Rail line doesn’t make business sense

THE letter of Colmán Ó Raghallaigh (June 14) fails to address and furnish explanation for a most concerning point. It is no great mystery that most of the passengers comprising Irish Rail’s figure of 252,607 have travelled between Limerick-Ennis and Galway-Athenry exclusively.

Figures under the Freedom of Information act have demonstrated that just a mere 53,187 passengers have used the “new” section of line between Limerick and Galway.

This is in fact what the references to Ennis-Athenry refer to.

Irish Rail should be condemned to the fullest extents for effectively wasting €106m on an ineffective and uncompetitive piece of infrastructure which, arguably, has contributed in some part to the closure of Rosslare-Waterford, and will lead to the inevitable run down of services and closure of Limerick-Ballybrophy and Limerick Junction-Waterford. Most services on the Ennis-Athenry section see such poor loadings that there could often be a subvention paid to Irish Rail of up to €50 per person.

Whilst not condemning entirely the existence of such lobby groups, Irish Rail was hugely mistaken to desist to West On Track’s demands particularly when they were most obviously only single-track mentality (no pun intended) claims of “the west needs this” instead of a proper business case.

I’m not anti-rail, but only if it was instated in a resourceful and proper manner.

One would expect that figures for this year will deteriorate significantly, with the introduction of an express bus option which takes 45 minutes less than the train.

Colm Fitzgerald

Limerick