Let’s get on the right track before roads become largely redundant
He says “bus services were invariably cheaper and more frequent than railways”.
But railways can operate at frequencies of more than one train per minute and the main reason they are more expensive to operate than buses is that the infrastructure (track, signalling, etc) and overheads (policing, accidents, maintenance, etc) must be underwritten by the rail operator while it is provided free of charge to the bus operator.
Prof Barrett wonders why air and bus are ignored in favour of rail on routes such as Dublin to Cork, claiming that air is faster and cheaper. But what use is this to anyone who wants to travel from the 150 towns served by Iarnród Éireann?
Is he counting the time spent hanging round airports? From city centre to centre, Dublin-to-Cork is in fact slower and more expensive by air.
The poor service provided by Irish Rail is not a justification for lack of investment. This problem is a result of lack of investment and lack of infrastructure caused by the destruction of three-quarters of permanent way.
There are now 30km of roads for everyone 1km of railway. Therefore, the ERSI should be considering the potential of railways.
Modern electric trams, suburban railways and high-speed inter-city railways are unaffected by the weather conditions that halt flights.
They are faster, quieter and more comfortable than buses or short-haul planes. You cannot relax, sleep, read, eat or write letters while driving a car, but you can on a train.
Railways are also about 30 times safer than road travel and more energy efficient. They also produce fewer greenhouse gases.
As traffic volumes increase, roads become less efficient whereas the reverse is true of railways because the maximum capacity of a railway is about 100 times that of a road in moving people.
To justify the expenditure, transport infrastructure has to have a useful lifetime of 20 to 40 years. Electricity for railways can be generated from any number of sources (coal, nuclear, wind, tidal), so they have a potential lifetime in excess of those limits.
Road transport, on the other hand, has to carry around its own fuel supply and is entirely dependent on fossil fuels.
Despite the hype given to biofuel, hydrogen, etc, there is quite simply no practical alternative on the required scale.
In less than 20 years, notwithstanding miracles, peak oil production will arrive and the cost of oil will rocket, crippling the country’s economy and making the road transport system largely redundant.
By all means, the ERSI should promote buses as an intermediate step while railways are being built, but not as an alternative.
The ERSI complains that no cost benefit analysis has been done, but this is just as well: roads are a poor investment but, in any case, cost benefit analyses are generally rigged to give the desired result. Neither can everything be measured in monetary terms.
Michael Job
Rossnagreana
Glengarriff
Co Cork
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