TGV for Cork - Dublin

Maskhadov

Did anyone read that article in the Sunday Tribune about a 200kmph service being introduced by 2010 ? Is this old news recycled or is it the full TGV service as seen on mainland Europe ? Speeds of 300kmph are common

icdg

Yeah, this is old news recycled.

Basically, no it wouldn't be anything up to the par of the TGV service on the continent. It would involve Irish Rail buying the power cars that go with the Mark IV carriges they bought recently and using them instead of the Class 201 locos. Think a more modern version of InterCity 125 rather than a TGV.

Bards

icdg wrote:

Yeah, this is old news recycled.

Basically, no it wouldn't be anything up to the par of the TGV service on the continent. It would involve Irish Rail buying the power cars that go with the Mark IV carriges they bought recently and using them instead of the Class 201 locos. Think a more modern version of InterCity 125 rather than a TGV.

also laying a completley new line... TGV does not like bends. this is what they did iin France

Maskhadov

bit of a porkie by the tribune then.. they had TGV and everything mentioned.. 200kmph isnt that fast

OTK

200kmh average would be great. you'd be in cork in 1h15m

Transport21 Fan

This provided all with a good laugh a while back when first mooted as 200KM by 2020 was perhaps the most damning indictment of Irish Rail's lack of vision and ambition for Inter-City travel.

2020 for late 1960's speeds...wow!

I am perhaps the only eejit on this island which thinks that Ireland will have to move to limited high-speed rail around the time Transport21 finishes up.

I am not talking about a Changing Rooms style make over for Irish Rail's Dublin-Cork victorian railway boreen here. I am talking about a brand new line from either Dublin to Belfast or Cork built to international loading gauge and proper high speed specs capable of carrying bulk frieght at speed and seriously fast passenger trains. Something akin to the German ICE lines. Built by an RPA-style operation and naturally CIE unions barred from being allowed anywhere near it.

The way I see it, it's either this, or inter-city rail travel between the largest cities on the island is fecked. Look at the Enterprise. A disaster which carries shockingly small numbers of passengers considering the investment and advertising budget it has been given. You just can polish a turd. You have to start over again. A new high-speed line for Ireland will have to happen. Otherwise rail is out of the game for Inter-City travel.

Population density will not be an issue. It's not in either Finland or Sweden were high speed rail is successfull and already up and running. By 2016 Ireland will have the population and the desire as the motorways will be clogged with bio-fuel and hybirds. Same misery - just less pollution. The current Dublin-Cork and Dublin-Belfast lines will be congested with commuter trains at the termini. It has to be a whole new rail line.

Irish Rail should stick to commuter trains as they are starting to get somewhat competent at it. They are not up for something like real high speed rail. It's a cultural issue - they are deeply institutionalised at every strata of the company. Could you imagine some ILDA gimp being told he would have to drive fast trains! He would demand a David Beckham salary just for opening the manual.

jjbrien

The main problem with the Belfast enterprise is the amount of speed restrictions on the tracks. Also it still takes 2 hours to go from Belfast to Dublin by rail the direct busses also take 2 hours and you can drive up to belfast in less than 2 hours. IE and NIR need to speed up the service. I would love to see a proper high speed service like the ice in Germany or NSB'S signatur in Norway. We can only dream.

Heres Irish Rails idea of the next gereration of high speed trains :rolleyes:

Prof_V

I'm not that convinced of the case for true high speed in Ireland. For one thing, from an environmental perspective, rail starts to lose its advantage over cars around 200km/h; it's still better than airlines at higher speeds, but I'm not sure how much of an airline market would be left on Dublin-Cork once you got the rail time down to two hours (which is perfectly possible without even upgrading the whole line for 200km/h) and of course there's no Dublin-Belfast air service. Internationally there doesn't seem to be a lot of support for big investments once you hit the two-hour level.

