Celtic Sea Tunnel?

[Bodiddly]

clearly the "answer" is a HS line branching off HS2, out to Holyhead, under to Dublin, up to Belfast then on to Glasgow.

Journey times from London to Glasgow would be longer than they are today as you would be going via Wales and Ireland to get to Glasgow!
Great way to do the British Isles in one journey though!

 

[jopsuk]

Journey times from London to Glasgow would be longer than they are today as you would be going via Wales and Ireland to get to Glasgow!
Great way to do the British Isles in one journey though!

It wouldn't really be for London-Glasgow, but London-Belfast would attract some.

Ooh, modification- have the branch go via Liverpool and dive under the Mersey. Liverpool-Belfast would definitely be a market, as would Glasgow-Dublin. It would have lots of overlapping markets.

 

[dggar]

It wouldn't really be for London-Glasgow, but London-Belfast would attract some.

Ooh, modification- have the branch go via Liverpool and dive under the Mersey. Liverpool-Belfast would definitely be a market, as would Glasgow-Dublin. It would have lots of overlapping markets.

And perhaps an interchange where the two tunnels cross?

(unless they both surface on the Isle of Man)

 

[DownSouth]

The guage in Ireland could be dual as in Australia.

Its not going to happen, the gauges are a major problem …

I know I'm a little late to this thread and that it's a complete fantasy in the first place, but these comments show a complete lack of any understanding around issues relating to track gauge.

I come from South Australia where we have Cape (1067mm), Irish (1600mm) and Stephenson (1435mm) Gauge tracks all in the same state and once upon a time also the only triple gauge station in the world, so I can speak with some authority on this issue.

1. Track gauge is the smallest of the problems related to this idea, first you have to deal with the major issues of the fantasy tunnel and the fantasy bag of money which will pay for it all.
2. Dual gauge track mixing Stephenson Gauge (1435mm) and Irish Gauge (1600mm) track is a right pain in the rear end with the narrow distance between the two non-shared rails making it an option chosen only as a last resort. It is only suitable for short distances (in/out of terminals and for local trip freight) with the longest stretch of non-yard track being only 13km long, and only medium speed (80 km/h) is permitted.
   
   Mixing Stephenson and Cape (1067mm) allows higher speeds (up to 160 km/h) because there's a much wider gap between the non-shared rails which allows less complex turnouts with more comfortable tolerances.
3. Constructing dual gauge requires a complete rebuild of the line, so you may as well just make it a proper gauge conversion project and spend the extra to convert other areas which would otherwise become isolated segments if those areas are small enough.
4. You'd be better off with one of the terminals on either end being a break of gauge station (and a corresponding freight transfer terminal nearby) if gauge conversion of the full Irish network is not an option. It wouldn't have to be the Irish side, it could be that running an Irish Gauge line in the UK from the tunnel to the nearest major terminal might provide better connections - this would be Crewe or Birmingham if the southern route for the tunnel was chosen, or for the northern route either Glasgow or Carlisle - with domestic Irish Gauge services operating as well as international services.
5. Variable-gauge Talgo high speed sets could be another option.

Matters such as different gauges being ignored shows a lack of attention to research detail …

They are actually correct in this regard, even if it's an accidental consequence of their ignorance - see my point 1 above.

 

[NotATrainspott]

I think as part of the fantasy it is necessary for there to be some sort of high speed rail link between Dublin and Belfast, which would then be built to be fully interoperable as the Spanish have done. The other services through the tunnel would be tunnel-gauge roll-on-roll-off vehicle transporters that would be captive to tunnel infrastructure.

 

[HSTEd]

If that is so, then why does the Tunnel hold a market share of 40% of the much larger cross-Channel market (source: Competition Commission)?

A drive through connection would have annihalated the Cross Channel ferries on all routes, not just gutted everything but the Dover-Calais shuttle (which was aways the biggest route).

Spending all that money for only 40% of the traffic is rather pointless really.

A rail tunnel can take rail and road traffic but a road tunnel can only take road vehicles.

Do you really think I was proposing a pure road tunnel? If you have the engineering in place for a road tunnel the cost of a pair of railway tracks in the bores is negligible. (The ventilation and cross section requirements for the road tunnel turn the railway into a rounding error.).

