Unfair Criticism of Irish Rail Inter-City Speeds

spacetweek

jank wrote: »

We have a small country. Very ideal for trains

The smaller a country is, the LESS suitable for trains it becomes. Also, the less dense, the less suitable. Ireland is unfortunately very small and also low density.

jank wrote: »

Is it that we are afraid of them as it might indicate that the brits actually did something for us?

Do you really believe there's anyone out there who thinks like that?

Lennoxschips

Metrobest wrote: »

Shambles? Sounds like the media spin on it. Like every big project, all the cost and disruption will be worth it as soon as the line opens and then the focus will move on to which line should be next for high speed.

I travelled Thalys Amsterdam to Paris and I noticed that the Amsterdam-Brussels section of the line is quite slow; you really notice the difference on the Brussels to Paris section. When the new high speed line from Schipol opens it will reduce the journey time from Amsterdam to Paris from 4.09 to 3.04 hours. That's fast.

The benefits of high speed are clear, especially when you factor in the environment. Presently KLM flies between Schipol and Brussels, but these flights will be made unviable by the speed advantage of Thalys, reducing the emissions we all worry about. Indeed, Thalys already codeshares with the Skyteam alliance so train+plane is possible one one ticket. The same is happening with the highspeed line from Barcelona to Madrid, which stops at El Prat airport in Barcelona.

Now Ireland is a very small country, so a high speed line that connects Cork - X big town - Dublin city centre - Dublin Airport - Drogheda - Belfast would be completely viable. Yes it would cost billions but so what? Think of the social, economic and environmental benefits. If the Basques can do, if the Belgians can do it, why can't the Irish?

Of course the HSL from Antwerp to Amsterdam will be an improvement, you don't have to tell me that, I travel on it a lot too. I'm just saying that the Thalys public consortium (who were recommended by somebody [you?] to come in and build the Irish lines) have made a total mess of the building of the project. It's years behind schedule and billions over budget. Just a month ago the new tunnels into Antwerp station caught fire. None of that is media spin. And when the Dutch section of the line opens three years too late, the HSL trains won't arrive for a another two years after that, because they've botched the train order as well. So standard speed trainsets will be running on HSL lines between Amsterdam and Rotterdam for the first two years. Are these the people you want building railways in Ireland?? If you do it you have to do it properly... on time and on budget.

However, if you look at all the HSL lines in Europe, they are connecting major metropolises or heavily populated regions. Paris, London, Brussels, Amsterdam, Koln, Marseille, Barcelona. Cork is no metropolis. The passenger demand to justify a HSL just isn't there. There might be a case for a HSL between Dublin and Belfast, but the distance involved is too short for the trains to get up to full TGV speed for long enough for it to make sense. So a massive improvement/electrification and alignment straightening of the existing line is what is needed.

I think the concentration in Ireland should be on improvement and integration of existing lines. A HSL from Cork to Dublin is no good if you still have to get a taxi from Heuston to Dublin Airport. The priority should be on restoring the continuation of the Cork to Belfast through service, with a stop at the Airport, while completely improving the Cork-Dublin line. The interconnector is the first building block in tis.

Basically, we need to worry about getting Irish rail services into the 20th century before we start dreaming about bullet trains.

murphaph

If we even had full 125mph running between Cork-Dublin-Belfast (including proper quad tracking on all approaches to Dublin) and full 100mph running between Dublin-Galway and Dublin-Sligo it would make a MASSIVE difference.

This is not a big country and realistically we simply don't need HSR as we don't have more than ONE city of international consequence in any case and population density is too low.

The future of rail in Ireland is bright, and it consists of urban mass transit in the main. IC rail will be of far less importance in relative terms but our current lines should be upgraded to the above speeds.

As it stands we still have vast quantities of single line twisty rubbish that needs doubling and straightening and in many cases rebuilding the foundations. If we can build an entire motorway network (no complaints about that) in 20 years we can upgrade the railways.

Chris_533976

And ignoring such utter **** as the WRC will be a good start.

Lennoxschips

murphaph wrote: »

If we even had full 125mph running between Cork-Dublin-Belfast (including proper quad tracking on all approaches to Dublin) and full 100mph running between Dublin-Galway and Dublin-Sligo it would make a MASSIVE difference.

This is not a big country and realistically we simply don't need HSR as we don't have more than ONE city of international consequence in any case and population density is too low.

The future of rail in Ireland is bright, and it consists of urban mass transit in the main. IC rail will be of far less importance in relative terms but our current lines should be upgraded to the above speeds.

As it stands we still have vast quantities of single line twisty rubbish that needs doubling and straightening and in many cases rebuilding the foundations. If we can build an entire motorway network (no complaints about that) in 20 years we can upgrade the railways.

