DART+ (DART Expansion)

Do you think with the new signaling system, the new trains, etc. that the trip times from Greystones/Bray to Malahide/Howth would be any shorter?

I mean, are we saving any time with our trips to the City Centre? or is it all just about the new trains and that's it?

When Liverpool recently went electric with there new Class 666s, journey times reduced by 10% from better acceleration alone.

Chester to Birkenhead: Reduced by 6 minutes (was 35 minutes, down to 29 minutes).

Southport to Hunts Cross: Reduced by 9 minutes (from 64 minutes down to 55 minutes).

The earlier units that the Class 777 replaced were already electric.

That's exactly my point. The new fleet should accelerate much faster than the old fleet, hopefully leading to 10% time savings by itself.

And Dart+ West and South West could be in for substantialy better savings, current rolling stock has extremely slow acceleration.

The D+ FAQs, which IÉ warn were very early modelling and estimates, predict 5-10 mins savings for M3 services (I would expect similar for Maynooth) and 10-15 mins savings for Drogheda-CC. A good chunk of the time savings will be the switch from Diesel to electric, EMUs just perform so much better. However, we also don't know how those times were modelled or how conservative they were. If they were based on existing fleet specs and signalling it could actually save quite a more than that, especially for Drogheda services with the 145km/h top speed. If they took everything into account, 145km/h, ETCS, etc then they could actually be the absolute maximum time savings. We just don't know, but hopefully we will get at least a glimpse into the time savings once the BEMUs start entering service.

It's a bit harder to say for CC-Bray and especially CC-Malahide. I would hope there will be some improvements as rolling stock has just gotten better over the years, and the 8100s are quite old. But even then I am not sure how much it can save. At the very least there will be some time savings for CC-Bray due to the switch to ETCS. My understanding of the current train signalling system is limited by signal line-of-sight which can cause speed restrictions that ETCS wont have with the in-cab signalling. Then also the current train protection system can only enforce certain specific speed limits with its yellow/caution signals on approach to red/danger signals and is also VERY conservative in its braking distances. Where as ETCS is can enforce pretty much any speed based on the distance on the distance to the next danger (and I don't even think ETCS has yellow/caution?) and also takes into account that vehicles specific braking characteristics making it much more efficient.