Finland and Sweden don't really have anything like full city-to-city high-speed lines; indeed, few countries comparable to Ireland do. There is the Kerava-Lahti new line in Finland, but this handles commuter, freight and slower intercity services as well (and is "only" 220km/h). Sweden has the Svealandsbanan which doesn't seem to run faster than 200km/h but may be designed for higher speeds. The Botniabanan (currently under construction) is, again, a multi-purpose line with high-speed capability (250km/h). I will grant that there's an aspiration for longer sections of high-speed line in Sweden, but these would cater for distances (including international trips) that don't really exist in Ireland. Even Stockholm-Gothenburg is about 80% longer than Dublin-Cork.

The best strategy for Ireland is probably to move to 200km/h on the Belfast and Cork lines, perhaps building limited sections of new line where there are exceptional capacity, geometry or other problems (e.g. Portarlington, Portadown); this would be very close to what the Nordic countries have done. In addition, the alignment, though not necessarily the actual track, on any new sections could be engineered to allow higher speeds in case they became viable in the future.

Calina

I didn't see the article, but on the subject of TGV/ICE for Ireland, I feel that I may as well comment anyway.

I don't really think that the distances here merit 250kph plus rail lines. I think it would be a nice to have, but it's still not something which is massively necessary. Casting my mind over the high speed rail links in Europe (namely Paris Lyon, Paris Brussels, a load of internal German ones involving Hanover Munich and Frankfurt for example), they are by and large joining fairly massive cities with fairly massive cities. We're talking 8M plus people in the Paris area to a million plus in Brussels, two million plus in Lyon, a million and a half in Rennes. The economies of scale exist there.

They don't in Ireland. Dublin has a population of maybe a million and a half. Cork has around 200,000. Belfast is claiming just under 600K in the wider metropolitan area. We're not moving the same volume of people around.

I'm slightly stuck here though because I do feel that we could upgrade the track to 200kph grading (or whatever the technical term is - not a rail person) in which case, depending on the cost of getting it to 250kph standard it would be worth doing now rather than "sometime" in the future, as in building for the future. But I know from looking at figures for upgrading the rail line from Paris to Quimper that the amount of money involved dwarfs the amount of money that has gone into rail in Ireland over the past number of years.

The latest figures I have are as follows:

Building of new line from outside Le Mans to Rennes: 2.9billion euro
renovation of lines from Rennes to Brest and Quimper: betweeon 800 and 900 million euro.

Just for the record, the make up of the line will be as follows: already high speed from Paris to outside Le Mans. Remainder to Rennes will become high speed (ie full TGV) - distance of 182km. From Rennes onto Brest and Quimper will be pendular.

monument

"but it's still not something which is massively necessary"

It's not so long ago that many people viewed broadband in the same way.

You could say that Ireland with far slower speeds for the same or higher prices then many countries still takes that view... "Why would you want 50mb connections when you have 1mb connections?" etc

It’s not just about what is “massively necessary”, it’s about connecting people for the benefit of the economy and society, with the additions of rail based transport being better for the environment in both construction and in running.

Calina

I note you didn't comment on either the cost of implementing LGVs in Ireland or on the question of the number of people who would be moved around on them. The benefits to the economy have to be set off against the costs.

If France is looking at something like 3billion now to build a LGV between Le Mans and Rennes, not including the purchase of TGV trains to run on the line (because they already have them to a great extent although some of them will require some remodelling to deal with the pendular section of track beyond Rennes), how much do you think it's likely to cost here? TGVs do not take freight, remember, and the numbers of people to be moved around are massively less here than they are in Europe. How long do you think it's likely to get a project like that off the ground here given the professional project objecting that goes on for every infrastructure project, and how will that impact on the cost?

We need to reassess how we look at rail transport in this country. We don't have a lot of imagination really. If you're going to TGV-ify say Cork to Dublin, then that's a lot of stations which will cease to have a regular service from Cork to Dublin and vice versa. TGV from Cork to Dublin might go Cork-Thurles-Dublin (say) so you need to get small local trains to serve the smaller stations to the mainline stations, to provide more local services feeding into the highspeed rail. But all this requires vision and a decent overview. Saying we'll turn Dublin-Cork and Dublin-Belfast into real highspeed lines isn't looking at the transport in the country as a whole...it's just doing something fancy for the sake of doing something fancy.

