Newton Emerson: Train-trams could put NDP on track

The city of Coventry last year commissioned French engineering firm Ingerop to design a ground-breaking Very Light Rail system for small cities. Its new track was unveiled last month, requiring rails to be sunk only 30cm into the roadway. A line built this way would have one-third the construction cost of the Luas.

Sheffield has been conducting a successful train-tram experiment since 2018, with Spanish-built Stadler trams that can run on mainline railways at 100k/h.

The Welsh government has since ordered a Stadler fleet modified with batteries for the new South Wales Metro. Batteries enable coasting under bridges and tunnels, avoiding the prohibitive cost of raising them to fit overhead wires. Batteries will also allow non-electrified stretches of mainline to be included in the metro network.

Train-trams are a technology developed in Germany in the early 1990s and now adopted across the continent. They were the basis of the EU-funded Sintropher research programme (Sustainable Transport for North-West Europe's Periphery), which ran from 2010-2015 and continues to be influential. Sixteen agencies from five countries, including the UK, explored how to make trains economical where geography and demography rule out conventional lines. A final report in 2016 noted "dramatic development in relevant transport technologies".

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All of this seems highly relevant to the Government's National Development Plan (NDP). The plan has been condemned for promising rail and tram investment while omitting costs and deadlines. Specifics would scarcely be believed, given the record of such projects in Ireland.

The NDP includes an all-Ireland Strategic Rail Review with some realistic goals for piecemeal improvement of the mainline network. However, it still indulges fantasies of high-speed trains and urban metros serving cities that are, in reality, regional towns.

Incompatible lines

The proposed train and tram commuter network in Cork would look more credible as a train-tram, as would the suggested new suburban line for Limerick.

Dublin is to have four incompatible line types, constraining how services can expand. Train-trams could solve that by running out to Navan, for example. Coventry’s approach might make Metrolink more believable.

The last review in 2013 found it would cost £100 million to connect a city of 15,000 people

The shared island dimension of the NDP includes new trains for the Dublin- Belfast route, already under development with EU support. While this is deliverable, elsewhere fantasy abounds. Stormont has just commissioned another review into restoring the 10-mile line from Portadown to Armagh, abandoned 60 years ago. The last review in 2013 found it would cost £100 million to connect a city of 15,000 people.

The rail gap in the west of Northern Ireland and around the Border is a subject of political and even sectarian contention. The economics of plugging the gap make little more sense than a train to Armagh – but that assumes conventional lines and trains are the only option.

Cross-Border university research is a key plank of the shared island programme, emphasised again in the NDP.

Sintropher was a university-led programme and university collaboration has also been important in Coventry.

Imagine an all-Ireland programme being established to explore new approaches to rail for our geography and demography.

Research need not be confined to engineering: innovation is required in every aspect of project management – a focus of other industry and government research in Britain. Archaic laws on land and property require complex reform.

Collaborative research

In addition to delivering the economic benefits sought by the NDP, an all-Ireland rail programme could be the inspirational project the shared island unit is desperately trying to find. Currently, its big idea is a high-speed line from Cork to Belfast, a scheme that discredits the entire shared island concept, as it will obviously never be built.

A high-speed line from Cork to Belfast discredits the entire shared island concept as it will obviously never be built

It is just about possible to imagine a Belfast Luas being built with the help of collaborative research. The city’s Glider bus lanes were originally meant to be upgradable to light rail. Something like Coventry’s system might be practical, while Sheffield’s train-trams can handle a 10 per cent incline – steeper than Belfast’s hills.

Ballymena has become a European leader in developing hydrogen buses. Hydrogen trains could let Ireland skip over mainline electrification.

Sintropher discovered there are unique issues with rail in Britain. Land is less flat and rural than on the continent and lines were built longer ago and to a higher standard, making expansion more fiddly and expensive. However, this also means technical developments, such as better batteries, have a far bigger impact on project viability.

Ireland has similar Victorian legacy issues, with a more scattered population. It once had its own approach to serving marginal areas. Narrow-gauge lines and tramways connected to mainlines, providing an entire separate network in the case of Donegal.

Could a similar concept be brought into the modern era?

The question should not be considered ridiculous while we have two governments on this island pretending they can build a TGV to Letterkenny.