‘Make the line user friendly and relevant’

Members of the North Tipperary Community Rail Partnership appeared before the Oireachtas Transport and Communications Committee recently.

They discussed the local group's submission to the All Island Ireland Rail Review on how the regional railway line between Limerick city and Ballybrophy should be operated and developed going forward. In their opening statement, the NTCRP expressed concern over the IÉ and NTA description of the local line as ‘lightly used’.

“This unfortunate tag is due to: a) the lack of useful journey opportunities, making it irrelevant and largely unusable to the population it serves;

b) the failure by IÉ’s Railway Undertaking (RU) to promote the line to these communities;

c) the failure of the NTA to challenge RU to improve the level of services being operated to meet local needs.

“All other routes operated by IÉ have seen services upgraded from the traditional two trains a day – to either an hourly or, at worst, three-hourly off-peak service, with an almost hourly service at peak times. The sole exceptions are the North and South Tipperary lines, which maintain a very basic service.

“The timetable has essentially not changed since the restoration of full services after the Emergency and fuel crises of 1947. The only change has been the loss of direct services to Dublin, since 1986.”

€45M SPENT

“In the 10-year period from 2011 to 2020, IÉ invested €22.8m on improvements, with a further €22.7m spent on day-to-day maintenance - resulting in a total infrastructure funding of €45.5m. There has been no significant improvement of services in terms of faster journeys or more train services.”

The NTCRP said 24 miles of the line have been upgraded but it still has a temporary speed restriction of 30mph. “We would like the committee to note that IÉ’s own CCE-TMS-321 Track Maintenance Requirements and Tolerances standards allow a maximum speed of 70mph on lines like the Limerick to Ballybrophy line, but IÉ have said they will not look at a speed limit higher than 50mph.

“Raising line speeds could result in a large reduction of journey times. For example, it takes an average of 48 minutes to cover 24 miles of CWR at 30mph. At 50mph it would take 28 minutes and 48 seconds, a potential reduction of 19 minutes, 12 seconds!

“It is only after persistent challenges by the campaign that IÉ’s IM agreed to review the line speeds for the new timetable due out later this year. The proliferation of level crossings on the route impacts significantly on line speeds, with 12 being legacy gated crossings that require a gatekeeper to operate them - at a cost of approximately €1.2 million per annum.

“There is no programme or funding in place to convert attended crossings to automatic crossings or abolish farmers’ crossings through land swaps or buying out rights of way. We would like to see further funding made available to allow this to happen as this would improve safety, allow better journey times and significantly reduce the operational and wage cost attributed to the line and allow it to be available to traffic 24/7.”

The group argued that running more passenger (or freight) service would have a marginal cost, as the farebox should have the potential to cover the cost of operating more services.

INTEGRATED SERVICES

“Our first goal is to make the line user friendly and relevant to the population it serves by the introduction of a third return service, seven days a week, utilising the existing available rolling stock allocated to the line. The additional service will help significantly increase choice and journey opportunities for passengers and should result in greater usage and greater farebox revenue.

“The line should be part of the vision for commuter rail into Limerick with the delivery of an hourly service from Nenagh to Limerick. This would serve the proposed Ballysimon Parkway station and the reopened station of Annacotty. Annacotty could then serve the university and local industrial estates and be integrated with the M7 Park and Ride bus station (as proposed in Limerick Shannon Metropolitan Area Transportation Strategy).

“Integrating timetables and ticketing between rail and bus services would expand the catchment area of stations along the line in counties Tipperary, Clare, Offaly and Limerick, allow flexibility and encourage a modal shift from the car to public transport. For example, we would like users of the Nenagh commuter service to access the later Bus Éireann 323 or 72 service back to Nenagh after the last train has gone.

“It is key that bus services call at the railway stations to connect with train services. The responsibility for promoting and coordinating local bus services with rural/regional rail should be mandated to the Local Link coordination units where appropriate. In order to ensure effective connectivity, extend Leap Card use to all rail and bus services throughout the country.”