Can Anyone Tell Me Why a Heavy Rail Link to Dublin Airport Can Not be Built in the Short Term?

prunudo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121889742#Comment_121889742

Good point about the flight path.

Consonata

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121889742#Comment_121889742

Finglas -> Broadstone could also be converted to Metro Grade right? If it were so desired, depending on how they did the Broombridge -> Finglas section

KrisW1001

No, Luas Finglas will be on-street.

Charlemont-Sandyford was an exception: an upgrade to metro is not what normally happens to tram lines.

blanch152

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121889678#Comment_121889678

The land reservations in the Blanchardstown area are still there.

Sam Russell

To answer the OP question: - In Ireland we have the Irish gauge of 1.6 metres for heavy rail and standard gauge for Metro and Luas. The two are completely incompatible. Because the intention is to build a metro line passing through the airport, heavy rail will not be considered..

There is no intention of any other rail link to the airport before the metro is complete. Now the further complication is that the metro will be fully automatic with no drivers and passenger doors to prevent passengers getting injured. This is incompatible with heavy rail.

ArcadiaJunction

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121893740#Comment_121893740

That was not my original question. The gauge issue - loading, track or otherwise was not what I asked. I ask for a reason why a heavy rail link in the short term is such a terrible idea.

bk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121893904#Comment_121893904

Because there is no capacity on the northern line to serve the airport via such an airport spur.

You could do an airport to Clongriffin shuttle, but the journey time from the city would be terrible, you'd be much quicker to the airport via Dublin Express, etc. using the port tunnel.

Plus you couldn't actually build something like this quickly, it would take years of planning, ABP, etc. Even if you started today, it likely wouldn't open before Metrolink would, making it pointless.

This route was previously studied and was rejected as being a poor option.

Furze99

If / when the real impact of the price of aviation fuel and travel carbon taxes are felt and only a matter of time, then demand will drop to such a level that the existing links will be excessive.

KrisW1001

... which is why it'll be good that Metrolink was not built to serve Dublin Airport, but rather to connect Swords and North County Dublin with the city. The Airport was a bonus.

spillit67

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121894170#Comment_121894170

Very unlikely. This is one of the stupid ones that climate change activists focus on. There is no realistic substitute.

Furze99

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121909202#Comment_121909202

Correct, no realistic substitute which only means that the cost of flying will rise & rise and this will dramatically reduce consumer demand. Flying will be used for business and political purposes with smaller aircraft.

Hence no need to waste money on underground facilities to Dublin airport. Put them above & below ground where they are needed, in population centres.

deirdremf

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058313188/can-anyone-tell-me-why-a-heavy-rail-link-to-dublin-airport-can-not-be-built-in-the-short-term

Very simply put, because the government doesn't want to.

A more important reason is WHY don't they want to. And here you have lots of stuff, I'll put a few thoughts below.

1. The Irish public service in general doesn't like providing services, every new service has to be fought tooth and nail for.
2. Some vested interest doesn't want it as it might decrease their profits.
3. In the current government, the Greens are concerned that a blade of grass somewhere might be disturbed by the project.
4. Someone with a connection to somebody has property in the way and doesn't want it to be affected.
5. Somebody with a connection to someone doesn't own property on the route, and so they won't make a killing as their property won't compulsorily purchased, but if a substantial deviation to the route was included they would.

deirdremf

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121909202#Comment_121909202

... but it is the sort of thing that you could expect from a middle manager in the Public Service to come out with. An excuse to do nothing, winning them a pat on the head from their higher-ups, a safe pair of hands for promotion to Assistant Secretary some time in the future.

Consonata

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121909321#Comment_121909321

What a load of nonsense. The Dart Spur project has been examined by DCC and Fingal and by external consultants, all of which has indicated it has pretty poor value for money. Particularly given it can only functionally exist as a shuttle service to Clongriffen, and the existing constraints of the dual track on the Northern Line.

deirdremf

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121909455#Comment_121909455

What did I tell you, the Upper Echelons are against it - Poor Value For Money, one of the everyday excuses in any Irish government department. Let's not look at the children's hospital while saying it.

Consonata

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121909497#Comment_121909497

Indeed. Spending in the Billions for 3km of new track, versus the Metrolink project which serves Swords and beyond is indeed very poor value for money. If you built the spur and didn't expand it to 4 tracks from connolly, and do the various improvements you would need to do to make it worth it, from the city centre it would be faster to take a bus to the airport than doing 2/3 changes on a Dart service.

markpb

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121909497#Comment_121909497

I think you’re missing the point, maybe deliberately so. It is not a good idea for all the practical operational reasons that have already been explained here. There’s no point building something that would be so poor that people wouldn’t want to use it or that would make the existing Dart or Northern Commuter services worse.

The actual problem is that lack of capacity on the northern line. That limits this project, it limits darts, it limits and slows commuter and intercity trains. In any other city, the northern line would be at least four tracks to allow for segregation of services. That’s the real problem that should be addressed but there’s no easy or cheap way of doing that so no one is doing anything about it.

spillit67

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121909218#Comment_121909218

No evidence for that.

This is one of the last things that governments will properly disrupt because of the lack of alternative options.

Furze99

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121909938#Comment_121909938

Ever hear of supply & demand?

gjim

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121909218#Comment_121909218

I wouldn't be so sure.

