High speed Rail

Distances are too short and the cost is too high! Cork is under 3 hours anyway.

lawrencesummers wrote: »

Is it to short? Why so?
If a train journey could take 1 hour and driving 3 hours then surely there would be scope for investigating it?

Journey time is only one consideration as well, traffic, environment, safety, future proofing, access, satellite towns, commuting etc etc are all direct benefits surely?

Cork is really the longest journey with a lot of passengers and one of the few that is profitable I believe. I imagine they'll get faster trains on it in due course but we're never going to TGV territory for the sake of one line.

the Healy Raes would want it coming to Kilgarvan

lawrencesummers wrote: »

Is there not a possibility of a Cork - Dublin - Dublin airport - Belfast line?

Sure brexit and the north and all that, but as the 3 largest cities on a relatively small island when you ignore the political stuff it could make a lot of sense.

I'd love to see that cork Belfast rail line... But it'd be stupidly stupidly expensive.... You'd pretty much need to build a whole new líne (ala HS2 in England), or 4 track the current line and pendalino or something...
The current cork Dublin is hardly over used at the moment... Its one departure an hour (more or less)

circadian wrote: »

I think they cost or building it is off-putting, however I think distances are perfect. South Korea has an excellent high speed rail system and is slightly larger in area than Ireland. They built their initial system out of old TGV stock before finally upgrading, so there are options.

they have literally 10 times our population.

lawrencesummers wrote: »

Is there not a possibility of a Cork - Dublin - Dublin airport - Belfast line?

Sure brexit and the north and all that, but as the 3 largest cities on a relatively small island when you ignore the political stuff it could make a lot of sense.

Dublin - Belfast has a lot of trains. Separate tracks on different alignments would have to be built for high speed rail. It would not follow the same route.

We don't need high speed rail. Quad tracking, upgrades such as strengthening the Curragh, sections of Mallow - Cork and 125mph would be a game charger here. Maybe a new line between Cherryvile Jct and Portlaoise to bypass Portarlington but not sure if the gain would be worth it.

It wouldn't break the bank to get the following journey times.

DUBLIN -
Cork & Galway 2hrs
Belfast, Waterford, limerick, Wexford 1.75hrs
Sligo, Kerry, Westport 2.5hrs

lawrencesummers wrote: »

I would consider those times ‘high speed’ - faster than a car is high speed for me.

How would you propose a 125 mph "high speed train" doing Cork to Dublin in an hour? It's an impossible pipe dream.

The fact is I can currently drive from home in North Cork to most places in the Dublin area quicker than I can do it by train. That's because I don't live in Mallow Station and I don't go to Dublin to visit anywhere near Heuston Station. Once the M20 is built, I'll be able to do it much quicker than train currently can.

Marcusm wrote: »

Years is the answer you are looking for! Only in limited places would there be sufficient space to add additional paths (ie sets of tracks). This would be further reduced if the line was to call at many stations.

If cork Dublin,was being upgraded to a much higher speed where would you stop on this fast route,cork, Mallow? limerick junction.? Portlaoise? M50? And heuston...
I'm assuming each stop will cost near 10 mins between acceleration, dwell time and acceleration...

lawrencesummers wrote: »

Has Irish rail / the Gov ever considered high speed rail?

If Cork - Dublin could be done in an hour it would take a lot of cars of the road, and make an already busy line super efficient, profitable?? and useful. Currently the time it takes to drive a car is the same as the time it takes to go by train.

Presumably Galway - Dublin would be under an hour and it would make commuting by train realistic for much larger areas of the country.

Construction costs may not be as high as other countries as it would use existing land / stations etc.

There are two high speed rail projects ongoing in the US, and China has built an extensive network so the figures / experience are available.

Anyone any ideas? It strikes me as a big investment with an even bigger pay off if you could have a massive change in how people commute between the two biggest cities?

Many of the existing routes/stations would not be suitable and in many cases require stations to be knocked down or significantly altered plus additional land would be required because many parts of existing routes would need to be altered.
High speed is great but 100mph would be acceptable here if the infrastructure supported it.

Doubling of Portarlington to Athlone combined with removal of all farm and most level crossings capable of 100mph could possibly deliver 10-15 minutes saving to Galway/Westport. Each train crossing is about 6 minutes for one of the services involved. Removing farm crossings between Athlone-Galway and closing certain crossings to allow 100mph and that's potentially another 10 minutes.

Realignment of a few sections between Athy/Carlow and removal of farm crossings between Cherryville and Carlow should enable a constant 100mph section.

Sections of 100mph on Galway/Waterford today are just token gestures with schedules largely based on 80mph because in the few cases you manage to reach 100mph you have to slow to 80mph almost immediately generally because of a farm crossing. 80, 100, 80, 100, 80 and maybe the odd 90 is the set up today all within 10 miles or so...

Ireland is a small country , frequency is as important as speed. With an eye to the future Ireland will benefit from autonomous vehicles/technology either road based or rail. With rail there would be a huge benefit if you could have single carriage driverless trains every 10-15min rather then something that only goes every hour or 2...one can dream! , high speed rail just doesn't seem to be commercially viable

IE 222 wrote: »

That's not high speed. It's a relatively normal intercity speed. High speed in today's terms is 200+mph.

indeed and still it couldn't do Cork to Dublin in an hour. IE can't manage 2 hours curently

Del.Monte wrote: »

And this necessitates a full motorway how?

Motorway standards remove all side road entrances and other hazards on national roads. I've not seen the specs but I'm assuming it's largely going to be dual carriageway with on/off ramps. If the current road is heavily used then it'll need upgrading one way or another to make it safer. You could argue that a regular dual carraigeway would suffice but you'll still have on road entrances across 2 lanes with multiple roundabouts.

Motorway makes more sense.