Bullet trains

defrule

Writing this while sitting on a bullet train from Tokyo to Osaka. These things are bloody fast, wouldn't mind having these here in Ireland.

When I was waiting for train, I couldn't get my phone and start the camera app in time to even photograph the ones that pass through!

ChikiChiki

A loop Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Galway would be the right job. Would help industry in our regional cities and help solve the mass demand for housing in Dublin

One can dream....

Zebra3

defrule wrote: »

Writing this while sitting on a bullet train from Tokyo to Osaka. These things are bloody fast, wouldn't mind having these here in Ireland.

When I was waiting for train, I couldn't get my phone and start the camera app in time to even photograph the ones that pass through!

Funnily enough I did that journey in reverse last December.

But if you think that's impressive, you should see the trains in China. Went from Shanghai to Beijing three years ago in under five hours.

BlinkingLights

A lot closer to home the TGV Paris-Bordeaux route is upgrading at the moment to cut journey time from 3h14 to 2h04

it's a 585km trip, which would take more than 5 hours by motorway.

Or, try Madrid - Barcelona on the AVE - designed for full 350km/h service

625km and takes 2h30m

tomfoolery60

ChikiChiki wrote: »

A loop Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Galway would be the right job. Would help industry in our regional cities and help solve the mass demand for housing in Dublin

One can dream....

That had not been the case in Japan.... https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/sep/30/-sp-shinkansen-bullet-train-tokyo-rail-japan-50-years

BlinkingLights

If Dublin ends up having say 3m and Cork 1.5 million people, then we might be able to justify a TGV link.

At present, not a hope. Nowhere in the world has cities of these sizes linked with ultra-fast trains. There simply isn't the passenger demand.

Even the TGV Atlantique is a little questionable, and is heavily subsidised.

Also, if we built one we would likely be buying in all the technology and equipment from Alstom or Siemens, whereas in France the money spent on a project like this goes straight into job creation in French engineering companies.

bk

You would be looking at a cost of about 5 to 6 Billion for just Cork to Dublin!

It would be vastly cheaper to just subsidise Cork to Dublin flights.

4068ac1elhodqr

Isn't Hyperloop (pneumatics) the next big thing, TGV has surely been around since the 70's and requires plenty of hardware.
The more feasible route would be a more direct line along the areas of greatest population density (approx figures city/areas).

Belfast (area inc Bangor60/NAbbey60 etc) 500,000
Lisburn 50,000
Portadown 30,000
Newry 30,000
Dundalk 35,000
Drogheda 35,000
Dublin (area inc Bray30/Swords35 etc) 1,100,000
Waterford 50,000
Cork 150,000

BlinkingLights

Figures there are very approximate.

Cork is closer to 250,000 potentially about 390,000 and up to within reach of Kent Station.
Belfast roughly 847,000
Dublin 1.35 million with about 1.9m on hinterland/metro.

Even with taking in their metro areas you're still not coming close to justifying a TGV service.

You'd be looking at needing several Cork sized cities along the route, what's there at the moment are really just small towns.

Moving to 200km/h conventional rail however would be relatively cost effective and could probably be achieved.

We should seriously look at switching the Cork and Belfast services to electric too. It could be done with existing fleets by just changing the locomotives. Major investment in terms of rolling out wiring but, it could be justified in CO2 efficiency and could also put a lot of high speed commuter services into Dublin from Kildare etc.

Electric trains also accelerate much more rapidly so intermediate stops on line could be better served without killing end to end journey times.

LeinsterDub

Emmalyn Big Magnolia wrote: »

Isn't Hyperloop (pneumatics) the next big thing

Depending on who you listen to Hyperloop is physically impossible
https://www.reddit.com/r/hyperloop/comments/4udod1/the_hyperloop_busted_thunderf00t_thoughts/

BlinkingLights

Alsp, yeah there are several European high speed train systems that are evolutions of conventional rail. The Japanese Bullet Train systems are similar. Also China has mostly invested in a mixture of German designed ICE derived tech and some of its own which is again, heavy rail derived.

