Trump's Card

[Lang Spoon]

The Irish version of Beeching in the 60s cut the shit out of everything. All the lines left pretty much lead to Dublin, very difficult to travel between two points without entering the Great Satan. Partition did for the border regions. Successive govts especially since EU entry have a hard on for roads, and couldn’t give a fuck about rail. Scotland’s network isn’t massively bigger, but links up more of the country (another reason for shite rail may be the comparatively more dispersed to rural areas population of Ireland. “Towns” of only a few thousand are less likely to pass a business case for opening/reopening stations.).

Maybe the most pathetic thing is there’s only about 35 k of electrified line along the Dublin coast for the whole country. But then it’s all about keeping leafy Big House voters happy, and fuck the rest. Let them take Bus Eireann.

[WOM]

... because I don't drive.

I thought you were basically North American by inclination and temperament. And you don't drive? How was that going to work?

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Where the hell are you trying to go? Most irish towns of a moderate size are on the rail network. Also there are an awful lot more lines than that that are simply used for goods transport. There's a tunnel that goes under the Phoenix park, that links Heuston to Connolly.

Also the bus network is pretty good.

[Lang Spoon]

The entire border areas lack railways. There’s also the total bullshit of not being able to go from Waterford to Wexford anymore. Towns like Roscrea might have a train service on paper, but it’s so infrequent and slow no cunt uses it. The Phoenix Park tunnel is now open for commuter rail outside of culchie GAA matches at least.

[Lang Spoon]

Even a good bus is still a fuckin bus.

[Flynnie]

I thought you were basically North American by inclination and temperament. And you don't drive? How was that going to work?

I grew up a five minute walk from the closest thing San Francisco has to a transit hub, Balboa Park BART station (and terminus to three Muni trolley lines and on the route of three huge bus lines). I can get basically anywhere in San Francisco or the East Bay from it.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

You don't get it. The train service from roscrea is so infrequent and slow, because no-one ever used it. But you can get there. There are only 5,400 people in roscrea, and it's not on a main line. just how many trains should it have. It's on a branch line but there are three trains a day to dublin, and three going the other way. I'd say that Irish rail's losses on that line are absolutely fucking eyewatering.

There's a story in Breandan o h-eithir's "a begrudgers Guide to irish politics" about a delegation from somewhere in the south West, coming into see De valera to complain about the imminent closure of a train line to their town, they come in, they sit down, they make their impassioned plea. Are then asked how they made the journey up, and leave with their tail between their legs.

And sure there are no lines near the border, but a) no-one lived there. and b) it was a struggle to keep the belfast line open. So when Stormont declared war on NI West of the Bann, then that entire spoke going to the North west had to go, and the truly weird looking Broadstone was turned into a bus depot.

[Tubby Isaacs]

That's a surprisingly full network. Over here, we wouldn't have considered keeping the line open to Sligo. I looked up its population. It's about the same as the population of Tewkesbury. There are places bigger than that on existing lines where we haven't opened stations.

[Lang Spoon]

With far fewer large towns than even Scotland or Wales they have to serve places like Sligo, or there would be no rail at all outside of Cork hinterland and the Pale. And the Kyle of Lochalsh/Far North Lines survived Beeching. Have you seen the population of Thurso and Wick?

[Tubby Isaacs]

I see a lot of the line to Sligo is single track. I assume it was double track and then cut back to save money, as happened with lots of lines here post-Beeching, when BR was still expecting passenger numbers to decline. I don't know if redoubling would help, but it looks from the size of the towns that there's always going to be better returns investing somewhere else. But that can be a dangerously circular way of thinking.

[Lang Spoon]

As more and more of the country becomes a commuter suburb for Dublin, (even outwith the pale) building lines strategically (say, combining commuter needs with tourist trap type places, as has worked very well with the reopened Borders Railway in Scotland) I’d say would exceed business case numbers. Unless people really love 3 hour traffic jams.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

This map goes a long way to explaining why the southern half of the map looks the way it does. The Bog of Allen explains the middle bit, the Border Explains the North west, and the Famine explains the west. Seriously, the Five counties of Connaught and donegal, Between them make up a 1/3 rd of the country, (23,000 sq KM) and there's 650,000 people living there, (which is only 26 people per square kilometre outside of Galway city)

The Overwhelming majority of Irish people live within 10 miles of a train station, they just don't use it very often.

[Tubby Isaacs]

The population density of Powys is around 26 per square km. That's easily the most rural place in England or Wales.

Not going to support a lot of train journeys, that.

[Lang Spoon]

The 4 lines that serve the Highlands have fuck all people once you hit the boundary fault (excepting the Inverness terminus). But yet are still full of tourists (maybe not the Far North line) and even Inverness/Glasgow commutes. A well marketed line with stops in Connemara might just perform better than you’d think. Tourists like mountains and quaintness from the comfort of a bar served train.