Back in the day, I had myself convinced that electric cars could never practically replace internal combustion vehicles (power density, weight and all that) nor that batteries could have any role in utility scale storage (way too expensive).

Both these predictions turned out to be spectacularly wrong. I had underestimated the unstoppable power of mass production - in this case that of batteries - leading to a 97% price decline in 30 years (and seemingly continuing - CATL or BYD recently announced a 40% price cut for some of their battery lines later this year) and constantly improving chemistries. EV range is doubling every 7 years which means they are constantly eating into applications currently only possible with ICE.

One trump card for electric is that the cost of "fuelling" an EV is a fraction of that of buying fuel for ICE vehicle. And the aviation industry is fixated with fuel costs - so there is absolutely no way I would bet against electric aviation being a thing within 10 or 15 years particularly for shorter flights - say less than 90 minutes.

Like with cars, there will be niche applications where the tech will not initially work (medium and long haul), but it's a mistake to think that just because the technology cannot do 100% of what a previous technology could do, it won't succeed. The fact that horses can do lots of things that cars can do didn't stop Henry Ford.

KrisW1001

Weight is the issue for aircraft. Liquid fuel has the huge advantage that it disappears as you use it, so on average, any plane only has to carry a little over half its fuel weight.

Batteries, on the other hand, stay just as heavy when they're empty as when they're full. Plus, the energy density of batteries is still far below liquid fuels, and the laws of physics suggest that they will never get close.

For a comparison of just how light planes have to be, an A330 widebody has a maximum takeoff weight of about 240 tonnes: that's the plane stuffed with passengers and cargo. That's the weight of about five to six empty train carriages, or eight to ten empty double deck buses.

Furze99

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121910085#Comment_121910085

Perhaps, perhaps not. Fact is that requires a lot of energy to shift metal boxes around in the sky filled with humans going on day trips and weekend breaks and that all eats up resources in one form or another. It's going to need a big jump in ideas and physics to keep this show on the road. I don't think flight is going away but just that it'll become more the preserve of the wealthy & military etc

loco_scolo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121910249#Comment_121910249

Aviation accounts just for 2-3% of global emissions. Meanwhile tourism, directly and indirectly, provides about 10% of global GDP and supports 100s of millions of jobs globally. The idea that aviation is going to disappear is nonsense. No government is going to let it happen.

Enough can be done in other sectors to get emissions down until aviation can find a solution. Current technology saves about 20% of fuel versus older tech. This can be reduced by another 20%+ through sustainable aviation fuels (SAF).

If you think low cost travel for the masses is going to disappear, you're mistaken. It will become more expensive but not to the point that only the wealthy and military can afford it.

gjim

Small electric aircraft are already available to purchase.

Up to 3 or 4 years ago, the consensus was electric could scale at most to a 20 passenger aircraft with a range of about 200 miles - anything beyond would require hydrogen, biofuels or syngas. Now there are companies working on 90 passenger/500 mile electric aircraft - admittedly at an early stage of development - but it shows their engineers think it's feasible.

And of course, all these companies working on such aircraft realise that weight is their biggest issue. I saw one calculation that with current tech, it would take 35T of batteries to power a fully loaded 737 (about 70T).

Sounds hopeless until you appreciate the power of exponential growth - both in terms of affordability and performance.

Battery performance, along the most important metrics such as power/weight ratio, has improved more slowly but still exponentially - roughly 8% a year over the last 20 years or so. If this trend continues, then the 35T of batteries required to power a 737 will fall to 17.5T in 7 years time, 9T in 14 years time, 4.5T in 21 years, etc. You can see where this is going.

In terms of costs (the bottom line for commercial aviation), battery prices have decreased exponentially over the last 3 decades - now costing 3% of what they did since li-ion started to be mass produced - representing nearly 14% price decrease year-after-year for 30 years. I see no obvious reason why this trend/progress would suddenly stop at this point in history.

deirdremf

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121909772#Comment_121909772

If it was up to me, I'd build a tunnel from the city centre to the airport, and continue overground to Swords.

For passengers, it doesn't matter whether it runs on standard guage or Irish gauge.

If we are talking about facilitating goods transport by air, then clearly an Irish gauge rail link might be helpful.

Personally, I don't care which the solution is - but my points about the Public Service attitude are the same in either case.

loco_scolo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121910863#Comment_121910863

You've just described Metrolink, no?

spillit67

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121910024#Comment_121910024

This is an imaged scenario by you of increasing costs.

The point I am making is that it will only ever be tinkering because there is no substitute for flying beyond trains in certain continents.

blanch152

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121909497#Comment_121909497

The Children's Hospital at its final cost is far better value for money than a spur to the airport from Clongriffen would be.

That you don't understand that, tells a lot.

Furze99

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121912031#Comment_121912031

I don't think I'm imagining much really! Passenger flight has only been around for say 7 decades and costs were high for at least the first 4 of those. Cheap flights are a relatively recent thing even in the airline industry and the airline industry is still in infancy compared to other forms of transport.

What did people do before that for centuries? I grew up when it was perfectly normal and everyday to get the ferry from Dublin or Dunlaoighre across to Holyhead and the train onwards. Dublin airport was there but few flew, except maybe once a year on a sun holiday or if emigrating to US etc

It's perfectly likely that this is where we'll go back to, albeit with faster ferries etc.

spillit67

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121914442#Comment_121914442

Nope. We have the technology now.

It isn’t happening.