COmmENT

‘From where I’m sitting’ – Howard Knott – howard@fleet.ie

A touch of ‘Back to the Future’!

November has turned out to be an interesting month, though according to the we’re into winter, it seemed to me that there was a touch of spring in the air, not just because of the unseasonably mild weather, but also because, suddenly, events were happening. Thankfully people were meeting each other after the long layoff. It was strange that, though a couple of years had passed, conversations picked up again where they had left off.

Never was this more the case when turning up at Johnstown Estate Hotel for the Fleet Transport Awards event. Throughout the dinner one couldn’t but be carried along by the buzz of old friends meeting and new products and ideas bouncing around the tables. Perhaps the enforced migration from Citywest Hotel was not a bad thing, being in Enfield was like a homecoming for that huge “Fleet Transport” family. For me, as well, as on parking the car close to the truck and trailer display, there was a double take from forty years ago, while looking at the Vanfleet/Fitzsimons’ Mercedes-Benz Actros tractor-unit. I had spent several years running the Norfreight operation from an office located in the Fitzsimons Transport building working with B+I and Pandoro trailers, which were hauled to and from the Ferryport by trucks in an almost identical livery to today.

Back to the awards event, I once gain had the great privilege of being a member of one of the judging panels and, maybe reinforced by the three-year break, we were hugely impressed by the progress that the contenders had made over that time and the roaring good health of the Irish freight transport industry with a level of confidence that was never higher.

Another “in person” event that took place a few weeks earlier, that I would very much liketo have attended, was the West=on=Track conference on Achieving Regional Balance. The organisers had framed the whole agenda within the concept of the development of the Atlantic Economic Corridor and, in doing so, had shifted the whole debate from a railway line to a development programme for Ireland - west of the Shannon. To read the papers and to talk with some of the participants afterwards it became clear that following COVID-19, the climate emergency and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the world will never be that same again and that phrase much loved by transport bureaucrats of keeping services and assets in “steady State development” has to be binned, and quickly. The event appears to have sparked a significant follow through commentary. One thing missed however was to hear anything about the medium to long-term impact of working from home, which enables people to remain in their home place with all that that implies in terms of population retention. Another new factor would be the settlement of people from outside Ireland in the Atlantic Economic Corridor. Last weekend a further thought occurred when on a train journey in Poland was that there almost all housing was located close to towns and villages and not spread throughout the countryside. I know that there are many cultural reasons why one-off housing is such a feature of the Irish landscape but living in clusters makes so much more practical sense. The benefits for the provision of water and power infrastructure are clear along with reduced climate challenges in transport of goods and passengers.

Another meeting, this one on Zoom, was with consultants appointed by Transport Infrastructure Ireland on the question of strategically located Distribution Centres throughout Ireland. This work closely mirrors the “2040 Rail Strategy” now being implemented by Irish Rail which envisages the establishment of Distribution Centres close to significant population centres. Over the years the ambitions of the Road and Rail administrations in Ireland have not seemed to be well aligned, I hope that this time a properly integrated transport infrastructure will be delivered.

On the basis that actions do speak louder than words it is good to see that work has commenced on the restoration of the rail freight link from Foynes Port to the rail network at Limerick.