Cross-border review of rail network officially launched

namloc1980

Hydrogen has the massive benefit that there is no capital cost in terms of system wide infrastructure like overhead lines. However they do require specialised refuelling stations and generating stations. Generating hydrogen through electrolysis is expensive and very power intensive. Almost certainly the long term operational cost is significantly higher than battery/OHLE.

https://www.hydrogeninsight.com/transport/will-no-longer-be-considered-hydrogen-trains-up-to-80-more-expensive-than-electric-options-german-state-finds/2-1-1338438

bk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120900007#Comment_120900007

Germany. 5 already in service, currently replacing 15 Diesel trains on a line:

https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/coradia-ilint-hydrogen-trains/index.html

Caltrains in California have ordered 29, starting to enter service next year.

France has ordered dozens, coming into service in 2025.

Keep in mind, that we aren't even planning to start electrification until 2040, plenty of time to see how these projects go, the real costs and do a proper comparison with full electrification.

Economics101

Hydrogen: I am told that using electricity from wind, etc to produce "Green" hydrogen costs about 30% of the inputted electrical energy. So providing prices reflect costs, that is a huge initial advantage for electric power. Then electric trains can feed energy back into the system through dynamic braking.

Hydrogen has to be compressed to at least 300Bar for use in vehicles. You don't get those kinds of pressure vessels cheap. Personally I would not like to be near them.

hans aus dtschl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120899905#Comment_120899905

Is there that much conflict between what's proposed and what would be in urban rail scope? Yes I think there's a couple conflicts that I think I can see (I could be wrong).

I think the Cork line towards Mallow will get very messy before too long because of the competing needs of intercity/urban. An hourly high-speed Dublin service will get stuck behind a 15-minute Cork/Kilbarry/Monard/Blarney/Mallow commuter service, but maybe they have considered this. It looks like a gap in the document, because they don't have them listed as "upgrades planned" or "capacity constrained".

They mention a tram/light rail to Carrigaline via Mahon on page 60, but nobody previously has proposed this and frankly I don't think it will happen. Later in the same document (page 66) they acknowledge that it "would be very costly and disruptive" to bring freight on that exact same route and they correctly dismiss it out of hand. It's doable, just that it's not realistic. Maybe not an important gap, but it's a gap.

I think Limerick Shannon rail line would need an overhaul to be effective as a commuter line, whereas this document just builds on the existing Limerick system. The existing system doesn't work for commuters. That looks like a gap.

bk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120900072#Comment_120900072

Thanks that is a fantastic article that helps answer some of my questions. I actually don't think it rules out Hydrogen at all, but it does bring up other options.

While the cost of operating hydrogen powered trains is higher then overhead electric, that isn't really surprising. The question would be how the higher operating cost compares to the high upfront capital cost of electrification. Keep at mind, according to the rail report, we are talking about €1.6 billion to just electrify the Cork to Dublin line. That will buy you a lot of extra hydrogen.

Havign said that this report brings up another option, battery hybrids. Could we get away with spending less on electrificatino by building just islands of electrified sections and have hybrid battery trains charge up on those sections. Perhaps it could bring that electrification bill far down.

namloc1980

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120900112#Comment_120900112

Cork-Mallow is a definite bottleneck of the future and there's no consideration in the Review that I can see in relation to that.

spacetweek

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120899022#Comment_120899022

Where on earth did you get £17 billion from ?? It cost £290 million - still dear but a couple of orders of magnitude lower!

https://news.sky.com/story/luton-airports-dart-service-cost-of-uks-most-expensive-rail-line-defended-as-bosses-say-its-value-is-huge-12833185

Pete_Cavan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120896204#Comment_120896204

Wait, a fairly easy electrification and dual-tracking of the existing line between Portarlington and Galway, about 140km, would cost 800-1300m.

The brand new Portadown - Mullingar alignment, 130km measured on Google Maps with a couple of straight lines but likely much longer if looking at realistic route, would cost 1,100 - 1,600m. Thats full route land purchase, all engineering works (which would be enormous as the geography of that route is extremely difficult (its all drumlins and lakes, the only flat parts are underwater), lots of environmental surveys and monitoring, new stations serving towns which have no remaining historic alignment, etc.

