Cork or Sligo to Dublin in 45 mins.

nayorleck114

I have traveled in High Speed trains in Europe. Great for getting around. Has the Irish goverment ever looked at them? Would mean you could get from Cork or Sligo to Dublin in under 45mins (example). I live in the west of Ireland for work and there is a nice train to Dublin, but it takes 4 hours. Would people pay the 60 or 70 euros for a High speed train? There really is not much public transport outside of Dublin.

7mountpleasant

pretty impossible, the cost of upgrading the tracks and the stations would in no way justify the cost of doing it, we just don't have the population. THe only high speed train in the uk is the eurostar and that is only since last year because of the huge cost, so if it was a barrier between paris and london it would probably be an impossibility between dublin and sligo, cork

Chris_533976

Also we only have people in Ireland wanting to use it. There is no 'through traffic' from other countrys (except for the North). We havent got, say a Germany connected to us.

Run_to_da_hills

Eliminate speed limits on the M4, M7 and M9 and you might achieve your goal.

(Did Castletroy to the Red Cow in less than two hours ).

ardmacha

However they have moderately high speed trains in Finland and this could be good model for Ireland.

http://www.railway-technology.com/projects/finland/

bmaxi

ardmacha wrote: »

However they have moderately high speed trains in Finland and this could be good model for Ireland.

http://www.railway-technology.com/projects/finland/

Yes but fortunately for the Finns, they don't have Dempsey.

Chris_533976

or Irish Rail.

L1011

100mph, which we have the trains for, would do fine in a country this size. We don't have the track conditions or network capacity to use it properly though...

D.L.R.

To Cork one day. MAYBE. To Sligo, I won't hold me breath!

Cool Mo D

Anyone remember this thread? Seems like a long time ago.

Judgement Day

Ah Jesus!!!!!!!:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

Tech3

Run_to_da_hills wrote: »

Eliminate speed limits on the M4, M7 and M9 and you might achieve your goal.

Also the M6!! Yeah I would like to see the limit changed to 130 on the inter urban routes eventually. The roads are well capable of that speed.

(Did Castletroy to the Red Cow in less than two hours .)

It takes just over 2 hrs if you stick to the speed limit. With the motorway completed next year it should be an hour an a half journey.

Run_to_da_hills

tech2 wrote: »

Also the M6!! Yeah I would like to see the limit changed to 130 on the inter urban routes eventually. The roads are well capable of that speed.

I think most drivers do that speed anyway.

mysterious

Runtodahills,


I'm giving you penalty points.

mysterious

tech2 wrote: »

Also the M6!! Yeah I would like to see the limit changed to 130 on the inter urban routes eventually. The roads are well capable of that speed.




It takes just over 2 hrs if you stick to the speed limit. With the motorway completed next year it should be an hour an a half journey.

jeesh ush....

thats crazy coming to think of it. it used to take two hours from Nenagh, pre Kildare bypass 2.5hours.

The Nenagh Limerick road shall really pick things up on that stretch, that national road carries alot of traffic.

Judgement Day

This is wonderful news! Soon our road network is going to be so good that all you will have to do will be sit in your car on your driveway and you will be in Cork/Galway/Limerick (insert town of your choice) without even starting the engine. :rolleyes:

No account of what will happen the next time there is trouble in the Middle East, or oil prices spiral upwards again when the recession ends, or when supplies really can't keep up with demand! Let's keep on driving and road building like there's no tomorrow and one day there won't be, but then again that will for our children to worry about so who cares? :mad:

Stark

Trains don't run on oil now? The second IE gets a whiff of those oil price increases, the cost of a train ticket will be pushed up again. What is it, €70+ these days for a Dublin-Cork ticket?

G_R

Judgement Day wrote: »

No account of what will happen the next time there is trouble in the Middle East, or oil prices spiral upwards again when the recession ends, or when supplies really can't keep up with demand! Let's keep on driving and road building like there's no tomorrow and one day there won't be, but then again that will for our children to worry about so who cares? :mad:

well hopefully, before that happens, hydrogen or electricity will be good enough to use in private cars. lets not be all doom and gloom about everything now!!

Judgement Day

Yes, trains run on oil but can also be battery or electrically powered. The amount of fuel used to transport a train load of passengers from A to B is a much less wasteful way of using oil as a fuel. Perhaps all cars will be nuclear powered in a few years time but even then the amount of energy and raw materials used to produce a car is a questionable use of finite resources. Yes, let's not be negative let's just pretend it's not happening and then it will be alright. E-voting, P pars, Thornton Hall Prison, a motorway to every parish pump in Ireland......

greener&leaner

I would love to see trains with higher speeds operating on the lines around Ireland, but to be perfectly honest I don't want a penny of tax payer money spent on it until half of Irish rail is fired and the whole operating system is over hauled.

The way things are at the moment we'd have to spend E50million to get E5 worth of benefit out of it. No point.

dmeehan

nayorleck114 wrote: »

Would people pay the 60 or 70 euros for a High speed train?

Seems like a bargain! A standard return from Killarney to Dublin costs €72

Polar101

ardmacha wrote: »

However they have moderately high speed trains in Finland and this could be good model for Ireland.

