Sir, – Michael McDowell outing himself as a fan of railways was never on my political bingo card for 2023 (“Nostalgic fantasies about rail travel won’t change reality. What we need are roads”, Opinion & Analysis, August 23rd). You learn something new every day.
The report of the All-Island Rail Strategy Review front-loads reinstatement of lines where freight will form a significant amount of the rail traffic. Foynes to Limerick is already being restored. Soon afterwards work will begin on the Western Rail Corridor and Rosslare to Waterford, specifically to facilitate freight. Much of the pressure to see rail reconnection has come from the port authorities themselves.
Freight flows have changed markedly in the last number of years, with Rosslare Europort seeing 200,000 container movements in 2022. There are now five ports on mainland Europe with direct links to Rosslare. Many of those are Tier 1 category. Provision of inter-modal options through rail freight are fundamental to Tier 1 status and are a reasonable expectation for port customers. Rosslare Europort is presently Tier 2 and doesn’t even possess a crane to lift a container off a ship. Any customer trading from Europe has an expectation that the services they avail of at the departure port should be also available on arrival in Rosslare.
Michael McDowell’s notion that the development of hydrogen-powered trucks will occur before 2030 when the Rosslare-Waterford line is set to be reinstated is fanciful since no manufacturer of trucks at present is providing such to the haulage industry. As the rail review points out, there is very little capacity to generate hydrogen in the State at the moment, whether for trucks or rail engines.
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The International Road Transport Union has indicated that by 2026, 30 per cent of truck drivers will retire. The workforce is ageing and the long hours are not attracting younger recruits. Unaccompanied freight is becoming central to how containers move and trade is done. This reality is central to the decision by P&O this week to end services between Dublin and Liverpool at the end of 2023.
The rail strategy is not about romance and is not about sending us all back to the days before Todd Andrews closed lines. It is about having 800,000 more people living within five kilometres of a rail station and running a rail network that is sustainable. Much of the mileage of new lines suggested in the report for the Republic of Ireland from 2030 onwards are to be constructed within a 30-mile radius of Dublin. The reality is that those to benefit most from this report, if implemented, are people living or working in Dublin because it will make it easier to get to Dublin Airport and provide options for those who now have no choice but to pay tolls on the M4, M3 or M1. – Yours, etc,
JOE RYAN,
Wexford.
Sir, – I share Michael McDowell’s frustration with how the State implements rail projects. Like him, I cannot understand why the National Transport Authority (NTA) and the Department of Transport continue to postpone the most strategically important rail project in the State, let alone the whole island of Ireland, the Dart Interconnector.
I also share his concerns over Metrolink. This project is being gold-plated and should never have been conceived as a standalone metro project in the first place. For those of us with long memories, the original Dublin Rapid Transit proposals of the mid 1970s would have provided high-capacity rail services to the North of Dublin, for a proposed cost in 1979 of £400 million for the whole network. Sadly, these proposals were shot down in flames by certain well-known economists who consistently oppose all rail investment, including the Luas and the current Dart line.
Where I fundamentally disagree with Michael McDowell is his wholesale dismissal of rail expansion and particularly rail freight. His argument that hydrogen-powered trucks will resolve any emissions issues is built on a fantasy that somehow we will use hydrogen as the main source of energy for road traffic. None of the technology he proposes is in mainstream use anywhere. Adding even more trucks to our busy roads will simply lead to more gridlock, as anyone who sits in standstill traffic around Dublin and Galway will understand. Your columnist has fallen for the stale road versus rail argument. We need both to thrive.
We are suffering an enormous housing shortage in the State, coupled with unaffordable property prices and increasingly long commutes by road or by infrequent and overcrowded trains. Expanding the railway network and coupling that expansion with intensive property and business development along those new or expanded railway routes would go a long way to resolving Ireland’s biggest crisis of modern times. – Yours, etc,
JARLATH CANNEY,
Tuam,
Co Galway.
Sir, –Many of our cities and towns are clogged with traffic, much of which consists of single occupant cars. Traffic jams do not differentiate between electric vehicles and diesel or petrol cars. Michael McDowell also talks of transport plans being hijacked by a “new anti-mobility agenda”. I recently holidayed in Portugal, a country of a similar size to Ireland and was amazed at the quality of their rail services, both inter-city and urban. Further major investment is planned, including high-speed links between Lisbon and Porto. Rail transport enhances mobility providing one of the most relaxing travel experiences. Who wants to drive from Sligo to Galway when you could take a train and sit in a dining carriage looking out at the western landscape?
This doesn’t have to be a rail versus road argument. Rail transport can complement the existing road network and should be developed as a priority, beginning with the reopening of the Western Rail Corridor. – Yours, etc,
MIKE BURKE,
Mohill,
Co Leitrim.