Additionally the Channel Tunnel Shuttle has proven to be a collosal failure - it can't even dispatch the Channel Ferries that operate on almost exactly the same route. It eats up ridiculous numbers of paths through the tunnel when a drive through connection would have left those paths available for actual trains.

With the advent of high speed rail in the British Isles and the start of the end of the low cost airline boom,

People have been predicting the end of the low cost airline boom for ten years - it hasn't happened yet.
Considering fuel prices are falling and International Aviation is, by treaty, exempt from virtually all fuel taxation its imminent end seems unlikely.

the better long term solution is to enable city-to-city high speed rail via a good rail tunnel. At 400km/h, London-Dublin and London-Belfast via any route would be competitive with air.

A combined road and rail tunnel is the optimum solution - otherwise you will end up with an expensive Channel boondoggle that won't even kill the Irish Sea ferry market.

Continuous motorway from Belfast to London would take up virtually all the Irish Sea road traffic, combined with a rail tunnel it would be an epoch defining change.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

The original posting, as this seems to have been totally forgotten amongst all the recent posting thoughts, was a tunnel from Holyhead to Dublin which would link two separate states in the EU.

Northern Ireland did not form part of any tunnel discussion from Holyhead as a tunnel from Holyhead to there would be considerably longer and would only form a link between two parts of the same state entity.

 

[HSTEd]

The problem is the Wales-Republic tunnel has serious problems with regards political wrangling and funding.

A northern route tunnel would be entirely within the UK and would thus be funded by the UK Government.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

The problem is the Wales-Republic tunnel has serious problems with regards political wrangling and funding.

A northern route tunnel would be entirely within the UK and would thus be funded by the UK Government.

Not only would your suggestion be one that all the costs would fall upon the UK Government as being seen as an internal state project, with all that entails in adding to British debt monies that seem so difficult to pay off, but one that totally ignores the link between two member states of the EC, which would attract EC finance.

 

[HSTEd]

Not only would your suggestion be one that all the costs would fall upon the UK Government as being seen as an internal state project, with all that entails in adding to British debt monies that seem so difficult to pay off, but one that totally ignores the link between two member states of the EC, which would attract EC finance.

It seems highly unlikely that the Irish Government would be in any position to pay for a significant fraction of the project.
Additionally the cost of the crossing would be insignificant compared to the size of the British economy and is therefore unlikely to make any difference at all to the national debt situation.

Additionally EC funding will no doubt come with all sorts of horrible strings attached that likely make it not worth having - although if the route via Northern Ireland was chosen you would probably be able to get Convergence funding regardless as Northern Ireland is not the richest place in the world.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

It seems highly unlikely that the Irish Government would be in any position to pay for a significant fraction of the project. Additionally the cost of the crossing would be insignificant compared to the size of the British economy and is therefore unlikely to make any difference at all to the national debt situation.

When you still have a debt problem the size of Britain's debt, any internal-only project of the financial magnitude of that which you would propose would be totally unacceptable and would see other areas of Britain as seeing absolutely no benefit accruing to those areas from such a state vanity project.

 

[edwin_m]

A drive through connection would have annihalated the Cross Channel ferries on all routes, not just gutted everything but the Dover-Calais shuttle (which was aways the biggest route).

Spending all that money for only 40% of the traffic is rather pointless really.



Do you really think I was proposing a pure road tunnel? If you have the engineering in place for a road tunnel the cost of a pair of railway tracks in the bores is negligible. (The ventilation and cross section requirements for the road tunnel turn the railway into a rounding error.).

Additionally the Channel Tunnel Shuttle has proven to be a collosal failure - it can't even dispatch the Channel Ferries that operate on almost exactly the same route. It eats up ridiculous numbers of paths through the tunnel when a drive through connection would have left those paths available for actual trains.

People have been predicting the end of the low cost airline boom for ten years - it hasn't happened yet.
Considering fuel prices are falling and International Aviation is, by treaty, exempt from virtually all fuel taxation its imminent end seems unlikely.


A combined road and rail tunnel is the optimum solution - otherwise you will end up with an expensive Channel boondoggle that won't even kill the Irish Sea ferry market.

Continuous motorway from Belfast to London would take up virtually all the Irish Sea road traffic, combined with a rail tunnel it would be an epoch defining change.

