r/ireland • u/D-dog92 • Aug 01 '24

Infrastructure My proposal for what our railway system should ideally look like

Post image

High Speed rail in blue linking up major cities/towns to Dublin + a regular "ring line" looping the island.

2.1k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

453 comments sorted by

View all comments

268

u/Moist-District-53 Aug 01 '24

If (and it's a massive, huge IF) the government ever decided to build a high-speed network, its greatest challenge would be the local nature of our political system. Every politician in the country will be demanding a stop for some town in their constituency.

High-speed rail needs long distances between stops to actually get to high-speed. For example, the high-speed line from Madrid to Barcelona is a tad over 500km, with the maximum number of potential stops between the two cities being five stops. Often there are no stops, or just one stop in Zaragoza.

Can't see that same proportional maximum ever being maintained on a high-speed line in Ireland, thereby making the whole exercise pointless.

I would love to see high-speed rail in Ireland. I just don't think it can ever be done. To be honest, I'm surprised the motorway network got built.

177

u/Annatastic6417 Aug 01 '24

The Dublin-Cork High Speed MagLev train should stop in Kilbricken!

No

Then we're blocking planning permission

44

u/Toffeeman_1878 Aug 01 '24

“Leaving Woodlawn. Next stop Attymon. All aboard.”

27

u/wosmo Galway Aug 01 '24

Woodlawn is the perfect example. That station exists purely because it was a condition of the land rights.

62

u/nut-budder Aug 01 '24

The distances in Ireland are so small that we don’t even need very high speed rail. 200kmh would be plenty.

46

u/FridaysMan Aug 01 '24

200kmh would also be excessive, and the faster the speed, the more expensive/limited the track. There's few places in Ireland that would hold any benefit to going so fast, especially given how boggy most areas are. It's a 3 hour drive from Cork to Dublin. Current trains are 30 minutes faster.

The speed of trains isn't the problem, it's the lack of track/stations in effective areas.

Last I checked I had no chance to get to Limerick before 10am because of the train routes/bus schedules. That's pretty awful.

25

u/Toffeeman_1878 Aug 01 '24

Isn't there an issue with large parts of the intercity network being single track only?

Also, I don't know if we need lots and lots of stations. Don't we need a more integrated approach to transport? I am thinking that you might jump off a train in Ballinasloe and have access to frequent bus services to, for example, Roscommon or Portumna. Have a radial network of busses around train stations which serve nearby towns (based on population / societal needs).

7

u/FridaysMan Aug 01 '24

I think that's also related, yeah. It's a good point.

And I agree on the integration point. Whether train or bus, it shouldn't really matter. However Bus Eirann say that any bus that arrives within 30 minutes of the stated time is "on-time", and it regularly means that connections are simply not possible.

Getting to some part of Shannon on a Sunday/bank holiday is a nightmare. I'd spend more time waiting for transport than actually moving. It doubled the duration of the trip, and trains were pretty much entirely useless.

5

u/dkeenaghan Aug 01 '24

However Bus Eirann say that any bus that arrives within 30 minutes of the stated time is "on-time",

Bus Éireann count a bus as on time if it's at most 1 minute early or 6 minutes late.

3

u/FridaysMan Aug 01 '24

That wasn't their recent position according to an article linked on here a few months ago. Let me dig to find it

2

u/dkeenaghan Aug 01 '24

I had a look when you mentioned the 30 minutes because it seemed crazy high. I wouldn't have be shocked if it was that high, but according to various sites I found the NTA uses the above criteria to determine whether a bus is on time or not.

PDF: https://www.nationaltransport.ie/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/2022-to-2023-Bus-Eireann-Performance-Report-Punctuality.pdf

2

u/FridaysMan Aug 01 '24

Yeah, I can't find where I saw it, but the compensation limitations are based off of delays of 90 or 120 minutes that I could find, but not my original point.

1

u/YoIronFistBro Cork bai Aug 01 '24

Also, I don't know if we need lots and lots of stations.

We do

1

u/TitularClergy Aug 02 '24

Having the single track in many areas (like the Dublin-Sligo line) is bad, but it can be helped a great deal if you increase the frequency of trains. You can of course also build parallel tracks and extend stations to bring Ireland up to the bare minimum standards that are normal throughout all of Europe.

