New Lines needed

[TAF]

There are so many new (old) lines that are needed (again) and thankfully some are on their way. The Varsity Line linking Oxford and Cambridge is in progress, at least from Oxford to Bedford by 2019. We remain to see what will happen East of Bedford.
East-west railways are needed in Hertfordshire and in many other places in the country.
Maldon (Essex) and Haverhill (Suffolk) are without rail links.
It is impossible to go from Norwich to King's Lynn directly by train.
North and North West Norfolk are poorly served.
East Lincolnshire is poorly served; a line needs to connect Skegness with Grimsby.
North Devon is poorly served, apart from the excellent preserved railway from Taunton to Minehead. A line needs to connect central Cornwall with Exeter via Launceston and Okehampton.
The old line Carmarthen to Aberystwyth needs reinstating ... and so on.

 

[6Gman]

There are so many new (old) lines that are needed (again) and thankfully some are on their way. The Varsity Line linking Oxford and Cambridge is in progress, at least from Oxford to Bedford by 2019. We remain to see what will happen East of Bedford.
East-west railways are needed in Hertfordshire and in many other places in the country.
Maldon (Essex) and Haverhill (Suffolk) are without rail links.
It is impossible to go from Norwich to King's Lynn directly by train.
North and North West Norfolk are poorly served.
East Lincolnshire is poorly served; a line needs to connect Skegness with Grimsby.
North Devon is poorly served, apart from the excellent preserved railway from Taunton to Minehead. A line needs to connect central Cornwall with Exeter via Launceston and Okehampton.
The old line Carmarthen to Aberystwyth needs reinstating ... and so on.

Your use of the word "need" is perhaps a little loose.

Just how much subsidy do you think the public should pay through their taxes to fund these "needed" links?

 

[3141]

There are so many new (old) lines that are needed (again).... North Devon is poorly served, apart from the excellent preserved railway from Taunton to Minehead.

You'd better be careful the next time you travel from...no, not Taunton, but from Bishops Lydeard to Minehead. Have you ever wondered why it's called the West Somerset Railway?

I reckon the greater need is for new new lines. Several lines in to London and other large conurbations are full, and longer distance trains with only a few stops conflict with all-stations trains. Whether new high speed routes are the best answer may be debateable, but something new that offers a far greater capacity increase than merely upgrading existing routes is certainly necessary, when you consider the continually rising numbers of passengers and the expected increase in the total population.

 

[bluenoxid]

It was going great and then the OP said link Grimsby to Skegness. What? Why?

 

[Harlesden]

I would say there is little that can be done to repair the immense damage done to Britain's rail network by one Conservative Minister of Transport, Ernest Marples. While strongly promoting the idea of closing railway lines, he was at the same time playing a very active role in road construction. Many 19th Century lines that cost thousands to build and were built very quickly by today's standards would each cost millions today, even if the route was still available.
There has never been a direct link between Grimsby and Skegness as far as I know. A change at Firsby would have been necessary - a once busy main line and branch line station that no longer exists on a line that also no longer exists.
If the OP really wishes to travel from Grimsby to Skegness, a Newark train followed by a short hop on the East Coast Main Line from Newark to Grantham and then a 90-minutes ride direct from Grantham to Skegness. Three trains, with the first and third being painfully slow stoppers - as the 19th Century journey from Firsby to Skegness would surely have been. Lucky the OP didn't want to go to Mablethorpe.
NOTE TO FORUM STAFF: Why does this site continually log me out before I have finished my post?

 

[rebmcr]

NOTE TO FORUM STAFF: Why does this site continually log me out before I have finished my post?

Seeing as that doesn't happen to me, and there's nothing in the site settings about it, it'll be disabled cookies in your browser (or similar).

 

[quantinghome]

I would say there is little that can be done to repair the immense damage done to Britain's rail network by one Conservative Minister of Transport, Ernest Marples.

Let's remember most of the beeching cuts were actually enacted by the subsequent Labour government. And BR had started cutting lines before that. There was a general consensus that the railways were on the way out. Hindsight's a wonderful thing.

My view is that many of the closures were sensible, a lot were marginal and in hindsight shouldn't have happened, and a fair few were plain nuts. The main line closures and drastic cutting in urban areas would be in the latter group.

