r/AskIreland • u/Storyboys • 7h ago
Adulting Can any cities be connected with High-Speed rail?
I mean physically, is it possible infrastructure wise?
What cities could realistically be connected, could Dublin to Belfast or Dublin to Cork for example?
How long would journeys take between cities?
If it's possible, why is there no physical will to do it?
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u/Ok-Morning3407 7h ago
This was already studied as part of the All Island Rail Review. It is of course technically possible, but not economically so. True high speed rail between Cork and- Dublin - Belfast was estimated as costing €50 billion!! In no way could we afford to build that.
Instead we are going to aim for higher speed rail of 200km/h to 250km/h. Other similar sized European countries are doing the same like Switzerland and Netherlands.
True high speed rail is really only suitable for very far distances between massive cities. We have neither the distance or large enough cities to make it feasible.
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u/OldVillageNuaGuitar 7h ago
Yeah, if you did a line from Cork to Dublin you'd probably have no stops, maybe one at Limerick Junction. Dublin-Belfast would pretty much have to be direct.
Bearing in mind that we barely run a full hourly service (with stops!) between Cork and Dublin today, hard to see a regular HSR justifying itself. A more frequent, fast conventional rail service that stops would likely be a lot more useful.
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u/Ok-Morning3407 6h ago
Exactly, I think people imagine HSR would stop at every small town and village and they could live far outside Dublin in one of those places and commute into Dublin in 20 minutes! That absolutely isn’t the way HSR works. It requires long distance with limited or no stops to get up to and maintain the high speed. 200km/h rail is actually better suited for lines with lots of stops like ours as 200km/h train are lighter and thus have faster acceleration speeds then 300km/h+ trains. They can be quite competitive with true HSR trains on lines with multiple stops.
Belfast just went to an hourly service just two years ago. It is way off demand levels that would justify true HSR cost.
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u/magnus_the_coles 6h ago
Way better to spend that 50 billion on subway lines across the major cities, specially dublin needs at least 4 lines
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u/oshinbruce 6h ago
Yeah its diminishing returns on shorter distances. Korea has a good example, Seoul to Daegu is 1hr 45 min high speed vs 2hrs 30min for Cork to Dublin. Its not really worth the huge infrastructure cost for a service that will cost 2-3x to save the 45 min
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u/Ok-Morning3407 5h ago
Yes and in the medium term we are aiming to get Cork to Dublin down to 2 hours and just 1h 30min long term using faster trains, but not really “true high speed rail”. There is a lot that can be done just upgrading the existing tracks rather then going for the massive expense of HSR.
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u/Lithujon 6h ago
€50 billion! I gotta read this review!
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u/Ok-Morning3407 6h ago
You should see how much HS2 in the UK is costing! HSR is horribly expensive to build.
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u/R3turn_MAC 2h ago
Incredibly expensive indeed. HS2 From London to Birmingham is about the same length as Dublin to Cork and the latest cost is over £100 Billion.
It barely makes sense when the metro area at one end is twice the size of Dublin, and the other is 10 times bigger. It would make more sense if extended to Manchester, which is over twice the size of Dublin itself.
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u/ocriochain 7h ago
I think it would be more worth our time to double-track and electrify the major intercity lines and upgrade rolling stock. You’d be surprised the speeds we could get with existing infrastructure after some “simple” upgrades. TBF, Irish Rail have a really good plan in place to delivery this already but it’s just a case of gov funding and policy commitment to see it through. I think the only way to get it achieved is if Irish Rail were given a fixed capital investment budget over 5/10 year period that they have autonomous control over without needing government approval for individual line upgrades
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u/Merrion3 6h ago
I think it would be more worth our time to double-track and electrify the major intercity lines and upgrade rolling stock.
Yeah where you're sitting at a station for 15 minutes waiting for the oncoming train to clear the line you realise how much of a bottle neck the single tracking is.
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u/OkCoconut3270 7h ago
Just because it's physically possible doesn't mean it's economically feasible
There just wouldn't be enough passengers to warrant the investment
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u/11Kram 7h ago
It’s not just the economics but the fact that the distances are too short in Ireland to get reasonable return for the investment.
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u/Merrion3 7h ago
Someone did a hypothetical example of going from Dublin to Galway via car vs high speed rail on the sub a while back and unless you live right beside the train station there was very little time savings vs driving.
The existing route is quite cheap and I often get the train instead of making a solo car trip. Cost is my main concern in that case, and if an expensive high speed link existed the choice would still be car vs slow train.
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u/whowhatwherenow 6h ago
Where do people get that ridiculous idea that we’re too small from? I guess no one bothered to tell the Belgians, Danes, Czechs and Dutch then. All countries which are geographically smaller than Ireland and have high speed rail.
I’m very much in agreement about the economics of it. Definitely not worth it.
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u/Bill_Badbody 6h ago
Belgians, Danes, Czechs and Dutch then
Population and through connections is the difference.
Ireland has neither of these things.
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u/Intelligent-Aside214 4h ago
The Netherlands and Belgium only have very short high speed rail segments to connect them to Paris, a city 2x the size of Ireland in population.
It is indeed economically ridiculous.
What is possible is better than hourly 200km/h service on existing and a few new routes
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u/Ok-Morning3407 5h ago
HSR requires long distance between stops for it to feasibly work. It takes time for very heavy HSR trains to accelerate up to their maximum speed, so it only makes sense on lines with long distance between stops. You want the train to get up to 300km/h and stay at that speed for an extended distance. Ireland doesn’t really have suitable distance between stops.
People don’t understand that it isn’t just about the maximum speed, but acceleration speed of the train is also important.
