ccos
Don't get your hopes up.
Got wind today that Jim Meade, IE's regional manager for the west was at Colbert Station aswering questions from customers so I thought I'd mosie down and make a nuisance of myself.
Firstly I asked Jim what his thoughts were on the new station planned for Moyress in the regen. plan. He said he'd got an email from somebody about it and thats it. His reply (to the email) was you build it and then maybe we'll get involved. Not an encouraging start though he was keen to point out that the Ennis line was a great success so far and Sixmilebridge was still on course.
I then asked him about the Nenagh line, (while I had him as it were). I've never used this line and I know nothing about trains & railways so bear with me. This route he said wasn't going so well though he said it would be a year from now before they could say for sure whether it was going to work or not (from their point of view i.e. ROI). The IE engineers are currently working on upgrading the line which will take them to the end of the year at which time there will be no more money available to do work on this stretch of line. At least that's how I understand it. After this there will be a bedding in period. Ultimately the goal is to guarantee a 50 minute service time as advertised at an average speed of 40mph (still seems slow to me) rather than the current 25mph. He wasn't really interested in adding further scheduled services because of the low uptake. He referred to a study done by a group at U.L which calculated that an average of 60 commuters would be using the line at this stage. However the number is in fact in the low 20's (although last weeek there was a couple of days where no's were in the low 30's). He readily acknowledged that the service was not up to standard and this was certainly a factor in the low uptake no's. For this reason the success or otherwise of the service will not be judged until they can provide the advertised service. I remarked that arrival time of 8:45 was in itself cutting it fine. He said that that there were no earlier slots available at Colbert and that many of the people who use the line would be happy if IE could manage 9:45 esp. students attending grind colleges like Bruce where doors shut at 9:00.
Finally I asked him about Park n' Rides & a suburban rail network in Limerick City that would serve Raheen, Corbally etc using existing tracks. Again not very encouraging. Cost benefit seemed to enter into everything. He was very hopeful about Tuam for example if an adequately sized carpart
could be managed at the station but was quite dismissive of short rail journeys like moyress-colber because he argued the concentrations of people weren't there and short journeys were not lucrative for them whereas long ones were. He mentioned a feasibility study by PUTS (correct?) that had looked at a line for Castletroy and the Parkway via UL but this idea had long since fallen by the wayside. He feels that that the lack of bus corridors in the city centre and the City Council's refusal to allow them prevents Colbert from linking up better with areas like Raheen and this is a big problem for them in marketing their commuter services.
On policy he said that the present government has done more fo rail in Ireland and has been more supportive of rail than any other govt. in the past. But he did admit that there is a greater emphasis being placed on making services profitable. He said a few more things as well but I think I've said enough. (Nice guy though & answered the questions directly). Any comments?
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