Hyperloop is still a very much an R&D phase project. Conventional high-speed like TGV had 40 years and billions upon billions of ultra safe passenger journeys under its belt at this stage and is a highly refined set of technologies.

The logical thing in Ireland would be to first move to electrification of two or three long distance lines. Perhaps initially just doing Cork Dublin as it's the busiest intercity route and already has 200km/ coaching stock - so you'd only have to invest in signalling and locomotives etc.

Everything should be planned with the notion that we are aiming for faster speeds. Irish Rail has tended to invest in old style technology and lock itself into peopepriery standards like CAWS.

The aim here should be where possible to go for current European industry best practices and the most open standards that allow upgrades and to ensure that we design things to accommodate future overhead wiring and incrementally move towards a higher speed system.

At the moment the aim should he to get maximum speed out of the existing fleets. We are nowhere near that area the moment and even just getting up to that level would be a big step forward.

Tabnabs

BlinkingLights wrote: »

At present, not a hope. Nowhere in the world has cities of these sizes linked with ultra-fast trains. There simply isn't the passenger demand.

Flytoget in Norway runs from the airport to Oslo (population 942,084) and half again run on to a dormer town with a population of 93,006 (think Bray). Train leaves Oslo every 10 mins and has a top speed of 210 kilometres per hour.

Flytoget transported 6.1 million passengers in 2013.

BlinkingLights

That is not a long distance high speed train. It's a rapid airport link and could be done in Dublin easily enough.

Only thing though is Dublin doesn't really have a metro transit hub to connect one and DUB airport is extremely close to the city and could be served by a rapid DART very easily had they planned one ...

The reason for the Flytoget service was they built a new airport 50km from Oslo, so it needed rapid ground transport to make it viable.
Dublin Airport is barely 10km from O'Connell Street.

What would have made sense would have been to include a 3rd bore in the Dublin Port Tunnel for 2 Luas tracks. It could have formed the basis for a high speed tram/metro hybrid link to Dublin Airport and also the link into a regular Luas service for the Whitehall/Santry/Beaumont areas (which could have used the same connect to the city centre)

At the very least it would have linked Connolly (and Heuston via Luas Red Line) and also the IFSC/Docklands and City Centre to Dublin Airport without any fuss at all.

bk

BlinkingLights wrote: »

That is not a long distance high speed train. It's a rapid airport link and could be done in Dublin easily enough.

Only thing though is Dublin doesn't really have a metro transit hub to connect one and DUB airport is extremely close to the city and could be served by a rapid DART very easily had they planned one ...

Or you know, Metro North.

I note that while Flytoget has a max speed of 210km/h, it never operates more then 160km/h and it ends up taking 19 minutes to cover 14.5 km. That is an average speed of just 45 km/h !

Metro North will go from City Center in 19 minutes, which is a shorter distance, 11km, but unlike the Flytoget has a number of stops in between, making it overall more useful.

BlinkingLights

There just seems to have been no joined-up-thinking when it came to building some of the existing infrastructure though.

Luas/Metro North and the Port Tunnel should have been rolled into an integrated project.

Likewise, there were loads of roads built out around the suburbs without any provision for tramlines which could have been at least planned into them, even if not provided with wiring, signalling and fleet straight away.

Davy

Just seen this the other day

https://futurism.com/proposed-texas-bullet-train-will-give-airlines-serious-competition/

Texas Central?is planning to build a bullet train route that will cut between Dallas and Houston, trimming?about 2 hours off the average driving time, and saving over an hour compared to air travel.?The approximately 240-mile high-speed rail line will offer a total travel time of less than 90 minutes, with departures every 30 minutes during peak periods each day and every hour during off-peak periods ? with 6 hours reserved each night for system maintenance and inspection.?Texas Central plans to?deploy?Central Japan Railway Company?s (JRC) ?N700-I Bullet? high-speed rail system based on the??Shinkansen? system.

defrule

My trip has ended sadly.

