Can someone explain this Irish Rail anomaly?

tering_klotsak

It took me 1HR 50mins to drive from Balbriggan to just outside Ballinasloe.

Irish Rails journeys according to their timetable, from Heuston to Ballinasloe varies between 1:50 and 2:02 ... can someone explain this discrepancy?? Are trains not supposed to be faster than a crappy little 1.1 Litre car which I was driving???

bk

Nope, trains in Ireland are slow, car is usually faster (outside rush hours in Dublin).

For instance Cork to Dublin is about 45 minutes faster by car then by train.

tering_klotsak

bk wrote: »

Nope, trains in Ireland are slow, car is usually faster (outside rush hours in Dublin).

For instance Cork to Dublin is about 45 minutes faster by car then by train.

Seriously, is there no room for a private firm to introduce some competition, such as Virgin Rail in UK?

For example, Thalys, the French High Speed Rail is 2 1/2 hours from Rotterdam to Paris, which is the guts of 470 km :O The trains really are something else on the mainland

tering_klotsak

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yszy1wltw8

foggy_lad

tering_klotsak wrote: »

Seriously, is there no room for a private firm to introduce some competition, such as Virgin Rail in UK?

For example, Thalys, the French High Speed Rail is 2 1/2 hours from Rotterdam to Paris, which is the guts of 470 km :O The trains really are something else on the mainland

High speed trains would require high speed track rail and allignments with much better trackbed standard than is currently available in Ireland

Dodge

tering_klotsak wrote: »

Seriously, is there no room for a private firm to introduce some competition, such as Virgin Rail in UK?

HAsn't worked out for them in fairness

In the last 5 years roads here have improved immeasurably. Rail network hasn't had anything done to it. With none the semi states having any money it won't be improved any time soon.

Comparisons to France/Netherlands are never going to end well

Victor

tering_klotsak wrote: »

For example, Thalys, the French High Speed Rail is 2 1/2 hours from Rotterdam to Paris, which is the guts of 470 km :O The trains really are something else on the mainland

When Dublin serves 10 million people and Ballinasloe serves 1 million, we might have a similar service.

Losty Dublin

tering_klotsak wrote: »

It took me 1HR 50mins to drive from Balbriggan to just outside Ballinasloe.

Irish Rails journeys according to their timetable, from Heuston to Ballinasloe varies between 1:50 and 2:02 ... can someone explain this discrepancy?? Are trains not supposed to be faster than a crappy little 1.1 Litre car which I was driving???

How long would it take for you to drive stopping at Kildare, Newbridge, Portarlington, Tullamore, Clara and Athlone town centres? These are stops that the train has to make en route and they add to travel times.

dowlingm

Helpful contribution from bk as usual, from whom answers to most questions consist of "car" or more likely "express bus".

OP:
Here's a google map comparing the routes mentioned. It turns out that by road, Balbriggan to Ballinasloe is 178km and Ballinasloe to Heuston 162km. You may have thought the difference in distance would be more pronounced but look how far south the line deviates, presumably to avoid bog country - there probably wasn't much alternative in the 1850s when the line was constructed.

However, the trip from Balbriggan to Ballinasloe is M1/M50/M4/M6 whereas the trip from Heuston is 3-track/4-track/2-track/1-track. Not many signals on the road, lots on the rail.

The rail route to Ballinasloe is actually quite quick - 100mph on much of the route to Portarlington and 80mph thereafter albeit with some speed restrictions. However none of that matters much if you're stuck at a signal on the single track between Portarlington and Athlone waiting for a freight moving more slowly in your direction to clear the signal ahead or at a station waiting for a train in the other direction to pass. By contrast the only places you would be on a single lane per direction on the road trip would be the on/off ramps of the motorway, and never a single lane shared with both directions.

n97 mini

As Victor says we don't have the populations.

We also have daft housing policies allowing people to build houses willy nilly in the countryside, outside of the catchment areas for public transport, helping to sustain its unsustainability.

L1011

dowlingm wrote: »

You may have thought the difference in distance would be more pronounced but look how far south the line deviates, presumably to avoid bog country - there probably wasn't much alternative in the 1850s when the line was constructed.
.

