Let’s admit it... the Western Rail Corridor is as realistic as the Streedagh Spaceport
Why are we arguing here in Sligo about the Western Rail Corridor? John Mulligan says that it’s unlikely ever to exist. Instead of arguing, he says, realistic transport projects ought to be pursued – and a greenway built on the old railway line
WHY ARE we arguing about the Western Rail Corridor? Brad Meltzer, author of ‘History Decoded’, famously said: ‘I think if you blame everything on the government, you’re not just wrong, you’re being reckless.’ I wonder what he’d make of our local row about the Western Rail Corridor.
I suppose the first thing he’d point out is that the ‘Western Rail Corridor’ doesn’t exist and is unlikely to ever do so. It’s a vague concept, a line on the map that maybe over-simplifies the problems of the west of Ireland and the possible solutions to those problems.
When proposing a big spend of public money, the WRC is about as realistic as the Streedagh Spaceport or the Monasteraden Motorway, with a similar chance of it happening. When the Western Rail Corridor concept was first proposed, I remember thinking that it was a grand idea. It would be lovely to have a railway running from Collooney to Athenry, in case I needed to use it once every 10 years.
But when I looked at the proposal in a bit more detail, I realised pretty quickly that it wasn’t really a proposal, it was more a populist suggestion with no basis in reality. A bit like draining the Shannon. I remember researching a feature on Shannon flooding some years back, and a real expert – not one of the politicians who know more than the hydrologists – told me a few home truths. The salient fact was that the Shannon drops just a hundred feet between Carrick-on-Shannon and Limerick. It’s a flat, slow-flowing river, and it floods. Politicians can promise all they like, but it will still spread across its flood plain every time we get heavy rain and the ground is already saturated.
If you live in that flood plain, you’re going to get wet every now and again. Voting for a man with a promise won’t change that, just as it won’t get you a railway to your house. The Western Rail Corridor doesn’t flood, except for a few miles near Ennis, but it has a lot in common with pledges to drain the Shannon – it’s a popular promise that nobody actually believes, and any politician who says he’ll deliver it just means that he’ll talk about it a lot.
But it won’t be built for any number of reasons, mostly because the route runs through a thinly populated region with a scattered population. Nobody is going to build a railway where there are no customers for a railway.
The Metro North project in Dublin is designed to carry more people in under one hour than this proposed rail corridor could carry in a year, and even it is struggling to get funding. So what chance a railway from Collooney to Athenry? Two recent reports were carried out at the insistence of the rail lobby, but now these reports have been delivered, these same lobbyists won’t accept them and they want more reports.
They are not just ignoring these reports but also other reports carried out in the past that came to the same conclusion – there is no case for this railway.
Jaspers, a consultancy arm of the European Investment Bank, authored one such recent report. It noted:
“The Benefit Cost Ratio of the investment is presented in the EY report at 0.25, with a Net Present Value of minus €286m. This is a very weak result for the project.”
The report went on to say that financing the project “would be a challenge”, a polite way of saying that no European money will be directed to a project for which no case can be made.
A few politicians have trumpeted the need to include this project on the TEN-T, the Trans-European Transport Network. The Jaspers report clears that one up too – it says that “examining the TEN-T policy, it is evident that the Western Rail Corridor is not located on the Core or Comprehensive network”. Europe is not going to pay for a white elephant. Sligo County Council has wisely decided to build a greenway on the Sligo section of the route, utilising available funding instead of chasing money that isn’t there. The council understands that a greenway not only provides jobs and amenities now, it also protects the route in case a railway becomes an option at some time in the future. It’s what is commonly called a no-brainer. A small number of politicians still clamour for this railway to be built, even though they must surely know that it won’t, and that they are merely playing to the gallery. In Brad Meltzer’s terms, they aren’t just ignoring facts, they’re being reckless. We shouldn’t waste our political capital on chasing nonsense. There is a need for other transport solutions in this region and that is where their energy and campaigning needs to be directed. We need the N17 improved, as well as the road between Edgesworthstown and Carrick-on-Shannon, including a new bridge over the Shannon, and we need journey times improved on the Dublin-Sligo rail line from their current pathetic 40 miles an hour average.
What we don’t need is the kind of politics that suggests we turn up our noses at a slice of the available greenway funding because we’re waiting for the Streedagh Spaceport, the Monasteraden Motorway or indeed the Western Rail Corridor.
A bit of realism would serve us better.
■ John Mulligan is an author, travel writer, journalist, broadcaster and columnist with the Roscommon Herald. He has a particular interest in rural affairs and has long been a campaigner for sustainable infrastructure in rural Ireland.
“The Dublin Metro North project would carry more passengers in under one hour than this proposed railway could in a year”