Road tunnels have a fairly bad safety record and the issues of intervention in and evacuation from a major pile-up or fire in a road tunnel several tens of km long with no intermediate exits don't bear thinking about. This is even more so if a train carrying several hundred people suddenly arrives on the scene and they all have to be evacuated too. At least with the HGV fires in the Channel Tunnel the number of people exposed to the hazard was limited and the control centre could stop anyone else exposing themselves to danger.

Trying to analyse the economics of something so blatantly pie-in-the-sky isn't really a worthwhile use of time in my view.

 

[NotATrainspott]

A drive through connection would have annihalated the Cross Channel ferries on all routes, not just gutted everything but the Dover-Calais shuttle (which was aways the biggest route).

Spending all that money for only 40% of the traffic is rather pointless really.

A road tunnel would have cost significantly more, due to the larger tunnel diameter, the massive increase in ventilation and the massively better fire suppression systems required. Long road tunnels under land are not as much a problem because it is easy to have intermediate access and ventilation shafts, and there is not as much of a problem with water above.

Do you really think I was proposing a pure road tunnel? If you have the engineering in place for a road tunnel the cost of a pair of railway tracks in the bores is negligible. (The ventilation and cross section requirements for the road tunnel turn the railway into a rounding error.).

I can't see it being that feasible to have a combined road/rail bored tunnel over that distance. Sunk-section tunnels make this easy because they have square cross sections that are ideal for all sorts of traffic, but TBMs leave a circular tunnel and you would need a huge diameter to be able to fit in both heavy rail and two lanes of traffic.

Additionally the Channel Tunnel Shuttle has proven to be a collosal failure - it can't even dispatch the Channel Ferries that operate on almost exactly the same route. It eats up ridiculous numbers of paths through the tunnel when a drive through connection would have left those paths available for actual trains.

The ferries don't need to pay for the cost of their environmental impact yet.

People have been predicting the end of the low cost airline boom for ten years - it hasn't happened yet.
Considering fuel prices are falling and International Aviation is, by treaty, exempt from virtually all fuel taxation its imminent end seems unlikely.

Eurostar has killed off most of air traffic between London and Paris. With HS2, the same could happen for London-Dublin. Dublin is the third most popular destination airport at Heathrow after JFK and Dubai, so that's not an insignificant number of people. To meet climate change targets I can see there being moves to increase taxation on aviation routes that are possible by high speed rail within the European Union.

A combined road and rail tunnel is the optimum solution - otherwise you will end up with an expensive Channel boondoggle that won't even kill the Irish Sea ferry market.

An optimum solution that is also by far the most expensive one.

Continuous motorway from Belfast to London would take up virtually all the Irish Sea road traffic, combined with a rail tunnel it would be an epoch defining change.

I think a better change would be to work on building rail freight corridors capable of taking piggy back lorries and cars. Would anyone drive to Ireland if they were able to drive to a transfer station and have their car taken with them to their destination? This would have significantly more capacity than Motorail ever could have had, meaning prices would be lower and the service would be less bad.

 

[Tobbes]

A road-rail tunnel (or a road tunnel) is a nonsense for the ventilation and safety issues aired above - one need only look at those horrific Alps road tunnel fires to know that you'd never choose to go down that route.

But for this to work, it would presumably need an HSR link from HS2 (Crewe?) across North Wales - presumably on or adjacent to the existing line and the A55, and then into a tunnel around Holyhead. 75 miles at a tunnel speed of 125 mph is 36 mins in the tunnel, with <10 miles into Dublin itself (8 mins?).

Holyhead to Crewe is about 105 miles (railmiles), so let's assume Celtic Shinkansen is the same distance and operates at 320 kph, giving a journey time of about 32 minutes to Crewe (76 mins to Dublin). Crewe to Euston is 58 mins, leading to <140 mins Euston to Heuston*.

<2h20 London - Dublin would certainly take much of the available traffic, but I don't know how many people actually travel between the two daily - hard to see 700+ seats every 30 mins (one express, one calling at Bangor, Crewe, Birmingham Intl, Heathrow) required.

(*I've no idea which Dublin station this would use, but Euston to Heuston amused me.)

 

[Bevan Price]

I think we ought to attach some very strong ropes to Ireland, and then tow it much closer to Wales & Scotland, so that they could build a couple of bridges........

 

[ainsworth74]

Or we could move over there a bit, actually that would probably be quite popular in some quarters as it would move us further away from the Continent!