 

[class26]

I would say there is little that can be done to repair the immense damage done to Britain's rail network by one Conservative Minister of Transport, Ernest Marples. While strongly promoting the idea of closing railway lines, he was at the same time playing a very active role in road construction. Many 19th Century lines that cost thousands to build and were built very quickly by today's standards would each cost millions today, even if the route was still available.
There has never been a direct link between Grimsby and Skegness as far as I know. A change at Firsby would have been necessary - a once busy main line and branch line station that no longer exists on a line that also no longer exists.
If the OP really wishes to travel from Grimsby to Skegness, a Newark train followed by a short hop on the East Coast Main Line from Newark to Grantham and then a 90-minutes ride direct from Grantham to Skegness. Three trains, with the first and third being painfully slow stoppers - as the 19th Century journey from Firsby to Skegness would surely have been. Lucky the OP didn't want to go to Mablethorpe.
NOTE TO FORUM STAFF: Why does this site continually log me out before I have finished my post?

Probably quicker to go via Lincoln and Sleaford.

I guess the OP was meaning the line from Grimsby via Louth to Boston and Spalding? Certainly Louth should be on the railway map but if the line to Grimsby was rebuilt it is really going the wrong way, so it would only be useful if it went south but I guess this is hardly anywhere near the top of the priorities !

 

[deltic08]

Your use of the word "need" is perhaps a little loose.

Just how much subsidy do you think the public should pay through their taxes to fund these "needed" links?

Why shouldn't they? Railways should be a public service at affordable prices that everybody can use not just the well heeled.

As a top band taxpayer before retirement, I objected to paying taxes for hospital treatment for smokers and drunks, the war in Iraq and foreign aid to countries that have a space programme but had to pay taxes.

I also paid/pay rail subsidy in my taxes even though my nearest decent railhead is 30 miles away. Why shouldn't I have a reinstated rail link subsidised by those who have had a good local service for years already such as in and around London and other big cities?

 

[Gwenllian2001]

Your use of the word "need" is perhaps a little loose.

Just how much subsidy do you think the public should pay through their taxes to fund these "needed" links?

And how much do you think that tax payers should shell out for road improvements that are only needed at peak periods? There always seems to be money for acres of tarmac with lights blazing twenty four hours a day to 'facilitate' rush hour traffic.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

Let's remember most of the beeching cuts were actually enacted by the subsequent Labour government. And BR had started cutting lines before that. There was a general consensus that the railways were on the way out. Hindsight's a wonderful thing.

My view is that many of the closures were sensible, a lot were marginal and in hindsight shouldn't have happened, and a fair few were plain nuts. The main line closures and drastic cutting in urban areas would be in the latter group.

The really annoying thing is that so many rail routes were not protected after closure but disposed of piecemeal for road 'improvements' and housing estates on the edges of formerly rail served towns.

 

[deltic08]

And how much do you think that tax payers should shell out for road improvements that are only needed at peak periods? There always seems to be money for acres of tarmac with lights blazing twenty four hours a day to 'facilitate' rush hour traffic.

North Yorkshire CC have just published a transport prospectus with a wish list of road improvements required immediately. Included are dualling of the A59 from the A1M to York, A1079 York-Market Weighton, remaining sections of A64 between Malton and Scarborough and A1237 York Ring Road not already dualled and construction of a Harrogate Western bypass to remove A61 and A59 through traffic from Harrogate Town. This is just short of £1billion collectively at to-days costs.

Also included are improvements to parallel rail routes from York to Scarborough and York to Harrogate to reduce journey times but costing a fraction of road improvements.

According to DfT statistics, all these roads have seen a reduction in traffic between 2005 and 2013 of up to 10%.

NYCC have the audacity to say that these improvements will make road more sustainable by reducing emissions but in the same breath say the intention is to "improve road travel times to nearer a mile a minute." My understanding of sustainable is that electrified rail transport can be run off renewables with less use of fossil fuels but not sure how this applies to new road building. Total w***ers.

This £1billion could have been used to reinstate railways between Northallerton and Harrogate, York-Market Weighton-(Beverley) (Minster Line) and Skipton-Earby-(Colne) and still have change left over.

Both Selby and Goole routes from the South to Hull were closed on Boxing Day due to river levels beneath both swing bridges effectively cutting Hull off from the rest of the Country. Had York-Beverley still been open, traffic could have been diverted this way without reversing as would be necessary via Malton and Bridlington.

