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.