I've always wondered, do you build these things as demand sees fit or do you built it and demand will be created itself. I'm inclined to think the latter.

The question should not be can we justify a bullet train from Dublin to Cork? Because we probably can't as things as are. But the moment you build one, it opens a huge blood vessel between the two cities and opportunities open up.

I think if you don't build one, you'll never need one because not having one will always limit you from reaching the point of needing it.

AlekSmart

defrule wrote: »

My trip has ended sadly.

I've always wondered, do you build these things as demand sees fit or do you built it and demand will be created itself. I'm inclined to think the latter.

The question should not be can we justify a bullet train from Dublin to Cork? Because we probably can't as things as are. But the moment you build one, it opens a huge blood vessel between the two cities and opportunities open up.

I think if you don't build one, you'll never need one because not having one will always limit you from reaching the point of needing it.

It's about Vision,and self-confidence,neither trait too abundant in 21st Century Ireland.

I recently watched the RTE documentary on the Ardnacrusha HydroElectric project,and rather sadly realized that 21st Century Ireland could not devise,construct and impliment such things.....it has become beyond our capability,and that IS sad.

Mutant z

You can dream all you want about having these in Ireland but it aint going to happen.

LeinsterDub

AlekSmart wrote: »

It's about Vision,and self-confidence,neither trait too abundant in 21st Century Ireland.

It's actually about cost and it being some what self funding.
If we just want to piss around money on white elephants we should start a space program

Cookie_Monster

LeinsterDub wrote: »

If we just want to piss around money on white elephants we should start a space program

we already have one-ish and it only costs 23m a year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Space_Agency#Membership_and_contribution_to_ESA

bk

defrule wrote: »

I've always wondered, do you build these things as demand sees fit or do you built it and demand will be created itself. I'm inclined to think the latter.

Well the cost of building high speed rail is well understood and also the number of people who are likely to use it based on distances between cities and city sizes.

So planners are able to model how successful it is likely to be based on various variables.

Ireland simply doesn't have the population, geography or cities big enough to justify the tens of billions it would cost to build.

Just because you build something, doesn't mean they will come. We already have a perfect example of that here in Ireland. The Western Rail Corridor, cost 100 million to open and only carries a few dozen people a day! The truth is the demand was never there and they never did come.

In reality high speed rail has mostly been built between already very large cities (1million +) where demand between the cities on both road, rail and air was already very high. That level of demand simply doesn't exist in Ireland.

HivemindXX

It may be possible in the future, say in 30 years. In an environment where people have subscriptions to self driving car services instead of their own personal car I can see lots of people wanting to get on a train that takes less than an hour to go from Dublin to Belfast or Dublin to Cork, or even Belfast to Cork, and then call up their robot car to pick them up at the station.

At the moment it is not going to happen. People are very tied to their personal cars and they don't want to get a train and then have no car at the far end. Even if it wouldn't be an inconvenience they are concerned that they may need the car and then not have it. This limits the demand for a train, no matter how fast. Lots of people are going to spend the extra hour driving simply because they want to bring their car with them. This makes me wonder if car trains are a thing...

LeinsterDub

HivemindXX wrote: »

It may be possible in the future, say in 30 years. In an environment where people have subscriptions to self driving car services instead of their own personal car I can see lots of people wanting to get on a train that takes less than an hour to go from Dublin to Belfast or Dublin to Cork, or even Belfast to Cork, and then call up their robot car to pick them up at the station.

At the moment it is not going to happen. People are very tied to their personal cars and they don't want to get a train and then have no car at the far end. Even if it wouldn't be an inconvenience they are concerned that they may need the car and then not have it. This limits the demand for a train, no matter how fast. Lots of people are going to spend the extra hour driving simply because they want to bring their car with them. This makes me wonder if car trains are a thing...

In that future we'll also have high speed ev buses capable of doing Dublin to Cork in <90 minutes safely

bk

LeinsterDub wrote: »

In that future we'll also have high speed every buses capable of doing Dublin to Cork in <90 minutes safely

Or far enough in the future, those on-demand self driving cars themselves.

