Tunnel from Dublin to Holyhead

CelticRambler wrote: »

Well, yeah, the number is "2" (2011, first time ever & 2012) and the "profit" is really magic money. £52m reported profits on £800m sales in 2012, but 40% of that (=£320m) is direct subsidy from the French and British governments, so if (when?) that gets cut someone will have to write off another few billions. :rolleyes:

Direct subsidy in the 2012 sales figures?

What?

Chemical Burn wrote: »

Bangor, NI to Portpatrick, Scotland more viable. Only 20km. Road tunnel would be better too. Realisticly speaking, you could get from Dublin to Glasgow in 5-6 hours driving.

EDIT: The reason I say a road tunnel will be better is that Irish Rail won't have an efficient system operating. Irish Rail only operates trains to an from Belfast, and terminates trains there. Realistically speaking, if you look at the route map, there could be direct trains to and from Derry, for example, but alas, there isn't. If there was a train line between Belfast and Glasgow via the undersea tunnel, Irish Rail (I can guarantee you) would not operate a service from Dublin to Glasgow, you'd have to change in Belfast. I'd say the unions (and all those clowns in general) would make life very hard for honest hard working normal people and grind the whole project to a halt.

tl;dr, Belfast to Glasgow is better (only under 20 km of sea, 4.5 times longer than port tunnel only) because more realistic, cheaper, more likely to get done, UK Government more money

Irish Rail fail = unions = no work done

Driving time from Belfast to Glasgow only 2 hours 5 hours max from Dublin

Did you miss the posts about the depth of the sea between NI and Scotland?

And who said anything about Irish Rail?

Richard Logue wrote: »

For the amount of money needed for a tunnel, a lot more fast ferries would be a better and significantly cheaper option.

Better how?

Plowman wrote: »

A tunnel's usefulness to its end users is a very broad consideration. For me, as a potential end user, it would be useful, and its services desirable, if it did things better than the currently available options of air and sea transport. An Irish Sea tunnel would not offer better pricing without enormous state subsidies

Enormous state subsidies -- that sounds like air travel!

Plowman wrote: »

it would offer, at most, similar travel times to airplanes;

Great. I can't see why that's a problem to the end user

Plowman wrote: »

it would not offer better frequency

Why do you think it would not?

Plowman wrote: »

and more destinations than flying;

Sure it's not a bar to high speed rail elsewhere.

Plowman wrote: »

it would not offer better capacity or flexibility (or, probably, pricing) than ships for freight.

It would offer better speed and reliability, and the likes of Stobart seem to think it offers fuel savings. Speed / fuel savings is why Tesco uses trains from the UK to Spain, as well as within the UK.

Plowman wrote: »

For potential passengers, in order to be useful and desirable, it would have to be better than what's available now.

Why?

Plowman wrote: »

I'm assuming (perhaps erroneously) that many people who live and work in London don't necessarily live in the city centre but outside it. Thus airports such as Gatwick, Stansted, and Luton can serve, to an extent, discrete populations in a way that a train dropping everyone at, say, St. Pancras can't.

Plowman wrote: »

Firstly, high-speed rail is beneficial in areas where the population is dense enough to serve it. Hence the presence of high-speed rail between certain parts of continental Europe (densely inhabited and affluent population centres), Japan and, increasingly, China, but not in the U.S. or Ireland.

The US has high-speed rail, even if the very low end.

Amtrak isn't doing too badly in short/mid distance intercity travel http://streetsblog.net/2013/03/22/in-many-markets-rail-beats-or-competes-with-air-travel/

And there's plans advancing for high speed rail elsewhere in the US.

Plowman wrote: »

Secondly, railways are limited by their tracks and stations - they can only serve people who are willing or able to connect to and from their end points. While London and the southeast has a high population density in order to make St. Pancras, for instance, a viable end point or connection point for passengers, Ireland's population is spread too thinly to expect enough people to fill a train at Heuston or Connolly in order for it to pay for itself. So connecting a very large city to a very small city wouldn't work, imho.

Airports are not fixed locations?

Plowman wrote: »

Given the improvements in motorways, the ubiquity of private motoring, and the advent of cheap air travel, the relevance of rail today is restricted to small areas with large populations (the Randstad, for example). While there are enough people commuting in and around Dublin to merit urban rail lines such as DART, Luas, and (hopefully) Metro North, there are not enough people commuting between Dublin and London to sustain the expensive rolling stock, multiple tunnel bores, and hundreds of kilometres of track and signalling that such a large-scale project requires.

Rail needs commuters? But air doesn't?

The big problem is that even now, we're all looking too short term, but in that respect, even 30 years is short term, I made the comments I did earlier based on the longer than that implications of the lesser availability of cheap non renewable energy like oil, so there will be a significant premium on it's use for even things like shipping, which is cheap in comparison to things like trains or trucks.

