[Waverley125]

depends really. I'd support the tunnel as part of a greater 'High Speed 3' package, which would do London-Heathrow-Bristol-Cardiff (all on one line, as cutting Bristol-Cardiff journeys to 15 minutes will be a big plus in the Southwest) line, which would extend to Swansea, and to the tunnel mouth.

If built for a 200mph cruising speed, the total mileage to the tunnel portal would be about 265 from London. If you assume 2 stops and braking penalties, lets call that 95 minutes. Doing the tunnel at 60mph, 1 hour, then 95 miles to Dublin. So a total mileage of 420 miles, which with a 200mph cruising speed and 1 hour in the tunnel, would probably take 3 hours. That's very competitve with air, given the quickest flight time is 1hr 10, from Luton, plus 40 minutes getting there, being at the airport an hour before departure, and the 30 minutes getting into Dublin at the other end. Total journey time: 3hr20.

[Clip]

Doesnt take me 40 mins to get to either City/Luton or Stanstead airport. Though it would take me the same amount of time to get from Eaast to West London so its all about where you are based really.

And the same would go for cost. People like cheap. Return from £50 from southend? Yup Id take that. how much return for the train? £100+? if not more. They would want to see a return on the investment pretty quickly would they not?

[Waverley125]

Well Eurostar does fine, even against airlines, and the key to Rail against Air, is that it provides centre-to-centre journeys. 40 mins is how long it takes to reach Luton from London city centre. Plus most people arrive 2 hours pre-flight, and take longer getting into the city at the other end.

Rail tunnel would also provide a much more competitve (i.e. 2hr30) journey to Cork against current air routes, as well as serving Bristol & South Wales, and destroying the existing rail 'n' sail and car ferry operations, both via Holyhead and Fishguard.

[Clip]

Eurostar does well because it travels between 2 Capital cities that are financial behemoths in their own right. I just cannot say the same for Dublin, nor that it attracts as much footfall as Paris does on the E*.

I know its kind of a fantasy thread and I am playing the doom-monger but a little bit of realism is always good to have when discussing these things.

[Waverley125]

sorry Clip, but Paris, in European terms, is a financial powderpuff compared to London, Frankfurt, Stockholm or Lisbon. Though it does attract a good amount of tourists, this is also the case for Dublin, which, as I said earlier, is the busiest transport route within the EU both for Tourism (the number of people visiting Dublin on day/weekend trips is staggering) and for Business (Ireland is the UK's single biggest trading partner). Add in Cork, and London-Bristol/Cardiff/Swansea flows, and you've got a serious number of passengers making the journey.

[OxtedL]

I may have missed it, but where is your source for this "busiest transport route" lark? Ditto "biggest trading partner"? Putting it in bold doesn't help anyone.

Have you considered that the figures are likely to be skewed in that we have a shared border with RoI whereas everything else we import/export has to do an interesting leap across the sea?

Ignoring this issue, have you actually compared the population sizes of Paris and Dublin? Or that Everything coming from the continent has the option of being routed through Dover-Calais (which is a lot of stuff) whereas the ferry routes to Ireland are much quieter, and it is this which makes the Channel Tunnel close to viable?

[Waverley125]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dublin_...senger_numbers

Busiest 3 routes, all London Airports, total travel London-Dublin 3.5 million people PA. Add in Bristol, 3.7 million. Another 800,000 on the London-Cork route, so let's call that 4.5 million in total. Let's also not forget the 'tourism boost' of people getting the train to Ireland whle using London as a base. Certainly an effect we've seen in London, with Paris do-able as a day trip, or excursion, from London and being much more convenient than flying.

Also you forget that the train is better placed to compete against a ferry on the much longer Irish sea route (i.e. 3 hours crossing time on a ferry v 1 on a train), and that the Holyhead & Fishguard ferries are much less easily accessible than the Dover ferries, given Dover's right at the end of a motorway, whereas Holyhead is along a long, winding, and often congested A Road, and Fishguard is 60 miles down a single carriageway.

[Clip]

Indeed the figures do indeed show that the top 3 sirports are indeed London airports. Where your arguement falls down by using these figures is that 2 of them - Gatwick and Heathrow are also hub airports which Dubliners themselves will be using for connecting flights back to Dublin from their holidays. These people would also find it a lot easier to stay within the confines of the airport rather then get out and have to travel to west london to use a train to get to Dublin.

Unless you can convince me that those figures are only for passengers making London - Dublin flights then your arguement for this link is failed based on passenger figures.

[Badger]

But they're still travelling from Dublin to London, even if not staying there. Heathrow, at least, could have a station at it.

[Waverley125]

http://www.independent.ie/national-n...pe-334846.html

London-Dublin busiest air route in Europe, twice as many passengers as the next busiest route (London-Frankfurt), and second busiest city-city air route in the world (after New York-Los Angeles, iirc)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datab...xports-imports

Ok, had it wrong on trading partners, Ireland is only 5th, but it's behind countries we are, or soon will be, connected to via HSR i.e. Germany, France, the Netherlands. It also is our biggest trading partner per capita, having 50% the trade we do with Germany with only 7% of the population.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

Originally Posted by Badger

But they're still travelling from Dublin to London, even if not staying there. Heathrow, at least, could have a station at it.

Indeed, a London-West Country-Wales line would have to go past Heathrow anyway, it's a logical interconnection.

[Clip]

Passenger gets off a Jumbo jet at Heathrow walks through the transfer bulding and gets on a plane to Dublin. Doesnt have to get their bags or anything as all done for them.

Passenger gets of Jumbo and has to get bags- pass through passport control, navigate to the station, wait for train, get on train then go to Dublin and repeat getting off process.