Once every car in the road is a self driving car, they will likely be able to go at much higher speeds safely, due to being able to communicate with one another.

Order an on-demand self driving car to pick you up at your home and then 90 minutes later it drops you to your destination in Cork!

Del.Monte

bk wrote: »

Or far enough in the future, those on-demand self driving cars themselves.

Once every car in the road is a self driving car, they will likely be able to go at much higher speeds safely, due to being able to communicate with one another.

Order an on-demand self driving car to pick you up at your home and then 90 minutes later it drops you to your destination in Cork!

You've been watching too much sci-fi me thinks.

bk

Del.Monte wrote: »

You've been watching too much sci-fi me thinks.

Not really sci-fi, head to the Bay Area in the US and you will already see plenty of them driving around. They are coming faster then people think and they will have staggering impact on how we travel, public transport, etc.

NickNickleby

Hahaha Defrule,
Welcome home!!
I share your pain, I wonder did you fly out of Haneda yesterday - I heard a few Irish accents.

Anyway, I too went on a few bullet train journeys over the last fortnight, including Osaka. Great fun, and reasonably cheap using JR pass. But for the locals its incredibly expensive. My son lives there so can't avail of the JR PAss. His return ticket Tokyo/Morioka was 24900 yen. So almost €249 (based on my effective exchange rate at the ATMs). On one late night journey, we encountered a few office worker types ,briefcases in hand, travelling just one station on the Shinkansen. My son reckons these would probably be one offs, as it would be prohibitively expensive for regular commutes. One night last week we were talking to a Japanese girl we know (she visited us many years ago) and she moved from a commutable area to central Tokyo because of the cost and inconvenience of commuting.

I'm saying all this not to show off about my hols (honestly ), but rather to introduce the cost to the consumer aspect of it all. I saw a hell of a lot of JR Passes being flourished.

I'd rather the money be spent on a decent Metro in Dublin, including a fast link to the airport.

Muahahaha

Can I ask how much are Japanese rail passes when you are there as a tourist? And do they cover bullet trains or only the regular ones?

NickNickleby

Muahahaha wrote: »

Can I ask how much are Japanese rail passes when you are there as a tourist? And do they cover bullet trains or only the regular ones?

Hi Muahaha,

I paid approx. €520 for 2 in May. I think the actual transaction was through a UK company - although I bought mine from Unique Japan Tours in Dawson Street, and here's a shameless endorsement, they're brilliant. Our family has used them many times over the last few years. They're in Dawson St.

Anyway, here's how I used mine:
Firstly, its a Japan Rail Pass. Japan Rail is like Irish Rail.
So any service they run, you can use the pass. That includes
Bullet Trains - Shinkansen
Local surface trains in Tokyo - and presumably wherever they operate elsewhere in Japan
Ferries - I used it in Hiroshima to get to an island.

In Tokyo, the principal means of getting around is the Metro - JR Pass doesn't work on it. However, the Metro is cheap enough.

My passes were 7 day cheapo tickets. What that means is you travel economy class on the Shinkansen. It also means the clock starts clicking on day one end ends at midnight on day seven, and during that time you can use it as much or as little as you like. In my case, I started on day one with a trip up country for three days, during which the JR pass remained in the safe. However, I still got value for money out of it over the other 4 days, requires good planning.

pm me if you want anymore info. I'm still jet lagged and may have left out something.

wordofwarning

Bullet trains in Germany are generally only for business travellers as they are super expensive. If you are going Berlin to Munich as a normal everyday German, you will fly despite there being a bullet train between the cities. If you are going Munich to Nuremberg, you will take the bus or the regular train. Even in Germany, bullet trains are not for the masses

We live in a country of entitlement. It is not even like China or Germany, where customers will pay a premium for bullet trains. You can be certain that people will expect to go from Cork to Dublin via bullet for free on their travel pass. It only takes a dodgy election for someone to allow travel passes on bullet trains. Good luck getting a business traveller paying €100 for the privilege of standing on a bullet from Cork to Dublin, while travel passers sit there for free.