As a general rule I'm not a fan of either/or arguments when it comes to infrastructure which is why "they should sort out local transport in Dublin before building the WRC" arguments bore me a little. But the figures for building highspeed rail links dwarf the budgets we have to play with for just about everything in this country. You can't recklessly throw money at it without figuring out how many people you're going to move around, whether they need to be moved around, how much they will pay in elevated ticket prices.

Maskhadov

what would they have to do to upgrade to 300kmph ? Does it take much effort ?

Calina

I'm not a railway engineer but to get the line up to 300kph it would have to be dedicated - ie not shared with other services - straight - and without level crossings. Have a look here for further detailed info on building an LGV.

Prof_V

On the environmental point, my earlier post refers: I don't think it's as clear-cut as is sometimes supposed.

Regarding speed, 220-230km/h is probably the best you can hope for on existing alignments (Amtrak's Acela manages 240, but only over short sections, and British Rail proposed the same with the abortive Advanced Passenger Train a quarter-century ago). If you only have short sections of new line, it's not really worthwhile having a top speed above what you can do on the existing routes, though, as I pointed out, you could design to a higher standard so the speed could be increased if it ever became viable to incorporate the route in a longer high-speed line.

monument

I'm not in a position to comment on costs in any meaning full way, but I'm not suggesting to "recklessly throw money at it".

The first thing that would have to be done is to study the options of how high speed from Cork - Dublin (or indeed Cork - Dublin - Belfast) could be achieved, and look at what speeds, what stops, what passenger loads could be achieved etc... from that we would start to get a picture of costs vs benefits.

As for TGV, I’d be weary about replacing 'high speed' with a brand name of another system as if it represents the only example to follow.

Saying we'll turn Dublin-Cork and Dublin-Belfast into real highspeed lines isn't looking at the transport in the country as a whole...it's just doing something fancy for the sake of doing something fancy.

Cork - Dublin - Belfast is of course just one part of the island's transport system, but labeling the idea of high speed rail linking the three out of hand as "something fancy for the sake of doing something fancy" is a huge underestimation of what benefits are possible.

dermo88

Ireland is not quite suited to the "pure" TGV / LGV concept. The population pattern does not quite fit, and the towns en-route have to be served. Irish railways have a frequent start-stop pattern, which means that much of the benefit of 200kph running is lost.

It would be far better if the same amount of money was spent in expanding capacity and making improvements that yield far greater long term benefits to a larger proportion of the network, as follows. Consider.

1. Rebuilding Dublin to Cork by remodelling Limerick Junction and Portarlington to a modern layout.
2. Double tracking Portarlington to Galway, And/OR Maynooth to Galway via Mullingar and Limerick Junction to Limerick.
3. Electrification of lines listed in 2.
4. Consider a partnership with the Northern Ireland Govt to rebuild SOME lines that link Dublin to the Northwest (a mad idea).

200kph is a respectable speed for a country with the kind of population density as Ireland. Cork barely ranks as a small town on the European scale, and in most countries, would lie at the end of a branch line. Limerick ditto. You've got to look at it in the overall context of things, and with that in mind, at least acknowledge, that for its size, and the population it serves, Iarnrod Eireann are actually making serious improvements.

But they need to make a lot more to compete and secure the confidence of the general public, and in the medium to long term, electrification is the key to doing that.

Prof_V

I'm not sure "how do we achieve high speed?" is the best starting point - it presumes high speed is needed. Transport planning is better off done on the basis of more general objectives - in this case the questions to ask are "how do we maintain and improve rail's speed advantage over car?" and, where applicable , "how do we make rail preferable to air transport?" (You could cast it in even more general terms, for instance reducing the environmental impact of the transport system.) I'm not sure TGV speeds are necessary for either in Ireland; elsewhere you may need them for rail to be air-competitive - for instance, rail will almost certainly, absent massive taxation changes or oil price rises, need such speeds to take the majority of the London-Scotland market.

Calina

I'd agree with 4 tbh. There's a vast swathe of the country that just doesn't have a rail connection.

As for electrification of some of the lines you mention...I'd be in agreement with that too.