Exactly, if we upgrade, straighten and electrify the current Cork-Dublin route, you could get it up to 200 km/hr along the whole route. So the journey time would be about 1 hour 25 mins.

Build a, seperate, dedicated TGV line at 300 km/hr and the journey time would be 1 hour.

I don't think the extra 25 mins saving is worth the billions of investment, especially when you consider that the current line intercity line is far from full.

monument

murphaph wrote: »

This is not a big country...

murphaph wrote: »

as we don't have more than ONE city of international consequence

The rest of your post is pretty sensible, but I don't get these.

Big in relation to what? And all hsr linked cities around the world are only ones of "international consequence"?

Ham'nd'egger

monument wrote: »

The rest of your post is pretty sensible, but I don't get these.

Big in relation to what? And all hsr linked cities around the world are only ones of "international consequence"?

I assume he means big in an International sense and a big player in terms on the world stage.

murphaph

Hamndegger wrote: »

I assume he means big in an International sense and a big player in terms on the world stage.

Yeah, that's it. Dublin is our only real city (one the rest of the world would consider a true city) and this is in part due to our low population density-our island has a spread out population, sparse in nature. Even our towns and cities have tended to be low rise sprawling affairs, difficult to serve well with public transport. This is hopefully changing.

We are in a totally different position than Britain-England for example is only a little bigger than Ireland. Its population density is 388.7/km². The population density of Ireland is 60.3/km². They ae also actually connected to the continent with HSR and it makes absolute sense for them to extend new-build HSR north and westwards to connect to the european HSR network-(the price of air travel is only going one way from now on, alternatives to oil are much further off for the airline industry than for rail).

Not only is England's density much higher, they actually have multiple urban centres in excess of 1 million people, all worthy of HSR connection. The only way HSR will become viable in this country is when a tunnel connects us to the continent via Britain. Obviously this would depend on Britain actually developing their own HSR network first.

bazzer06

I don't understand why Dublin - Cork - Belfast is getting such a trashing - the SNCF are building a dedicated TGV line from Paris to Caen and Rouen. Obviously we don't have a Paris sized metropolis, but Caen and Rouen are both cities comparable to Cork in population (and much less than Belfast)

Also, I have to say I'd be against the international gauge idea. Part of the huge success of the TGV is that it can go anywhere ie it can run on conventional track. The only way HSR would work here is if services from all other parts of the country were routed to connect to a central spine (Belfast - Dublin - Cork), leaving other lines free for commuter rail. Also, you could then have services, for example from Dublin to Tralee direct during the summer, all under the HSR banner.

markpb

bazzer06 wrote: »

Also, I have to say I'd be against the international gauge idea. Part of the huge success of the TGV is that it can go anywhere ie it can run on conventional track.

TGVs don't operate on conventional rail, they operate on specially built LGVs.

Calina

Not strictly speaking correct. To travel at the very high speeds, they need the LGV, but they do share rail in parts of France (Brittany, again, being a handy example) where they are not travelling at the very high speeds. AFAIK, and oh God it's ages since I read it, the lines from Rennes to the west are being upgraded so that the TGVs can travel at a higher speed on them than has previously the case, and LGV is being built part of the way between Le Mans and Rennes. Or, currently, they are going through the planning for them and sorting out the finance split.

The issue in Ireland is that a) we've non standard gauge and b) a lack of agreement on what is needed.

The non-standard gauge probably makes it more expensive to buy rolling stock. The big issue however is our inability to sit down and make a viable plan for the future. What is blindingly obvious to me may not be considered useful by other people. Ultimately, I would venture to suggest that in the long term, we're going to need higher speed rail from Cork to Belfast (via Dublin) than we have right now. It may - in the long, long term - be ultimately less expensive to sit down and plan a system from scratch rather than trying to fit it in around the existing/remaining infrastructure. This is not just rail routing, but how we've squeezed stations (Kent in Cork being an example - I don't think it's even remotely adequate for the number of people who need to use it on a Sunday and Friday, for example) and how we don't integrate our different transport types. Even if you could get agreement on what is practically desirable, this country is full of people who will find someway of narking about the short term cost of implementing such a system. So we're not going to do it.

Red Alert

Most rolling stock is built-to-order anyway, regardless of the purchaser. It does, however, affect IE's dealings in the second hand market. But I seriously doubt a switch in the gauge would be possible at all or that it would really be worth the incredible hassle.

IE have become more interested in their statistics than in real service. They need to quit the idiotic padding that is in the timetable. It's annoying, unnecessary, uneconomic and is environmentally unfriendly. If they're late, they're late, if they're early, they're early. End of story.