As you say, more unnecessary tarmac with additional maintenance costs, snow clearing, carriageway lighting and unnecessary land take.

 

[306024]

.........This £1billion could have been used to reinstate railways between Northallerton and Harrogate (White Rabbit Line), York-Market Weighton-(Beverley) (Minster Line) and Skipton-Earby-(Colne).......

Or given to Lincolnshire to build the Skegness - Grimsby route (White Elephant Line).

In hindsight it is a shame Maldon lost its railway, although you could always rename Hatfield Peverel to Maldon Parkway

Meanwhile the X1 bus links Norwich and Kings Lynn frequently, and north and north west Norfolk simply don't have the population to support reopening any closed lines.

 

[yorksrob]

Let's remember most of the beeching cuts were actually enacted by the subsequent Labour government. And BR had started cutting lines before that. There was a general consensus that the railways were on the way out. Hindsight's a wonderful thing.

My view is that many of the closures were sensible, a lot were marginal and in hindsight shouldn't have happened, and a fair few were plain nuts. The main line closures and drastic cutting in urban areas would be in the latter group.

Or rather, all the more reason why a considered and organic approach to closures should have continued, rather than a slash and burn policy based on 'sexed up' statistics and dubious political patronage.

 

[deltic]

To take the OP's suggestion about new lines and not reworking the same old story about re-opening rural lines in the middle of nowhere I suggest the following:

1 Outer London orbital - roughly following the M25 with interchanges with all lines entering London to reduce the need for cross London journeys and open up new travel opportunities
2 Holyhead- Dublin rail tunnel and upgrade of north Wales line to allow 3hr journey from London to Dublin via HS2
3 Outer Manchester orbital roughly following M60 again to allow improved travel across Greater Manchester
4 rail tunnel between Scotland and Northern Ireland and new line to allow 1hr high speed journey from Glasgow to Belfast and with high speed connection from Edinburgh

 

[absolutelymilk]

To take the OP's suggestion about new lines and not reworking the same old story about re-opening rural lines in the middle of nowhere I suggest the following:

1 Outer London orbital - roughly following the M25 with interchanges with all lines entering London to reduce the need for cross London journeys and open up new travel opportunities
2 Holyhead- Dublin rail tunnel and upgrade of north Wales line to allow 3hr journey from London to Dublin via HS2
3 Outer Manchester orbital roughly following M60 again to allow improved travel across Greater Manchester
4 rail tunnel between Scotland and Northern Ireland and new line to allow 1hr high speed journey from Glasgow to Belfast and with high speed connection from Edinburgh

1. Why would you have this instead of Crossrail 2/Crossrail 3? Any new rail line near London that doesn't provide opportunities to go into central London is missing out on a huge chunk of revenue
2. Upgrade of North Wales line yes, Holyhead to Dublin tunnel
http://oireachtasdebates.oireachtas.ie/debates authoring/debateswebpack.nsf/takes/dail1988111600034
Would cost twice as much as the Chunnel and have 20% of the usage.
3. Possibly
4. Same as 2. - would be shorter but there is not as much demand for this

While I would love to see these happen, the subsidy needed for them would be much higher than for other projects currently in the pipeline

 

[clc]

... rail tunnel between Scotland and Northern Ireland and new line to allow 1hr high speed journey from Glasgow to Belfast and with high speed connection from Edinburgh

I think a high speed connection between Glasgow and other Scottish cities would be a higher priority than Belfast to be honest.

Start with the planned HSR line from Glasgow to the outskirts of Edinburgh.

Then build a spur from some point west of the City Bypass to a point south of the Forth Bridge. If an Edinburgh airport stop can be incorporated into this section even better.

Then build a new HS line from Inverkeithing to Perth on the Glenfarg alignment.

Perth-Dundee and Dundee-Aberdeen wouldn't get completely new lines but would be upgraded to increase line speeds and capacity.

All cities would get faster journeys on at least one intercity route.

Glasgow would get faster journeys to Edinburgh, Perth, Dundee and Aberdeen.

Edinburgh would get faster journeys to Glasgow, Perth, Dundee, Aberdeen and Inverness.

