It was widely assumed that the ferry companies would slope off with their tails between their legs, leaving the tunnel to mop up Dover-Calais traffic. Certainly at the beginning, the restructuring was painful, but the ferries still take a huge share. Shuttle traffic is actually declining. Plenty people have decided that sitting in their car in a tube looking at the car in front is not preferable to enjoying the delights of a ferry, regardless of the time saving. Short of government action to ensure there was no ferry competition, the same factors would weigh on a UK-Ireland tunnel.
Unless you carve a high-speed line across Wales from Birmingham to Holyhead, high-speed rail will not be able to compete with air timewise on the Dublin-London route. So again, unless government action on environmental or other grounds limits air traffic on UK-Ireland routes, passenger services will not have the advantages that Eurostar has gained over flights on its routes.
Through-trains beyond the tunnel mouth in Ireland, whether passenger or freight, also come up against the gauge problem.
Finally, the three routes (North Channel, Holyhead and Fishguard) are so far apart that a tunnel on one would have limited impact on traffic on the others, unless the governments found a way to encourage/force traffic through the tunnel. Just imagine if traffic from Belfast to Glasgow was forced to go down to Dublin than back up from Holyhead... in no way can that be preferable to the short crossing on time, cost, environmental grounds - unless there's an expenses fiddle to be worked, so it could be great for AMs, MSPs and MPs;-).
Actually, there is another, stronger reason: the ferries had more room to cut prices. However, even while I think Dublin-Holyhead is a pipedream, I want to note:
The other issue is the need to upgrade rail lines on both sides, and the 1,435 mm standard gauge and the 1,600 mm Irish broad gauge.
The only way I could see any such project becoming seriously considered would be as part of a pan EU initiative to reduce carbon emissions and facilitate closer economic integration. I doubt it could ever be "profitable" without some state infrastructural subvention.
The Irish sea isn't all that deep for the most part. Would a bridge for some of it be a technically/financially feasible alternative for part of it? notes from no w here
The sea is of significant economic importance to regional trade, shipping and transport, fishing and power generation in the form of wind power and nuclear plants. Annual traffic between the two islands amounts to over 12 million passengers and 17 million tonnes of traded goods.
Heh, and here I thought the _Puente Aereo Madrid-Barcelona_ was the busiest.
According to page 4 of this Eurostat press release (PDF, 4 December 2009), the busiest intra-EU air links were
Madrid-Barcelona 3.5M -24% Roma-Milano Linate 2.5M -1.1% Paris Orly-Toulouse 2.3M -0.1% Paris Orly-Nice 2.3M -1.3% London Heathrow-Dublin 1.8M -8.2%
See DoDo's Puente AVE. En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma
maybe other airport combinations between Dublin and London make up the difference
Gatwick, Stansted, Luton... Am I forgetting any?
They'd have to share 6.2 million passengers to make up the 8m sum, and that would put at least one of them (if not two or three) in the table above Heathrow-Dublin.
The DAA said yesterday that a record 23.5 million passengers used Dublin airport last year, an increase of 1 per cent on 2007.Passenger traffic rose by 5 per cent in the first half of the year, but declined by 3 per cent between July and December as the effects of the global credit crunch, rising fuel prices and the economic downturn here took hold.Passenger numbers declined in each of the last four months of 2008. "Given the current economic climate, the outlook for 2009 remains difficult, and passenger numbers at Dublin airport are expected to decline in line with the contraction in Irish GDP," the DAA said.Traffic to the UK declined last year by 1 per cent to 8.6 million passengers, while the number of people using domestic routes fell by 5 per cent to 870,000.
The DAA said yesterday that a record 23.5 million passengers used Dublin airport last year, an increase of 1 per cent on 2007.
Passenger traffic rose by 5 per cent in the first half of the year, but declined by 3 per cent between July and December as the effects of the global credit crunch, rising fuel prices and the economic downturn here took hold.
Passenger numbers declined in each of the last four months of 2008. "Given the current economic climate, the outlook for 2009 remains difficult, and passenger numbers at Dublin airport are expected to decline in line with the contraction in Irish GDP," the DAA said.