Lennoxschips

markpb wrote: »

TGVs don't operate on conventional rail, they operate on specially built LGVs.

They operate on both. The point being made is that a TGV train can operate on any electrified rail line in France, as they all have the same gauge. That's why France opted for TGV in the first place over Maglev, so they could use existing track in combination with new track.

If you build standard gauge lines in Ireland then the trains won't be able to run on existing track. I.e., a Cork-Dublin train wouldn't be able to spur off onto other, existing Irish gauge tracks.

paulm17781

Lennoxschips wrote: »

If you build standard gauge lines in Ireland then the trains won't be able to run on existing track. I.e., a Cork-Dublin train wouldn't be able to spur off onto other, existing Irish gauge tracks.

Probably not a bad thing. A lot of the time tabling issues are from running too many services on the same track, no need to add to it.

Solair

I don't understand what Irish Rail were thinking when they specified the recent new trains:

MK4 or the Cork-Dublin Express fleet is a strange choice. It doesn't tilt, is designed to use top-and-tail locomotives (which they didn't buy) so basically it's just a new set of carriages that are being hauled by the same locomotives as they always were.

The Intercity Railcar fleet that's coming on stream now too also does not tilt.

Why the ***** didn't they get a fleet of 125mph+ tilting trains ?! They're nearly standard everywhere else in europe where there are similar population distributions to Ireland and they can handle older track at higher speeds.

It would have left the possibility of 100-125mph operation open on all routes.

Cork-Dublin-Belfast could and should be upgraded to a full 200km/h medium speed standard European Intercity service.
There's no reason why this shouldn't or can't be done.
The existing Cork fleet can run at 200km/h when used with the power cars it's supposed to have and the Belfast enterprise fleet needs to be replaced.

I really think there needs to be a long hard look taken at Irish Rail's purchasing policies though. They make no sense!

We don't need to go down the route of TGV lines between Cork-Dublin-Belfast just yet, but it might be nice to start looking at a proper intercity service on that route that could connect them a hell of a lot faster than the current mess.

Right now Irish Rail seems determined to upgrade the system to the level that most other EU countries were at in the 1960s.

Then again, why I am I surprised. The same organisation seems to have industrial relations and internal work practices that are more like the 1860s!

Lennoxschips

paulm17781 wrote: »

Probably not a bad thing. A lot of the time tabling issues are from running too many services on the same track, no need to add to it.

That's a capacity issue in Dublin, I don't think the actual intercity lines outside the city are running anywhere near capacity, in fact I'd venture to say they are half empty.

If more capacity is needed in Dublin, then more should be built, hence the Interconnector.

Why the ***** didn't they get a fleet of 125mph+ tilting trains ?! They're nearly standard everywhere else in europe where there are similar population distributions to Ireland and they can handle older track at higher speeds.

Because they didn't have much money to spend? Other European countries have invested heavily in their rail infrastructure. The Irish government is only interested in keeping the existing rail infrastructure up to EU safety minimums.

DWCommuter

Lennoxschips wrote: »

The Irish government is only interested in keeping the existing rail infrastructure up to EU safety minimums.

And then calling it "world class".:eek:

Polar101

ardmacha wrote: »

As far I as know the Finns did not build new lines, they introduced the Pendolino tilting trains.

And as there were no new lines built, the Pendolinos won't run at "high speed" except on short distances on the network - making high speed rail in Finland a bit of a myth. The major differences between rail travel in Finland and Ireland is that the Finnish rail network is mostly electric. And that travel on IE is cheaper (Finnish rail lacks the return fares). And that travel times have decreased in Finland over the last few years, especially on main lines.

You get the timetable padding, reliability issues and customer service problems in both countries.

T Corolla

Folks,
This is a small country compare to other countries in Europe. We are not connected to any other rail system like the UK. You cannot expect to drive a train in Ireland over 100mph because there is no requirment for it.
It takes time to stop a three hundred tonne machine and since the stations are sometime only short distances between them you would wreck the train. The biggest problem Irish rail has to deal with in the next ten years is when all the dualcarriage ways are built and people can go from Cork to Dublin in a car for far less time and money. Irish rail will need to pull out the finger then alright. I myself try to use it as much as possible and where possible. I wonder will they ever open the section to Athlone from Mullingar. I have walked that line and i can assure people it is a far better section of line that Athlone to Portarlington, but then again there is more business for Irish rail along the Athlone Portarlington route than Mullingar to Athlone. Maybe in the future when there is a hourly service to Galway they will dispatch a train from both Hueston and Connolly and this will give the Sligo line a boost in offpeak times.