[ad hoc]

I imagine that Trump's worst nightmare is that instead of being angry/delighted in him, people will instead find discussing the minutiae of Irish railway lines more interesting. Good work everyone.

[Tubby Isaacs]

As more and more of the country becomes a commuter suburb for Dublin, (even outwith the pale) building lines strategically (say, combining commuter needs with tourist trap type places, as has worked very well with the reopened Borders Railway in Scotland) I’d say would exceed business case numbers. Unless people really love 3 hour traffic jams.

Borders Rail is 2 trains an hour. Dublin-Sligo is 7 trains a day.

[Lang Spoon]

Yeah I was meaning more Dublin to somewhere in the Midlands (Borders line is only 35 miles so far). Dublin to Sligo is a huge distance.

[Lang Spoon]

I imagine that Trump's worst nightmare is that instead of being angry/delighted in him, people will instead find discussing the minutiae of Irish railway lines more interesting. Good work everyone.

Heh. I’ve a feeling this is the second time the Trump thread has derailed thanks in part to myself and Tubbs.

[Tubby Isaacs]

My bad. I don't know Ireland at all. Or Irish Railways.

[ad hoc]

No no don't apologise. The phrase "Good work everyone" was meant entirely unsarcastically

[Lang Spoon]

Actually, fuck giving the culchies anything, electrify all the 5 commuter lines into Dublin, not just the fuckin Dort, and ffs build a proper integrated network into the new hellsprawl and car planned estates of West/Post M50 Dublin. When does Blanch gets its shiny infrastructure? That was the most important part of the underground plan, yet it seems to be mothballed till the next capital spending plan. Cos it’s all about the fuckin airport link. And redoubling half the fuckin Dort underground.

[Lang Spoon]

I’m done now. Surely Trump has done something awful by this time today.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The Borders rail line is 30 miles long. Sligo is about 150 miles from dublin. I don't know if they're comparable.There used to be a railway line from Galway to Clifden. It closed in 1933, and my grandfather had only got used to driving the truck into Galway rather than Recess, when the Emergency came along and it was back to the boat. The thing about reopening it as a railway line for tourists, is that it only takes in about 25% of connemara, and will always get beaten by a bus that does a loop through the whole of Connemara. Anyway, they're desperately trying to turn it into a cyclepath, which would be absolutely amazing for tourism. The one on the old Waterford Cork line is amazing.

Here's the thing. the Irish Govt spends an absolute fucking fortune on the Irish rail network. Ticket revenue is half of the costs of Irish rail, and it's still two the three times as expensive as a direct bus. I use it regularly, and it's fine. But there are fundamental reasons for why it is the way it is. The Republic of Ireland would be the 40th biggest state in the US, This is a small fucking island, and most people live in two relatively small areas. There are Motorways linking all of the major population centres in the southern half of the country. There is only a limited future for expanding commuter rail because unless you work beside Heuston, or connolly, or in the city centre, You're at least two changes from whereever you work. If you work in the west of Dublin, and you're commuting, you're already on a bus, or it makes more sense in terms of time to drive.

The other thing is because of our fucking mania for living in semidetached houses, (Dublin has a higher proportion of houses, and lower proportion of apartments than any city in the OECD) and because Dublin bay takes up a third of the circle around o'Connell bridge We can't build a fucking meaningful underground network that would be anything other than bunch of spokes. The Path to a half coherent transport infrastructure in Dublin is going to revolve around a completion of their fancy Bus lanes, and the construction of Cycle lanes. Trains are a very 1870's way of going about things. The major lesson of the Dart and the Luas, is that they really benefit only a relatively small number of people, Admittedly to the tune of a couple of hundred grand on their house price, But still.

[Lang Spoon]

Trains are booming elsewhere but. Copenhagen is still building metro lines. Low density housing beyond the canals (Dublin is comparatively as dense as Amsterdam within the tight city centre canal loop) will have to be stopped in the beyond. It’s calamitous for the environment and infrastructure (water especially) to keep sprawling out. But nothing will change. 32 million people used Glasgow Central station last year. Not even in the UK top ten. Look at the stats for Connolly. Now, not having a connection to the Great Wen by rail will knock a huge bit off the numbers, but the Glasgow urban/suburban/nearby culchie low-rent s-bahn always makes up over 10 million of those passengers. And the whole Strathclyde network now takes over 60 million passengers a year. Central is at capacity now and Queen St even after refurb can only comfortably get to 25 from the current 15-16. And Dublin is far denser than post-war decanting Glasgow.

[Lang Spoon]

Fucking bicycles and omnibuses don’t reek of a shiny future all on their own either. Are we going to get proper Bogota special bus lanes for special buses that can’t run on ordinary roads?