic congress so any numbers for that week must be discounted as being artificially high and not representative of ongoing demand

To break even (as in make a loss not greater than the average train) would require close to 50 passengers per day

The train if course could start from Portlaoise and serve onwards from there

Looks like the only through services between Dublin and Limerick on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays during July and August will be the 0505 from Limerick and 1340 return, both via Nenagh !

Oh no Inniskeen, not whataboutery/Palerail. I credited you with more class than that. I'm all for examining alternative timetables but the 0505 is not working by any metric. I have several ideas about what could be done better - notably replacing the 0505 with a Nenagh-Ballybrophy shuttle which meets the Cork 0515 which stops there anyway - but every month of exemplary losses that go by makes that harder to countenance.

I am not remotely suggesting that the existing arrangements on the Ballybrophy line are the most appropriate to the current condition, constraints and configuration of the line. As long as the speed limits remain as they are (even on upgraded track) and the existing signalling arrangements persist it is very difficult to conjure up a useful service.

I agree the 0505 from Limerick is anything but ideal. Not only is it slow on the branch, it is pathetically slow on the main line. Like Rail Users Ireland, Irish Rail want this service to fail and have effectively designed it in such a way as to ensure it does. I am not remotely surprised by low usage, I would be more than surprised by any other outcome. It needn't be that way.

As for investment in IR igenerally, a lot of money has been spent with relatively small return. Operating costs may well have gone down somewhat but service quality and performance does not match the investment. It needn't be that way.

I strongly suspect that if you were to travel on any of the very early services from Galway, Athlone, Cork or Rosslare that there would be literally a handful of passengers until the service was at least 50% through its journey - probably not that much different to the Limerick via Nenagh service.

sorry to say this, but the vast vast majority of those 25 go straight to their cars which are parked in BB car park and go home.

i also get the 18.00 train, and the most i have counted on the connecting service, which can indeed be late, is six. That said, the 2700 is a lovely warm train.

I think this issue should be clarified. RUI most certainly does not want any service to fail. The problem with the 0505 service is that it replaced and prevents the running of perfectly marketable and sensible commuter services to and from Limerick on that branch. What is overlooked here is the 0505 and the connecting train to the 1700 ex Heuston has scuppered this.

The problem that we have, and this is a perfectly valid point, is that this train is a political gambit which we are of the opinion was imposed without any consultation or reserch, and without adhering to the proper proceedures, simply to allow the local TD to print lots of leaflets and gets nice mentions in the Tipp Star and Nenagh Guardian. That is entirely in line with our long standing view on the interferance in rail issues by local TD's and ministers over the years.

It is indeed paradoxical for a rail users representation group to take that stance, when it may lead to us questioning the proper use of the assets of the rial company. But that is all that it is. IE could have a much better service on this line, one that truely develops it and ensures its continued existance. It chose long ago not to do this.

Why? Well, you may be correct in your view that IE is ok with the line closing. Since the McCarthy reports and the troika, things are not as rosy for IE as they once were. Like Minister Howlin, IE has its own low hanging fruit which can be plucked easily, and that includes the Nenagh branch. Not that this is acceptable either, but you do have to wonder why, in the face of all the evidence, IE continued to run a train every day for years when the traffic was going the other way.

one addittional thought - i cannot see how IE can be accused of designing the 0505 serive in such a way as it is designed to fail. They have provided the service, they have publicised it, they have given it cheap fares, and they can hardly give it any other time slot and try to get it into dublin before 9am.

the reality, and i have pointed this out before, is that the number of people who are available to use this service is very very low. I actually think that those who find it useful are using it, and it is simply a matter that not that many find it useful for what they want. This service is only relevent to those on the branch who have work or other activities in the dublin city centre area. That is a small number of people this far out.

By the way, as an admin I can read deleted posts. Just putting that out there.

These passengers were definitely waiting on the platform for the connecting train.

Although as was noted earlier, the IEC may have bumped figures up last week, especially for passengers with free travel who wouldn't get that off the private bus service.