 

[deltic]

1. Why would you have this instead of Crossrail 2/Crossrail 3? Any new rail line near London that doesn't provide opportunities to go into central London is missing out on a huge chunk of revenue
2. Upgrade of North Wales line yes, Holyhead to Dublin tunnel
http://oireachtasdebates.oireachtas.ie/debates authoring/debateswebpack.nsf/takes/dail1988111600034
Would cost twice as much as the Chunnel and have 20% of the usage.
3. Possibly
4. Same as 2. - would be shorter but there is not as much demand for this

While I would love to see these happen, the subsidy needed for them would be much higher than for other projects currently in the pipeline

1) Rail has a very high share of the travel into central London market and as you say Crossrail 2/3 are being developed to meet future demand. However, outside that market rail's market share is tiny. The London overground inner orbital service shows there is huge unmet demand for journeys that dont go into central London. The M25 supposedly carries more people a day than the whole national rail network - making journeys that are presently difficult to make by rail. A new outer orbital railway even if took only about 5% of journeys presently on the M25 would be one of the busiest in the country. It would also free up capacity on rail services into central London as those who presently travel into and out of London again would be diverted to it, reducing or delaying the need for very expensive capacity upgrades on these lines.

2) I did a private study on the feasibility of a tunnel between Ireland and UK many decades ago when we had one the world's leading tunnelers working with us. The air market between Dublin and London was the same size as that between London and Paris with a much bigger regional market (compared to that travelling to Paris/Brussels) from Birmingham/Manchester/Liverpool that could also transfer to rail. Since then the low cost airlines are well embedded and rail construction costs have gone through the roof but it would certainly cover its operating costs and make some contribution to its capital costs.

3) M60 is one of the UK's busiest motorways clogged up with very short distance trips - Highways England would love to close many of the junctions on it to remove some of those trips and improve safety (huge amount of weaving traffic due to the short distance between junctions). A orbital railway would allow large number of trips which again are not very difficult by rail.

4) I agree this would be the least used route of the lot and doesnt stack up but this is a fantasy list!

I would respectfully suggest 1-3 would deliver far greater benefits and at probably lower cost than the sum of all the reopenings suggested on this forum.

 

[Class 170101]

1) Rail has a very high share of the travel into central London market and as you say Crossrail 2/3 are being developed to meet future demand. However, outside that market rail's market share is tiny. The London overground inner orbital service shows there is huge unmet demand for journeys that dont go into central London. The M25 supposedly carries more people a day than the whole national rail network - making journeys that are presently difficult to make by rail. A new outer orbital railway even if took only about 5% of journeys presently on the M25 would be one of the busiest in the country. It would also free up capacity on rail services into central London as those who presently travel into and out of London again would be diverted to it, reducing or delaying the need for very expensive capacity upgrades on these lines.

This idea has been floated around from time to time for freight - most of which does not need to go to London.

2) I did a private study on the feasibility of a tunnel between Ireland and UK many decades ago when we had one the world's leading tunnelers working with us. The air market between Dublin and London was the same size as that between London and Paris with a much bigger regional market (compared to that travelling to Paris/Brussels) from Birmingham/Manchester/Liverpool that could also transfer to rail. Since then the low cost airlines are well embedded and rail construction costs have gone through the roof but it would certainly cover its operating costs and make some contribution to its capital costs.

But how long would it take to build? The Channel tunnel took six years to construct from start to finish never mind the political wrangling and that was just over 23 miles of tunnel. Could it really be quicker to travel from London to Dublin by rail given the distances involved?

I would suggest the tunnel speed would be 100mph for 73 miles leaving 297 miles on High Speed line what speed would be required for this to remain under 3 hours total journey time London to Dublin stopping at Crewe en-route to compete with air.

 

[CP165]

2 Holyhead- Dublin rail tunnel and upgrade of north Wales line to allow 3hr journey from London to Dublin via HS2

May as well chuck in proper HS1-HS2 connection to get Dublin - Paris in 5hrs and Dublin - Brussels in 4hr 30, including a stop at OOC/Stratford International of course.

In reality I think demand for that would be pretty low!

 

[Class 170101]

HS1 - HS2 connection as we knew it has been binned.

I think they would be better constructing one from Old Oak to Stratford International anyway.

