Navan is getting a train! It’ll only take 13 years to complete and 750million to re-lay the preexisting lines. Thanks Helen, great job!

45 comments

  2. I propose that government and politicians stop announcing infrastructure investments and other “achievements ” *before anything has been achieved*. Stop telling us what you’re going to do, just do it and tell us when it’s ***done***.

  4. The children’s hospital started around the same price estimate (actually less, was 650million), it’s now over 2.1billion and expected to be more by the time it’s fully completed, should we expect much of the same for this?

  8. Would i be right in saying Navan has a train but it doesn’t carry passenger rail services?

  11. I don’t know the area or the issue. I saw electric bus service starting up yesterday in Athlone. Why wouldn’t that do if run more frequently?

  12. Any existing track can hardly be reused, so if course it’ll have to be relaid.

    Large chunks of the existing alignment have been lost to buildings over the years (whether legally or not), so new routes into the towns will have to be found and bought.

  15. So people here are angry that we don’t have trains, and are getting angry because we are getting trains. Make up your minds ffs. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

  19. The snail turned to the sloth and asked ” Why the fuck is Ireland so slow at doing things?” The Stalactites and Stalagmites were quite amused too.

  21. As someone who has just returned from Navan after being gone a long time I’ve changed my mind, don’t make a train station. Keep these backwards folk to themselves, it’s for the best I assure all of you.

  22. How long will the journey take ? Surely a direct bus route from Navan to to the M3 parkway, and allow the 109X service to stop there too and upgrade the existing line from Dunboyne to allow a high speed train would be much better. The thing is you can literally get to the M3 parkway driving from Navan in less than 30 minutes. I’d imagine the train will take longer.

    So in essence you could be 50 minutes getting from Navan to Dunboyne Parkway on the Train and another hour getting from there into the city on a train. So your morning commute from Navan to Dublin is nearly two hours.

    I come in from a town in Cavan on the bus in under 90 minutes for comparison

    I’d imagine plenty will still drive and plenty will still take the bus.

  24. Is 3/4 a billion really how expensive it is to take a line from Dublin (I presume) out to Navan and to build a station?

    That seems ridiculously expensive, but if they plan to link this train station into galway and the Dublin to Limerick line through Kildare or the midlands then fair but I somehow doubt that

  27. Look im just saying, but the worst possible thing we did, was cover the railways in greenways and footpaths for environmental reasons and cycling.

    We should have kept the train network we had. Yes some of it needed to be updated but we were all pretty connected at one point with rails.

    A shame in my opinion

  29. It’s so weird how proudly they announce it. It’s like saying, guys we totally nail-ed cold fusion … expect clean energy by 3045, free of charge!

  31. Are you having a laugh? It takes 8 years to START it?

    Like, whatever reasons can be provided for this are total hogwash. The layers of bureaucracy that halt progress in this country is absolutely scandalous.

  32. 750million??? For a train line from Navan to Dublin??? Is the track made of gold? Are the trains pulled by unicorns?

  34. “The Navan Rail will be built and open for business by 2016”
    Noel Dempsey promised in 2010

    The Rail Link was also part of the National Development Plan 2000.

    The Rail Link was also part the Transport 21 plan of 2005.

    That’s more than a generation of absolutely fuck all done and millions spent on consultation reports.

  35. Youse can come back to us about planning a Cork Limerick motorway and a Luas in Cork after this is finished.

    *Grand so sorr!*

  36. While I am all for the expansion of the rail network it sure would be nice for them to build a line that didn’t terminate in Dublin. For instance if you want to get the train from Waterford to Rosslare it would take you 6.5 hours to go there via Dublin whereas it takes an hour in the car. A train from Cork to Galway? Well then you either need to go to Dublin (5.5 hrs total) or else change at both Portlaoise and again at Portarlington (4.5 hrs total)

  37. Love that it’s only in the context of Dublin that places seem to be able to get a rail line. Can’t rail lines connect other places too?

  38. Does anyone else just think that we’ve missed the window to do any of these large scale public transport projects? We really needed to start these in the 50’s/60’s before we built so much car dependant infrastructure and it seems too late now to change it. Things like the metro or significant extensions to the dart just seem like they’re never going to happen.

  39. I moved to Navan when I was 7 years old and saw the same flyer in my first week there. I’m now 34.

  40. Building infrastructure takes time. The problem isn’t that it will take 13 years or whatever, it’s that they didn’t start 13 years ago when they knew they’d be needing this stuff up the line.

    She talks like Meath “suddenly” rose in population and it took them by surprise, but Meath Coco has had development plans that always predicted population rises. Even taking recent influxes from various places into account, a lot of this was pretty, deprressingly predictable.

  42. Imagine how much more prosperous Meath and Kildare would be if we had good, reliable commuter rail. In NY 40-80 min away on the trains (NJT/Metro North/LIRR) is where we’ll off professionals with families live. Good schools and low crime. Think it’s the same with London right?

    The best way to develop rural Ireland is with good transport links, and commuter trains that just go from Carlow to Dublin, not all the way from Waterford/Cork (I’m unsure what line it is exactly).

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