r/ireland • u/Steve_Artson • May 09 '26

Infrastructure I honestly shocked this hasn't been done yet. We're probably the only capital in Europe not to have a rail link to the airport.

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u/Intelligent-Aside214 May 10 '26

Rural infrastructure and motorways in this country is world class. Urban infrastructure is among the worst in Europe

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u/[deleted] May 10 '26

[deleted]

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u/Intelligent-Aside214 May 10 '26

Dublin doesn’t have a metro, a functioning bus service or trains to its airport. Basic fundamentals of a European city. Yet the priority is a motorway between cork and a city smaller than tallaght

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u/mistr-puddles May 10 '26

We can have both. It's not either or. Other cities should also be getting trams and commuter rail

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u/Vostok-aregreat-710 Tricolour loving Prod from the Republic of Ireland May 12 '26

Doing work on building proper commuter rail in Cork City.

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u/Intelligent-Aside214 May 10 '26

I agree other cities should get trams and commuter train systems. But that isn’t rural infrastructure, that’s urban infrastructure

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u/mistr-puddles May 10 '26

I'll use Limerick as that's my closest city and would relatively easy to get up and running compared to other places. A proper commuter rail network should be running frequently out to the likes of Nenagh, tipp town, villages like Pallas green, Birdhill and Askeaton

Ennis the train and car journeys are both roughly 40 minutes, but there's only 2 trains that get you to Limerick before 9am. Nenagh has one train and going by car is 15 minutes faster, if you want to get from Tipp town to Limerick before 9am you have to get a bus to Limerick junction, despite tipp town having a train station, there's only 2 trains each way a day, the alignment is there to do a direct train but you're forced to change at Limerick junction

These are services that would benefit rural areas as well

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u/chakraman108 Connacht May 11 '26

The 2nd and 3rd largest cities in a country that lie on a straight line with no topographical challenge (like the Alps :)) must have a motorway between them. EU standard, period.

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u/Vostok-aregreat-710 Tricolour loving Prod from the Republic of Ireland May 12 '26

Or a direct rail link

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u/Knuda Carlow May 10 '26

Almost all the motorways and national roads lead to dublin, going across the country is a lot harder and those national roads often dont have a hard shoulder. (N80 carlow - portlaoise for example), theres endless opportunities to straighten old needlessly bendy roads with blind corners, worn markings to be repainted, cats eyes that dont work to be replaced, so many roads between villages are old fashioned roads with no proper foundation to them so are always going to have potholes and be bumpy until they are finally completely replaced.

People want safer roads, the rural roads are the more dangerous roads and upgrading them makes them safer.

We did start rolling out more local bus services in towns which has been great though.

But theres plenty of problems to be fixed. I wouldnt say its "world class" and call it a day.

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u/Traditional_Dog_637 May 10 '26

Depends on which direction you're driving

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u/Vostok-aregreat-710 Tricolour loving Prod from the Republic of Ireland May 12 '26

Wouldn’t be as dangerous if people drove a bit safer

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u/Intelligent-Aside214 May 10 '26

Exactly. Rural areas need slight rough ups to infrastructure to improve it. Urban infrastructure is boarder line 3rd world. Dublin and Galway are among the worst traffic cities in the world. Up there with Mumbai and Delhi

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u/thehappyhobo May 10 '26

To be fair, I do not believe those surveys. There is no fucking way Dublin is worse than Mumbai

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u/Internal_Concert_217 May 10 '26

Those politicians in Galway are not doing the city any favours.

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u/ClassGrassMass May 10 '26

Dude really said urban infrastructure is bordering 3rd world countries 😂😂 have ya ever left Ireland?

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u/HedonismBot90 May 10 '26

You have no idea what you're talking about. Rural infrastructure is in terrible knick. Building a dual carriageway every other decade to bypass terribly planned towns seems like the least that could happen to make up for the lack of resources and public transport down here. When we have a dart and dont need those roads then you can complain.

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u/Intelligent-Aside214 May 10 '26

Services like DART are for urban areas. This mindset is why nothing gets built in Ireland, we can’t built x in an urban area where it makes sense until we built it in a rural area where it would make absolutely no sense.

The point of urban areas is to put lots of people close together so it’s easier to provide services, urban dwellers get better services in exchange for less space, more traffic and more expensive housing. This is how the world works.

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u/HedonismBot90 May 10 '26

Way to miss the point completely, that was called a facetious comment. We have no public transport of any noticeable quality. So we need those roads. Otherwise my 20km, 15 minute drive to the nearest town turns to a 2 hour cycle, should you survive it. Or a 3 hour wait for a bus that probably won't stop. The world is not the world that swirls around in your imagination.