Am I reading that right? If so, these costings have no credibility.

timmyntc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120901065#Comment_120901065

Mullingar - Portadown is entirely along the historical alignment. Its not a new alignment, and would not require massive engineering works or anything else. This is all covered in the document. Have you read it?

Overhead electricals and substations is incredibly expensive. The price for that is not at all surprising.

ricimaki

It's very disappointing that this report didn't consider a Cork-Limerick-Galway direct line in any detail. The 3 biggest cities after Dublin in the republic, with several major towns (by Irish standards) along the route mostly ignored, yet Mullingar to Portadown makes it in...

The vast majority of the original alignment between Charleville and Patrickswell has not been built over, and nearly all of the bits which have buildings on them, have open fields at most 20M away. Some realignment to reduce tight curves/increase line speeds seems very straightforward to do.

The existing line between Sixmilebridge and Ennis has been closed due to flooding for several months in recent years. The only way to solve this properly is to reroute the line, with the obvious routing being closer the Shannon. Whilst Shannon airport does not need a station, Shannon town should have one. Include a local bus service in the town serving the airport, industrial and housing areas.

The line speeds along the entire Limerick to Athenry stretch are atrocious, the whole alignment needs works.

I am glad to see twin tracking of the Limerick to Limerick Junction line, as it should improve services from Limerick to Dublin, but feel like its a scapegoat for Limerick to Cork, adding roughly 30km of distance to 2 cities which are only 90km away from each other.

The Cork-Limerick-Galway route should have hourly intercity services which only call at the main Cork, Limerick, Ennis and Galway stations. There should also be regional services calling to all station at least every 2 hours, ideally every hour. A proper service would also include journeys from the Kerry and Nenagh lines.

And finally, electrify all of it. Hydrogen/Battery are ok as a temporary solution, but they are more expensive to buy every time, and require more maintenance and facilities to support them, adding more-and-more to the log term operating costs.

When properly integrated with commuter rail, busses and (sounding less mad when considering some of the other things proposed) trams in each city, this makes a hell of a lot more sense than most of the things mentioned in this report....

bk

What! Just over 10 years after we wasted 100 million on the WRC that nobody uses, you want to shut it down and build a new alignment for hundreds of millions more!!

Not going to happen.

Cork to Limerick via the junction should be a perfectly fine solution, with the double tracking of Limerick, upgrades to Limerick Junction and the proposed 200km/h upgrades, it will make for an attractive service at a fraction of the cost of a whole new alignment.

LuckyLloyd

As always, it’s very easy to come across well by arguing all the ways in which infrastructure spend in Ireland is silly or impractical or too expensive. The penny is not dropping yet in political conversation, but very radical change is required for us to meet our climate action demands by 2050.

Every state sector needs to think in ambitious terms, and work is already underway to overhaul the electric grid and network. This report brings the necessary ambition to the table, this is what it would take to have a robust national rail network, and facilitate real transformative capacity on Intercity and commuter routes.

Directionally, the old trope of the guy who criticises the cost benefit of every proposed infrastructure suggestion is on the wrong side of history. We simply can’t keep kicking the can down the road, not building new infrastructure, leaving it to the next government to figure out.

Once you accept radical change is required, a lot of the menu items presented by Arup in this report look quite reasonable. Like it or lump it, the state needs to start significantly upping its investment in infrastructure that facilitates emissions reducing daily practices. The only reason to not invest in rail infrastructure is because we can credibly say the money is being better spent on non Irish rail projects, energy projects, etc. The Taoiseach coming out to talk about roads in the aftermath of this report is where the delusion lies at present.

marno21

The Taoiseach coming out to talk about roads in the aftermath of this report is where the delusion lies at present.

No it really isn't. The report states that post 36bn in spending we'll manage to have 6% of passenger journeys by rail and 10% of freight moved by rail. That is absolutely tiny and clearly demonstrates that rail is not a silver bullet solution to transport in Ireland.

Secondly, I wish these environmentalists would just come out at this stage and admit they hate cars. At the minute it's climate this, climate that but it's current Government policy to convert to a fully electric fleet powered by renewable energy. Ergo, no emissions. So this argument of not improving the road network due to emissions is nonsense if that's a fully achievable policy. Also, buses travel on roads. So roads are part of the public transport network.

