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.