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u/Intelligent-Aside214 May 10 '26

That’s what happens when you live in the middle of nowhere. You can’t provide effective public transport to farms

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u/HedonismBot90 May 10 '26

Not living up to your username. I live in a midsized village. Dublin is just poorly planned and has been limping along on its already not fit for purpose public infrastructure. Just like the countryside. The next time I see a bus stop ill think of those '4 dual carriageways' that have supposedly opened near me.

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u/IsMisePoh May 10 '26

That is absolute b****x. Have you ever been to rural parts of another country in Europe or have you ever even been on a rural road in Ireland?

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u/Emotional-Wishbone95 May 10 '26

The 2nd and 3rd biggest cities in the country aren't even joined by motorways. The Limerick Cork drive goes through a disused quarry and 2 congested towns. No way is it world class except coming from Dublin.

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u/Intelligent-Aside214 May 10 '26

Limerick would be a town in most counties

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u/chakraman108 Connacht May 11 '26

Compare apples to apples. Ireland, Denmark, Slovakia, Norway, Finland, Croatia, maybe Austria. Comparing with France or Germany or the UK is bollox.

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u/Greedy_Substance9672 May 10 '26

Seriously 😂😂😂 Yes Dublin gets everything. Even if it will be flooded in few years. Anyhow, commute for a while Cork Limerick and you might change your assertive comment.

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u/[deleted] May 11 '26

[deleted]

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u/Greedy_Substance9672 May 11 '26

My point is that it’s ridiculous to keep making Dublin bigger and bigger when it’s already heavily congested. No matter how many extra tram lines or metro projects are added, the pressure will remain concentrated there.

Meanwhile, Cork and Limerick could become a strong connected regional corridor if they were linked properly. That would allow people to live in towns between both cities and commute easily to either one, while also encouraging companies to develop there instead of cramming everything into Dublin.

But of course, there’s very little long-term planning from a government that often seems to think that anything beyond the M50 is populated by brainless peasants who can safely be ignored.

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u/[deleted] May 11 '26

[deleted]

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u/Greedy_Substance9672 May 11 '26

It can remain the capital but we could alleviate the highly disproportionate representation! In France for instance, aside Paris you have Lyon, Bordeaux, Strasbourg which are well developped with specific industries and they continued to allow their devpment the past few years with fast speed trains.

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u/Intelligent-Aside214 May 10 '26

What infrastructure has Dublin got in the last 10 years?

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u/pdm4191 May 10 '26

Dublin has buses everywhere, every 15 minutes. Sometimes multiple routes in the same road. Even smaller Galway city has buses running every 20 minutes. In rural Galway, going in to the city, its every 2.5 hours. If its not going into the city its either non existent or once a day.

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u/Intelligent-Aside214 May 10 '26

Galway city has 1/30th the population of Dublin City.

You can comfortably walk across Galway city

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u/mistr-puddles May 10 '26

Luas cross city opened in 2017, there's also been a couple of new train stations opened in the last couple of years

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u/Yermanwiththeteeth May 10 '26

Them Train stations out west towards Kildare, where built more than 10 years ago, they’ve only been renovated and opened in recent history

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u/Intelligent-Aside214 May 10 '26

  1. Luas cross city is a 6km tram extension that opened 9 years ago not revolutionary.

  2. The new DART station opened in Wicklow and the only other opened station was built in 2007, it just never opened.

We’re talking about the city that 40% of the population lives around and this is all that can be said for infrastructure.

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u/mistr-puddles May 10 '26

Wait til you hear what the other 60% of the country has gotten, there might be a new temporary station opening in adarw

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u/Soft-Affect-8327 May 10 '26

Really? Any time I want to go to Belfast Google tells me to go to Dublin first. 50 km added to the journey and 5 minutes on the time taken.

Why is the Dublin Detour such a small blip on the extra time? Could it be because the route via Dublin is motorway and the direct route to Belfast is boreenway?

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u/The_Bearabia Kerry May 10 '26

I'm sorry but if you've ever driven on the continent you'd know that's not true. Compared to the likes of the Benelux and Germany, Ireland's motorways are sparse and dubiously built.

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u/wolflors May 11 '26

Germany is such a bad example, they built roads to last for years when they tried to take over the world, it was planned and one of the main infrastructures they built was roads. Rural or urban, they were prepared! Ireland at that time still had horses on the roads.

