Heard this clampit on Nolan’s show this morning and wanted to reach through the radio and wring his neck!!
https://twitter.com/stephennolan/status/1617870665700319232?s=46&t=fGrYjuK5gKO6-5Rz-dhDZg
He has a point. The only sure way to cut the number of road deaths is to cut the number of vehicle miles travelled, and that means giving people viable alternatives to private cars.
I'd be in favour of part of the A5 project if it meant bypassing Omagh and allowing the current A5 route to go back to its original use as part of the Portadown-Dungannon-Omagh-Derry railway that should never have been closed. Ditto for Strabane.
Public transport works where there is sufficient population density to make regular services viable.
There is some push on Twitter to have the Antrim to Lisburn line reopened to allow a regular (every 15 minutes) each way service between Belfast, Lisburn, Crumlin, Aldergrove, Antrim, Templepatrick Newtonabbey, Belfast (the circle line). That sort of investment, and I know it is in the East, would take many more cars off the road that a twice a day service to Castlederg or Drumquin.
Yes, we need to get more cars of the road and the Great Northern railway would benefit many who live along its route, but West Tyrone is a rural area where car dependency cannot be easily eradicated.
Omagh is the biggest town in the north without a railway station, and there are far smaller towns with stations (Scarva, anyone?). There's plenty of justification for reopening that line through Dungannon, which in my opinion should be a higher priority than the complete A5.
There used to be a narrow gauge branch line that went to Castlederg from the mainline station at Victoria Bridge. No railway ever went to Drumquin that I'm aware of.
Restoring the railway is only part of the job. The other part is adjusting settlement patterns so that more people cluster around stations instead of having traffic-inducing bungalow blight peppered over the countryside.
The Knockmore line that you speak of is the lowest hanging fruit of all the railway reopenings since the tracks are still there and still in occasional use for certain types of movement. Putting a halt at Aldergrove and connecting it to the rest of the network in a Belfast circle line is a no-brainer. Following that I'd like to see Portadown-Armagh reopened. 10 miles of undisturbed route just sitting there with cuttings, embankments, and half the bridges already in place. It'd prove the concept of reopening a dormant line, and would build popular support for the reopening of the old Derry Road line.
Omagh has a population of around 20,000. There are 4-5 times that number living in the ‘hinterlands’. Do we continue to let people die on that road while you spend the next 15-20 years doing proof of concept and building the “into the west” railway. That does not help the people of Drumquin or Dromore or Gortin or Trillick,etc.
A rail line is a nice to have and would support a % of the population in 10 or 15 years but the road is needed now.
That presupposes that only townies would use the train, but the railway would still be useful to people in the hinterlands. The railway is so useful that people in outlying areas make a point of getting to the stations on it, driving if necessary. It also removes traffic from the road, which frees up capacity for people who absolutely have to drive.
Omagh has an hourly bus service. I have never heard that it is over capacity (50 people / hour) I am not convinced that having a train going via Portadown and taking a similar length of time would convert a significant additional number of people to public transport.
How many people’s would travel from Strabane to take the train from Derry to Belfast or how many people from Banbridge would travel the 2 miles to catch the train at Scarva?
Buses get stuck in traffic, are slower than driving, and less comfortable than the train. The number of people taking the bus is no indicator how how many people would take the train. The traffic on the roads is a better indicator of demand for travel on a route.
Scarva is an under-utilised station. Translink could do a better job of getting people from Banbridge to use it, but more frequent services from the station would be a prerequisite for that. It seems to be 2 trains in the morning and 3 at night at this point, so it's hardly a viable alternative to the car in its present state.
I grew up 6 miles from Lurgan station and would often use the train for journeys to Belfast or Dublin if I had business within a walkable distance of the station at the other end. The convenience of the train dropping you off in the middle of town in a speedy manner justifies the effort in getting to the station.