It would be political suicide not to allow free travel passes on bullet trains

bk

Yes, this is the issue. People think wouldn't be great if you could go from Dublin to Cork in 60 minutes?

Of course it would be. Maybe some people imagine living in Cork/Belfast and commuting to Dublin daily!

But then you point out the reality that it will cost Billions to build and tickets would likely be €200, in order to pay the massive cost of it and the reality quickly sets in.

The truth is there isn't even enough demand on Cork/Belfast-Dublin route to justify a 30 minute flights that would cost less then €100 a ticket! So unless Irelands population massively grows, there is little chance of high speed rail here.

zetalambda

The population of the UK is 65 million and they're only building high speed rail now. London was the same size that Dublin is today about 200 years ago. Therefore, we can probably look forward to high speed rail here in about 2217

V_Moth

wordofwarning wrote: »

Bullet trains in Germany are generally only for business travellers as they are super expensive. If you are going Berlin to Munich as a normal everyday German, you will fly despite there being a bullet train between the cities. If you are going Munich to Nuremberg, you will take the bus or the regular train. Even in Germany, bullet trains are not for the masses

Are you referring to the ICE Sprinter service? In that case I would agree, but the regular ICE services are far from being used only by business travellers. Services on the main corridors are not infrequently standing room only, and this is with double traction.

Arguably, prices are high if you book last minute, but even then you can travel relatively cheaply over long distances on ICE services with some clever booking. Plus you can get significant discounts if you have a BAHNcard. A BAHNcard 100 would be around 3k for example, and would mean free travel on almost all train services.

The new Berlin - Munich HSR route is due to open later this year, reducing travel time to around 4hrs, which will probably be slightly quicker than air travel (city centre to city centre). HSR has already killed off air travel between Madrid and Barcelona for example.

Regarding HSR in Ireland, the only route that would make sense in my mind would be Cork - Limerick - Galway - Dublin - Belfast. Going into fantasy land, another option worth looking at would be Cork - Waterford - Wexford - Dublin. Having a Irish Sea tunnel would also open options to make HSR more viable. Sadly, this will never happen.

devnull

zetalambda wrote: »

The population of the UK is 65 million and they're only building high speed rail now. London was the same size that Dublin is today about 200 years ago. Therefore, we can probably look forward to high speed rail here in about 2217

Depends what you call High Speed.

Fact is even without HS1 and HS2, the 125mph/201km/h hit on many lines in the UK is still far above what is achieved on the lines here.

The Irish system has far lower linespeeds and far more speed restrictions than that of the UK.

Bullet trains in Germany are generally only for business travellers as they are super expensive. If you are going Berlin to Munich as a normal everyday German, you will fly despite there being a bullet train between the cities. If you are going Munich to Nuremberg, you will take the bus or the regular train. Even in Germany, bullet trains are not for the masses

There is no such thing as a Bullet Train in Germany, they are called ICE trains and they are from the same family of trains as the New Eurostar and the Spanish AVE between Madrid and Barcelona.

The Spanish Velaros have been able to hit 400km/h in tests as well without too much of a problem but the infrastructure can't support it.

boombang

Nobody is going to convince me of the need to spend millions whizzing pensioners and travel pass holders around the country at high speed. This systems are marvels, but there's no sense in them for Ireland.

Having said that I'd love CIE to sort out the quality of the track to ensure Dublin to Cork doesn't feel like experiencing a prolonged earthquake.

Del.Monte

Thread belongs in After Hours - it's a 'train wreck' - Sorry....:o

end of the road

boombang wrote: »

Nobody is going to convince me of the need to spend millions whizzing pensioners and travel pass holders around the country at high speed.

except it isn't just those groups who use public transport, including existing rail services. also, high speed rail would cost a couple of billion to build. so, you wouldn't be spending millions "whizzing pensioners and travel pass holders around the country at high speed"

wordofwarning

V_Moth wrote: »

Are you referring to the ICE Sprinter service? In that case I would agree, but the regular ICE services are far from being used only by business travellers. Services on the main corridors are not infrequently standing room only, and this is with double traction.

