Re: Re: Airports; how many state subsidised airports are required in Ireland

@Frank Taylor wrote:

These subsidised routes copy the ‘spokes to Dublin’ form of infrastructure used by road and rail.

why i agued the retention of shannon over and above all others . refocusing saved monies into a new double tracked 200/km/h railine between cork and galway through shannon.

Then updgrading (in fact basically building from scratch) a 300 km/h double track to limerick /shannnon. then closing or selling the two routes galway to dublin and cork to dublin .

bus routes well managed and well designed would provide an equal level of service to our trains at the moment. I.e. since the trains stop in so many places the whole point of them is removed. instead create quality bus routes. I.e. insist that say kilkeny or cahersiveen reserve completely a route through the towns for buses. this would radically improve the times journeys.

with the northeast sligo donegal things are more difficult. i would favour a train link (100/hour) to galway , followed by the closure of the dublin sligo line.

Long term the galway to dublin road has been built in the wrong place . it should start some twenty miles north of galway , and head north east passing within 20 miles of sligo before turning dead east . it should also pass with 20 /30 miles of the northern irish ring road before ending substantially north of dublin (again 20/30 miles) on the m1.

same goes for dublin to cork and dublin to limerick , both should be torn up with a new motorway built midway between limerick and cork, passing near enough to cahir cashel kilkenny .carlow and ending substantially south of dublin (at least 30 miles because of the wicklow mountains).

as kerryblogs2 points out none of the western airports are currently working properly .