Trump's Card

[Lang Spoon]

My sister and her boyfriend share a car, they both work in Embra city centre and their gaff is 100 yards from a main bus route in one of the few cities in the Uk where the bus network actually works. Also live at the back of a cycle path. Give out about the new 20 mph citywide limit. Ffs.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

I should have known that about Tony, but he was always reticent about certain elements of his personal history when speaking to lawyers.

Junctions are an important element of any rail network. It is, however unusual to have mainlines crossing at a 90 degree angle.

We are nothing if not innovators. Though I don't think it's actually a crossroads. If I recall it's more like 60 degrees, and the train from the Waterford side goes across the dublin cork track, goes a bit further towards Limerick, and then reverses into the station. He was actually born in the hospital in Thurles, but I'm not surprised he didn't mention it. It was a small cottage. It's the sort of thing you'd play up at home, but you'd be quicker to mention that you had pissed away €100 million renovating Lyons Demense when swanning around NY.



It and 600 acres are on the market for €25 million. Just look at those trees.

As to how comprehensive nature of our train network. Of the top 50 biggest towns in Ireland, only Letterkenny (No. 23, 19.274). Carrigaline (No.28 16,000 people, Ashbourne (no. 35 13,000) Cavan (No.41 11,000) Tramore (No.43 10,000) Don't have a train station. Letterkenny and Cavan can point to the border, but Carrigaline and Ashbourne were villages of less than a thousand people well into the seventies. And Tramore was a railway holiday resort, but lost its railway when people stopped taking holidays, in tramore. Shannon Just about sneaks in there at 49, but Clare didn't have trains when Shannon was built, and they had a 15 mile dual carriageway all the way into limerick. That's six in total. If you go down as far as no 60 (Youghal, which was at various times was owned by, Walter Raleigh, and robert boyle, and Moby dick was shot there) you get every irish town above 8,000 people, and 50, out of 60 have a train station. There are another 50 railway stations scattered around the rest of the country. the large majority of Irish people live within 10 miles of a train station, and most of those live much closer. The Irish rail network is really comprehensive. Except it doesn't go to any of the airports.

[Lang Spoon]

Yeah, maybe the rural network is as good as it can be with the small population of most Irish towns. But it’s utterly shocking what’s served up for commuters into Dublin.

[ad hoc]

As a resident of Romania, can I comment on how efficient and speedy the Czech rail network seems.

[Janik]

Junctions are an important element of any rail network. It is, however unusual to have mainlines crossing at a 90 degree angle.

Osnabrueck Hbf. But having changed trains there, it wasn't particularly confusing or unwieldy. So they must be doing something different at Limerick Junction to cause people problems.

[Gangster Octopus]

This thread is suddenly interesting...

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

There's a problem inherent with commuter rail though. It's a fucking economic nightmare unless you're extremely careful, and can't All commuter transport is. But it's particularly bad in the case of rail. It's only busy in one direction for 2 hours a day, and busy in the other direction for 2 hours a day. What are hopelessly inadequate numbers of trains in rush hour, become completely redundant for 20 hours of the day. (As far as I know, Iarnrod Eireann gets around this by using commuter trains to do a quick trip to galway, or sligo at off peak times.) This time period is only long enough to make one return journey with each train. Half of which are useless. the two time periods are so far apart as to render it necessary to hire a different shift of people for the return journey. So you've got all that rolling stock sitting around unused all day. The other problem is that if you expand capacity to meet all demand, then demand rises to the point where you are back where you started before. Except the midlands is now completely covered in houses to a much greater degree than even now. The thing is that the Irish Govt gives vastly more to Iarnrod Eireann per capita, than the UK govt gives to the train operators. I don't know if the appetite is there to give the sort of extra capacity to commuter rail that you're talking about. You're talking about an awful lot of money, to impact a relatively small number of people, in a way that isn't going to fundamentally do very much to lessen traffic on the roads.

I think that the thing to remember is that the Average Irish person spends €30 on train tickets every year. The Average British person spends £110 on train tickets every year. That's more than four times as much. The Average Irish person made nine train journeys, the average person in the UK made 27 train journeys. though the median figure in the UK is going to be much lower. (Every UK commuter who makes 1000 journeys a year (train and tube) supports 36 people who never use the train at all) The UK has the second busiest passenger rail system in the EU in terms of numbers of journeys, if not passenger miles. (French people make 2/3rds as many journeys) Germans make 34 journeys a year, while The Average dane makes 33 trips.

It gets a bit more revealing when you discover that the average UK rail journey is 35 km, in ireland it's 40km. Germans travel on average of 33 km per journey, whereas people in france travel 80 km. The Germans would seem to be really into commuter rail. Aside from France being fucking huge, (Bigger than the UK and Germany, and Ireland combined) I strongly suspect that a lot of French Commuter rail journeys are not included in that statistic. I seem to recall light rail and trams are a feature of a lot of french cities. The Average danish journey is 33 km, like the germans. Denmark is fucking tiny mind you. Denmark is only half as big as the island of ireland. But that's grand for comparisons with Ireland, because basically only the southern half of our country has a train system.

A little over 1% of all passenger journeys in the EU cross international borders. I find that quite extraordinary. I strongly suspect that the figure for freight is a lot higher. (has trump gone away yet?)

