FourNorth - Quad Track Railway - North Dublin

That’s exactly it. The railway is only just picking up speed, and it takes time to build these projects.

I was at the RDS last week and heard Paul Hendrick, from capital investments at Irish Rail, in a panel discussion.

He was saying Irish Rail have had too many piecemeal projects in the past, where the knowledge is built up on projects, and when those projects are finished, the people usually go abroad as there’s no new projects to be worked on.
He said they need to have a constant supply of projects to work on, to maintain the qualified people available to work on them, and get projects completed on time and on budget.
He also lamented the old cost saving measures of single tracking, previously double tracked lines. Its causing big delays to services now, which will only get worse as increased frequency of services starts to happen.

Off topic, but any nice day trip train journey suggestions? Heading to Geneva in June and wouldn't mind going for a train trip somewhere.

Most of the Swiss rural rail network was built a century and a half ago. It survived when ours didn't because of tourism and the difficulties of accessing mountainous areas by road (that has changed now with improvements to roads and road vehicles now being far superior). They have a lot of single track lines with level crossings, there are even LCs around Zürich. Places like Geneva and Basel are nodes on the trans-continental rail network.

The Swiss network exists in a very different context to Ireland's. Their network has been in existence for a long time and the country has developed around that network, they have continuously been upgrading that network for decades. Ireland on the other hand has mostly developed without much of a rail network and we are trying to create a basic modern rail network from the bones of a few Victorian lines through towns and cities which developed without much recognition of the rail network and whose development often now hampers rail improvements.

Infrastructurally, there isn't a whole lot for us to learn from the Swiss. Where we should be learning from the Swiss is from their SBB app and the ease with which you can buy tickets and find connections between different types of services.

Alo worth noting that the Swiss are spending a fortune building a new tunnel alongside the existing tunnel on the motorway around Zürich to increase it to four lanes in each direction.

Yes the terrain, history, etc of rail in Switzerland is vastly different to Ireland. And it has been rich for more than 100 years - I'd say Ireland has really only emerged from economic doldrums in 1990 - effectively a gap of nearly 200 years, the last time Ireland had been relatively well-off (by European standards of the time, not modern) was the end of the 18th century, before the act of Union. Even the last 30 years of remarkable prosperity was interrupted for 5+ years by the great financial crisis.

But it's not just infrastructure that makes the Swiss system excellent (like I said, there is a surprising amount of single track sections, level crossings, curved platforms, etc) but what everyone should learn from the Swiss is the excellence of their operations. Basic stuff like always having accurate information communicated to passengers whether in stations or on-board trains, trams, etc. - transforms the experience. IE really do themselves no favours in this regard - and it's one of the reasons, I believe that successive governments have been reluctant to provide investment for the heavy rail system. The worry is that even with brand new shiny rail lines and train sets, IE will operate services poorly thus delivering a poor return on investment.

and most importantly the public transport at the stations means you don't get stranded from your final destination.

This is the key for me. When you arrive in a city or town by rail, you know that you can immediately avail of excellent local public transport to actually get to where you want to go. This is why I believe Ireland needs to improve local public transport first.

I'm sceptical of increasing the capacity outside of Dublin BEFORE sorting out local PT issues in the city first. Increasing capacity for getting trains into the city isn't very helpful when there is no capacity to handle extra rail traffic in the city itself.

I think there are lessons to be learnt from how the road network has been transformed in our lifetimes (if you're of a certain age). It would have been daft to build the M3 before the M50, for example. It would have meant funnelling more cars onto the already congested streets of Dublin. By building the M50 first, it provided immediate relief in Dublin and ALSO helped those arriving from the rest of the country. It isn't a us vs them, city vs country thing at all.

Like @bk (I think?), I've switched to coach services getting to Dublin airport, for example, even when I have the option of rail (which I vastly prefer) because being dumped in Heuston with luggage just means the start of an unpleasant, unpredictable, slow slog through Dublin to get to where I want to go. This wouldn't change, for me, even if in some fantasy world there was suddenly high-speed TGV available to me to get to Heuston - I'd still get the coach. The only thing that would make me consider the train again would be if there was decent PT available for the last stage of the trip. For example, if the DART tunnel was there; I could get off in Hueston, descend stairs to get (with 5 minute frequency) a DART and then switch to ML at Tara - in this scenario I would go back to using the train.

And it's not about Dublin, it's about all cities and town. For example going FROM Dublin - I'd like to use the train from Dublin to get, say, to family in Mayo but that means someone picking me up by car in Castlebar. So generally for this sort of trip, it's easier all round to just hire a car. Having said that, one of Ryan's initiatives, "Connecting Ireland" - a huge expansion of local bus services in more rural areas - seems to fly under the radar here. But it's having an big impact on the practicality of getting around and WOULD make me consider the train to Castlebar the next time if relatively frequent onward connections were available to me.

At a guess, with a lack of money in the 80s, it just wasn’t a priority.

Was always very odd tho the relatively long distance the DART travelled non-stop between Killester and Connolly.

I see pinch points that might necessitate three tracks in some sections. Which shouldn't be too much of an issue.

I'm not sure I agree with your optimism for a 30 min service to Belfast though.

WILD suggestion here but with the examples above, would it not be better to cut and cover? An additional track both sides and covered with a park/green area so it reduces the noise of the line and looks better? I don't know how much the line is below street level but looks semi-plausible.

On the topic of encroaching development on the railway line. It seems there is no lessons learned in that department. It's currently CIE policy to develop lands adjacent to Connolly and Heuston into residential and commercial use, but somehow it's also policy to more than double the number of trains at these stations by 2040 without adding new platforms or concourse.