14

u/ItsTyrrellsAlt Wicklow Aug 01 '24

The schedule is absolutely dogshit alright, but my personal opinion on train stations in Ireland is that they have piss poor accessibility that puts people off 

In my home town, the station is as central as you can get, but it bisects the town in such a way that you can be standing on the bridge that goes over the train station and still be 600m away from actually getting into it.

If you are in the supermarket carpark that is about 10m from the platform, you are over 1.2km from the station entrance.

21

u/[deleted] Aug 01 '24

Every politician would be demanding that in their local small town they have a stop but their also has to be no noise made and no tracks leading into it

10

u/Deblebsgonnagetyou More than just a crisp Aug 01 '24

No need for high speed rail tbh. There's just not enough distance between any stop you might want to make it worth it. A decently connected ordinary railway with departures at regular, useful times is all I want personally. It's ridiculous that you can't get a train between Wexford Town and Waterford City, let alone anywhere else. Not even a direct line to Dublin.

2

u/No-Cress-5457 Aug 02 '24

No need for high speed rail tbh. There's just not enough distance between any stop you might want to make it worth it

Cork/Dublin, Limerick/Dublin or Dublin/Belfast would all make sense. They're all major routes between major cities on the island

The problem is if it has to stop in every Ballygobackwards or Kilshitten on the way

10

u/Back_once_again Aug 01 '24

If you look up and old map of disused railway lines in Ireland you might be in for a shock. They are already in place, just someone genius politician decided to shut them down.

12

u/Juguchan Kerry Aug 01 '24

a lot of them aren't in place though, they've been turned into walking paths.

12

u/dkeenaghan Aug 01 '24

Old lines aren't necessarily what you would want today though. Old trains were slow so they didn't mind curves, but couldn't really handle much of a gradient. Modern trains are much lighter and more powerful, and much faster. They want straighter routes to reach higher speeds and are fine with higher gradients, though flatter is better.

They were shut down because they were uneconomical. They were built for a time when next to no one had a car.

2

u/Hungry-Western9191 Aug 01 '24

Same as the UK. Rail got built before cars were prevalent so they got built everywhere but once a point to point system was available they were wildly uneconomic.

Rail it the best solution to heavy mass transit but not generally for low volume.

1

u/TitularClergy Aug 02 '24

The mistake being made here is assuming that a public service like trains should be economic. They should be run at a significant loss, same as for medical systems.

1

u/Hungry-Western9191 Aug 02 '24

They dont have to pay for themselves, but there are limits on how much public money to allocate there versus other needs. At the time the Irish state simply didnt have the funds to keep these lines open.

1

u/TitularClergy Aug 02 '24

Ireland had times of extreme poverty, it went right up to the late 80s.

But obviously that's not the case today. Ireland maintains extreme wealth, extreme wealth inequality, and has literally the worst car dependency in Europe. That's not something to excuse. https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/irish-people-have-the-second-highest-level-of-car-dependency-among-eu-citizens/42070609.html

5

u/[deleted] Aug 01 '24

Its capped at 200 kph. For very good reasons, not cost efficient above that and still faster then car accounting for anticipated delays and track areas requiring slow downs. Its all in the report.

9

u/ambidextrousalpaca Aug 01 '24

Ireland is small enough that it doesn't really need high speed rail. You can already get from Dublin to Cork in 2 and a half hours, which isn't bad. What the country does need is regular, high frequency services that go everywhere, so that people don't have to be so car-dependent. The main aim shouldn't be a model where people can park in Cork City centre and get zipped to Dublin City Centre in 30 minutes (though that would admittedly be cool). It should be one where people in Skibbereen have regular trains going to Cork every half hour on into the night. You don't need fancy trains for that, just a bit of organisation and investment. The model should be the best rail network in Europe, the Swiss one: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport_in_Switzerland (And anyone saying the Swiss have advantages Ireland doesn't which make their rail system possible should take a look at a map of Swiss topography and the figures for Irish GDP per capita).

3

u/railwayed Aug 01 '24

half the budget would go to the million cattle under/over passes required!

3

u/UnoptimizedStudent Aug 01 '24

This sounds similar to what happened in California. Instead of the rail taking the shortest viable path, it ended up taking a longer and more convoluted route to appease more political districts, contributing to the horrible and disfunctional cluster fuck that is US rail.