Traffic to the UK declined last year by 1 per cent to 8.6 million passengers, while the number of people using domestic routes fell by 5 per cent to 870,000.
My original source was Wikipedia - this is the best other source I have found, but it doesn't give a separate breakdown for London notes from no w here
There are approximately 50 daily departures from Dublin to all five London airports (Stansted, Luton, Gatwick, Heathrow and London City), The Dublin-London route is the second busiest route in the world after the Hong Kong-Taipei route.
During the 1980s, major competition, especially on the Dublin-London routes, resulted in passenger numbers swelling to 5.1 million in 1989.
Top 10 International Arrivals Figures for 2008. Rank Origin Number of Passengers 1 London Heathrow Airport, England, United Kingdom 894,536 2 London Gatwick Airport, England, United Kingdom 541,593 3 London Stansted Airport, England, United Kingdom 462,756
Rank Origin Number of Passengers 1 London Heathrow Airport, England, United Kingdom 894,536 2 London Gatwick Airport, England, United Kingdom 541,593 3 London Stansted Airport, England, United Kingdom 462,756
Conclusions: the Eurostar figures count both departing and arriving passengers, otherwise the Heathrow figures for 2008 would be way off between different sources. The total Dublin-London traffic is over twice that for Dublin-Heathrow and it probably does exceed the Madrid-Barcelona traffic but it didn't in 2007 (Madrid-Barcelona was 33% higher a year earlier).
100 passengers per flight is a better average than 200 at least for the Dublin-London distance range. En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma
Perhaps the "second busiest route in the world" only applies to international routes? notes from no w here
Surely you mean DDA and Wikipedia (Irish Sea Tunnel article) figures. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
I mean Eurostat, of course. En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma
And SNCF would rather leave that traffic to planes...
Sure; but what's the point? It would not be cheaper, and traffic on it would depend on weather. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Yes. En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma
Thus if we did want to dramatically reduce CO2 emissions, the volumes would be significant and sufficient to justify a tunnel. I don't know how you would calculate the CO2 saving and I also don't know whether the cost could be justified on any rationale. You guys are the train experts.
However the idea doesn't seem as mad to me as it might sound at first. Note a route across the Irish sea from Dublin to Holyhead would have to navigate a maximum sea depth of c. 100M - which seems v. little and which is also why I also raised the bridge option - which could be enclosed to avoid weather issues - although snow on Irish sea is v. rare and slight and I presume wind is not a problem for trains. In fact the entire route could also be a giant offshore wind farm with bridge pillars doubling as turbine pylons.
The problem with the bridge option is that at least one section would have to be v. high to allow shipping traffic underneath - or have an opening mechanism for large ships. notes from no w here
Well that wasn't a proper comparison. You'd have to compare with Eurostar + all flights to Belgium and Northern France. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Well, the concrete for the tunnel lining would involve a lot of CO2 emissions.
I also don't know whether the cost could be justified on any rationale.
That's a political issue, not a technical one. If a government sees a benefit, whether its benefits are quantified or not, it can decide to shoulder an investment. But, even though I don't think that the Irish Sea Tunnel would cost more with today's technologies than the Chunnel did with technologies back then, it looks like a tall order.
maximum sea depth of c. 100M
At a length of 90+km, the real challenge is not depth. It is length, and water control. Unless one or more expensive articical islands/giant caissons are built in the sea for intermediate accesses, it would have to be bored from both ends, meaning the transport of dug material away from and tunnel lining towards the TBM over up to 50 km. Building watertight tunnels across water-bearing strata is no problem per se, but you should better know in advance what rocks can be expected in sequence, so a lot of boreholes would have to be dug between Dublin and Holyhead.
bridge option - which could be enclosed to avoid weather issues - although snow on Irish sea is v. rare and slight and I presume wind is not a problem for trains
Enclosed: costs even more, you just lifted the tunnel above the sea, and added pylons. And wind is a problem for any vehicle with significant side wall surface area.
