Madam, - Transport policy, and especially the deliberate ruin of rail freight systems, should be a main subject of debate in the coming general election. The performance of Government in inland freight transport has been deplorable. So inspissated has the road system become that more trunk road building is not even a palliative of urban congestion. Transfer of as much road freight as possible to rail is an urgent need - social, economic and environmental.
In 1993 Iarnród Éireann had three-tenths of cross-Border freight; now it has none. In 1997 the Government, typically, refused to pay for a rail link to the Lisheen mine in Co Tipperary; the traffic was best suited to rail, but local and national taxpayers have had to cross-subsidise the track costs of 80 lorries per day. In 2000, with Government approval, Iarnród Éireann began indiscriminate sales of freight terminals and sidings, with, in consequence, headlong withdrawal of goods, mineral and parcel operations. Even bulk cement, well adapted to rail, was thrown on to the roads. Unit container business was given up instead of being reorganised into profitability, and trainloads of containers on offer were turned away.
In 2003 consultants had recommended private sector involvement in rail freight and State support for non-profitable traffic, in order to lessen road wear and congestion and to reduce - or to slow the growth of - accidents and pollution. (The accident rate per tonne - km of load is far higher on road than on rail.) The consultants' advice was promptly ignored by the Department of Transport and Iarnród Éireann.
Pleas from the Irish Exporters' Association in favour of rail freight have also been ignored. Yet in one in eight of all fatal and injurious road accidents, goods vehicles have been concerned. About one in six of road deaths in the greater Dublin area involved heavy goods vehicles: since such ongoing slaughter is in effect an operating cost, at €1 million or so a fatality, the case for rail freight promotion and investment (in accordance with EU policy) is overwhelmingly cogent. It is not true, as the Minister for Transport keeps asserting in obedience to his mentors in Iarnród Éireann, that distances in Ireland are too short for viable rail freight. Like the Minister's, the Iarnród Éireann board's freight policy is characterised by intellectual laziness and social irresponsibility.
Whatever the outcome of the election, Iarnród Éireann should be stopped now from removing yet more of the rail freight capacity and infrastructure and from enforcing the decay of their remaining on-rail freight services. Ireland needs more railways, but the country cannot afford to have a passengers-only railway system. - Yours, etc,
Prof G L HUXLEY, Trinity College, Dublin 2.