 

[NotATrainspott]

A road-rail tunnel (or a road tunnel) is a nonsense for the ventilation and safety issues aired above - one need only look at those horrific Alps road tunnel fires to know that you'd never choose to go down that route.

But for this to work, it would presumably need an HSR link from HS2 (Crewe?) across North Wales - presumably on or adjacent to the existing line and the A55, and then into a tunnel around Holyhead. 75 miles at a tunnel speed of 125 mph is 36 mins in the tunnel, with <10 miles into Dublin itself (8 mins?).

Holyhead to Crewe is about 105 miles (railmiles), so let's assume Celtic Shinkansen is the same distance and operates at 320 kph, giving a journey time of about 32 minutes to Crewe (76 mins to Dublin). Crewe to Euston is 58 mins, leading to <140 mins Euston to Heuston*.

<2h20 London - Dublin would certainly take much of the available traffic, but I don't know how many people actually travel between the two daily - hard to see 700+ seats every 30 mins (one express, one calling at Bangor, Crewe, Birmingham Intl, Heathrow) required.

(*I've no idea which Dublin station this would use, but Euston to Heuston amused me.)

Total passenger numbers for a tunnel (assuming HSR to Bristol, Newcastle and Scotland on top of the Inverted A) should be about 80% of current flight passenger numbers:

Heathrow-Dublin: 1.66m
Heathrow-Belfast: 0.67m
Gatwick-Dublin: 0.94m
Gatwick-Belfast: 0.35m
Birmingham-Dublin: 0.56m
Birmingham-Belfast: 0.27m
Manchester-Dublin: 0.62m
Manchester-Belfast: 0.28m
Bristol-Dublin: 0.29m
Bristol-Belfast: 0.23m
Edinburgh-Dublin: 0.41m

Total: 6.28m passengers a year from a sample of places, 80% of which is 5m or 13.7k a day. That would not be bad going for high speed rail, and looks to be perfectly in line with what a city the size of Dublin could have if it were in Great Britain. Given that the states of the British Isles will always remain within a single border zone, the numbers won't be dampened as they are with Eurostar because of the passport control effect. Once you combine this with the inevitable increase in demand coming from fast connections as a result of high speed rail alone, I can see any link not having too bad a job filling up passenger numbers.

 

[Iron Girder]

I think a better change would be to work on building rail freight corridors capable of taking piggy back lorries and cars. Would anyone drive to Ireland if they were able to drive to a transfer station and have their car taken with them to their destination? This would have significantly more capacity than Motorail ever could have had, meaning prices would be lower and the service would be less bad.

When you look at how much of the traffic on the A40/A477 is for the ferries from Pembroke Dock & Fishguard, I've often wondered why someone hadn't thought of organising a piggyback transfer station somewhere like Cardiff or Swansea and doing just that, for the ferry traffic - let alone any tunnel options.

I expect there's some really good reason why not, but pondering it helps while away the long and somewhat tedious run West from Swansea...

 

[NotATrainspott]

When you look at how much of the traffic on the A40/A477 is for the ferries from Pembroke Dock & Fishguard, I've often wondered why someone hadn't thought of organising a piggyback transfer station somewhere like Cardiff or Swansea and doing just that, for the ferry traffic - let alone any tunnel options.

I expect there's some really good reason why not, but pondering it helps while away the long and somewhat tedious run West from Swansea...

Piggy back lorry transport requires a larger loading gauge than can be provided on current Network Rail tracks. Since we're not going to build many more, if any, motorways (filling in small gaps notwithstanding) it isn't too ridiculous to say that we might seriously consider building new freight routes capable of taking lorries. I would have a Betuweroute-gauge central spine from Dollands Moor up to Coatbridge and it wouldn't be impossible to design other spur extensions of the HSR network to be able to take lorry-load traffic as well with passing loops.

 

[Bald Rick]

When you look at how much of the traffic on the A40/A477 is for the ferries from Pembroke Dock & Fishguard, I've often wondered why someone hadn't thought of organising a piggyback transfer station somewhere like Cardiff or Swansea and doing just that, for the ferry traffic - let alone any tunnel options.

I expect there's some really good reason why not, but pondering it helps while away the long and somewhat tedious run West from Swansea...