This craic of Ireland needing to get rid of cars to save the planet doesn't wash with a large part of the population, and delivering that message as is currently exercised by the Green Party in a more arrogant, "we know what's good for you" kind of way is not going to win people over.

hans aus dtschl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120902031#Comment_120902031

If you'll excuse my way of phrasing this, I think you may have presented a straw man argument.

Radical change is not what people in the thread appear to be against. Rather the spending of large sums of money for what appear to be minor gains. There's a lot of expensive rail "wins" available that this report specifically considers out of scope. And what's in this document is a mix of stuff that we do and definitely don't need to prioritise.

As one example: Marino point for freight, with an inland freight terminal north of Cork city. It takes some HGV's off the Cork cross-city corridor between the N20 and N25. Sounds great. But how much freight is actually taking that routing? Not much. Most freight in Cork is going to/from Little Island, Ringaskiddy, Midleton, Carrigtohill, Kinsale Road, etc. A comparitively small amount is coming from the N20 corridor. And putting freight on that corridor will be in (manageable?) conflict with the Cork commuter services. So this measure is realistically designed only to try and remove some of the need for an N40 North. There's little other benefit to it. It's a radical measure, yes, but is it an effective measure? Largely no. It's mostly just ticking boxes rather than causing "change". The majority of freight and people will be unaffected. It's just a big expensive token gesture and it possibly hampers real change elsewhere on the network (commuter network etc).

And there's a lot of that in this report: tokens and gestures, mixed in with important and necessary projects.

ricimaki

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120901796#Comment_120901796

I'm sorry but that comment (even if its just a throwaway) is just ridiculous. By that logic, we would never improve anything outside of Dublin and Cork.

Why do you think nobody uses the WRC? It should never have been reopened in its current state. Reports like this should be aiming to highlight issues with the entire network, and at least get improvements on the agenda, even if they won't happen for many decades.

Cork to Limerick via the Junction will be an improvement, sure, but it cannot be the end goal for the route.

This is a report suggesting over €30 billion of investment into the rail network. Heaven forbid it actually calls out the issues with the Cork to Galway route...

Economics101

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120902093#Comment_120902093

Could someone clarify whether the 10% for freight refers to tonnes or tonne-kms? The former number has been used a lot, but it's totally meaningless. Same for passengers: IE says it carries about 50m a year. But this is actual numbers not passenger-kms. Fancy counting someone going over 25kms from Dublin to Killarney the same as someone making the short hop from Dun Laoghaire to Dalkey, whihc is just 1% of the distance.

LuckyLloyd

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120902093#Comment_120902093

I’ve never been accused of being an environmentalist before!

I don’t have strong feelings towards roads. Building more roads in urban areas doesn’t reduce commuter time or improve quality of life.

The conversion of the national car fleet to EVs is decoupled from building more roads. That’s a very central plank of necessary infra investment. But we desperately need to improve public transport capacity in parallel.

At a certain point you have to take a step back and agree it’s a bit of a nonsense that we haven’t been able to add genuinely new rail alignments in the history of the state. It simply has to change.

As a conversation starter, the report is well pitched imo.

marno21

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120902287#Comment_120902287

Apologies, my post turned into a more general one than a direct reply to yours.

I am fully in favour of public transport investment like yourself, but it doesn’t have to come at the expense of roads investment. There’s a 2:1 ratio of public transport: roads in the Programme for Government (I think this should actually be geared more towards public transport given the backlog of projects in that regard).

There’s also a case to be made that not all public transport investment makes sense. For example, WRC Phase 2 but no Bray Head tunnel really calls into question the methodology behind this.

timmyntc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120902264#Comment_120902264

6% of passenger kms would be by rail (before considering demand management measures). Freight is 10% of "rail freight mode share" from eurostat, unclear what that target entails, although in that section they say targeted freight volumes will be anything at least 100km+ in length.

Majority of flows expected to be NW to south

Consonata

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120901796#Comment_120901796

600k used the line in 2022... I don't know if we can say "nobody uses it". Whatever your opinions about WRC north of Galway, Galway/Limerick has been relatively successful. We spend far more money on roads with far worse use than WRC

Ronald Binge Redux

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120902287#Comment_120902287

Indeed. For forty years after independence the population of the State fell, while the then Government of Northern Ireland fell over itself to alienate the population west of the Bann. 'Tod' Andrews and Lord Glentoran were mirror images of each other. Both were steeped in hardline visions of each state, and both were in thrall to a vision of modernity that prioritised the car, but without much of the infrastructure to cope with greater road traffic. What made sense in an era of economic and population decline makes no sense now. I agree that this plan is a start.