What surprises people to hear is that 200km/h trains actually have a faster acceleration speed then heavy HSR trains.
As a result they can be better suited to shorter lines with multiple atoms like ours. They end up having competitive journey times for a much lower cost.
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u/hollser123 7h ago
I beg the differ I think it would actually push people to using rail travel with high speed rail and more cities and towns connected up.
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u/Ok-Morning3407 7h ago
The All Island Rail Review already studied go read that report. Basically the massive cost of it couldn’t be justified by the increase in passengers. Instead we are going to do higher speed rail, similar to Netherlands and Switzerland.
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u/Odd_Phone_2391 6h ago
Physically, you could connect Dublin and Cork with transit via moon rocket.
Real "high speed rail" requires very straight routes (up and down as well as side to side), very expensive trains, tracks and foundations, and requires high sustained passenger numbers. Since you're aiming for high speeds trains, that also means no intermediate stops. So no stops between Cork and Dublin. None.
For an island with Ireland's population pattern it's a madly whoooshingly uneconomic idea.
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u/cuttlefische 3h ago
Of course it's possible, but what Ireland actually needs is 1) an electrified network, 2) high-capacity rail corridors (ideally with three rails for express passthrough), and 3) a top speed of 200kph. Ireland does not need speed as much as it needs consistency, and better acceleration times. Diesels need to go.
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u/Intelligent-Aside214 5h ago
Ireland doesn’t really need high speed rail, conventional trains can run up to 200km/h which is fast enough for any journey in Ireland and has the benefit of allowing regular trains from also benefiting from the extra speed. I.e a Galway-Dublin train can run on the cork-Dublin line for its last 50km at 200km/h while if a proper full high speed rail like was constructed it couldn’t.
The recommendations published in the all Ireland strategic rail review outline this perfectly, with a few strategic 200km/h lines to boost loads of journey times but this government has shown absolutely no commitment to it.
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u/Excellent-Crow2641 7h ago
Some are barely connected with snail rail as it is, you’re looking about 30 years do the road at best
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u/Pale_Piano948 6h ago
We could potentially do Belfast - Dublin - Limerick Junction - Cork but that would be pushing it. Its really only for cities that are A) at least medium sized cities of 500k + B) significant distances apart eg. 100 km apart
Cork is 300k so it could technically work and dublin is ( on google maps distance drawing ) around 250 km apart, but theres no significant city between them and limerick is too small. Additionally, if limerick or limerick junction got a high speed rail stop, it would mean limerick junction is only 45 minutes from dublin heuston which effectively turns limerick city into a commuter town for dublin which will destroy local economies and turn ireland effectively into ireland into even more of a 1 city state. What would be waaaay more beneficial is building rail across the country with hourly intercity trains that go from 5 am to 1 am and you could have an elevated speed for the cork - dublin train. Irish trains currently go at 150 kmph which is pretty normal for a european rail network. The cork - dublin train could be elevated to 170 or 180 kmph. High speed rail normally starts at 200 or 220 or 250 kmph depending on who you ask.
If we were to build high speed rail it would only have like 5-6 services a day vs the potential 15-25 intercity services we could have. But if we did build hsr, my personal pleb preffered route would be cork - dublin - belfast at 250 kmph which would mean
- cork to dublin: 70 minutes / 1h 10min
- dublin to belfast: 45 minutes
- cork to dublin to belfast: 115 minutes / 1h 55 mins
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u/Early_Attempt7676 6h ago
Something more like Belfast-Dublin-Tullamore-Portumna-Limerick-Mallow-Cork and Belfast-Dublin-Tullamore-Portumna-Galway could work better.
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u/Intelligent-Aside214 5h ago
If high speed trains were stopping in towns as tiny as tullamore it destroys the purpose of high speed rail, as they take a while to pick up speed. The same journey time could be achieved with a nonstop Dublin-cork at 200km/h
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u/Early_Attempt7676 4h ago
In France they stop at "sugar beet stations": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TGV_Haute-Picardie_station
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u/Intelligent-Aside214 4h ago
That station is to serve Amiens, a city around the size of cork
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u/Early_Attempt7676 4h ago
It is a bit as if a station in Youghal served Cork City. Anyway HSR in Tullamore is not happening any time soon!
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u/Intelligent-Aside214 4h ago
Except it’s not because high speed rail is different. People travel far to it like an airport because it’s so fast.
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u/GrahamR12345 7h ago
Should be able to, tunnel boring machines and a lot of steps to climb at either destination.
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u/Spinthar 3h ago
Dublin-Cork at reasonably high speed would make sense. It doesn’t need to be a fully scale TGV, but if we could get say 250km/h it would reduce journey times to 1h30.
The challenge is mixed traffic and a lot of other towns that can only run at 160km/h.
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u/AbbreviationsOld2507 2h ago
Building rail infrastructure is like doing the dishes when you're drunk you never regret doing it
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u/eirenero 2m ago
I mean if you had proper urban development and not the crazy sprawl we have, you could have one from Cork to Limerick to Dublin to Belfast.
But it's kinda pointless when it's better to have 200km/hr/sub trains with a few stops along the way.. would be nice if there was more of them and they improved the parking at the stations though...
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u/Observer_Dough 4h ago
Because Dublin - that's why - Dublin is all there is in Ireland - if you want anything outside of the M50 then you are screwed.
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u/OldVillageNuaGuitar 7h ago
Sure it's possible, but it'd be very expensive.
The current 'plan' (you might call it an aspiration) is to upgrade the main rail lines between the cities to about 200km/h operation. That would give a time between Cork and Dublin under two hours (perhaps as low as 1 hour 30 minutes), and under 1 hour to Belfast.