OPINION: Our airports must be connected to our railway network

On December 17, 1903, Orville Wright flew the first powered aeroplane at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. On Sunday, June 15, 1919, Alcock and Brown landed at Clifden after the first non-stop flight across the Atlantic. On May 27, 1936, the first Aer Lingus flight took off from Baldonnel, bound for Bristol. A new, iconic Dublin Airport terminal was opened in January 1940. On April 28, 1958, Aer Lingus flew its first transatlantic flight from Shannon to New York.
In 2023, over 39 million passengers flew into and out of the five main commercial airports located in Ireland (Dublin, Cork, Shannon, IWAK and Kerry). Air travel made Ireland less peripheral and integrated us with the rest of the world.
So here’s the question. How do departing passengers access Irish airports today and arriving passengers travel onwards to their destinations?
Data for Dublin Airport, which handled over 33 million passengers in 2023 (a massive 85 percent of the total for Ireland) shows: private car (34 percent); bus/coach direct (32 percent); taxi (22 percent); hire car (4 percent); rail (0 percent).
None of the other four major airports are linked to the rail network. Lack of rail connectivity to our airports continues to make air travel – arrivals and departures – an irritating and complicated business.

FAILURE OF IMAGINATION
Some obvious factors explain the complete failure to develop rail transport links to our airports. The 1950s saw the start of massive closures of rail lines on cost saving grounds as the country’s population collapsed to 2.8 million in 1961 and emigration peaked at 80,000. That same year, 500,000 passengers used Dublin Airport.
The last in the cascade of rail closures involved the Western Rail Corridor that had provided a north-south transport corridor linking Cork, Limerick, Galway, Mayo and Sligo. Ironically, the shuttered Charlestown rail station on the currently disused Claremorris to Collooney/Sligo line is located 7.8km from IWAK. But of course, IWAK didn’t exist when that line was closed! Thank God the Monseigneur saw the future, even if our policymakers did not. But the future was not going to involve much rail.
The failure of imagination and inability to think ahead was not confined to rural Ireland. The 1950s rail closures included the Dublin Harcourt line, linking the then decaying city to its southern suburbs. This line ran from Harcourt Street to Bray and was closed when car use increased and it was never anticipated that the population of south Dublin would ever grow rapidly. The Dublin tram system, efficient and fully electrified, was also abandoned in the late 1940s, destroyed by the growth of bus transport and demands by car owners for more road space. With the benefits of hindsight, transition from trams to the Luas could have been smoother and less costly.

THE CHALLENGE
But let’s focus on the access transport challenge facing IWAK. As with Dublin Airport, current access is by car, bus and taxi. Data are unavailable, but my guess is that car access is the most common, as the IWAK car park photo illustrates.
Bus access depends on a north-south Expressway service linking Galway to Derry via IWAK eight times per day, and east-west access is by Bus Éireann linking Westport to Athlone via IWAK four times per day. Buses service IWAK en passant rather than directly and are difficult to interface with the IWAK flight schedules. Taxis are available, but must be pre-booked and are not cheap.
Of course, there is a big difference between Dublin Airport and IWAK when it comes to rail access. The national rail system notoriously radiates out from Dublin to serve the regions, so even if you have to take a bus or a taxi from the airport, you can quickly access the rest of the country from Heuston and Connolly stations.
However, the present rail system near IWAK is much more problematic. Ballymote station (33km from IWAK) will get you on the Dublin-Sligo line. Foxford station (27km) will get you on the Ballina-Manulla line. Ballyhaunis (22km) and Claremorris (31km) will get you on the Dublin-Westport line. So, if you wanted to go to Galway, it would be IWAK to Ballyhaunis by road; Ballyhaunis to Athlone by rail; and Athlone to Galway by rail. This is madness, but nobody seems to be in any great hurry to do anything about it.
It will not have escaped your attention that the final version of the All Island Strategic Rail Review said nothing about restoring the WRC from Claremorris to Collooney/Sligo (‘The strange case of the disappeared railway’, The Mayo News, May 23). But when the Government eventually restores the WRC from Claremorris to Athenry, at least it will be easier to travel from IWAK to Galway by rail. But how much better it would be if the WRC was restored on an initial basis as far as Charlestown (an extension of 34 km north of Claremorris)? IWAK, with a dedicated shuttle bus service, could claim to be ‘almost’ linked to the rail network.
IWAK is a cornerstone in any credible regional development strategy for the North and West region. A vibrant airport, with easy access for passengers and freight, is a driver of economic and population growth. This transformation is challenging and requires the kinds of insight, expertise and co-operation that gave us IWAK and made it a success in the teeth of negativity. It also needs the kind of thinking harnessed by the late Dr TK Whitaker in the 1950s, whose strategic recommendations, accompanied by decisive political action, reversed the decline of our nation and gave us the opportunity to grow and prosper.

John Bradley is a former ESRI professor and has published on the island economy of Ireland, EU development policy, industrial strategy and economic modelling.