It seems that rail engineering projects aren’t being stymied by the downturn that seems to be the case in Éire as much as it is in other places. Today saw the announcement of further efforts towards putting the DART Underground in place for Dublin. It should be remembered that the original above ground DART was constructed in the middle of another recession in the early 1980′s so it looks as if history is set to repeat itself. Naturally anyone living above where the tunnels are to be going will be concerned but tunnel construction has happened in Ireland (and Dublin too) before without any above ground consequences so that should give a little reassurance. That there are forward thinking projects like this in progress in a country in public sector borrowing reduction should be some cause for optimism for the future, especially when there’s always the temptation to scale back these very things in the short-term.
The U.K. still retains a more expansionary approach with all of the excitement surrounding HS2. However, that will won’t be in place for a good while so enhancing what we already have might be a better idea. Thankfully, Manchester’s rail congestion is coming to notice and there’s London’s Crossrail and other such schemes in the offing too. With all of this and what is happening in the Middle East (Dubai) and with high-speed rail in the U.S.A., you have to say that railways are seeing something of a renaissance at the moment. Hindsight nearly always is 20-20 vision but it now very much appears that a transport strategy based around private motorised transport only was going to get us so far and we now have the congestion to prove it. Add the threat of global warming (has it been overplayed even if it’s real?) and the need to cut down on carbon footprints and it seems that we live in an interesting age when the benefits of public transport are there for all to see. Let’s hope that it stays that way.
Tags: Crossrail, DART, Dubai, Dublin, England, HS2, Iarnród Éireann, Ireland, Irish Rail, London, Manchester, Middle East, National Rail, Trains, U.S.A., United Kingdom
The railway lines going up and down the east coast of Ireland have been having their share of problems in recent months. For one thing, Dublin-Belfast services were disrupted by the collapse of a viaduct near Malahide in north Dublin. Mercifully, no train was going over it at the time but the inconvenience for passengers cannot have helped the sustainability of the Enterprise service or local commuter services. Thankfully, that is behind everyone now and the hope is that any lessons to be learnt are heeded and that the economic downturn doesn’t slow down investment in the Irish rail network too much.
However, no sooner has one problem been sorted but another has surfaced. In fact, it turns out to have echoes of a one that had an impact on journeys between down the Wicklow coast earlier this year with the DART on other trains being unable to operate between Bray and Greystones because of line stability problems. Apparently, the cause of the latest round of disruption is all the rain that we have been getting in recent weeks and the result is a landslip south of Wicklow that was struck by a train running light at the time and instability south of Arklow. For passengers, travel between Wicklow and either Gorey or Enniscorthy will be by rail replacement buses until the end of the month (2009-11-30) with trains running the rest of the way. In a way, sorting the problem in a matter of weeks doesn’t sound so bad but that’s coming from someone who had to contend with a non-existant summer weekend train service for a few years because of the West Coast Mainline upgrade here in the U.K. Even so, let’s hope that nothing else afflicts east coast train services in Ireland for the forseeable future.
Tags: Éire, Arklow, Belfast, Disruption, Dublin, Eniiscorthy, Gorey, Iarnród Éireann, Ireland, Irish Rail, Landslip, Malahide, Rail Engineering, Rosslare, Timetables, Trains, Viaduct, Wicklow
After last year’s big timetable change, I highlighted on here an inconsistency whereby northbound Virgin and CrossCountry services ran so close together within the hour that we virtually had an hourly service from Macclesfield on Sundays. Well, that seems to have been sorted with a more sensible half-hourly spacing but southbound services would seem to suffer the same affliction on the same day of the week. After the December timetable changeover, things are set to look better but they lapse again in February. All in all, It makes you wonder if these companies speak to each other with the aim of improving customer service. Perhaps, we need to voice our concerns.
Tags: CrossCountry, England, Manchester, Northern Rail, Timetables, Trains, Virgin
Until yesterday, I was under the impression that the Sunday service on the Mid Cheshire railway line between Stockport and Chester consisted only of three trains running each way. There is some vague memory of a timetable of that shape lodge in the back my brain but it’s two-hourly these days and proved to be good enough to lure me as far as Chester yesterday. There may have been a delay to my outbound journey of the order of 35 minutes because of a delay to the train from Southport but I was far from incensed. The extra time was used to potter around Stockport’s nicer parts (around Stockport Village where its markets are held) and the sun stayed out to shorten the journey around by Knutsford and Northwich. Chester was under cloudy skies when I arrived but the clouds had dissipated by the time that I came to leave the pleasant spot.
A subsequent shamble around the web has revealed active community involvement in the line with there being websites for the associated community rail partnership and local users group. It makes you wonder if any service improvements are a result of the added involvement and the enhanced Sunday service then would make sense. My web wandering also took by the website of the community rail partnership for the Manchester-Crewe line and there would seem to have been improvements there too.
This vein of thought is beginning to make me wonder if a community rail partnership for the Manchester-Macclesfield-Stoke line is in order with Northern only running three services each way of a Sunday and none of these going northbound earlier than the first Virgin service starting from London. Unlike others, we might have been spoilt with what we have and I am getting to wonder if we are paying for any complacency and if we could be made to pay even more. There is the East Cheshire Lines Rail User Group but could it be more active? Where I am going with this is that is a question that only we can answer and it might be time for all of us to give it a bit of added oomph, particularly after the reduction in CrossCountry services and the disruption that we suffered for far too long during the West Coast Mainline upgrade.
Tags: Altrincham, Cheshire, Chester, CrossCountry, England, Knutsford, Macclesfield, Manchester, Northern Rail, Northwich, Stockport, Stoke-on-Trent, Timetables, Virgin
It now appears that I might have been too hopeful when I mused that traffic conditions might improve next month because anyone braving the A34 around Monk’s Heath faces almost certain disruption from next Monday week (2009-11-16). Included among these is the widening and resurfacing of Bollington Lane along with the installation of new sets of traffic lights at either end. After that, there’s the adding of an extra lane at the Monk’s Heath traffic lights so that traffic from the Alderley Edge direction are not held up by anyone seeking to turn right at what at times is a very busy junction.
The scale of these changes makes it sound that they will be ongoing for a while so you only can hope that any inconvenience is kept to a minimum. In a way, this is counterbalanced by the coming to an end of the work at the Harden roundabout on the Wilmslow side of Alderley Edge as part of the construction of its bypass. Even so, there has to be an impact of bus service timings with all of this going on and at a time when the hours of daylight are limited too. It’s just as well that Cheshire East Council has their bus tracker in place for the very buses that will be impacted by all of this. Is that why it was set up in the first place?
Update 2009-11-09: Signs are already in place telling of 11 months of work ahead and that makes sense given what’s in scope. It might be an idea to use an alternative route at busy times if that’s possible, methinks.
Update 2009-11-14: The start date is now to be two weeks later than originally planned (2009-11-30). November seems set to be more or less unsullied by any of the associated disturbance that these will cause.
Update 2009-11-15: A quick look at the Cheshire East Council website suggests that the start date is tomorrow week (2009-11-23) but we’ll have to wait and see on that. Apparently, the real reason for the length of time needed is the impact that there will be on things like phone lines and water pipes. Let’s hope that the very thing that delayed the tram workings in Edinburgh doesn’t strike here too. However, there is some good news in the form of keeping work away from peak times as much as possible and the taking down of signals only needed while work is in progress at the end of the working day.
Tags: 130, 27, A34, A537, Alderley Edge, Cheshire, Cheshire East Council, Nether Alderley, Road Works, Satellite Tracking, Wilmslow