In the 1850s, the trains went Broadstone->Maynooth->Mullingar->Athlone not Heuston-Portarlington->Athlone. Much less southerly.

foggy_lad

Losty Dublin wrote: »

How long would it take for you to drive stopping at Kildare, Newbridge, Portarlington, Tullamore, Clara and Athlone town centres? These are stops that the train has to make en route and they add to travel times.

Newbridge, Kildare, Portarlington, Tullamore and Clara are all well outside their respective town centres, only Athlone station is in the town centre but the train is on rails so is not being slowed down by other road traffic

parsi

foggy_lad wrote: »

Newbridge, Kildare, Portarlington, Tullamore and Clara are all well outside their respective town centres, only Athlone station is in the town centre but the train is on rails so is not being slowed down by other road traffic

Point is much the same - you still have to leave the motorway to visit the town centres or stations in these spots.

dowlingm

MYOB wrote: »

In the 1850s, the trains went Broadstone->Maynooth->Mullingar->Athlone not Heuston-Portarlington->Athlone. Much less southerly.

the MGWR went the way you say, the GSWR the other.

CIE

tering_klotsak wrote: »

Seriously, is there no room for a private firm to introduce some competition, such as Virgin Rail in UK?

For example, Thalys, the French High Speed Rail is 2½ hours from Rotterdam to Paris, which is the guts of 470 km :O The trains really are something else on the mainland

That seems to be a contradiction. You're comparing non-private state agencies (SNCF + Deutsche Bahn + NMBS/SNCB = Thalys International) to a private firm (Virgin Rail).

victor wrote: »

When Dublin serves 10 million people and Ballinasloe serves 1 million, we might have a similar service

Stockholm has 1.25 million people and Arvika only about 14,000, yet there is SJ2000 tilt-train service between the two, with many stops that have population levels comparable to Ballinasloe; that kind of service would work out better, rather than TGV Thalys which is designed for international travel anyhow.

bk

CIE wrote: »

Stockholm has 1.25 million people and Arvika only about 14,000, yet there is SJ2000 tilt-train service between the two, with many stops that have population levels comparable to Ballinasloe; that kind of service would work out better, rather than TGV Thalys which is designed for international travel anyhow.

Hmm, we aren't telling the whole story here, are we?

Stockholm to Arvika is actually part of the Stockholm (pop. 2m) to Oslo (pop. 1.4m) line. It connects two large capital cities and connects into the rest of the Norwegian rail network.

From 2001 for 4 years the SJ2000 high speed trains were operated between Oslo and Stockholm on this line. However they weren't able to compete with cheap and much faster flights between the cities, so the service was ended and the SJ2000 were pulled back to only operate the profitable parts of the Swedish network.

The Stockholm - Arivka is really the Stockholm to Karlstad (pop 85,000) line, the line also has Örebro (pop 100,000) on it.

Also Karlstad is where you change over to a Norweigan train when heading to Oslo and vice versa.

Arivka is only served on this route for operational reasons. It is the last station and town before Norway, but it isn't served by the Norweigan train from Karlstad, so the SJ2000 serves it to serve people in the area.

These really aren't comparable with most lines in Ireland.

It is interesting to note that the Oslo to Stockholm high speed service failed partly because it had to go much slower on the Norwegian side where the lines were a lower quality and much bendier. It was going to take hundreds of millions to upgrade the Norwegian lines.

This is interesting from an Irish perspective, as the Irish rail network is more like the Norwegian rail network then the Swedish and the oil rich, very socialist Norwegians decided it wasn't worth upgrading. If they didn't, what hope is there for rail in Ireland?

Run_to_da_hills

tering_klotsak wrote: »

If Only [URL] ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yszy1wltw8[/URL]

No Thanks.

Alstom don't exactly have a good track record with EMU in Ireland. (Pun Intended)

dowlingm

TGV is a waste of time aspiration. There are a lot of achievable improvements that get overlooked because of yearnings for technologies that are not and never will be suitable for the Irish situation absent a tunnel to Britain. Claiming that multi-billion euro spend on geewhiz trains is necessary for rail to succeed is the best way for a future An Bord Snip 3 to propose full closure outside greater Dublin.

L1011

dowlingm wrote: »

the MGWR went the way you say, the GSWR the other.

MGWR4life