What exactly is the All-Ireland Rail Review? And why we might need a more collective vision

Comment & Analysis: The coverage might lead you to believe that the All Ireland Rail Review is now the official policy in both the North and South of Ireland. But the first giveaway is that the logo of the consultant firm that wrote the report, Arup, is in the corner of every page — not official logos from the institutions on both sides of the border.

Only a few pages into the report, it is spelt out: “The Review has developed recommendations for policymakers that, together, provide a route to achieving the Review’s Goals and Objectives. These recommendations do not represent official policy for either jurisdiction but aim to provide a constructive, evidence-based approach for delivering the Goals and Objectives of this Review.”

The report’s main map (see below) — the draft of which people examined in detail — has the health warning: “Please note: This is an indicative artistic interpretation of the recommendations presented within this document. The pathways delineated on this illustration are conceptual in nature and should not be interpreted as a precise or literal depiction of potential routes or route corridors.”

Obviously, from the report, the consultants and others involved put a hell of a load of work into it. So, I feel sorry to have to say this report is somewhat undermined by the way it’s presented with so many political caveats.

Of course, notes should be included saying routes may not be exact, etc, but the warning in the report goes a bit further than that. It’s also hard not to be cynical when so many reports and studies have sat on shelves and are often never looked at by the people who say no research has been done.

The Department of Transport’s press release on the report outlined that “This ground-breaking Report, approved for publication by the Irish Government and DfI Minister, sets out a strategic vision for the development of the rail system across the island of Ireland over the coming decades.”

But with all of the caveats in the report, it hardly can even be called an official vision.

The world of investing in public infrastructure has been captured by the pseudoscience of meeting requirements set by people in Government finance ministries around the world that has no bearing on reality.

For example, roads in urban areas are often approved for their benefits, including cutting congestion, when it has been proven that such roads increase congestion repeatedly. Rail projects which have examples of benefiting society often rank lower than major road projects that result in major harm and don’t address transport in the best way possable. This is completely against the scientific method.

Something that we need to face is that the decision to build or cancel mega projects — basically larger projects such as metros, higher-speed railways, motorways, large hospitals, etc — is not made because some cost-benefit analysis says it makes sense or not.

For example, the Torys’ decision to cancel High Speed 2 in the UK was based on lies.

These are political decisions. Often dressed up as something else, but ultimately political decisions.

That’s not to say that the State should have a blank cheque or not care much for value for money — quite the opposite: We need to focus more on these things after we make a clear decision about whether something should be built or not.

The lack of wide political decision-making is one of the flaws of this process (and I’m talking wider than the railway review).

That feeds into the report’s vision. For example, the excellent concept of segregation of mainline intercity rail and local/regional services like Dart is a key part of the review.

But there are signs that it has been considered too much from the perspective of doing it in terms of being realistic in terms of making Departments of Finance happy. For example, in engineering terms, there’s nothing stopping the suggested addition of extra tracks on the Northern Line between Clongriffin and Dublin City Centre.

I mean, in engineering terms, reducing people’s back gardens is possible. So is even knocking houses, Knocking a good few trees and building the aliment into what is currently a golf course is also possible (desirable even). Changing bridges and roads is no problem.

But the realpolitik of the situation is you’d have built a few tunnels with the same political capital it would take to widen the alignment south of Clongriffin.

Of course, we already have many shades of anti-rail people horrified with this plan, actually campaigning against it in national newspapers. They’d be worse if it was beefed up. That’s where the political vision is needed: To face down the nonsense.

The map below is also supposed to represent the rail network after 2040. But there’s no solution still for Dublin to Bray and the whole way to Wexford is still single track, and there’s still sections of single track between Dublin and Galway.

The electrification programme might be solid transport thinking (electricity where the frequency justifies it, etc), but it doesn’t really fit into our climate commitments. If rail is to play a larger part in decarbonising the future, 16 years from now, more of the network should be getting beyond stop-gap measures such as battery electric. And hydrogen trains are so-far a non-runner.

Railways in Ireland have been underinvested since the independence of the South. Some people really underestimate this and focus way too much on the old railway maps when the rail network was built to transport a huge percentage of national cargo traffic (then food for export). Much of the older network was not really a passenger network.

Beyond the report, we also need a collective vision of where we want rail to go

Partly due to this kind of nostalgic thinking of looking at old maps, mixed with many people’s just being focused on their own areas or routes rather than the wider picture, we sometimes have genuine railway supporters nearly arguing against investment in Dublin or on lines towards Dublin.

We need a collective vision where lines like Cork-Belfast/Derry and Galway to Dublin offer a backbone of the intercity network, and much-needed improvements to those lines are seen as key. Then, people would also see that the Dart+ plan for Dublin is an improvement in the national rail service — in terms of allowing for fast and frequent connections once passengers get to Dublin and also, especially with Dart+ South West, allowing for the separation of local and intercity services that use the Kildare line, given the line more capacity and reliability.

There needs to be some understanding that people who support rail should not be looking for villages and smaller towns to be connected before projects that should have been built decades ago. For example, Navan, with a population of nearly 35,000 people, should be connected to the rail network that towns with a fraction of that population.

Navan is relatively close to Dublin, which makes it a good match for a Dart-like rail link. That case becomes all the more stronger when you have the cluster of Dunshaughlin (~6k people) along the old line and both Ratoath and Ashbourne (nearly 30k people) beside it.

It would be overkill to try to serve the three towns, but a station closer to the middle of the cluster of towns, at least on the west side of Dunshaughlin or even closer to Ratoath, could mean that a cluster of 36k people would be within a 5-6 minutes cycle or easy bus transfer from the station.

This is why we need more of a collective vision and fewer debates pushed by anti-rail forces and also people who support rail in very limited ways