Cross-border review of rail network officially launched

I hope the rail review won't be all about fantasy rail projects all over the country through mostly rural hinterland.

A rail line to Donegal through Northern Ireland is fantasy as long as there is dysfunction in NI and the UK government has no interest on large scale capital spending like that up north.

Cork and Dublin are getting their plans for commuter rail, this plan is an island wide review focused on inter City

There's little to no travel demand between Galway and Derry, a distance of some 300km, that's a long way for a train to go with no demand. Cork and Galway should absolutely be connected by rail within 2h30.

Not sure what advantage an athlone hub has over existing portarlington hub?

There is no chance of elevated rail through the Phoenix Park. Such a tunnel would be a second half of this century project and should only be considered after DART+ Tunnel has been delivered.

In the meantime, there are lots of upgrades of the existing network which can deliver immediate benefits and are also required before such a mega project can happen. It's the same as the old DU mega project, the upgrades proposed under DART+ should have been pursued individually back in the 00s instead of all being rolled up in something so big.

What is needed is a realistic, achievable plan for the next 20 years to optimise the existing network so that it can handle expansion. What happens after that is a matter for the future. Talk about reopening lines through rural areas is only a distraction.

Agree, but my sense is DART+ Tunnel won't ever get delivered unless Intercity services are integrated into the plan. That's the political conundrum faced. It could be sold as a national rail project, showcasing 'Ten-T' Cork to Belfast direct services thanks to some EU funding, whilst linking large parts of the country with the 'national' airport and more direct services to Dublin City Centre. It will also be argued that it supports more frequent and directs InterCity services to Waterford, Limerick and Cork, on top of regional commuter services by freeing up capacity at Heuston Station.

Commuter services in GDA are the hostage to fortune. Working from home etc will be used to justify a reduction in DART+ service capacity through the tunnel, which will supplemented by Intercity services stopping at Heuston and stephens green.

The business case writes itself - climate action, regional balance, accessibility and social inclusion, tourism, international connectivity, TEN-T, economic development.

Mixing Intercity and commuter services on crosscity rail tunnels isn't ideal, but it has been done successfully in constrained environments across Europe busier than Dublin. To see it in my lifetime I'll take the good over the perfect.

Once opened we scale back the InterCity services, increase DART services, and make people interchange instead.

Can Heuston Station cater for much improved InterCity services on the Kildare line? DART+ Options didn't assume much growth in services. A big failing of our approach to rail has been thinking about commuter and intercity services in isolation for such a small country. Now we're left with compromises.

I'll rephrase this - irrespective of the DU tunnel - is there a lost opportunity at New Spencer Dock?

This whole area could be a better location for intercity services rather than commuter / Dart. A very quick connection between Cork-Dublin to Dublin-Belfast.

Great but then we're back to square 1 on Dublin Belfast trains, we need to create a usable service. The only way to achieve that is to build more tracks to separate it from the DART. Do we bulldoze some of Dublins most expensive suburbs or do we build a new greenfield route with some tunnel/ elevated tracks. I never said there should be elevation through the park, cut and cover would be more appropriate. Elevation through the airport campus and perhaps over the M50 and navan Road at ashtown could be considered, it's easier than tunneling at those locations.

Is there any scope for expanding the PPT, allowing for folk travelling from Cork to alight at the future Glasnevin station, allowing for Airport access? Seems like it would be a better future station to set up given how well connected it is (ML to the inner city, Dart to the Docklands and GCD). There is probably limited expansion options for such a line in the future though.

The tunnel most likely can be justified given the enormous benefits it will have on the network in Dublin in terms of carrying capacity and facilitating more journeys. The direct benefits would mostly be for the commuter services but there would also be indirect benefits for intercity services too. I'm not sure why people here are so hung up on intercity services, Dublin and its surrounds are the most populated part of the island, it has to be the focus rather than services from less populated areas.

People transferring from intercity services to commuter services facilitated by the tunnel strengthens the case for the tunnel. Running intercity services through the tunnel only creates problems for little or no benefit and damages the case for the tunnel.

Once Lucan Luas is built (long before a Dart+ tunnel) I believe it'll be very difficult to justify another cross-city route more or less along the same route. Probably better keeping that discussion to the other thread for GDA.

Regarding intercity connectivity, best medium term solution would be a core western DART station such as Clondalkin, which could facilitate intercity connection with the DART network.

We would have to spend a couple of billion south of Drogheda to get the same benefits which could be gotten from spending €100m north of Craigavon. Track replacements, signalling upgrades, passing loops and LC closures would do a lot to improve reliability and reduce journey times. We are talking at most two Dublin-Belfast trains per hour, I have no idea why people think it deserves major invinvestment.

Surely NI being broke is exactly the reason why we shouldn't even be contemplating a mega project to accommodate Dublin-Belfast trains. Any investment made down here would ultimately be undermined by the state of the line up there. Sort things out up there first, even if we have to part fund it.

Dart Underground was planned before Phoenix Park Tunnel was opened and before Bus Connects plan was developed. Lucan Luas to College Green is also likely to be built before it.

Additionally, the New Spencer Dock station will need to be closed and dug deeper to facilitate DU. So there are plenty of reasons going against it.

Sorry, but saying that DU cannot accommodate IC services in addition to Dart services requires ignoring the many precedents of such services found elsewhere in cities across the continent. Additionally, the cross border rail plan will, at the very least, lay out a timetable for the electrification of the Cork-Dublin and Dublin-Belfast lines, so the costing to facilitate such services wouldn't be part of that particular project anyway. And it's not like every station in DU needs to facilitate IC services. The main cost is from quad tracking the tunnel.

Still, I don't expect DU to appear in the plans. I expect the review to make the following recommendations:

• Quad track the approach into Dublin and (possibly) the approach into Belfast for the Enterprise service to reduce conflict with existing commuter services.
• Extend Derry services onwards to Letterkenny and some line speed improvements towards Belfast on this line.
• Electrify Dublin-Cork and Dublin-Belfast.
• Some sort of Cork-Limerick direct service.

This is what a realistic report should look like, if it comes with more bells and whistles then we'll know it's not worth the paper it gets printed on. Of course, the whole notion of making this plan a cross-border project is just a political ruse to ensure it's more hot-air and empty promises that don't get delivered. Will we be left in a situation where national rail projects in the south will get held up by political paralysis in the north? And timelines will be set in such a way that ensures current Governments don't need to act now so that future governments can disown these commitments in future. It's the same type of playbook we've been seeing with Dublin transport infrastructure for the last decade or more. And the argument each time is that circumstances have changed ...even though circumstances in Cork have changed by just as much, yet the Government is willing to stick with the delivery of a decades old CMATS report in that city (presumably because it's less costly).