In the longer term, it will be in everyone's interest to use as little as possible non renewable energy for transportation, and to use renewables as much as possible for transportation.

On that basis, there is a case for a "super port" and air hub that would work well around the Shannon Estuary, with a ultra high speed rail link to Europe, which could handle a significant quantity of freight to and from the Continental USA, and also from other parts of the world.

The Chinese are spending massive sums on making sure that they have a viable rail connection from China to Europe, but a rail connection from the USA to Europe is not going to happen for probably 100 years, while there are some very fancy proposals for undersea tunnels that are "floating" on a wire anchor system, there is a lot of kite flying in there, as the trains would be pressurised/sealed, in order to achieve the designed speeds, they would be running in a vacuum.

Before that happens, things like rail WILL replace local flights on airlines, and air travel will only be used where there is no surface alternative, and we will probably see rail tracks on the right hand lane of most motorways, as the level of long distance and heavy road traffic will most likely diminish unless a means is found of charging batteries while on the move, using under road circuits of some sort.

I'm not talking here about changes that will happen in the next 10 or 20 years, some of this is 30 to 50 years out, and based on present understandings of energy as we know it now.

So, if there was a "super port" in the Shannon Estuary, and an upgrade of the Shannon airport, to facilitate a rail connection to Europe, with air connections for both passengers and urgent freight to the East Coast of the USA, the numbers that would use such a service may not be high now, but as the oil scenario changes, the population of Ireland and trade to and from Ireland as such becomes irrelevant, it will be the total quantity of freight and passengers from the accessible parts of Europe that will be the potential market for a facility at Shannon.

At the moment, Rotterdam is the port of access to much of Europe, but if using ship borne transport becomes more expensive than using rail, which that is a distinct possibility, unless nuclear fission becomes viable and cheap for small scale units, the the concept of a Shannon super hub is very much a reality, for both imports and exports for much of Northern Europe. Bio fuel is going to be a problem, as the quantities required put the production of food at risk, growing crops for bio fuel and human food are competitive for land space now, and that will only get worse.

The other option is for economies to become much more self sufficient, and for production and consumption to go back to being local, but the way the world has changed, and demand for products that are not local has increased, that is a change that is not going to happen in a hurry, in the same way that travel for the masses will not just stop.

What is clear is that the finite life of oil reserves is going to force massive change on much of what we know and understand now, carbon fuel based transport, from cars up to supertankers and the like, are going to undergo a massive change over the next century. In the same way that the accident of geography has brought massive earnings to the Irish Aviation Authority from overflights, which have no relation to the population size of Ireland, there is no reason why we should not see the same sorts of returns from transit traffic through Ireland to other parts of the world on of just below the surface, as that will replace a large proportion of air travel as we know it now, unless science becomes very creative in a big hurry, a viable replacement for oil or bio fuel has not emerged yet.

OK, you may have problems getting your head round this. The first flight of a powered aircraft happened just over 100 years ago, and the flight distance was less than the length of an Airbus 380, and at little more than walking speed. Now, it's possible to put close on 600 people in one aircraft, and transport them non stop and reliably over half way round the world at close on 600 Km per hour, with very high levels of reliability.

Ultra high speed rail, using magnetic levitation is already a proven working concept, now the requirement is to increase the speed, and capacity, and develop the capability of running long distances over, or better, under water at a depth that is not disturbed by surface agitation from storms and the like. While technically it will be a tunnel, it will not be a tunnel under the water, but through it, so the construction will not need massively deep level boring machines, or similar, it will need massive sections to be taken to position and submerged and connected, and anchored, so while there will be deep sea work to be done, to place tethering anchors, the bulk of the work will be at manageable depths.

Again, for the sceptics, and there will be plenty, this is NOT a short or medium term issue, it's not even on the radar of the EU of the politicians right now, because in most cases, they can't and won't think beyond the next election, which is one of the reasons why we are in the mess we are now. This is Long term strategic infrastructural development that will require charters and conventions between states in a way that doesn't happen at the moment, in order to ensure the ongoing orderly trade on which so much of this world is now dependant. As for who is going to front run this, I don't see a leader that is even close to being able to step up to this level of challenge, to me, the political fish pond is barren, and has nothing in that that comes even close to recommending itself for such a role, but that's thread drift

Maybe this is all a flight of fantasy, but the significant factor is that Ireland is one of the closest points to the East Coast of the Americas, and one of the places that doesn't get disrupted regularly by abnormal weather or seismic events, both of which will be significant in the long term design of the new world transportation systems.