Cookiemunster

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120902507#Comment_120902507

Are the breakdown figures for that? How many only used the Limerick to Ennis line? How many only used Athenry to Galway? How many used the Ennis to Athenry section?

Economics101

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120902550#Comment_120902550

Please put this in context. Rail networks in many if not most European countries were severely pruned in the 1950-1980 period. Railways were largely built when the only alternative was horse-drawn. So it was more or less inevitable with the development of the internal combustion engine that rail would cede market share and routes to road. But we now live in different times when basic energy and emissions factors are likely to swing things the other way.

Not need to demonise politicians who lived in very different circumstances.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120902507#Comment_120902507

Remove the numbers from the Oranmore station and that figure would likely drop by over half

Charles Babbage

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120902663#Comment_120902663

I think it is perfectly reasonable to demonise those that closed lines for political reasons to reinforce partition.

bk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120902507#Comment_120902507

You know perfectly well worth I'm talking about. Almost no one uses it to actually travel between Limerick and Galway. The Coach service is at least 30 minutes faster and that is when the line isn't flooded.

I've absolutely no issue with the improvements of commuter services into Limerick on that end and into Galway on that end, it is actually what I want more of, but the section in between was a big waste of money.

Money that instead should have been used double tracking the Limerick and Galway lines and other commuter enhancements.

Some people seem to be obsessed with drawing lines between cities and bringing back the crappy old Victorian rail network. No thought to if the reopenings actually make sense and are good value for money. Will people actually use them? Will they even be speed competitive with the intercity coaches, never mind cars?

I feel we need to focus on spending rail money on where it will actually has the most impact, commuter rail into and around our cities.

Ronald Binge Redux

BK writes: "Some people seem to be obsessed with drawing lines between cities and bringing back the crappy old Victorian rail network. No thought to if the reopenings actually make sense and are good value for money. Will people actually use them? Will they even be speed competitive with the intercity coaches, never mind cars?"

Read the report. It addresses those issues. In particular what they envisage for the direct services to Derry wipes the floor with road journey times.

Smearing and jeering is never a good look.

bk

"As always, it’s very easy to come across well by arguing all the ways in which infrastructure spend in Ireland is silly or impractical or too expensive. The penny is not dropping yet in political conversation, but very radical change is required for us to meet our climate action demands by 2050."

The problem is, this plan doesn't give us radical change at all.

Our funadamental problem is one of demographics. 40% of our population is rural, one of the highest rates in Europe, most Western European countries are 10% or less for comparison.

But worse then that, in other European countries rural populations tend to cluster around small villages or hamlets. Instead in Ireland we have ribbon development, one off houses built up and down every rural road in the country.

Frankly you can spend all the billions you want on reopening rural rail lines. But if people live too far outside the village to walk to the station and there is no footpath anyway, so they have to drive, well frankly they will just drive right past the new rail station and drive to their destination.

Radical change would mean we fundamentally change how people life here in Ireland. It would mean banning all new one off rural homes. It would mean urbanisation and densification of our urban areas. It would mean building more homes and apartments in our cities and towns clustered around rail stations within walking distance of them.

But this plan doesn't really give us any of that, it simply isn't radical at all.

Geuze

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120902828#Comment_120902828

+100%

We need to build up villages and small towns, and severely restrict rural one-off houses.

However, this would be politically very unpopular.

To help move in this direction, I suggest making thousands of 0.25 acre sites available around villages and towns, to encourage people to build their one-off house in a small town, rather than in the countryside.

timmyntc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120902828#Comment_120902828

Banning one off houses and the like without building infrastructure first is cart before horse. Make it attractive to commute by rail or go intercity by rail and more people will do it. Living near a rail station with good service is attractive, in itself it triggers densification around it.

Relying on private cars for transport instead of public transit systems is part of the reason we have such crap ribbon development and one off housing is so prominent. Its a symptom of our infrastructural deficit, rather than the cause.