Mr. Graham Lightfoot:

My name is Graham Lightfoot. I am representing the North Tipperary Community Rail Partnership, NTCRP, which thanks the Chairman and the committee for inviting us to talk about our submission to the all-Ireland Rail Review. As the Chairman knows, the issues we raise have been highlighted here a number of times, most recently when the Minister for Transport, Deputy Eamon Ryan, appeared before the committee on 26 January 2022 and when Iarnród Éireann CEO, Jim Meade, appeared on 17 February 2022.

The partnership has quarterly meetings with Iarnród Éireann management to promote the line, secure improvements in services and to provide in-depth feedback to Iarnród Éireann from users and potential users. We also engage with the National Transport Authority and local authorities. The rail review gives us an opportunity to highlight several issues, including our particular concern that there is no policy for the development of rural or regional railways at Department level or within the NTA or Iarnród Éireann. Iarnród Éireann Strategy 2027 makes no commitments to improve regional rural services, except for improving services in the four metropolitan areas of Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford. The NTA's remit does not currently include developing regional, rural or intercity rail, even though it is responsible for the public service obligation, PSO, contract, allocating PSO funds and approving the timetable. Iarnród Éireann's own position in developing services is outlined in an email we received from local management telling us that it is not within its remit, but up to the NTA via the PSO contract, to determine the timetable. It could propose an additional service for the NTA, for approval but it does not currently have the resources for this. Both Iarnród Éireann and the NTA describe our line as "lightly used". This unfortunate tag is due to the lack of useful journey opportunities making it irrelevant and largely unusable to the population it serves; the failure by Iarnród Éireann's railway undertaking, RU, to promote the line to these communities; and the failure of the NTA to challenge the railway undertaking to improve the level of services being operated to meet local needs. All other routes operated by Iarnród Éireann have seen services upgraded from the traditional two trains a day to either an hourly or, at worst, three-hourly off-peak service, with an almost hourly service at peak times. The sole exceptions are the north and south Tipperary lines, which maintain a very basic service. The timetable has essentially not changed since the restoration of full services after the emergency and fuel crises of 1947. The only change has been the loss of direct services to Dublin, since 1986. Except for a brief period in 2012 and 2013, all passengers must change at Ballybrophy to access stations on the line. The line suffers from a lack of consistent and reliable services. There are currently 31 passenger trains a week, or 1,567 a year. However, in each of the two years before Covid, over 200 services were replaced with buses, the equivalent of seven weeks of services. Due to Covid, there were significant periods when there was no service on the line; for example,162 days from January to June 2021.

When driver shortages occur, our line's services are the first to be replaced by buses. This creates a perception that the line is closed or unreliable and is not helped by the fact that none of the stations on the line have real-time information on display to update passengers. In the ten-year period from 2011 to 2020, Iarnród Éireann invested €22.8 million on improvements, with a further €22.7 million spent on day-to-day maintenance, resulting in a total infrastructure funding of €45.5 million. There has been no significant improvement of services in terms of faster journeys or more train services. There are no rail services from Limerick to Ballybrophy between 6.30 a.m. and 4.55 p.m., and from Ballybrophy to Limerick between 10.05 a.m. and 5.05 p.m. There are no services on Sunday mornings or at all on the Sundays of bank holiday weekends.

As of today, 24 miles of the line has been upgraded with continuous welded rail, CWR, but it still has a temporary speed restriction of 30 miles per hour. We would like the committee to note that Iarnród Éireann's own CCE-TMS-321 track maintenance requirements and tolerances standards allow a maximum speed of 70 miles per hour on lines like the Limerick to Ballybrophy line, but Iarnród Éireann has said that it will not look at a speed limit higher than 50 miles per hour. Raising line speeds could result in a large reduction of journey times. For example, it takes an average of 48 minutes to cover 24 miles of CWR at 30 miles per hour. At 50 miles per hour, it would take 28 minutes and 48 seconds, a potential reduction of 19 minutes 12 seconds. It is only after persistent challenges by the campaign that Iarnród Éireann’s infrastructure manager agreed to review the line speeds for the new timetable due out later this year. The proliferation of level crossings on the route impacts significantly on line speeds, with 12 being legacy gated crossings that require a gatekeeper to operate them, at a cost of approximately €1.2 million per annum. There is no programme or funding in place to convert attended crossings to automatic crossings or to abolish farmers' crossings through land swaps or buying out rights of way. We would like to see further funding made available to allow this to happen as this would improve safety, allow better journey times and significantly reduce the operational and wage costs attributed to the line and allow it to be available to traffic 24-7.

On a typical weekday the line requires 68 people to operate two and a half return services a day. We believe that with these fixed costs, the line should be offering more services. Running more passenger or freight services will be a marginal cost, as the farebox should have the potential to cover the cost of operating more services without the need for any significant adjustment to the PSO. Our first goal is to make the line user-friendly and relevant to the population it serves by the introduction of a third return service, seven days a week, utilising the existing available rolling stock allocated to the line. This additional service will help significantly increase choice and journey opportunities for passengers, and should result in greater usage and greater farebox revenue. We note that the Minister for Transport told this committee on 26 January 2022 that there is a need to invest in the line and that strategic use needs to be made of the line. He stated:

Do we let them just chug along at bare minimum use or do we want to make strategic use of them? I think we should make strategic use of them. I think we should build new stations along that line.

The line should be part of the vision for commuter rail into Limerick, with the delivery of an hourly service from Nenagh to Limerick. This would serve the proposed Ballysimon Parkway station and the reopened station of Annacotty. Annacotty could then serve the university and local industrial estates and be integrated with the M7 park and ride bus station, as proposed in the Limerick Shannon Metropolitan Area Transportation Strategy.

Integrating timetables and ticketing between rail and bus services would expand the catchment area of stations along the line in counties Tipperary, Clare, Offaly and Limerick, allowing flexibility and encouraging a modal shift from the car to public transport. For example, we would like users of the Nenagh commuter service to access the later Bus Éireann 323 or 72 service back to Nenagh after the last train has gone. It is key that bus services call at the railway stations to connect with train services. The responsibility for promoting and co-ordinating local bus services with rural and regional rail should be mandated to the Local Link co-ordination units where appropriate. In order to ensure effective connectivity, Leap Card use should be extended to all rail and bus services throughout the country.