I love the train: but half a billion on rail lines is crazy – given that cars will soon be driving us anyway!

LEO Varadkar may as well have signed a cheque for €466million yesterday. Faced with reports that Irish Rail, without that money supplied to it over the next four years, would have to close most of its inter-city routes to concentrate on just the Dublin to Cork, Belfast and Limerick lines and various Dublin and Cork commuter services, the Taoiseach quickly told the Dáil that as the rail lines didn’t close during the depths of the recession they won’t do so now.

Cue relief among Fine Gael TDs in Galway, Mayo, Sligo, Waterford and Wexford, and many points along those routes to Dublin. They knew the potential for big bother had the suggested Irish Rail cutbacks been implemented; even people who don’t use the train would be very angry if their choice not to be bothered with it was taken away from them.

The problem is that keeping those intercity routes on life support will cost a small fortune – and not necessarily deliver a particularly useful service. Considerable work is needed to maintain and upgrade the tracks.

Expensive

Which means serious questions have to be asked as to whether such investment constitutes value for money, not just on economic grounds but on social ones too. But such a cost-benefit analysis won’t happen, because local politics will intervene and impact on a national level.

Instead, the emphasis at Irish Rail will be on the low-hanging fruit. We are going to get some major arguments about the few lines that will (and most probably should) be closed. We have too many enormously expensive and effectively redundant routes such as Ballybrophy to Limerick, via Nenagh (which serves about 75 people each day on four different trains); Ennis to Athenry; and Limerick to Waterford. There simply isn’t the demand, and increasing services – to create more choice for potential passengers – is not going to do the trick and reduce the losses and subsidies.

Yet there will be considerable moaning about the damage done to local communities, and the rest of it about how people in rural areas are somehow discriminated against when it comes to public transport. Few will be willing to point out that people could as easily go on these routes by bus – and it would cost the State a fraction of the cost in subsidy if one was even needed. Or that public transport only works efficiently in areas of reasonable scale. Irish Rail is unlikely to press the point, however. It knows its place as an instrument of State policy, a company that is not run according to fully commercial lines but to suit political strokes and imperatives.

It has had considerable success in reducing its cost base by €73million a year since the economic crisis developed a decade ago and deserves credit for that, even if it is regularly reviled by its own unions. It had no option but to cut costs because revenues from passengers slumped – as fewer travelled – and Government funding was cut from €195million in 2007 to just €98million in 2016.

The Government has a Strategic Framework for Investment in Land Transport and it ‘and other reviews’ have identified a shortfall in annual funding of €90million in the amount required to keep current service levels on the existing network.

Begging

The company has argued its funding is insufficient to provide a ‘steady state’ in terms of maintenance of the railway and that the rail network could not withstand ‘further losses beyond 2016 without impacting on service levels, performance and safety maintenance’.

It won’t close the gap by cost-cutting on existing services. It either has to cut further or get more money from the Government. But so as not to make its own life any more difficult, it has fallen in line with the Government’s demands of cost reductions and maintenance of existing services while politely holding out the begging bowl.

And here’s the twist: Irish Rail wants to run a Dart service to Dublin Airport. It can’t fund the construction or operation of the service itself, so it needs money from the Government. Economic logic dictates you can’t spend €466million on that, as well as multiple amounts on a new line to the capital’s airport. However, political logic is that you have to do both if you want to get either one done; this explains Irish Rail’s positioning.

We should have bigger debates as to whether we need all of the transport services that the State pays for, or, if we do, what investment should be involved.

For example, an enormous amount of money has been invested in the motorway between Dublin and Galway. Buses, which are far cheaper for customers, can get from the outskirts of Galway to the M50 as fast as any train.

Galway’s much bigger problem is the congestion in its city streets and existing ring road. It needs a larger outer ring road and maybe trams for the city itself. That would be a better use of money than upgrading the track for inter-city services.

Essential

I’ve argued on this page before that rail transport is essential to the capital city and its environs… and to Cork as well. Without rail as an alternative, the roads in Dublin and beyond clog as badly as if there has been a major accident and commute times are increased dramatically and unfairly.

But if it is an essential service in Dublin, that is not necessarily the case in places beyond. Trains to Galway, Mayo, Kerry, Waterford, Sligo and Wexford may be very comfortable and convenient – if expensive – ways to travel but it is very difficult, unless you live there, to say they should be classified as essential services.

The Government agreed on Monday to spend €115billion on a range of transport infrastructure projects over the next decade. This is an enormous sum of money, many multiples of what has been spent in the past decade, so whatever it is splashed out on has to be done well.

These projects include a second runway for Dublin Airport and an extension of the Dart for the capital city, which might also involve a line to the airport. Those seems like good decisions, subject to details on the cost becoming known. There may be even more train lines in Dublin to cater for the continuing growth in population (once house and apartment building reaches the levels required).

But to get the political agreement for that, and to avoid the allegations that everything is being loaded to Dublin’s benefit, more has to be seen to be done for rural Ireland. That means rural train services will be provided, notwithstanding the increasing popularity of buses on the better roads and motorways and the use of private cars. Yesterday, Leo Varadkar made a promise suited only to today with tomorrow’s money.