We don't have a position on freight, though we do point out that Irish Rail recieves a subsidy for passenger services only, in the days before separate accounts it wasn't clear if the freight division was taking a cut of this or not.
In the case of secondary routes having freight actually makes it cheaper to run passenger services since it splits the high fixed costs. Ireland is fairly unique in Europe in not offering any grants or other supports for rail freight, any capital investment in freight is likely to improve passengers journeys as well by either providing increased capacity or new freight waggons capable of travelling at higher speeds keeping them out of the way of passenger services
Most of the freight lost from the network was as a result of the companies involved closing down, IFI, Bell Lines, Silvermines, Asahi etc. Guinness got a cheaper deal elsewhere. No exising block customer has been told to get lost
The number one cause of delay in rail projects currently is the refusal of the DoT to sign off on projects at the post planning approval stage (Midleton, Kildare etc) and the failure to provide certainty in the funding going forward note the Pace/M3 electrifcation issue
It is clear that there is still a heavy bias in favour of the roads, despite the undeniable evidence that Ireland has the fastest growing passenger railway in Europe recording a 12% increase last year alone or 380% since the year before the DART opened
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