Breaking down the EY Report errors - a thread.
First off, the silly mistakes: With Dart electrification there is no need to purchase new trains as the existing trains on the Maynooth line can be cascaded after Dart+. That’s a €25m saving from the EY forecast costs to begin. 1/ https://twitter.com/irlwestontrack/status/1348566237761204224

Track renewal is costed at €63.6 m for 52 km/33 miles of track. This is seriously excessive. IE in house can deliver a mile of new CWR installed and stressed, including the digging out of old ballast and replacement for approximately €1m per mile or €635k per km. 2/

This suggests that the capital costs for renewing the track would be €33m or approximately half the EY estimate. With a 20% contingency a budget of €40 million would certainly be deliverable. This should include switches and points. 3/

The E&Y report suggests three passing loops (again inflating costs), when in reality only one (1) would be required at Tuam, to maintain an hourly service and provide an hourly freight path. Conclusion: This base cost seems to have been over costed by €40m 4/

Signalling - At €55m approx. this is one of the most overpriced elements of the report. We are informed that the signalling could in fact be done for £8.4m. 5/

The EY figure may include the price for a loop at Tuam (€7m) and perhaps contingency for connecting in the line at both ends (€3m), but even with this it is over priced by €35.9m 6/

A whopping €49.5m has been allocated for Preliminaries. As all the land is IE/CIE ownership, very little land will need to be acquired. No railway order is needed. Even if we generously allocated €10m for Preliminaries, this has been over costed by €39.5m. 7/

As stated above the project costs have been so grossly inflated that any CBA (Cost Benefit Analysis) will inevitably give a negative result. This is exactly what has happened here.
The EY report overestimates the cost of delivering phase 2 and 3 by some €168.8m 8/

In fact, the line could be delivered for €95-105m. That's a significant difference. The costs have been grossly inflated, and the demand massively unnderestimated. 9/

The underlying assumption appears to be that there will be no population growth in the areas served by the railway. In fact the regional development strategy for the next 20 years in the region is geared towards population growth and consolidation of towns such as Tuam. 10/

The population of Tuam at the last census in 2016 was 8767. The EY report states that it 1059. Any demand model will fail to produce a credible result with wrong data like this being fed in 11/

Further, the report shows Nil population growth over the next 20 years. The Project Ireland 2040 population expansion plan and the Northern & Western Regional Spatial Strategy are completely ignored. 12/

The model used by the NTA to forecast demand has proven problematic before. The NTA model killed off the Navan rail proposals offering instead a bus. That bus pre Covid was often full but hardly took many drivers out of their cars. 13/

Again in Limerick the NTA model failed to recognise rail opportunities available, resulting in the rejection of the NTA's draft Limerick transport strategy by stakeholders. The only conclusion that can be drawn is that the NTA are biased towards road only PT outcomes 14/

No trips to Dublin from Tuam were modelled by EY and the report assumes that there will be very little shift from private cars to PT. Experience with the Borders Rail project in Scotland strongly suggests otherwise 15/

Conclusion: the report is not fit for purpose and that the govt should reject it. Note that ALL railway projects in Ireland have needed political will rather than Civil Service/CIE opposition to go ahead. Show us some leadership @eamonryan and get the railway reopened.