OK, it's a big step forward from Dublin to Holyhead, but the reality is that this level of thinking and planning will be the level required for Ireland to benefit from this level of connection to Europe, as there will be gains for Europe in making it happen, so hopefully, Europe will also contribute significantly to the funding of such a project.

Alun wrote: »

Surely though for US shipping operators the difference in fuel costs between shipping to a potential new port in Shannon and Rotterdam is going to be very small, and for longer distances, say from SE Asia, vanishingly small? The total population of the main European land mass accessible from the Netherlands dwarfs that of the UK, let alone Ireland, so what would be in it for them to use Shannon in preference?

Given the present price of oil, maybe nothing, but let's look at the price of oil being 100 times what it is now. We already see a mass exodus from one airline to another when the price is 19.99 instead of 24.99, and the same will be true in shipping, and in every other form of human endeavour.

A large supertanker can use up to 330 Tonnes of heavy oil per day, so if Rotterdam is close on 2 days from Shannon, probably round trip of 5 days in total sea time, that's close on 1500 tonnes of fuel, so if rail becomes cheaper than ship. we're talking very big bucks here.

I'm old enough to remember putting fuel in a motor bike at less than (converted from old currencies) 50 cents per GALLON, or 11 cents per Litre, we're now looking at €1.50 plus per litre. So, to make the math easy, 50 miles per gallon, the old cost per mile was 1 cent per mile, now it's 15 cents per mile.

Let's presume that there is a much bigger increase over time to deter use of oil for non essential purposes, so oil is now perhaps €15 per litre. All of a sudden, 330 Tonnes per day becomes an even bigger overhead on the operating cost of the ship. Why do you think that Stena Line are only using the HSS in the summer months, for only one crossing per day, and they have put a second traditional ferry on the route from Dublin Port? Partly because the HSS didn't meet the operational requirement for really heavy sea conditions, but also because the operating costs of the thing are MASSIVE compared to the traditional ferry, the HSS just is not economic when trying to compete with the likes of Ryanair etc because of the additional cost of getting to anywhere once in Holyhead. The HSS uses 4 large marine turbines, and they eat fuel like it was going out of fashion,

That's why I'm saying that this is longer term, once oil can't be used for many of the things it is now, like plastic bags, and plastic bottles, there will be all manner of changes in material and methods to get round it, but ships are limited in their energy possibilities, unless someone has invented a new very high power solar system that no one knows about, or a completely new energy source is found.

I may be completely wrong, but we've been using oil and derivatives for a long time now, and no one has seen fit to seriously try to replace it yet, which maybe tells us something.

Not sure of the sea distance, what I am aware of is that the speed of the supertankers is about 16 kts, and the RoRo ferries are usually slightly faster, around 21 Kts, from Rosslare to Cherbourg is about 18 Hrs,

Boston to Shannon GC is 2516 Nm, BOS AMS is about 3100 Nm, so we're looking at round figires 600 Nm in each direction, so 1200 Nm, which equates to about 5 days round trip time at 18 Kts, on that basis, close on 1700 Tonnes of Heavy oil. The sea distance is going to be slightly longer than that, as the great circle goes over land and ships can't do that yet. For what it's worth, I've used Boston, Lands End, then to Rotterdam to get the routing, so it's not that far off.

So, if you were to operate Boston Shannon, with the same size ship, the round trip is 5 days shorter, and uses 1700 Tonnes less fuel, which would allow 1700 Tonnes of extra cargo to be carried on the same size ship., Boston Shannon is between 5 and 6 days sailing time, with an extra 2 days to Rotterdam, so a round trip, allowing a day at each end for loading and unloading, which may be a bit too generous, is 14 days to Shannon, and 18 days to Rotterdam. 26 trips a year to Shannon, just over 20 trips a year to Rotterdam.

For the owner of the goods, the total cost of shipping may not vary much, as there is still the onward rail to Europe costs to consider, for the ship operator, that looks like very helpful maths, and remember, I'm speculating on massive increases in oil prices to deter use and save it for really essential purposes. At present prices, the oil saving would be close on 17,000 per trip, if the price goes up by order of magnitudes, which it will, then it's Monopoly money levels per trip

That could make the costs of putting in all that infrastructure very attractive, given the volumes of goods that move across the Atlantic, and from the Far East, using ships all the way. The distance advantage from Gibralter is only about 300 miles, so less of a saving, assuming that no one builds a suitable port in Italy, France, Spain or Portugal.

It certainly has possibilities for shipping, and maybe for passengers too, I did some working out a while back that with the right turn round, it would just about be possible to do 3 flights a day from Shannon to Boston, which is 1 flight more than can be done from just about any other European airport, so again, significant advantages to an operator that can fill the aircraft, as they get 33% more revenue for the same fixed cost.