 

[Andrewlong]

To take the OP's suggestion about new lines and not reworking the same old story about re-opening rural lines in the middle of nowhere I suggest the following:

1 Outer London orbital - roughly following the M25 with interchanges with all lines entering London to reduce the need for cross London journeys and open up new travel opportunities
2 Holyhead- Dublin rail tunnel and upgrade of north Wales line to allow 3hr journey from London to Dublin via HS2
3 Outer Manchester orbital roughly following M60 again to allow improved travel across Greater Manchester
4 rail tunnel between Scotland and Northern Ireland and new line to allow 1hr high speed journey from Glasgow to Belfast and with high speed connection from Edinburgh

I would rather see some blue sky thinking like the above rather than this 'let's blame Beeching and we need to need to re-open closed lines which will solve our capacity problems'. Living near Reading - suggestion 1 make a great deal of sense especially if you can link the various airports at the same time (Luton, Gatwick, Stanstead etc).

 

[GrimsbyPacer]

The Fleetwood, Wisbech, Ashington, Coalville, Portishead, and other lines with track in place should be the prioty. As much as I want to see a line through Louth, that money could reopen several other lines where the track is almost ready.

 

[Chester1]

But how long would it take to build? The Channel tunnel took six years to construct from start to finish never mind the political wrangling and that was just over 23 miles of tunnel. Could it really be quicker to travel from London to Dublin by rail given the distances involved?

I would suggest the tunnel speed would be 100mph for 73 miles leaving 297 miles on High Speed line what speed would be required for this to remain under 3 hours total journey time London to Dublin stopping at Crewe en-route to compete with air.

Speed is not the primary problem with the idea. A tunnel would need to be about 55-60 miles long not 73. The channel tunnel is limited to 90mph due to carrying vehicles. At the same speed the journey time from Dublin to Holyhead would be about 50 minutes. The existing London-Holyhead service is about 3 hours 55 minutes (London-Crewe 1 hour 40 minutes and Crewe-Holyhead 2 hours 15 minutes). HS2 will reduce journey times between London and Crewe to 55 minutes. I created a thread about Crewe-Holyhead upgrades a few months ago, if I remember correctly the general consensus was that Crewe-Abergele could be upgraded to 100mph, Abergele-Bangor could never go beyond 80mph without a new line and Bangor-Holyhead could be increased significantly beyond the current 60mph limit, to close to 100mph. Electrification was recently estimated to be £750m in a Welsh Assembly funded report. In addition about 75 miles of track would need to be relayed to 100mph standard and significant amounts of resignalling would be necessary (although I believe Crewe-Abergele is being resignalled to support 100mph running anyway). For about £1bn+ the Crewe-Holyhead journey time could be reduced to 1 hour 35 mins (with very limited stopping pattern). In total this would mean a journey time of 3 hours 20 minutes without needing to build new high speed track.

The flaw in the plan is the cost of the tunnel itself. At £300m a mile it would be £16.5-18bn. The only spare train paths on HS2 are the 2 paths each way that are currently being reserved for Heathrow if a third runway is built. Using these for London-Dublin would allow for slightly higher frequency services than Eurostar but the trains would also be used for shorter journeys. In addition, in addition, the existing Manchester-Llandudno service could probably be extended to Dublin and run by a fast EMU, perhaps with a similar service to Liverpool (Liverpool and Manchester have popular flights to Dublin, Birmingham does to a lesser extent). At most that is 4 trains per hour, significantly better than Eurostar but not a huge amount. The killer blow is vehicle traffic between Holyhead/Liverpool to Dublin, it is a small fraction of Dover-Calais traffic. Its reasonable to expect the services to be revenue raising after operating costs but there is no chance it paying much of its capital cost. The Irish government is in no position to throw away several billion and there is no pressing political reason for our government to fund it.

 

[deltic08]

Or given to Lincolnshire to build the Skegness - Grimsby route (White Elephant Line).

In hindsight it is a shame Maldon lost its railway, although you could always rename Hatfield Peverel to Maldon Parkway

Meanwhile the X1 bus links Norwich and Kings Lynn frequently, and north and north west Norfolk simply don't have the population to support reopening any closed lines.

Why should NYCC give their budget to Lincolnshire? Lincolnshire will have its own to spend on reinstatement.

As I have said previously, I would rather crawl on my hands and knees than use a bus. If I can't travel by car or train then I will not travel. Many think the same way.