That being said, although I agree ultimately that the population profile doesn't support TGV, I'd suggest that you could get around the frequent stops by nominating one or 2 hub stations and building up local services not unlike the French TERs to serve the hub stations and onto the TGV services if you were eventually going to build them. Even do it by bus if necessary. For me the problem is that between Cork and Dublin possibly the biggest town is Thurles unless you route the TGV up through Limerick which would then, I guess, see the benefit of it being a TGV more or less gone ie no major time gain from Cork.

Oh and monument just in case you don't know: TGV is the train and LGV is the line it runs on.

Calina

Prof_V wrote:

I'm not sure "how do we achieve high speed?" is the best starting point - it presumes high speed is needed. Transport planning is better off done on the basis of more general objectives - in this case the questions to ask are "how do we maintain and improve rail's speed advantage over car?" and, where applicable , "how do we make rail preferable to air transport?" (You could cast it in even more general terms, for instance reducing the environmental impact of the transport system.) I'm not sure TGV speeds are necessary for either in Ireland; elsewhere you may need them for rail to be air-competitive - for instance, rail will almost certainly, absent massive taxation changes or oil price rises, need such speeds to take the majority of the London-Scotland market.

Aer Arann currently has seven departures a day from Dublin to Cork. I think Ryanair has five. The latter in particular is undercutting rail in terms of cost to the user quite a bit. Scheduled flying time is under one hour. For a lot of people, despite security and check in, because of the location of the airport and the location of Heuston, the air option is still faster.

The problem with rail speed advantage over car is it only works from rail point to point. For myself rail is both longer and more expensive than driving is. The primary reason I might take the train is because I'm tired and don't want to drive or I'm sick of other drivers trying to kill me somewhere on the N7.

As a general point, transport planning should be based on necessity, so I would agree that the first question to be answered is "do we really need high speed rail from Cork to Dublin or from Belfast to Dublin" and the second question is "can we do it" followed by "how much will it cost" followed by "is the cost justified". My guess is that the answer to 1 will frequently be tempered by the answer to 4.

monument

Yes, I do know of both, my point being that people here are getting too caught up in one brand/system.

Prof_V

On air/rail competition, I'm aware the current journey times aren't good enough for rail to maintain its share. I'm just questioning whether what can be achieved with 200km/h running (2 hours or slightly less) isn't good enough. Calina makes a good point about cost to the user; speeding up the trains, whether 200km/h or 300km/h, can't change that per se (though the time saving will compensate somewhat). In fact, some countries have imposed premium fares for high-speed trains, though this is dying out. You can make the fare structure more flexible, increase subsidies etc., but this doesn't depend on the rail technology in place. In fact, high capital spending might well diminish government's appetite for operating subsidies.

On car/rail competition, the point is that rail is in danger of losing the advantage even on a point-to-point basis. Normally you'd expect rail to be somewhat faster point-to-point, with the margin going some way (obviously not all) to compensating for the car's door-to-door, on-demand characteristics and low marginal costs. The danger is that at least some important Irish routes will end up significantly slower by rail point-to-point.

antoinolachtnai

It's all about population density surely? If you had a plan to maybe double or triple the population of Cork city (not county) within 25 years (that's 3-5 percent per year, I think) then it would probably be worth your while doing a big intercity project; if you expect the population to grow less rapidly, I can't see how it would be worth doing.

mike65

Whats the average speed on the Cork-Dublin line now? Is it even non-stop?

Mike.

Stark

mike65 wrote:

Whats the average speed on the Cork-Dublin line now? Is it even non-stop?

Mike.

Nope. I don't think they even run express services that get you there in 2 hrs 30 mins anymore. They promised 2 hour journey times in the future but it looks like they're still some way off.

dermo88

Guys

2 hours 6 minutes was the best time done on the Dublin to Cork line by a mail train in the 1980's on track limited to 75mph most of the way, and 90mph on certain stretches.

The Dublin to Cork line was last relaid between 1983 through to the mid 1990's, when it was completely upgraded with CWR.

They can remove a few slacks.
The Kildare quad tracking project will make a huge difference to the lines radiating from Heuston, reducing congestion, timetable padding and delays.
Long term, electification, but not at the DART voltage, its not quite suited to high speed operation and costs a fortune to install, despite the fact that SNCF were using the same voltage and frequency to operate 200kmh 17 coach 700 tonne express trains from Paris to Bordeaux.

