Dream time. If you had €200 billion what would you spend it on?

Sure Borris is going to build that bridge to Scotland first.

Key Objectives for me would be to cater for population growth to 15M and better distribute it across the country by creating 3 separate hubs (Dublin, Cork, Galway)

Each Hub connects to the other 2 via TGV style rail allowing less than 90 mins commute. The surrounding counties feed the workforce linked by decent road transport with possible dedicated bus roads power by electric buses. This would allow a person living within 50KM to get to work in 1 hour and those living within 5KM get to work 25 mins.

Each Hub has the following

A) A health campus District where all hospital (public and private) services are located connected by light rail to the hub center, this will go a long way to kill the siloed nature of the health services. This would be a multi-year project rebuilding and moving hospitals, existing sites would be repurposed and sold on freeing up valuable land space for economic activities
A Civil Service Campus where all National Government department's offices are based connected by light rail to the hub center, existing sites would be repurposed and sold on freeing up valuable land space for economic activities
C) An Office / Apartment Complex designed with IDA with an incentive to relocate certain key industries into these new campuses. For example (Cork would have pharma, Bio-Tech, ECommerce), (Galway would have (Energy, Agriculture, etc...)

Every 5 years or general election Dail/Seanad relocate to one of the hubs spreading out national politics and taking pressure from Dublin to cater for all things.

Enniskillen to Letterkenny rail link
Dublin to Holyhead road bridge
Belcoo post Brexit anti smuggling border wall
FAI buy out off Aviva Stadium shares
And a new shed for A3 paper when the above 4 are completed on time and within budget

Rayna Slow Salami wrote: »

15m, would take decades even after UI, and with that you've just excluded a city with the combined population of {Cork, Lim, Gal} combined (Belfast 1/3m).

I have no opinion on your post but think your numbers may perhaps be incorrect.

According to Google...
Belfast's population is ~312,000.
Cork City is ~210,000, Limerick City 94,000, Galway ~80,000.

So Cork/Limerick combined perhaps? But then the Cork route is also the Limerick route for the majority of the corridor.

Rayna Slow Salami wrote: »

Or more answers, than questions:

➤ Low or no-maintence (no moving parts, or engineering needed in a vacum)
➤ Yes, pods are small, build area smaller, and cost (eventually) smaller.
➤ Extreme speed = high frequency = large mass of capacity.
➤ Vacums don't really have accidents, controlled automated environments, no issues with leaves on tracks, access or jumpers onto a sealed tube.
➤ Movement is by magnetic fields (in vacum) thus near instant stop/start in any emergency, loaded with sensors so fully automated movement, no drivers needed (no strikes).

No engineering needed in a vacuum? The current largest vacuum chamber in the world is about 40m tall and 30m in diameter and was literally built and is operated by rocket scientists (NASA). And you're talking about maintaining hundreds of km of tube at vacuum as if this was easy? There would be 10,000kg of force on every square meter of the walls of the "tube" - no engineering?

Now we know that a humans bodily fluids will start boiling pretty quickly if exposed to a vacuum so you'll need plenty of engineering also to protect the passengers while shooting along through the vacuum - much more engineering than required for a passenger jet airplane where depressurization will only cause breathing difficulties - and not cause the fluid in your eyeballs to turn to steam.

Hyperloop bascially brings all the cost and complexity of space travel to the problem of transporting people across land. And that (the space angle) is pretty much the only reason Musk is interested in it.

It's nuts and will never work. And if you want to to bet on this, I'm willing to put any amount you want into one of the online escrow accounts.

Rayna Slow Salami wrote: »

What a very strange request, randomer escrow unregulated betting for an in-progress, developing technology with an estimated commercial rollout for 2030 is it now? Rollofeyes.

Anyways... The 1,640-foot-long tube at the Virgin Hyperloop One test site 2017 has already been used for hundreds of runs, including pod at 240mph



Plenty of other companies throwing millions/billions at the technology apart from HL1, e.g. Transpod(Can), HTT(US) and Hardt (EU) each developing their own test tracks. https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/how-long-hyperloop/index.html?gallery=1

India (75mile track) & Saudis have already green lighted the procurement process. Sure, it's likely the 1st passengers won't be until very late 2020's after their planned 2023-25 certifications (not a overnight process).
This will be the biggest change to transport in a century, so won't be a sprint event, more of a gradual marathon over the next decade.

It's absolutely nonsense.

Rayna Slow Salami wrote: »

The Cork figure is <2018, in 2019 it had a massive boundry extension which included many rural areas and commuter towns/districts, likely not 'city' zones as such.

Doing the same to Belfast would result in an easy 1/2million+.
Via the addition of (very) nearby Lisburn City (45,000 or 120,00{for district}), N'Abbey (85,000) and maybe even Bangor town (60,000).

I appreciate that you may not know the Cork area well but the Cork boundary extension wasn't an inclusion of distant urban areas, though I appreciate that it can potentially look like that.
The boundary change certainly did include rural areas. But these naturally did not increase the population by any significant amount. Areas which were already de facto part of the city were included, but many areas which were not part of the city (but are part of the "mertropolitan" area) were left out.

Your Lisburn, Bangor, N'Abbey (maybe Newtownards?) would perhaps be the equivalent to Cobh, Carrigaline, Carrigtohill, Midleton, Little Island, Passage etc. Urban areas within 10k of the city itself and not truly part of the city.

