No more HSS

LiamoSail wrote: »

The Swift wouldn't fit on that berth as it is, not sure if the ramp or gangway's could be used either. Rectifying that would require major investment.

Additionally, the Swift carries very little. Any marginal increase in revenue Irish Ferries may experience as a result of operating out of DL would be dwarfed by the costs associated with fitting the berth and ramp out to fit the ship, and of course by the additional cost in employing additional staff and running another base.

Add to that the port dues being substantially higher in Dun Laoghaire, it won't work.

Irrelevant anyway, I would think The swift is very unlikely to still be around in three years time

Simon2015 wrote: »

Is it going to be destroyed ?

Irish Steve wrote: »

I was on the first HSS trip back in the day, and while it was a fast service, the designers were way too optimistic about the sea conditions that it could operate in, and that was a very big nail in the coffin of the HSS services, especially on the Irish Sea, which can be very hostile at times. A HSS crossing in bad weather was not a nice experience, especially if you had the misfortune to have to sit right at the edge of the ship, the vertical movement was like being in a high speed lift for most of the 2 hours, there were a few seats down near the back that didn't move so much, but getting one wasn't easy, they tended to be full pretty early on with people who knew the score on the HSS.

A fast service is nice, but the most important aspect of the service is that it has to be reliable, and that (for me) was the downfall of the HSS.

That said, the reliability was not helped at all by the crazy concept of having to reverse the thing on to the berth in Holyhead, getting it through the gap going backwards was never easy, and in some winds, it just wasn't a safe exercise. I never did explore the reasons why it wasn't turned inside the harbour, I'm guessing that there would have been too much work involved in getting adequate depth inside the area to make it possible.

And yes, the other killer was the operating cost, it used large quantities of fuel to achieve the speeds it was designed for, and the increasing numbers of low cost flights from UK airports didn't help the economics at all.

That said, my (elderly) parents prefer to travel by rail and fast ferry from the UK rather than endure the aggravations of the security checks at the airports, even though it takes longer to make the journey, but that's not always easy, the timings of the rail connections are not as friendly as they used to be in the days when the ferry and the rail services were operated by the same company, and the speed of both rail links to the UK side of the ferry routes are not good, and getting to Dublin Port without a car isn't easy either.

Another issue that's not often mentioned is that for some drivers, the HSS was too fast, the time on the ferry wasn't long enough to qualify as a "rest break" for commercial drivers, which meant they then had to take rest breaks off the ferry, again, not so much of a problem on the Irish route, but it was a big factor on the Harwich- Hook of Holland route.

There were also problems with large wake waves when they were moving at high speed, which caused a number of upsets of small craft when they were operating in restricted waters.

The last issue with HSS was that it didn't lend itself to being loaded with unaccompanied trailers, which are an increasing proportion of the RoRo freight that is carried, so that was another factor that led to the decreased use of the HSS.

It will indeed be interesting to see if Irish Ferries retain the Swift on the Dublin route, on the occasions I've used it, it seems to be well subscribed, but the advent of additional traditional ferries on the route may well have changed the balance, though the lack of foot passenger facilities on the Epsilon is a significant limitation, as if the evening Swift doesn't operate, the next crossing is nearly 10 hours wait in Holyhead, which is NOT fun as there's very little in the way of facilities in the terminal, and not exactly a lot to pass the time with in Holyhead itself.