Dublin-Belfast rail link upgrade?

Leonard Hofstadter

Looks like the Government is (for once in its life) looking to spend money on the railways!

It's certainly on their shopping list as part of the Brexit negotiations.

In all fairness, the current journey times are a disgrace and we should be looking for faster connections not just on Dublin-Belfast, but for Dublin-Cork/Limerick/Galway/Waterford.

http://www.independent.ie/business/brexit/dublinbelfast-onehour-rail-link-on-brexit-shopping-list-35628264.html

LeinsterDub

Any chance of reasonable fares too?

cgcsb

Work seems to be underway on removing speed restrictions on Dublin-Cork/Kerry/Limerick which should make the train faster than all other modes for such journeys.

Dublin-Galway is a joke and needs serious improvements, double tracking to Athlone, an hourly service and a 1hr50 journey time should be the norm. Dub-Belfast/Sligo/Rosslare also need serious improvement.

LXFlyer

Four tracking out of Connolly northwards (perhaps from Clontarf Road to Raheny) would be top of the shopping list for me in order to remove DART congestion.

Bray Head

This tells me two things, both of which I knew already:

1. The standard of journalism in Ireland is abysmal
2. It's a bank holiday Monday

markpb

What an excellent plan by the government! I can't decide which part I like better, the one where they ask someone else for money or the one where we'll spend the next two years negotiating for money that we might get sometime in the future for an upgrade which, at best, would happen another three years after that. There's a decade of doing nothing but being able to say they're doing something.

Sam Russell

Mod: Off topic posts deleted.

Paddico

The Sligo to Dublin train is disasterously slow.
Serioys imporvement needed there

LXFlyer

Paddico wrote: »

The Sligo to Dublin train is disasterously slow.
Serioys imporvement needed there

It will be rather difficult to deliver any significant improvement in overall line speed on that line - it already has a maximum speed limit of 75mph.

The problems are:

* It's a single track railway beyond Maynooth with passing loops at fixed locations - therefore with higher frequencies it becomes increasingly difficult to deliver faster trains as they have to pass one another at fixed locations. New passing loops and the associated signalling would be exceptionally expensive. You also have to build in resilience into the timetable for the possibility of one train being late - otherwise the knock on effects will be that every train for the rest of the day will be late. As it is virtually every train travelling between Dublin and Sligo (and vice versa) has to pass at least two trains travelling in the opposite direction.

* For much of the route the curvature of the line and the physical track bed are such that they will not deliver higher speeds than 75mph

* It has to share track space from Maynooth to Connolly with suburban traffic which is only going to increase - there is unlikely to be room for four tracking to allow trains overtake one another.

LXFlyer

Deedsie wrote: »

Why can't people just say the entire rail network needs to be upgraded? Every line needs to be upgraded and needs investment.

Our public transport is disgracefully under served.

The focus right now is rebuilding the track bed on the Dublin-Cork line which will (when it is eventually completed) deliver improvements on all routes out of Heuston.

Again though that is subject to whatever funding is provided by the NTA, which in turn is dependent on the funding from Government - currently €10m per year on that specific programme (and we are currently in the third year of this programme).

rounders

lxflyer wrote: »

The focus right now is rebuilding the track bed on the Dublin-Cork line which will (when it is eventually completed) deliver improvements on all routes out of Heuston.

Again though that is subject to whatever funding is provided by the NTA, which in turn is dependent on the funding from Government - currently €10m per year on that specific programme (and we are currently in the third year of this programme).

Any more detail on the actual improvements proposed for Cork - Dublin?

LXFlyer

rounders wrote: »

Any more detail on the actual improvements proposed for Cork - Dublin?

It will ultimately shave 15 minutes off the journey time between Dublin and Cork so journey times will range between 2 hours and 2 hours 20 minutes depending upon stopping patterns.

Clearly there will also be journey time improvements for the Dublin-Galway, Dublin-Waterford, Dublin-Limerick and Dublin-Kerry as a result also.

One would hope that we may see some improvements resulting from the works to date in the next timetable change (probably at the end of the year).

bk

Deedsie wrote: »

Everything is looked at in a very negative, too expensive, take too long, unions will take all the money anyway, not enough passengers to justify etc etc...

I added the bold there. I think you have hit the key reason there.

I think the government feels that CIE and it's unions are already too powerful and that any time the government tries to implement positive change in Irish Rail, you have the unions straight out looking for more money. Note the extra 10k DART drivers got for driving just two extra carriages or them currently blocking the new 10 minute DART schedule.

So I think the feeling in government circles is that it just isn't worth investing in CIE, at least beyond basic safety requirements to keep it going. But no major improvements.

You can see that from the fact that they are pretty enthusiastic to invest in Luas, which is independent from CIE.

It is pretty noticeable that the major developments in public transport in the past 10 years have been outside of CIE, namely Luas and private intercity coaches.