 

[deltic]

Speed is not the primary problem with the idea. A tunnel would need to be about 55-60 miles long not 73. The channel tunnel is limited to 90mph due to carrying vehicles. At the same speed the journey time from Dublin to Holyhead would be about 50 minutes. The existing London-Holyhead service is about 3 hours 55 minutes (London-Crewe 1 hour 40 minutes and Crewe-Holyhead 2 hours 15 minutes). HS2 will reduce journey times between London and Crewe to 55 minutes. I created a thread about Crewe-Holyhead upgrades a few months ago, if I remember correctly the general consensus was that Crewe-Abergele could be upgraded to 100mph, Abergele-Bangor could never go beyond 80mph without a new line and Bangor-Holyhead could be increased significantly beyond the current 60mph limit, to close to 100mph. Electrification was recently estimated to be £750m in a Welsh Assembly funded report. In addition about 75 miles of track would need to be relayed to 100mph standard and significant amounts of resignalling would be necessary (although I believe Crewe-Abergele is being resignalled to support 100mph running anyway). For about £1bn+ the Crewe-Holyhead journey time could be reduced to 1 hour 35 mins (with very limited stopping pattern). In total this would mean a journey time of 3 hours 20 minutes without needing to build new high speed track.

The flaw in the plan is the cost of the tunnel itself. At £300m a mile it would be £16.5-18bn. The only spare train paths on HS2 are the 2 paths each way that are currently being reserved for Heathrow if a third runway is built. Using these for London-Dublin would allow for slightly higher frequency services than Eurostar but the trains would also be used for shorter journeys. In addition, in addition, the existing Manchester-Llandudno service could probably be extended to Dublin and run by a fast EMU, perhaps with a similar service to Liverpool (Liverpool and Manchester have popular flights to Dublin, Birmingham does to a lesser extent). At most that is 4 trains per hour, significantly better than Eurostar but not a huge amount. The killer blow is vehicle traffic between Holyhead/Liverpool to Dublin, it is a small fraction of Dover-Calais traffic. Its reasonable to expect the services to be revenue raising after operating costs but there is no chance it paying much of its capital cost. The Irish government is in no position to throw away several billion and there is no pressing political reason for our government to fund it.

The route would only work with considerable new route in north Wales to get the journey time below 3hrs. The HS2 paths allocated to Heathrow have been binned as analysis for the Davis Commission showed that demand to and from Heathrow from Midlands and the north couldnt justify them.

So 2 HS2 trains from London, 1 HS2 train from Birmingham, I train from Leeds via Manchester, 1 from Liverpool and a semi stopping service from Chester would give 6 passenger trains an hour.

There appear to be up to 18 ferries a day from Dublin to UK so while not as busy as the Channel still some potential demand - dont know whether the economics stack up for container trains from UK ports to Dublin exist. A new rail terminal would obviously be needed due to different Irish gauge so through running into Ireland would not happen.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

May as well chuck in proper HS1-HS2 connection to get Dublin - Paris in 5hrs and Dublin - Brussels in 4hr 30, including a stop at OOC/Stratford International of course.

In reality I think demand for that would be pretty low!

HS1/HS2 link has as much chance of happening as the reopening of the Carmarthen-aberystwyth line

 

[DynamicSpirit]

The flaw in the plan is the cost of the tunnel itself. At £300m a mile it would be £16.5-18bn. The only spare train paths on HS2 are the 2 paths each way that are currently being reserved for Heathrow if a third runway is built. Using these for London-Dublin would allow for slightly higher frequency services than Eurostar but the trains would also be used for shorter journeys. In addition, in addition, the existing Manchester-Llandudno service could probably be extended to Dublin and run by a fast EMU, perhaps with a similar service to Liverpool (Liverpool and Manchester have popular flights to Dublin, Birmingham does to a lesser extent). At most that is 4 trains per hour, significantly better than Eurostar but not a huge amount. The killer blow is vehicle traffic between Holyhead/Liverpool to Dublin, it is a small fraction of Dover-Calais traffic. Its reasonable to expect the services to be revenue raising after operating costs but there is no chance it paying much of its capital cost. The Irish government is in no position to throw away several billion and there is no pressing political reason for our government to fund it.

I would imagine that one additional factor that a Holyhead-Dublin tunnel has is the possibility for a commuter market, with people living in Anglesey (or at a pinch, mainland NW Wales) and using the train to get to work in Dublin). That market does not of course currently exist because of the impossibility of making that journey in a reasonable time, but if the tunnel existed, and had a reasonable service level, then it would seem likely that people would start doing exactly that. That's in contrast with the Channel Tunnel, where there are only modestly sized towns near to either end of the tunnel, and so fewer commuting possibilities.

