Transport slowly moving in right direction

The past record of Irish transport policy is frankly dismal, and it is only quite recently that it has started to emerge from…

The past record of Irish transport policy is frankly dismal, and it is only quite recently that it has started to emerge from something like chaos, writes Garret FitzGerald.

For unfortunately, the key factors governing State policy over the decades have been the following:

First, a marked tendency at both political and Civil Service level to favour State monopolies in rail, bus, airline and airport policies.

Second, a deep resistance, at both levels, to any review of failed policies.

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Also, a lower than normal level of public service competence in this policy area, and inadequate boards, often overloaded with political appointments, many of them of poor quality.

An almost total absence of the application of economic expertise.

Poor management skills in the planning and execution of investment projects.

From 1932 onwards, passenger and goods services by road were crippled by controls which inhibited the development of a competitive adequate road transport system for goods, and even more so for passengers.

Our State saw the development of its bus network stopped in its tracks - to use a singularly inappropriate metaphor! - within a few years of its rather late initiation around 1926. The railways not alone blocked the development of bus competition along the routes that they continued to serve uneconomically, but also, more surprisingly, often failed to develop bus feeder services to their rail system.

The contrast with Northern Ireland was marked in this respect, for although protectionist policies favouring rail services were also adopted there, these did not preclude the emergence of a dense network of bus routes.

Here, the maintenance of this monopoly system was not accompanied by much public investment in a very run-down rail system - until the advent of the Celtic Tiger finally persuaded the State to renew at great expense the entire hugely-subsidised rail system - but without any attempt to increase the very slow speed of our trains.

As a result of this failure to make speed a priority, the completion of our motorway system within the next three years will face the expensively renovated, but still extraordinarily slow, rail system with a new kind of competition - not just from low-cost (because in some instances even more hugely-subsidised!) domestic air services, but also from privately-owned express buses which may use the new motorway system for city- to-city services, which will operate without subsidy at a fraction of the cost of the main-line rail system.

The rationale of a huge public investment in new but slow trains undertaken simultaneously with the building of fast motorways is, to say the least, unclear.

Just how slow are our trains? When some years ago a major investment was made in the Dublin-Belfast line I recall an advance announcement that this was going to reduce the journey-time to 95 minutes, (still no more than 105km/h), but today all the Belfast trains except one are scheduled for 130 minutes - a truly third-world speed of 76km/h. This represents a mere five-minute improvement on the steam-driven Enterprise of 1948, viz, an improvement of less than one minute per decade since the first half of the last century.

Again, the recent huge investment in track and new trains between Dublin and Cork has been accompanied by an actual marked slowing-down of train times on this route to 170 or 175 minutes (88 to 92km/h), from the 155 minutes achieved by many trains in earlier years. Because of a combination of a later departure and a 15-minute longer journey time, the first train from Cork now arrives in Dublin at 10.20am, instead of last year's arrival time of 09.35am.

I cannot help wondering whether those who authorised the major investment in rail services to Cork were made aware that not only was this going to fail to speed up the rail service to enable it to compete with fast motorway speeds, but that this investment was actually going to slow down the trains?

And, if so, why was such an uncompetitive investment authorised? One must hope that the public authorities will not be tempted now to try to salvage the rail service by banning buses from motorways in order to protect the slowed-down trains!

The present trend towards re-opening abandoned rail lines, not just in the case of commuter areas like Midleton, or Dunboyne and Navan, but also in areas of low traffic density, looks like imposing heavy costs on the economy, for little or no return.

There is an evident widespread public and political failure to grasp the fact that railways, with their huge investment in track and heavy rail equipment, are suited only to routes with a very high volume of demand - either inter-city routes or commuter lines.

Nevertheless, there is now a prospect that, at least at the level of the public service, some kind of rationality will in future be applied to proposals for transport investment. When Transport 21 was announced, Minister for Finance Brian Cowen laid it down that all projects were in future to be appraised and implemented in line with his department's Capital Appraisal Guidelines.

As a result, the Departments of Finance and Transport have between them devised a very extensive process of appraisal of future projects.

As I understand it, an initial preliminary appraisal is now being used to establish whether there is a prima facie economic case for a more detailed study of a project.

This, if not negative, is followed by a detailed appraisal and cost-benefit analysis by the initiating body, which must take account of other projects upon which the project might impinge, and must also take account of the alternative economics of a bus service.

That study is then followed by an independent appraisal, after which these appraisals go to a monitoring group, chaired by a Department of Transport official, but with representation from other departments and agencies, including, of course, the Department of Finance. That group then appoints auditors, again with finance representation, to ensure that the finance guidelines have been respected.

This seems a huge improvement on the deplorably loose process that it has replaced. And the new process has already shown its mettle by turning down as not being economically viable the proposed Ennis-Athenry rail restoration project.

This is not surprising in view of the fact that a century and more ago, when rail was the only form of transport, traffic on this line justified only three trains a day.

The fact that the Government nevertheless decided for political reasons to go ahead with this non-viable project - a decision which does not seem to have been challenged by the Opposition - does not take away from the integrity of this new and long-overdue public service evaluation process.