If closure was off the table then here's my suggestion in lieu of the status quo: if a 2800 was based/crewed in Nenagh and departed 0545 it could arrive ~6 mins before the 0653 departure to Heuston ex Cork. If it departed back toward Limerick at 0656 then it would arrive in Limerick 0850 approx.

Now that's not great, granted, but if the 30mph running Nenagh-Ballybrophy was sorted then you could be looking at something nearer an 0600 departure and arrival back in Limerick nearer the current 0840. Roscrea-Limerick commuter is something BE and JJK don't offer - according to the (admittedly sometimes inaccurate) getthere.ie there is no Roscrea-Limerick service which departs Roscrea between 0240 and 0840 whereas in the Nenagh-Limerick market IE competes with both and doing so both Dublin and Limerick commuter duties in a single set/crew.

It also removes the embarrassment of an 0505 ex Limerick train making it to Dublin barely before one which departs 1h15min later. The stabled 2800 could position Limerick-Nenagh in service in the evening which might be more useful to people in Castleconnell who might opt for a taxi to catch a mainline morning service.

This would raise two issues:
1. Can a train be stabled overnight without making Nenagh a full block post?
2. What happens to the 0625 Limerick-Nenagh-Ballybrophy - how patronised is that both at the endpoint and to/from intermediate stops, and could it be moved a bit without affecting its popularity?

I'd also recast the evening schedule to reinstate a decent commuter service (perhaps connecting to an extended Portlaoise service rather than a Dublin-Cork to work around passing loop issues) although that might need further works like making 2nd platforms accessible, making Nenagh a block post etc.

I've been wondering about IE's motivation for basing a 22000 in Limerick for the direct service - are they running into capacity issues for dispatching trains from LTC and it's single point of failu... err... exit?

but that is still only bringing an average of four passengers per train to BB. of those four, a seizable amount probably already use the early Limerick/Cork Trains at Thurles and Templemore anyway. I would be very interested in learning as a fact (not PR dreams) how many NEW passengers this service has attracted. For example, I do not count as a new passenger. Instead of getting the first ex-templemore train I now get the first ex-Roscrea train.

there is a much simpler solution to the line which is centred around getting a train from portlaoise depot to leave BB and serve all stops to limerick as a day long commuter service. IE may even keep their extra commuter from Nenagh. It is not rocket science, and at that early hour doing the complicated up and down at BB to get the train into a starting position should not present a problem.

The basic problem with the line is that the trains left atthe wrong time, in the wrong direction. the 0505 is simply another train leaving at the wrong time in the wrong direction. that is all you have to do, really, to change things, and once people know there is a regular service which is relevent to them it can grow. it really is as simple as that.

so why hasnt this been done? over to IE.....

Not wishing to go off topic but this week I picked up a copy of the Tipperary Holiday Guidebook 2012 (freely available in tourist offices).

Amazingly neither the Ballybrophy - Nenagh - Limerick line nor any of its stations appear on the detailed map on the rear two pages (Railways do feature on said map - Cork line and Limerick Jct. - Waterford line shown).

Now not for one minute am I saying tourism is going to solve the line's problems -it's not - but why is the line not shown?

Two possibilities perhaps:
(i) a genuine omission
(ii) someone somewhere decided the line wasn't worth mentioning (while the sentiment is understandable

It's the principle of the thing.

This guide is published by County Tipperary Tourism Committee on behalf of North Tipperary Company Ltd. and South Tipperary Tourism Company Ltd.

If I was in Irish Rail I'd be very angry about publications like this.

Similar maps for Dublin showed a metro in the past, thats life

There has been no shortage of notice of the service on the Nenagh line in recent times.

Its not really on the tourist trail, beyond some nice countryside there isn't any reason to visit anywhere on the line

Limerick Galway is significantly different in that the line actually goes from somewhere to somewhere

I wasn't arguing the case for the line or referring to the new services.

I was merely pointing out that how come an official tourism publication like this manages to omit something like a railway line running through several points in it.

Ditto was done in a Wexford tourism publication for the South Wexford Line (a few years ago).

It's a case of standards and principles in what official bodies in this country are presenting as "official" and that standard simply isn't good enough across many organisations.