But I don't think anything I've said changes the point you're making: The population, and therefore the potential size of the commuting market in NW Wales, is relatively small - so it isn't going to change the basic economics - that a tunnel would likely be too high a cost for too little benefit. There are doubtless hundreds of other places in the UK that arguably should be higher priority for new rail lines.

 

[MarkRedon]

The flaw in the plan is the cost of the tunnel itself. At £300m a mile it would be £16.5-18bn. The only spare train paths on HS2 are the 2 paths each way that are currently being reserved for Heathrow if a third runway is built. Using these for London-Dublin would allow for slightly higher frequency services than Eurostar but the trains would also be used for shorter journeys... The killer blow is vehicle traffic between Holyhead/Liverpool to Dublin, it is a small fraction of Dover-Calais traffic. It's reasonable to expect the services to be revenue raising after operating costs but there is no chance it paying much of its capital cost. The Irish government is in no position to throw away several billion and there is no pressing political reason for our government to fund it.

To back up your approximation for the cost of the tunnelling: see http://www.irishcentral.com/culture...ng-Ireland-and-Wales-proposed-by-British.html. This is an article which refers to a report by the Chartered Institute for Logistics and Transport; I have been unable to find an online copy of the original report. Prof. Stuart Cole concurs with a cost estimate of the order of £15 billion:

Professor Stuart Cole, of the Transport Research Centre at the University of South Wales, does not believe the cost would be an issue.

“We're talking about something like £15bn [$23.5 billion],” he said. “Something like the cost of HS2 [high speed rail line] between London and Birmingham.

"So we're not talking about a massive amount of money in the world of governments.

"Also, much of this money would come from the European Commission," he added.

As Prof. Cole says, a significant proportion of this bill might well be picked up by the European Union under the TEN-T programme.

 

[edwin_m]

As I have said previously, I would rather crawl on my hands and knees than use a bus. If I can't travel by car or train then I will not travel. Many think the same way.

This is a big part of the problem.

If you look at countries which most people agree do public transport pretty well, such as Germany and Switzerland, you find that buses are an integral part of the network but they don't try to do jobs that buses aren't suited for. So you will find buses in uncongested outer suburbs and rural areas, making very slick connections into trains or trams for the trunk hauls into the city centre. In most cities there is hardly a bus to be seen in the centre itself. I guess some people still drive instead of using a bus but enough people use the network as a whole to make it worth continuing (though it does require a significant subsidy, which is politically non-controversial).

If we had done something similar, and also adopted the 1970s attitude to funding and to route "rationalisation" ten years earlier, then I believe many of the Beeching cuts would not have happened. Having buses feeding rather than competing with the railway would have boosted traffic on some routes enough to make them worth keeping, especially if redundant infrastructure and inefficient operations were swept away at the same time. However there would always have been "no hoper" railway routes that no sane policy would have kept open, probably more in Britain than in other countries because our network was built by competing companies instead of being centrally planned. This might include some of the routes that survived the Beeching axe for political rather than economic reasons. However network integration, and hopefully lack of stigma attached to using buses, might have turned many of these into successful bus routes that still fed passengers into the rail network.

 

[deltic08]

I did a private study on the feasibility of a tunnel between Ireland and UK many decades ago when we had one the world's leading tunnelers working with us. The air market between Dublin and London was the same size as that between London and Paris with a much bigger regional market (compared to that travelling to Paris/Brussels) from Birmingham/Manchester/Liverpool that could also transfer to rail. Since then the low cost airlines are well embedded and rail construction costs have gone through the roof but it would certainly cover its operating costs and make some contribution to its capital costs.

I would respectfully suggest 1-3 would deliver far greater benefits and at probably lower cost than the sum of all the reopenings suggested on this forum.

Unlike the Straits of Dover that is shallow, I thought there is a deep north/south trench in the Irish Sea that prevents tunnelling.

All the reinstatements I have mentioned in North Yorkshire have positive benefit cost ratios, unlike HS2 that is negative, so don't include these in your worthless fantasy high speed constructions. My lines are short distance, high volume commuters routes that will take hundreds of thousands of car journeys off roads annually.

 

[yorksrob]

I don't think I would be happy exchanging some of our more political branch lines with the less justified closures. Bus connections would be desirable, but a little differentiation isn't a bad thing.