Finland is 4-5 times bigger than Ireland, so the distances are much longer also - there is more to be gained by a high speel rail connection over there. Ireland could use a rail network that offered decent speeds, instead of "speed restricted" ones, though.

dowlingm

Once Maynooth/Kildare is electrified and Metro North/Luas extensions are online the proportion of Irish passenger transit done by electricity will be fairly substantial, at least in no. of trips.

Tech3

Judgement Day wrote: »

a motorway to every parish pump in Ireland......

More like a motorway connecting every city in Ireland is what is required for good road infrastructure.

Tell me did we not need the M6,M7 and M8. Especially the M8 for what was there was an awful stretch of road connecting the republics 1st and 2nd largest cities.

Even the likes of Albania have dual carriageway standard from Durres-Tirane a long long time before we have motorway between Cork and Dublin next year. Even Kovovo is construting motorways ffs.

If the PPP's go ahead then not many more major projects need to be done apart from small little bypasses like Longford and Claregalway. It will save upgrading from a crappy bypasses every f**king time eg. Loughrea, Roscrea.....

Ham'nd'egger

dmeehan wrote: »

Seems like a bargain! A standard return from Killarney to Dublin costs €72

No, it's €51 tomorrow; you may have opted for a first class ticket.

Incidentally, Ryanair want almost €200 for Kerry-Dublin return tomorrow:eek:

parsi

tech2 wrote: »

Even the likes of Albania have dual carriageway standard from Durres-Tirane a long long time before we have motorway between Cork and Dublin next year. Even Kovovo is construting motorways ffs.

No trafic jams on the ALbanian roads either....... possibly due to lack of cars ..

Tech3

parsi wrote: »

No trafic jams on the ALbanian roads either....... possibly due to lack of cars ..

Wheres the evidence to back up that statement.

murphaph

Realistically we should strive to get 125mph from Cork-Dublin-Belfast throughout. It's the sporadic speed restrictions that kill the Cork line.

125mph would be perfectly adequate I believe for a relatively small island like Ireland. Cork-Dublin-Belfast should be electrified and there should easily be enough capacity in the Interconnector to run 1 train per hour each way right the way through, Cork-Belfast.

Really they need to get the finger out. The poles are upgrading chronic stretches to 125mph and they are doing this BEFORE looking at making their stations pretty with hanging baskets or buying fancy (but slow) trains. In ireland it's backwards.

parsi

tech2 wrote: »

Wheres the evidence to back up that statement.

Census 2006 - 80.3 % of Irish Households (1.17m) had at least 1 car. http://www.census.ie/census/census2006results/PSER/PSER_Tables%2031-38.pdf

Albania: 32% of Households (242,000) have at least 1 car.

http://www.idra-al.com/en/read_more.php?newsid=29

parsi

murphaph wrote: »

Really they need to get the finger out. The poles are upgrading chronic stretches to 125mph and they are doing this BEFORE looking at making their stations pretty with hanging baskets or buying fancy (but slow) trains. In ireland it's backwards.

They are also going on a massive slash & burn of Domestic routes (see Todays Railways)

murphaph

parsi wrote: »

They are also going on a massive slash & burn of Domestic routes (see Todays Railways)

Yeah, I've seen some of the low patronages myself though. A lot of the network is a throwback to communism when practically nobody drove. They are just experiencing the railway rationalisation experienced in Western Europe 30 or 40 years ago. Some of the pokey little villages with railway connections are unreal. Rail does not serve such population centres well and the freight that used to be transported is gone.

We are reopening the sort of stuff the poles are closing (northern section of WRC) and we are ignoring the core network (what the poles are upgrading to 125mph).

Judge

As far as I know, the French will only consider a TGV line to be economically viable if it serves at least two centres of population of at least 500,000 people each. On that basis, it would require densification of population in Belfast and Cork for a high speed line to be justifiable.

In fact, given that the motorway network is almost complete, it would make more economic sense to get rid of the Enterprise and use the extra capacity that would bring to the Northern Line to improve the DART/Commuter service. This would benefit far more people than the Intercity service does and would be cheaper than the Interconnector.

westtip

At non peak times I reckon Lucan to Oranmore will be doable in an hour and a half when the motorway is fully open in considerable comfort -its probably just over 100 miles at a steady 75 mph, it would actually be 1 hour 20, can't ever see us having trains of the speeds mentioned - but then again they might gete them on the WRC!

Victor

OP, the French high speed network after more than 25 years. http://images.french-property.com/9/5/0/cms950_o.jpg The thick lines are high speed lines (LGV - Ligne à Grand Vitesse). The thinner lines are main lines on which TGVs continue.

Now compare the size http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=50.148746,-7.338867&spn=20.998241,57.084961&z=5and population for France (62m) http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/19/France_population_density_40pc.png and Ireland (4m). http://www.irishtimes.com/timeseye/whoweare/poster.pdf (note the colour sclaes are different).

tech2 wrote: »

Also the M6!! Yeah I would like to see the limit changed to 130 on the inter urban routes eventually. The roads are well capable of that speed.

Are the cars and drivers?