I repeat that bridges aren't a cheaper alternative. The reason Denmark built its two big sea strait crossing links as bridge-tunnel combinations was on one hand to avoid complications with ventillation for the road tunnel part, on the other hand to keep bridge-building experts employed. (And the same reasons apply for the planned Fehmarn Belt crossing.)
bridge pillars doubling as turbine pylons
That's not necessarily a good idea. Vibrations, danger to trains if a blade breaks or sheds ice. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
As you say - cost is ultimately a Government decision, but I would see it as v. likely to be totally unaffordable for any Irish Government in the foreseeable future especially when the cost of upgrading rail infrastructures on both sides of the sea are taken into account.
Are there any general studies/macro-comparisons available of the relative CO2 emissions of building and operating rail networks (with large tunnel components) compared to other modes of mass transportation? notes from no w here
As you say - cost is ultimately a Government decision, but I would see it as v. likely to be totally unaffordable for any Irish Government in the foreseeable future
There is the current budget crisis; but, you never know what governments are willing to waste money on. In the diary, I presented an example, the Koralmbahn: that little-justified project will cost the Austrian government €5.25 billion, while 3-4 other investments of a similar scale are on-going. (I estimate the Irish Sea Tunnel at €10-15 billion; for scale: the geologically much more difficult Gotthard Base Tunnel will cost around SFR9.7 billion = €6.5 billion). Another example: here in Hungary, the government maintained the big budget for highway construction even when public deficit exploded a few years back. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
If by some miracle that level of value is ultimately recovered over the next 10 years we could perhaps do worse that using the proceeds to pay off some of the national debt and invest in some major infrastructural projects which reduces our long term dependence on CO2 intensive transportation. The costs you outline don't seem outlandish, although the government has a track record of mismanaging infrastructural projects to the extent that they come in at two or three times the original budget.
The Chunnel experience is not encouraging. Have tunneling technologies, techniques, and cost factors improved dramatically since? No doubt prevailing ideologies would require some PPP type funding architecture which would require a huge risk premium to attract private investment. notes from no w here
OTOH, if its portside, that means that one time advantage of trucks is offset by doing ship loading/unloading directly from/onto the train.
So a grid of "Steel Interstate" model corridors that all end at a port would seem to be the most promising basic model.
If the the passenger trains are going at least 175kph, its hard to see why they'd have to go faster.
If only the standard gauge turn-outs have to be high speed turn-outs, it seems like it'd be possible to dual-gauge the track in intermediate stretches and switch out to a dedicated standard gauge section for crossing and passing loops and stretches with a larger number of turn-outs per km. Common right rail if the typical standard gauge passing loop is passing to the right. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
Liverpool or Warrington to Holyhead would be enough, along the North shore: that wouldn't be problematic, nor too long. On the HS2, the planned London-Warrington time would be 1h06m. The distance to Holyhead would be around 160 km, another 100 km for the tunnel and the connection in Dublin -- that 260 km would add less than an hour, so around 2h in total. That would be quite competitive with air, accounting for the airport-city commutes. But the expensive thing is the tunnel, not a North Wales route. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
There was a recession and a tunnel fire, but, actually, passenger and coach shuttle traffic grew 8% in Q3/2009 vs. Q3/2008, only truck traffic declined. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
How many people take the bus or fly direct between the two? En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma
Or, maybe, if you want to have a business trat requires you to travel across the UK frequently, you have to move to Manchester or Birmingham or London. En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma
Can we take this pair of cities as representative? Is the public transport provision on the route disguised through being shared with Manchester? Are they simply at a distance which favours car travel?
Clearly it's true that for a business with regular need to travel across the UK, basing yourself at one end of the distributed population brings additional costs, not least in time, over basing yourself more centrally.
I don't know, we're only talking about the 5th/6th largest metropolitan areas in the UK... En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma
What is it you were saying about evidence for no demand? It's not slower than driving and there's at least one train an hour during the workday. En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma
And of course they've been made as flying boats, so a dockside terminus station in Liverpool and Dublin would give central city stations on both sides. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