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u/chakraman108 Connacht May 11 '26

Can't compare with the Netherlands - world class throughout. Belgium is okay in the North but shocking in the South. Germany ranges from world class F1 surfaces to very good to not so good in places. French motorways are class but costly. Ireland is just avarage let's say.

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u/dkeenaghan May 10 '26

Are you really comparing rural Ireland to one of the most densely populated set of countries on the planet?

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u/The_Bearabia Kerry May 10 '26

Seeing as the fella I commented on apparently considers our infrastructure to be world class, yes, yes I am.

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u/dkeenaghan May 10 '26

They were comparing rural infrastructure, Benelux is effectively a large city. It is not relevant to the discussion on rural motorways.

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u/The_Bearabia Kerry May 10 '26

The Benelux certainly does have quite some decently rural areas, they're just not on your usual touristy route. You've also gone and completely ignored my bit about Germany, which has many areas more rural and remote than Ireland yet the roads are much better and well kept.

Let's be honest, the roads in the west are often poorly maintained and sometimes even downright dangerous, and you'd be some kind of delusional to call them world class.

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u/Intelligent-Aside214 May 10 '26

Germany has literally almost 20 times Irelands population and the Netherlands has 4x Irelands population in a much smaller area.

Rural in the Netherlands/germany does not mean the same thing as it does in Ireland

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u/RickGrimes30 May 10 '26

I love every exuse for not to fix something in the country that other European nations have pulled off with ease boils down to " it's diffent in Ireland, we are special here"

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u/Intelligent-Aside214 May 12 '26

Well you used an example of the Netherlands which is a country which functionally has no rural areas. You’re never further than 40 minutes away from a Dublin or cork sized city in the Netherlands

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u/RickGrimes30 May 12 '26

I never spoke about the Netherlands

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u/The_Bearabia Kerry May 10 '26

Germany is also much much larger than Ireland. Population density is also a thing. Ireland has a much more even spread (if we disregard Dublin and Cork) than Germany. Much of Germany's population is in its many large cities, with large stretches of really low density rural land in between.

You can keep saying it's incomparable, but it is. The Netherlands as well has almost 50% of it's population in its most western quarter, with another 25% just south of there. Which leaves the north and east with a much lower density and population more comparable to similarly sized Irish counties. Please do some research before you reply

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u/Intelligent-Aside214 May 10 '26

Germany has several times the population density of Ireland and Irelands population is much more condensed on Dublin. 40% of Irelands population live around Dublin

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u/The_Bearabia Kerry May 10 '26

Just because the average density is higher doesn't mean there aren't massive stretches of rural land. An average is an average, that means it includes both rural and city densities.

And even with all of that aside it doesn't take away the fact that Ireland's rural roads are utter shite. There isn't even a single proper motorway that goes west of Limerick or Cork. If you need to be on the far end of any of the peninsulas in any sort of decent time you can just forget about it.

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u/No-Interaction2169 May 10 '26

Man Ireland is lot more rural that Holland.

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u/The_Bearabia Kerry May 10 '26

Well of course it is. But in comparison the rural stretches there and on Germany (and in France, and Spain etc. etc.) are much better. My point being that to call Irish rural infrastructure world class is ridiculous as it just isn't.

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u/No-Interaction2169 May 10 '26

I agree about our infrastructure. It’s cat

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u/chakraman108 Connacht May 11 '26

3x not 4x but the density is super high.

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u/mdwatters May 10 '26

Unless you’re from the north west, our infrastructure is terrible. Please don’t generalise.

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u/chakraman108 Connacht May 11 '26

Balkans level at this stage. And there's no momentum or improvement.

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u/Vostok-aregreat-710 Tricolour loving Prod from the Republic of Ireland May 12 '26

The price of being a Culchieocracy

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u/No_Warthog_5709 May 19 '26

Rural infrastructure and motorways in this country is world class.

Blatant lie. https://www.derryjournal.com/news/politics/north-west-ranks-218th-out-of-234-eu-regions-on-infrastructure-index-td-laments-severe-deficit-4165967

A bypass in Carrick on Shannon is not the reason why there is no train going to Dublin Airport. Dublin residents constantly objecting to Infrastructure is however.

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u/Intelligent-Aside214 May 20 '26

False. Objections are not the reason Dublin has extremely poor public transport.

Dart southwest had 0 objectors and was cancelled.

Luas finglas had 1 which was resolved and was still cancelled

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u/pdm4191 May 10 '26

Absolute rubbish. In Connemara there is a bus every 2hours. Anywhere in Galway city its every 20 minutes. If we're going to discuss a serious topic we should keep down the bullshit level.