Cross-border review of rail network officially launched

But that was only the case up to 2 years ago when the majority of transport capital was spent on roads, that's been flipped on its head so (pending a serious reform of ABP) you're likely to see PT investment at a pace similar to road building in previous years.

There's nothing yet to suggest that. There hasn't been a transport project of any significance under construction in Ireland since Luas cross city opened in 2017. I'll happily say I was wrong if I'm on an electric train all the way from Cork to Dublin in 2033.

According to IE, mainline rail electrification will not be DC. 25kV AC is the most likely system.

DC is the more efficient system if you're operating a lot of services in a small area, but over longer distances, resistive losses become a problem with DC systems, so you need more substations. Even if AC is less efficient within the train, the lower transmission losses of AC power more than make up for this.

Trains that can run on both AC and DC are commonplace; less common is dual-system electrification, with both AC and DC overhead.

The 201 series locomotives have an operating life of 30 years, but can be extended to 40. The newest ones are now 28 years old. The carriages used on Cork Dublin are still good for another 20 years. So at some point in the next 10 years this service will need new trains, or it will suffer poorer reliability... those new trains/locomotives should not be diesel powered if we have any intention of meeting our transport co2 emissions targets.

Hard to see the justification for buying new Diesel trains in the current world.

Irish Rail got Connecting Europe Facility funding of 2.6m to study the Dublin Cork Line improvements, decarbonisation formed part of the study. Wouldn't take much to electrify Limerick services as well if do it right and make passive provision as part of the double tracking.

All the red are under electrification, including Derry/Dublin. The Cyan and Green are decarbonised.

Just because it's an aspirational design doesn't mean it's not a firm plan. Plans change, but that doesn't mean we should not make plans. Any significant changes to this 'plan' will need to be scrutinised and justified. The AIRR has set the tone, expectations and priority for the individual projects needed - which will become self fulfilling.

I think you're right, road building typically happens faster as it can immediately be used by anyone with a car, to drive wherever they want. A symbol of freedom. But that's changing and younger generations expect better public transport - being connected to a city with a train and not dependent on a car is now a symbol of freedom.

I am more optimistic about the plan!

It's naïve at best to see the AIRR as some form of binding document. What gets built is what the government wants built. I worked in the HSE for years and was often involved in planning teams for new projects, from bike sheds to hospital extensions to entire residential villages for elder care. Ministers can at the stroke of a pen scrap entire projects which are shovel ready, with nothing more than a vague "circumstances have changed" (without ever elaborating what has changed) or "This project was a great idea, but we want to make it even better by sending it all the way back to the drawing board".

They don't feel bound at all by reviews or recommendations.

Take the example earlier this year where the speed limit review recommended across the board lowering of speed limits; the government were trumpeting it front and centre declaring ""The experts have spoken and we can't argue with them. We have to decrease our speed limits in the interests of safety. It's our only option, we're doing this to save your life etc."

A few weeks later a separate review said we'd need to spend a huge amount on road infrastructure to improve road safety, and out of nowhere the experts were wrong and very fallible. Ministers were declaring that it wasn't a priority for them and there were other ways around it.

They're not in govt (yet) but look at SF too. When the AIRR was published they too came out with the "We came up with these ideas first, and now the experts agree with us, build it all now!" but last week at their WRC event SF were saying that they'd build whatever they wanted regardless of whether it was in the AIRR or not.

@CrabRevolution - really good point about governments restarting plans to make them "better". Perfect is the enemy of good, but we keep falling for this trick - Health is the worst offender, but it happens everywhere.

I would rather see incremental improvements made year by year to make a good system better, rather than have nothing done at all because any works would be superseded by a future "super-project" that has a chance of never happening..

The Rail Review is actually quite good in allowing incremental implementation: it has only a couple of high-cost projects (Cavan-Portadown, Portadown-Derry), but everything else could be divided into pipelines of 1-2 year improvement works. The problem is getting the political will to start filling that pipeline of projects.

In contrast, if a High Speed Rail line had been recommended, that would have been a perfect example of the kind of "jam tomorrow" project that guarantees nothing else gets done.

As an island, we don't have a break-of-gauge problem, and that's the only reason why countries spend money on dual-gauge tracking. But as an island shared by two jurisdictions and two operating companies, we definitely would have a break-of-gauge problem if we tried to to change ours.

From previous discussions, the long term savings (mainly from being able to buy refurbished rolling stock) just don't make up for the enormous cost: you're effectively re-laying the whole length of the network, and if you're going to do that, isn't it better to not end up with the exact same size of network afterwards?

Even if we had a tunnel to the UK in the future it would make more sense to have the standard gauge train terminate in Dublin and have connections to Irish gauge services

This hopeless bit of track gets more attention from rail "activists" than the rest of the ntwork combined.

A lot of people think that railways are a thing of the past, and this fetish only confirms that view.

You have quite the chip on your shoulder about that line. People are quite entitled to post updates without such condescending comments.

The comments on this thread relating to the WRC occur only occasionally and the thread is dominated by discussions on other lines. Even the WRC thread itself is quieter these days.

Do we call people leaving comments on other lines 'activists' with 'fetishes' as well? Of course not.