Go to Munich or Berlin Hbf and you will mainly people in suits getting off the ICE services. They are expensive and in my experience mainly used by business travellers. Munich to Nuremburg is €9 sharing a Bayern Ticket. The ICE service is €30. You can fly Munich to Berlin for around €40 usually. Whereas the ICE train is about €80 booking the same dates.

V_Moth wrote: »

The new Berlin - Munich HSR route is due to open later this year, reducing travel time to around 4hrs, which will probably be slightly quicker than air travel (city centre to city centre). HSR has already killed off air travel between Madrid and Barcelona for example.

The new tracks to make that possible cost €10bn alone. DB will want to make up for that cost with higher ticket prices. If trains are suddenly more attractive than flying, I think you can guess what impact that will have on ticket prices

V_Moth wrote: »

Regarding HSR in Ireland, the only route that would make sense in my mind would be Cork - Limerick - Galway - Dublin - Belfast.

How is going to pay €60 for a one way ticket on this service when you can get a bus for €10? We are trying to solve an issue we don't have. HSR is for longer distance travel that needs to be fast. Is someone going to pay €50 premium to be in a city/town 90 mins sooner? IMO most people won't be bothered in the slightest

Ryanair has shown that price is generally the biggest factor for deciding who to travel with, not the journey time. Hundreds of millions of people rather to fly hundreds of miles away from the main airport to save money. I don't see people will be convinced to spend a massive premium on HSR to shave an hour or so off a journey that is not long to begin with eg look at the London Gatwick or Stansted

BlinkingLights

They need to just keep pushing the envelope with the existing fleet.

At present, Irish Rail's network's main hold-ups are signalling and track issues. If they resolved those you could cut significant times of most routes and compete better with road transport.

There's really no need to go for TGV here, even the distances involved aren't really long enough. They're all medium-distance regional kind of distances rather than TGV length.

Stephen15

BlinkingLights wrote: »

There's really no need to go for TGV here, even the distances involved aren't really long enough. They're all medium-distance regional kind of distances rather than TGV length.

Not nessecarily theres a high speed line between Rome and Naples a distance further than Dublin to Belfast but shorter than Dublin to Cork. There's good range of train options on the line a regional service stopping at nearly every station taking over 3 hours, an intercity train taking 2.5 hours and stopping at a limited number of stops and the non stop high speed service that takes 1.5 hours. The main issue is population rather than distance.

bk

Stephen15 wrote: »

Not nessecarily theres a high speed line between Rome and Naples a distance further than Dublin to Belfast but shorter than Dublin to Cork. There's good range of train options on the line a regional service stopping at nearly every station taking over 3 hours, an intercity train taking 2.5 hours and stopping at a limited number of stops and the non stop high speed service that takes 1.5 hours. The main issue is population rather than distance.

Hardly comparable.

Rome 4.3m
Naples 3.1m

And the line that this train runs on is actually:
Turin (2.2m) - Milan (3.2m) - Bologna (1m) - Rome (4.3m) - Naples (3.1m) - Salerno

So it is actually a long line, running down 2/3rds the length of Italy and connecting a number of very large cities. You can easily see why high speed rail makes sense between these large cities.

Cork 400,000
Dublin 1.9m

The difference is laughable!

defrule

I go on the Enterprise a lot and it struck me that the travel time between it and car is comparable.

Suppose we had a Shinkansen style service instead that can do the route in 45 minutes. It could become very enticing even for car travellers to use it, because the Shinkansen would outright trump the private car in travel time.

dermo888

The trouble is we don't have the population densities in Ireland to justify such fancy baubles. Shinkansen's, Ligne a gran vitesse, high speed lines are meant to link mega conurbations with other mega conurbations. Ireland's system is reasonable enough for the population on offer. A few tweaks to improve it here and there would'nt go amiss mind.