If you mean the "Metro Population", then absolutely the Belfast metropolitan population would probably be the equivalent of Cork Limerick Galway and probably even more! But then we come back to rail catchment areas which is a whole different ballgame altogether.

Rayna Slow Salami wrote: »

The Cork 124,391(at 2016) had an overnight 'x5 area increase' in extension size.

I appreciate you may have never been to Belfast, but N'Abbey (very high density area, with tower blocks just North of city), really isn't the same place, nor direction as more distant, smaller N'Ards town.

Perhaps the view from space will better highlight to you the actual population density of the Island. As you can see likely '1/2m' catchement areas would be Belfast (Greater), Dublin (Central only) or the whole of Gal-Lim-Cork and perhaps Waterford also.



Any future transport (across decades) should consider whole Island urban catchements (New Alba 5.5m might even get their bridge by then to Larne). A single HSRail/HL line Dub to Limerick might suit best in this case (with connections therefrom to both Gal&Cork).

As you can see Cork (urban area) resembles somewhere smaller in the North, such as the Craigavon urban area (which includes closely located Lurgan, Portadown and Central Craigavon). Cork barely even registers on a sat view of Europe.

I presumed you meant Newtownards because you mentioned other towns 10km from Belfast!
Yes I'm all for prioritising our 200 billion euro spend in a hypothetical "Belfast, Republic of Ireland" metropolitan area, but forgive me if I feel you've made a handful of extra leaps here slightly beyond the reunification question.

The hyperloop will never work. No amount of money will make the stupid thing anything other than a joke.


Suffice it to say I doubt that there's going to be widespread hyperloop travel any time soon. So even though the premise is a fantasy, ideas for how to spend a mythical €200bn would have to be limited to something that would be in any way realistic.

This would be my list.

• I would start with the full DART expansion plan but with some major exceptions - the DART underground would be widened to 4 tracks with the outer two being Intercity. This way, continuous services Cork-Dublin-Belfast and regional combinations like Dundalk-Portlaoise/Athlone etc could be put in place with Intercity stations being built underneath Heuston and Pearse, along with the inner tracks and DART stations/platforms.
  Obviously, that would require replacing the 201 class locomotives with dual mode (diesel plus 1500VDC electric) and new or retrofitted generator vans for the Enterprise and Dublin/Cork trainsets that could also shut down the diesel generators.
• Continue working to straighten and thusly speed up the current lines between Cork/Dublin and Dublin/Dundalk/Belfast, in staged upgrade works. New build sections of line where large scale speed upgrades are not possible. Aim for 125MPH running from Cork to Dublin and from Dublin to at least the Northern border.
• Long term, electrify Dublin-Cork and Dublin-Belfast. Possibly with a changeover to 25kV/AC South of Kildare and North of Drogheda.
• After that it would be a proper Metro system for Dublin, starting with a full, grade separated, high platform, 4-8 car system running from Swords to Bray. Full schedule all the way. Feasibility studies to be started into other Metro line proposals that may be helpful. Additional Luas lines with the old plans in A Platform For Change of 2000.
• Feasibility study into a new railway line from Dublin via the Airport to Derry. Following the same rules as other railways from Dublin, the line would provide commuter services locally, and be regional/intercity on the line beyond.
• New railway tunnel between Greystones and Bray, twin track electrified.
• New railway tunnel between Bray and Dublin City Centre, allowing Wexford/Wicklow services to avoid crawling along the current line which is slow, indirect, crawling with DARTs and cannot be expanded.
  With these, Greystones DART and long distance services would share a new tunnel under Bray head, continue sharing Bray train station, but then North of Bray separate into fast and slow lines to continue into the city.
• Either continue the Bray-CC tunnel out to Maynooth or find a way to quad track the Maynooth line so that Sligo/Longford trains do not have to wait behind Maynooth locals.
• The M20 between Cork and Limerick. Yesterday.
• Full implementation of the CMATS plan, electrify the Cork Suburban railway network between Mallow and Cobh/Middleton and build a Cork Luas. Build the ring roads and the inner distributors called for in that plan.
• Extend motorways from Cork in all directions. On the N25 upgrade or build new road at least as far as Youghal, bypassing it. Motorway along the N71 and N22.
• Upgrade the sections of N2, N3, N4 and N7 in the Dublin area to motorway, allowing travel on motorways unbroken from any approach road via the M50 to any other long distance route. Construct any alternative routes required.
• Change the 2+2 standard to require concrete barriers instead of cheese-grater wire in place now, use this on all future 2+2s and retrofit all the existing ones.
• Upgrade/new build motorway from the N4 junction 13 to beyond Longford, with a 2+2 upgrade of the N5 in its entirety and the N4 from the N5 split to Sligo. Alternatively, continue the M4 to a new terminus South of Carrick-On-Shannon (perhaps to the junction of the N61 and R370) and construct new 2+2s from that point for the N4 and N5 to Boyle and Frenchpark respectively.
• Immediately bypass any town or village on a national primary road.
• Increase allocations for upgrades on the national secondary roads, many of which are still 16th century goat tracks. Focus improving curvature and sight lines, adding hard shoulders, and bypassing towns en-route.
• Work on a cycling strategy, creating cycle lanes as needed on streets that have been bypassed and where there is no great need for vehicular traffic.
• Use any money leftover to build social housing for working people in Dublin and other major cities as needed.