I know what people would then be doing is using connecting flights from other european airports from Dublin instead. Like those with lots of runways.

Also your Independant story is from 2001. And again it does not give figures if these were used mainly by Irish holiday makers(very VERY likely) or business people/normal tourists(small percentage)

EDIT: A quick wiki discovers that the route has dropped somewhat in the years since the indys story http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%2...ger_air_routes

[giblets]

If the proposed Heathrow Spur to HS2 was built, this would overcome some of the issues mentioned about transfer times, and could easily be built into the system.

The biggest question for me would be the whole Holyhead or Fishguard route argument. The Scotland route would take traffic so far round the houses for anyone other than those in Scotland to be unacceptable.
I also think a lot of people are forgetting the large Irish communities in Liverpool and Manchester, who would see little/no benefit to the Southern route (approx 1.5m air passengers, plus large numbers of ferry passengers (see below)

The actual stats for ferry routes (as would be influenced by the shorter travel times, and the tunnel would presumably also take cars)

(2011 figures in thousands)
Roslare Route..............................723
(Fishguard and Milford Haven)
Dublin/Dunloaghare Route..............2,383
(Liverpool, Holyhead, Mostyn)
Scotland-Northern Ireland.............1,857


For London-Dublin there is not a huge difference between the two time wise

Fishguard- Roslare (London-Dublin 2 1/2 hrs)
You go South, and you need to build a high speed extension (what is the current line speed beyond Swansea?) all the way to Fishguard (80m), as well as road links, then a brand new rail route all the way up from Wexford to Dublin (which I don't think there is huge demand for) (both road and rail required) and on to Belfast (200m). This route would also become difficult for any cities in northern England (with their large Irish communities). However, it would support a business case for high speed travel to Swansea.

Holyhead-Dublin (London-Dublin 2 1/2hrs)
Currently the busiest Ferry route due to the shorter distance to Dublin and from Northern English cities.
Go North, and in Ireland, you only need Dublin-Belfast (which is relatively busy), and the rail route along North Wales (80m) needs upgrading. The road would need upgrading, but not to the same extend as Swansea-Fishguard.
This would also make travel from Northern England easier

Scotland-Northern Ireland (London-Dublin 4-4/1/2 hrs)
The second busiest sea route, and the shortest tunnel, requires Belfast-Dublin rail. Also road and rail to stranraer from the west coast mainline. Would be the lengthiest for London travel (and negate adavantages for air travel), great for Scotland though. Expanding the road and rail route on the Scottish side is difficult with the terrain.

Originally Posted by Clip

So how can your proposed tunnel to Ireland move passengers and probably freight more efficiently then Air can now?

Air freight is somewhat expensive, and there is an awful lot of convention freight that uses air and road already (you could link Felixstowe in easily too).

[TrainBoy98]

Originally Posted by VTPreston_Tez

"At the nearest point America and Russia are less than four kilometres apart" maybe explains that my fact books are faulty.
I like the idea of Scotland/Liverpool to Ireland, and an additional Severn Tunnel. I like everything proposed though including Portsmouth to Ryde, it slipped my mind completely.

This could be true by means of the distance between their claimed water space. There could only be 4km between them but this isnt land to land its international water to international water.

[Waverley125]

Originally Posted by Clip

Passenger gets off a Jumbo jet at Heathrow walks through the transfer bulding and gets on a plane to Dublin. Doesnt have to get their bags or anything as all done for them.

Passenger gets of Jumbo and has to get bags- pass through passport control, navigate to the station, wait for train, get on train then go to Dublin and repeat getting off process.

I know what people would then be doing is using connecting flights from other european airports from Dublin instead. Like those with lots of runways.

Also your Independant story is from 2001. And again it does not give figures if these were used mainly by Irish holiday makers(very VERY likely) or business people/normal tourists(small percentage)

EDIT: A quick wiki discovers that the route has dropped somewhat in the years since the indys story http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%2...ger_air_routes

yeah, Wikipedia figures for London, Bristol & Birmingham-Dublin still show 4.3 million Annual users though, plus, as Giblets notes, another 700,000 by ferry through wales, and 800,000 flying to Cork. I think 6m pax annually can probably support a tunnel, hmmm?

Also, it's just not true that every single one of the passengers going to London, or even a majority, is changing planes. Where would they change to? Go through the destination lists and find somewhere you'd need to change in London to get to. There's not many of them, I'll tell you that.

Plus, as giblets says, airfreight is expensive, intermodal containers can be taken much quicker and more efficiently by rail into Ireland than by slow ferry.

[Clip]

Originally Posted by Waverley125

yeah, Wikipedia figures for London, Bristol & Birmingham-Dublin still show 4.3 million Annual users though, plus, as Giblets notes, another 700,000 by ferry through wales, and 800,000 flying to Cork. I think 6m pax annually can probably support a tunnel, hmmm?

Also, it's just not true that every single one of the passengers going to London, or even a majority, is changing planes. Where would they change to? Go through the destination lists and find somewhere you'd need to change in London to get to. There's not many of them, I'll tell you that.

Plus, as giblets says, airfreight is expensive, intermodal containers can be taken much quicker and more efficiently by rail into Ireland than by slow ferry.

Yup Ill take the air freight one but I will not have it about the passengers..

You ask where will they change to? Well seeing how Dublin airport only has 5 inter-continental routes routes from the airport then I would suggest that everywhere else in the world wouldnt you?

Ive just checked for a flight to singapore - popular destination. Just for connecting flights using Heathrow there are 55. Now im guessing thats pretty much the same for any international destination that is not on their route map.


And I have gone through the destination list and used their route map HERE and that only shows 5 inter-continental routes. So again I would say that there are plenty of those using that route to go onwards to anywhere in the world.