The Dublin to Cork alignment, if the track is laid and maintained to a high standard can handle 200kph trains already, and could be configured to handle 220kph trains with tilting rolling stock and electrification.

But I'd prefer if they spread the resources over more of the network, instead of concentrating it all in one flagship project, as I outlined earlier.

The Belfast line is still slow on account of congestion in the Dublin to Drogheda section, and solving that may upset a lot of Northside backyard owners.

Forget about TGV. It works in countries with high densities, and cities >/=1 Million. If you want high speed in Ireland at the right price, that works effectively, and gets the job done, we'd be better off looking at Swedens X2000, Britains Virgin Voyager (different seating layout needed) and Denmarks IC3 type trains to do the job.

GerardKeating

Maskhadov wrote:

Did anyone read that article in the Sunday Tribune about a 200kmph service being introduced by 2010 ? Is this old news recycled or is it the full TGV service as seen on mainland Europe ? Speeds of 300kmph are common

A simular article appear in the Indo this morning...

bk

As others have said the speeds of rail have to improve, otherwise less and less people will use rail.

As a Corkonian living in Dublin, many of my friends already drive to Cork. They have all commented that it is getting much quicker to drive to Cork nowadays with the improvements to the road to Cork. When the interurban is completed and the M50 works finished, the door to door time of driving to Cork will be faster then by train.

My fear is that with the improvements in the road, what has happened to the Belfast line will also happen to the Cork line. None of my friends from Belfast take the train, they all drive as it is much faster.

IR most improve the speeds on the Cork line.

OTK

Lots of things put people off using the interurban trains other than the top speed - the reliability, the frequency, the heating and lighting, the quality or even availability of food, rude staff, not getting a seat, and a poor urban public transport network to reach a station like Heuston.

Interurban transport in any country has a far smaller share of journeys than local commuting so why our emphasis on interurban transport over travel within the cities? The interurban motorways are far less used for interurban transport than they are used for lonmg distance commuting.

bk

OTK wrote:

Lots of things put people off using the interurban trains other than the top speed - the reliability, the frequency, the heating and lighting, the quality or even availability of food, rude staff, not getting a seat,

In fairness, most of these have been fixed with the new carriages, train manager and trains every hour. So much improved here. That is why we are discussing speed now, it is the only major problem left *

OTK wrote:

and a poor urban public transport network to reach a station like Heuston.

Agreed it takes me over an hour just to get there.

OTK wrote:

Interurban transport in any country has a far smaller share of journeys than local commuting so why our emphasis on interurban transport over travel within the cities? The interurban motorways are far less used for interurban transport than they are used for lonmg distance commuting.

But that is the point, there isn't an emphasis on interurban transport. Most of the emphasis is rightly on local public transport, Dart longer trains, Luas, Metro, etc.

The only thing they have improved on the interurbans are the new trains and better frequency and that is relatively easy to do compared to building new lines, etc.

The problem is if the intercity speeds are improved, then far less people will use the trains and will use the interurban motorways instead and that would be bad for the environment and for Irish Rail (Cork being their most profitable line).

* There are still problems with long queues at the station to be sorted, particularly the complete disaster in Cork.

Calina

I would say Cork needs a new station full stop. I don't think Kent is adequately big enough.

but that's just my 2c.

Prof_V

Calina wrote:

I would say Cork needs a new station full stop. I don't think Kent is adequately big enough.

but that's just my 2c.

I'd tend to agree, and possibly a chance is being missed with the planned upgrading (which I think is just going to create a quayside concourse connected to the existing platforms). With just two through platforms, one of which the hourly Dublin service needs most of the time, all the Mallow-Cobh services in both directions would have to be handled on just one platform (the suburban rail feasibility study a few years ago said as much). If you wanted to introduce, say, a Cork-Limerick-Galway service - though it seems more likely Galway trains would connect at Limerick Junction - I don't see where the platform capacity would come from.

I believe there was actually a plan for a completely new station a few years ago, but it seems to have been abandoned. It'd be nice to think there was a logical upgrade path built in to the current upgrade plan, but I suspect it would be too much to hope for...