Aside from gauge, lack of track capacity (especially to Pembroke) the simple reason is that it would, roughly, be 1 piggyback train per ferry. So the kit would be sat around most of the day doing zippo.

 

[Tobbes]

Total passenger numbers for a tunnel (assuming HSR to Bristol, Newcastle and Scotland on top of the Inverted A) should be about 80% of current flight passenger numbers:

Heathrow-Dublin: 1.66m
Heathrow-Belfast: 0.67m
Gatwick-Dublin: 0.94m
Gatwick-Belfast: 0.35m
Birmingham-Dublin: 0.56m
Birmingham-Belfast: 0.27m
Manchester-Dublin: 0.62m
Manchester-Belfast: 0.28m
Bristol-Dublin: 0.29m
Bristol-Belfast: 0.23m
Edinburgh-Dublin: 0.41m

Total: 6.28m passengers a year from a sample of places, 80% of which is 5m or 13.7k a day. That would not be bad going for high speed rail, and looks to be perfectly in line with what a city the size of Dublin could have if it were in Great Britain. Given that the states of the British Isles will always remain within a single border zone, the numbers won't be dampened as they are with Eurostar because of the passport control effect. Once you combine this with the inevitable increase in demand coming from fast connections as a result of high speed rail alone, I can see any link not having too bad a job filling up passenger numbers.

Thanks N-a-T, very useful. Add in a tunnel under Dublin, and HSR to Belfast (c. 35 mins for the 90 miles?) and it's still hours Belfast to London - or with HSR north to Edinburgh about the same to Scotland, even going via Dublin and Wales!

On this basis, it would be competitive with air - but the cost (of the tunnel at least) would be vast. Does anyone have a real idea about the actual costs of building the tunnel? QED, unless the EU really wants to pull out all of the stops on TEN, then it's not going to happen.

 

[Haydn1971]

Roughly, the Gotthard Base tunnel is running at about £112M per Km (two main tunnels and connecting passages)

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Roughly, the Gotthard Base tunnel is running at about £112M per Km (two main tunnels and connecting passages)

So, using that as a basis, what would this project cost?

 

[ainsworth74]

For the tunnel alone (assuming Holyhead to Dublin) something like £12ish billion. That doesn't add any extra costs like rolling stock, other infrastructure and the difficulty, potentially, of tunneling under the sea rather than a mountain.

 

[Haydn1971]

There would need to be three tunnels, plus perhaps about 5k inshore tunnel each side. So perhaps something like £150m per Km may be more appropriate - that's coming in at about £18Bn at today's prices. You then have about 160Km of HSR - which on current phase 1 prices could be getting on for £14Bn then another £14Bn for a line to Belfast. Let's not forget inflation assuming a start date in the 2030's, optimism bias could be 40-100% on top - Sticking my finger in an informed bit of air, I'd price the whole project in excess of £70Bn

 

[Hornet]

There would need to be three tunnels, plus perhaps about 5k inshore tunnel each side. So perhaps something like £150m per Km may be more appropriate - that's coming in at about £18Bn at today's prices. You then have about 160Km of HSR - which on current phase 1 prices could be getting on for £14Bn then another £14Bn for a line to Belfast. Let's not forget inflation assuming a start date in the 2030's, optimism bias could be 40-100% on top - Sticking my finger in an informed bit of air, I'd price the whole project in excess of £70Bn

Seeing as we are up to our eyeballs in debt over here, (we owe the ECB €64 Billion due to the Banking collapse), there is no chance of this project ever getting off the ground, (or under the sea)!

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Seeing as we are up to our eyeballs in debt over here, (we owe the ECB €64 Billion due to the Banking collapse), there is no chance of this project ever getting off the ground, (or under the sea)!

You seem to have the same thoughts that I expressed in posting # 71.

 

[HSTEd]

Immersed Tunnels will soon reach ~60m under the Bosphorous and 45m under the Fehmarn Belt - so the tunnel depths for the Irish Sea are not entirely out of the question for an immersed tunnel.

And if you can have an immersed tunnel teh tunnel cross section is no longer the driving cost factor.

 

[PFX]

As was discussed at length the last time this idea was mentioned here, a total pipe dream.

 

[krus_aragon]

As was discussed at length the last time this idea was mentioned here, a total pipe dream.

Aren't most tunnels a "pipe" dream? :P