Railway route could have
accommodated motorway
Dear sir - I refer to a recent article in the Meath
Chronicle by Paul Murphy: "Iarnród Éireann
outlines Navan railway route". So Iarnród
Éireann has decided the preferred and most
sensible route, should be the one chosen in the 1860s
when slide rules and pencils were high tech instead of
computers and picks, shovels and wheelbarrows were used
instead of JCBs and bulldozers and workers using horses
and carts moved thousands of tonnes of rock and clay
instead of today`s diesel guzzling carbon producing large
dump trucks.
Shortly after the famine in 1860, engineers and workers
with no agenda other than common sense choose the best
routes from Dublin to Navan and Athboy for the
railway.
At a recent conference on climate change the principal
speakers included Minister John Gormley TD and Mr. Duncan
Stewart. Mr. Stewart informed the meeting that for every
one tonne of cement produced one tonne of carbon is
released into our atmosphere, thereby worsening global
warming. I asked "if we accept this is so, why are we
building the M3 motorway instead of the railway to Navan
and beyond" to which both the minister and Mr. Stewart
described the M3 as madness and irresponsible
planning.
With the Bali conference on global warming, peak oil and
the finite supply of fossil fuels reaching $100 a barrel
it is hard to argue against either the minister or Duncan
Stewart.
Thousands of motorists drive each day on the N3 to Dublin
and are severely stressed and must surely question those
responsible in the Dept of Environment, the Dept. of
Transport, the National Roads Authority, Meath County
Council and those politicians as to why we are going full
speed to build this stupid and costly M3 motorway instead
of rebuilding the much less expensive railway from Dublin
to Navan. This is absolute madness because to build the
M3 will create more carbon and destroy the archaeology in
the Tara Skryne valley. In 100 years or less the people
will look back will ask why were these decisions allowed
to go unchallenged by the EU. If the railway had just
been put back on the embankment which was built in the
1860s (and now to be upgraded) the trains from Kells and
Navan would now be travelling to Dublin carrying
thousands of would be motorists/commuters each way.
This M3 is a most irresponsible way of playing our part
in reducing carbon emissions. This latest news from
Iarnród Éireann about replacing the track
on the old embankment also questions the decision to
build the M3 through the Tara Skryne valley. Could some
of those "experts" who proposed the five or six route
options for the M3 explain to us why the old railway
route was not included as one of the possible routes?
Surely it would have made more sense and avoided delays
and millions of euro in legal and archaeology costs to
build the M3 along the route of the railway. Then again,
that would have made common sense and there`s little room
for common sense or sentiment where politicians/parties
have to look after their friends and/or developers.
Common sense seems to be in short supply amongst those in
EirGrid also as they propose putting their 400KV lines
above ground in County Meath. With the M3 and now
EirGrid, we have had more than enough of bad planning of
infrastructure in County Meath to last us a lifetime.
Yours,
Colr. Phillip Cantwell,
Trim.
© The Meath Chronicle, 22nd. December 2007.
Related Articles:
Iarnród Éireann outlines Navan railway
route.
Route of Navan-Dublin rail line to be outlined "within
weeks".