[Tubby Isaacs]

It makes a lot of difference how much of the cost you make commuters pay themselves. We make them pay more than anywhere else, which is very unpopular, and might have reached the limit of what commuters will pay. But it's better to do that than be cutting investment. Once you've got a solid income for commuting, you can run cheap trains during the day on all the empty seats. I don't think we've been anything like imaginative enough on that.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Outside London, I suppose you should be more careful with pricing commuters into cars.

[Lang Spoon]

I dunno TAB, everywhere in the old EU 15 (barring Greece mibees) manages to offer commuter and urban rail to their major cities that fairly pisses over what’s on offer in Ireland. But then you could build a metro stop every 20 yards in the likes of Terenure and the fuckers will still be doing the school run/commute in a fuckin SUV.

[Lang Spoon]

Outside London, I suppose you should be more careful with pricing commuters into cars.

In Glasgow the hell of bus deregulation and price gouging by the likes of First/Stagecoach, combined with unreliable service, has helped skyrocket rail usage. Bus patronage declines year on year, and the response is an even more shoddy service that refuses to integrate smart cards with rail or subway. And cars have gone through the roof as well, unfortunately.

Can be really cheap using the train to go from say the non metro serviced bits of the west end/likes of Mount Florida on the southside to the city centre. And the totsy subway is pennies for the two or three parts of the city it serves any utility for. I’ve never known anyone to get a non dart train for a journey within Dublin. Partly cos of the lines that are left not serving much purpose to folk for short journeys.

[anton pulisov]

If we are going to do epic nerding...

What most EU countries would have done by now is build a partially underground through line from Malahide to Dublin airport Connolly to Heuston and electrified all the mainlines. You'd have trains going coming from Belfast stopping at Dublin Airport, Connolly, Heuston and then continuing on to Cork and Limerick.

This is what the Scandinavians did. You can get on an intercity train in Malmö (one that came in from Gotheburg), it will stop at Copenhagen airport, a couple of stops in Copenhagen (including the central station) and then continue on to Helsingor.

Instead in Ireland they build a Port Tunnel for a few trucks, which for some reason had to be four lane motorway standard, and now a Dublin-centric metro line whisking people from Renalagh to the airport.

[Lang Spoon]

Epic nerding is how I roll. I dunno if I’m more angry about the rugger buggers getting their VIP metro that’s useless to 90% of people, or those fucks up in Clontarf protesting about the sea wall rebuild that will block their Lovely View. Seeing as they’ve won for now, I hope the fuckers get soaked to fuck any bit of rain or storm or weird tides. Must be too rich for climate change. Fuckin Roddy Doyle, one of our top thinkers.

[Lang Spoon]

This is definitely three or so pages on the wrong thread.

[San Bernardhinault]

Bringing this back slightly, Washington DC is a classic example of a city whose main airport is almost inaccessible by public transport, and if you do find a bus you have to pray that it doesn't get held up in traffic. Despite DC and NoVa being insanely wealthy and fully of lobbyists, they've somehow managed to never get past building a separate car lane for a bit of the journey. I remain astonished that they've never sorted it out. It's true of a large number of US cities, but DC is the one with all the money and influence.

[Gerontophile]

NoVa? (North Virginia?)

[San Bernardhinault]

Yup. All those super-rich suburbs full of lobbyists and tech money and politicians and diplomats...

[Lang Spoon]

Where does the metro under the Capitol building go?

[ursus arctos]

To the House and Senate office buildings nearby. It is also off limits to the public.

[Incandenza]

Yup. All those super-rich suburbs full of lobbyists and tech money and politicians and diplomats...

"Raytheon Acres," as coined by Matt Christman of ChapoTrapHouse.

[San Bernardhinault]

DC-metro does go into commuter land (and National Airport, which is the one that the pols use to fly domestically).

But it looks like I've got ahead of myself, and they are actually building a metro extension out to Dulles. 40 years late, but they're doing it.

[Lang Spoon]

To the House and Senate office buildings nearby. It is also off limits to the public.

Jesus. Like FDR’s own secret platform at Grand Central.

[Tubby Isaacs]

You can get on an intercity train in Malmö (one that came in from Gotheburg), it will stop at Copenhagen airport, a couple of stops in Copenhagen (including the central station) and then continue on to Helsingor.

That sounds bizarre. Malmo and Gothenberg are big places, so need a big fast train to Copenhagen. I can't see any point in that train going on somewhere the size of Helsingor. It's like a West Coast Mainline train from Birmingham going through London to Crawley on the other side. Better for the trains from each direction to terminate somewhere near Copenhagen and go back whence they came, isn't it?

[Tubby Isaacs]

Anyway, what's this Democrat law suit? I don't get the point of it. Isn't Mueller good enough?

[Lang Spoon]

That sounds bizarre. Malmo and Gothenberg are big places, so need a big fast train to Copenhagen. I can't see any point in that train going on somewhere the size of Helsingor. It's like a West Coast Mainline train from Birmingham going through London to Crawley on the other side. Better for the trains from each direction to terminate somewhere near Copenhagen and go back whence they came, isn't it?

I think yer man of the Big Boobs and Fire! once explained in a more appropriate thread how it once made sense running in East Coast mainline trains to Aberdeen and Inverness even when those were still loss making propositions, utilized trains that would otherwise have been idling for hours, helped the network logistics. Maybe the same thing in shiny land on their fancy trains.

God, make me stop. Compelled like the Lobster Boy thread. Never even really that into choo choos as a kid. Fuck knows what I’ve become.