There's a whiff of the Third World about Dublin's Western Suburban Line between Maynooth and Connolly Station. It currently carries more than 4,000 passengers a day and would be used by many more if the service was up to scratch. Most of the "stations" along the route are grafitti-scarred, litter-strewn halts, with ticket offices housed in shabby steel containers. They also have only very limited "park-and-ride" facilities where commuters could leave their cars for the day.
Beyond Clonsilla, the service is reduced to operating on a single track, which means that any breakdown results in the line being closed. And the chances of a breakdown are high because much of the rolling stock consists of 30-yearold Craven carriages.
With an explosion of housing estates along the route and passenger numbers growing by 10 per cent each year, the two morning peak-time trains are so crowded that some commuters have resorted to standing in the guard's van, just like in Bombay.
Antiquated signalling around Connolly causes delays, because of the heavy volume of rail traffic going through the station every morning. Platforms at most of the halts are too short to cater for eight-carriage Arrow trains used on the Kildare-Heuston line. Barry Kenny, spokesman for Iarnrod Eireann, makes no attempt to defend the existing service. But he points out that the first two of 27 new Arrow sets for the Dublin suburban lines, ordered from GEC-Alsthom in Barcelona, are due to arrive this week. However, in order to operate a more frequent service with higher quality rolling stock, the line between Clonsilla and Maynooth needs to be upgraded to double track, the signalling needs to be improved and the platforms extended to accommodate Arrow sets.
Iarnrod Eireann estimates that all of this could be done for £23 million, and it has submitted its scheme to the Department of Public Enterprise for consideration in the next tranche of EU funding - assuming, of course, that there is one - in the post-1999 period.
"With the huge growth of population out there, it could be a very viable service running at 15-minute intervals in peak periods," Mr Kenny says. "Even as it is, the line is used as a selling point by estate agents and this adds a few thousand pounds to the price of houses in the area."
Catherine Murphy, the Leixlip-based Democratic Left councillor, says the line "obviously has great potential, with Maynooth Collegeat one end and Intel, one of the biggest employers in the State, just 30 yards away from it outside Leixlip. Why it hasn't got any priority is simply baffling."
What may serve as a spur to improving the service is the latest proposal by a CIE-Aer Rianta working group to use the line for a rail link to the airport, branching off at Cabra Junction. Otherwise, all it's got to show is the new station at Drumcondra - Bertie Ahern's home turf.