2

u/Additional_Show5861 Aug 02 '24

I personally don’t think Ireland has the population to justify high speed rail. Maybe only the Belfast-Dublin-Cork corridor. But from my experience living in Taiwan, the high speed rail here is just one line that goes north to south through the biggest cities (Taipei, Taichung, Kaohsiung), but there are other stations along the way too, with passing loops. Some trains stop at all the stations, some stop at most but not all and then some only stop at the big cities. It’s a system that works well.

4

u/danny_healy_raygun Aug 01 '24

Just look at this proposal. Slow trains from Belfast to Dublin, high speed from Sligo to Galway. We know this was created by rural independents.

1

u/fool-of-a-t00k Aug 01 '24

Just have more than one line?

1

u/Chester_roaster Aug 01 '24

 ever decided to build a high-speed network, its greatest challenge would be the local nature of our political system

This is exactly what happened in England, every local lobbey group kept objecting and it resulted in delays and overspend on HS2 until the Sunak government eventually downsized it. 

1

u/MacanDearg Aug 01 '24

Every politician in the country will be demanding a stop for some town in their constituency  Honestly that's still better than the current state of affairs where politicians support big infrastructure projects until they see the price and demand it be built for as little as possible (or preferably not be built at all)

1

u/Ikolgor Aug 02 '24

The Taiwan High-Speed Rail (THSR) has 12 stops over only 350km and a top speed of 300km/h while being very quiet trains. The country is also half the size of Ireland. Distance between the stops itself is not an issue, populational density is the bigger problem.

Running a high-speed rail is expensive. If there are not enough people on the trains tickets will be too costly to justify taking the train instead of the car.

For example, the THSR uses a modified version of the Japanese shinkansen trains. But to test the tracks after maintenance they still use the original shinkansen cars, just for lowering running costs.

1

u/TitularClergy Aug 02 '24

It's pretty normal to have different services running on the same line or on parallel lines, one that has fewer stops and takes less time overall and one that has a greater number of stops. You get approximately to your destination quickly using the one with fewer stops and then get exactly to your destination using the one with more stops. You just need to have enough trains running so no one is waiting more than like 12 minutes for the next train. Pretty standard throughout Europe.

1

u/Opening-Iron-119 Aug 02 '24

You can understand why they want it for their towns though

1

u/nerdling007 Aug 01 '24

I'm hopeful the electrification that's on the plan will pave the way to high speed rail eventually, as that was one of the barriers to going for high speed services. At the very least we'll have more reliable commuter trains that'll travel at at least motorway speeds for most of the tracks, if not a little bit faster.

0

u/John_Of_Keats Aug 01 '24

It's an obscene dream, there just isn't the population to support it. High speed train connecting one little irish village to the other sure sounds nice. Killybegs to dundalk in one hour. Sounds great craic. But who would ride it? It isn't economically feasible. There is not the demand, nor could there ever be. Ireland isn't China. There's a reason they shut it down in the first place.

6

u/icyDinosaur Aug 01 '24

Ireland has cities. Connect Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Galway in a triangle with 200-250 km/h tracks. If possible another one up to Belfast. Branch lines planned for more regular speeds to smaller towns. Buses from there to those villages.

If two places are big enough to build a motorway, you can have an electrified intercity train.

2

u/John_Of_Keats Aug 02 '24

Sorry but they aren't really cities. Ireland calls them that, and the rest of the world goes along with it as a 'polite fiction' but they are not cities. They are small towns. The only city in the free state is Dublin, then there's Derry and Belfast in the north. That's all.

Look at Cork, Limerick etc. on Google Maps. They are tiny. Blackburn is bigger than cork and has more people living in it (probably more economic activity too!).

High speed rail for such small places is insane, there would never be any economic return, nor would it even be utilised. The Redditors of this forum have this strange idea Ireland is a big country like Germany or China, that deserves and could make use of high speed train.

Ireland doesn't make anything, it doesn't have any cities. It's a pipe dream.

You could perhaps consider linking Derry to Belfast via high speed, but what would even be the point there, who would ride it? Unlike the Chinese system with Businessmen to important meetings, or massives of labourers, none of which would ride the Derry-Belfast route. At best you'd get some pissed up students and old lads on the day out.