There are 64-85 Flights between Dublin and these cities every day. At what point does a rail tunnel make sense?
by jqmesblake
There are 64-85 Flights between Dublin and these cities every day. At what point does a rail tunnel make sense?
by jqmesblake
26 comments
Never?
Who in the hell is going to Crewe?
Oof not sure how I feel about being technically attached to mainland UK.
Also on another note, have you seen the state of the rail prices in the UK? Nah thanks. Ryanair is cheaper.
The Irish sea is very deep, in comparison a tunnel there would need to be over double the depth of the Channel Tunnel, a rail ticket would probably be hundreds more than the currently cheap Ryanair flight that we can get.
Although ferry prices are very expensive for goods, it would still be cheaper than a tunnel ticket for a lorry. There’s just no justification for a tunnel, there would need to be a significant change, like air/sea fairs tripling before a tunnel would be attractive to people
Yes but the engineering aspect of such a tunnel would be monstrous.
Folkestone to Calais is only 48km.
Holyhead to Howth would be 94km; or to Ringsend would be 103km. It would be a massive undertaking.
Wasn’t the NI to Scotland tunnel deemed overly expensive? Not sure a Dub -> Wales line would be cost effective. But it would be cool to get onto the Eurostar rail network.
Saw a YouTube about why we don’t have a bridge from NI or Dub, apparently the Irish Sea was a dumping ground for bombs or ammunition or something so nothing something you want to be messing with far under the sea.
I rather fly right into my UK destination also thanks, no desire to ever go to the shit holes where the boats go again.
It’s for Dennis Bergkamp.
The cost has been previously estimated at €20bn or so from Dublin to Holyhead.
It would be twice as long as the Channel Tunnel and much deeper, and the Channel Tunnel would not be commercially viable today.
The only way it would become viable is if some of the newer drilling techniques (plasma, microwave, etc.) become commercialised and hugely lower the cost of such tunnels. While they’re receiving a lot of attention for deep/fast geothermal work, it’ll be many years before companies start even looking at it for full sized tunnels.
Geothermal bore diameter is approximately 15cm, compare to 50 times that diameter for the Channel Tunnel, or 2,500 times more material to remove by comparison.
Taking CSO 2023 Q3 figures, there’s about 6 million trips between Dublin and those cities. At an average cost of 54 euro per roundtrip according to Aer Lingus that is about 162 million euro a year.
A 2021 feasibility study of an Irish Sea tunnel had a cost of £209 billion, so about 240 billion Euro.
So about 1400 years before it would break-even if the trip in the tunnel was free, didn’t have any maintenance, and never had to be rebuilt.
Tunnel to france would be a better idea.
Could we dig the tunnel under the UK and go straight to France instead?
We could build our own Chunnel. Call it The Hunnel.
Let’s get the rail tunnel under Dublin done first before we do anything.
I suggest a Glass Tube ( well two ~ one for each way ) = = Just deep enough, to not snag anything above.
It would be great but will never happen while we can’t even build a metro in Dublin. Maybe in a 100 years time but God knows what Ireland and Britain will be like then.
I’d love to see how the Irish NIMBYs would object to it though.
“It will weaken the foundations of the Irish Sea!”
“It will just be used by single transients! We need to build a family tunnel for families!”
“it will disturb the fish!”
“It will lower the house prices of the houses at the bottom of the sea!”
Ireland uses a different rail gauge to the UK and the rest of the continent however
Here’s my proposal: train leaves in the morning Dublin-Edinburgh. Stops in Belfast city centre. The train boards a ferry and leaves immediately after (no dilly dallying). Change the track gauges on the boat. Stop in Glasgow. You’re in Edinburgh for lunch.
Mate we can’t even get trains between Uk mainland cities built
There’s many thousands travelling from Meath to work in Dublin every day by car. Clogging up the road network, taking hours to commute. At what point does a simple surface train line to Navan – for which most of the land is readily available – make sense?
A notably small fraction of the cost of a sea tunnel.
It makes sense but the cost doesn’t. It would benefit Ireland far more than the UK, which would likely prefer a second tunnel to France. That’s assuming it wasn’t governed by a party hellbent on spending as little on infrastructure as possible. I said in a reply to somebody else that this tunnel would be twice as long as any existing tunnel, and go underneath water that is more than twice as deep as the English Channel.
All else being achievable, there’s land on Holy Island, Anglesey and mainland Wales where the tunnel could emerge onto the existing rail network, but I can only imagine the almighty fuss that would be made about where the Irish cutting would take place. North of Dublin makes sense so the existing or future port infrastructure can be used as well as having some Belfast-only trains, but I’m sure there’s a host of reasons why it doesn’t make sense either. There’s a [trench (second image)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Sea?wprov=sfla1) that starts at the same latitude as Dublin and Holyhead, but there’s a small gap of much shallower seabed. I can see lots of nice land next to Malahide that could be used, if that means obliterating Malahide Golf Club then so be it. Anything south of Donaghmede, gets stuck behind twice as many DART trains all the way down to Bray. I suspect that taking up a few back gardens and rugby pitches for a new DART line to free up rail capacity would make a tunnel under the Irish Sea seem like a walk in the park.
Willing to get clarification or correction on any of the shite above.
Sadly there isn’t even enough capacity on the line from london to liverpool and manchester for the existing traffic, so there would be no way this would work.
Jesus we can’t even built a train to the airport in our country, how do we build this!!
And let the brits waltz back in? No thank you.
A tunnel to France is the way to go