[article]Irish Rail plan to link Dublin Airport with rest of country

[Mark Gleeson]

Nothing terribly new here http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/irish-rail-plan-to-link-dublin-airport-with-rest-of-country-30936601.html

RISH Rail is planning a new line to allow intercity trains to travel direct to Dublin airport from Cork, Galway and Belfast.

[James Howard]

How are they planning on achieving this without having to do a reversal around Connolly? That would go down really well in the middle of the morning rush-hour.

[Kilocharlie]

A stop in Connolly would not be a problem apart from congestion. After all the InterCity trains need to serve some City stations.

Would they also bypass Heuston? Doesn't make sense to enter Heuston and then reverse out again. Or perhaps a train change at Hazelhatch for those that want to go to Heuston?

[James Howard]

The whole operation would just take too long to be viable. The Heuston options are to either a double reversal or use the remote platform. But they would still need to cater for the 90% of customers who would want to go to the city centre as opposed to the airport.

The article itself quotes a 3:30 time to get to the airport which would mean that the Heuston to Airport section would be about an hour. It would be far more efficient and quicker to just have the intercity services stop at Adamstown and have an express coach transfer to the airport from there.

The idea of a heavy rail airport link in Dublin makes very little sense. The airport is too close to the city to make it necessary especially when the massively underused port tunnel makes it a 20 minute taxi trip from docklands. I would be highly surprised if Irish Rail could beat a port-tunnel bus run from Connolly even. Then there is the issue that hardly anybody wants to go into the city centre from the airport.

A luas line is an entirely different proposition.

[Mark Gleeson]

There is a game afoot, Irish Rail appear to have learned how to play the game.

There is no plan to operate Intercity services on the Airport spur if built, just wouldn't work

Plan is for a 15 minute interval DART service from Airport to the southside.

The only way to get the parish pump politicians onside is to try to sell this as some class of country wide project and not a much needed piece of Dublin infrastructure

[Kilocharlie]

This really needs the DART Underground to work effectively with DARTs from Heuston to the Airport. Anything else has limited capability; Connolly does not have the space to accommodate more that a few additional InterCity services.

[Mark Gleeson]

This really needs the DART Underground to work effectively with DARTs from Heuston to the Airport. Anything else has limited capability; Connolly does not have the space to accommodate more that a few additional InterCity services.

Thats part B of the plan, to force the situation with respect to DART underground.

The City Centre signalling upgrade will provide a lot more DART capacity and turnback at Grand Canal and Dun Laoghaire would allow a very good service

[Inniskeen]

Metro North is the only proposal that delivers anything worthwhile to north county Dublin in terms of attracting major new traffic flows onto an entirely new and uncongested high capacity corridor. Metro North will give better access to the city centre, be more frequent and at least as fast as DART. Airport DART only makes sense if it can deliver an attractive journey time and has the potential to operate frequently at peak periods. Given the congestion on the northern line neither is realistic without additional tracks.

[Mark Gleeson]

If you have 2.8billion under the bed let the minister know. The problem with metro north is the large up front capital cost and that it only benefits a single corridor

Its an impossible sell outside Dublin

[Kilocharlie]

Thats part B of the plan, to force the situation with respect to DART underground.

The City Centre signalling upgrade will provide a lot more DART capacity and turnback at Grand Canal and Dun Laoghaire would allow a very good service

Hopefully including trains that run Kildare-GCD incl Drumcondra. That might be nice.

[James Howard]

As far as I can remember, the basic costings for Metro north also only provided for three-car trains. This would deliver barely more capacity than a tram line. To me, the tram proposal that was floating around a year or two ago, makes vastly more sense than either Metro North or the spur proposal.

The airport DART strikes me as basically an attempt at a land-grab by Irish Rail for an airport rail service that really only provides for two groups of people - those living in the DART corridor who are already served by Aircoach and business travellers who are already served by taxis through the port tunnel and are unlikely to travel any other way. Bus Eireann are doing an admirable job in terms of delivering airport passengers to basically all of Leinster.

[Mark Gleeson]

To be fair airport access from the DART corridor is poor to non existent

1. Nothing north of Connolly apart from the rather poor bus from Sutton
2. Southside looks good on paper if you are happy with 1 bus an hour that sits in traffic for ages at peak and charges 10+ euro single

Pretty sure metro north was planning on 90m trains which gave more than double the best a Luas could offer, the maths suggested this was not going to be enough for demand.

EU policy is for heavy rail links to airports, i.e. strong likelihood money will be available. Nothing wrong with having multiple connections

[shweeney]

To be fair airport access from the DART corridor is poor to non existent

1. Nothing north of Connolly apart from the rather poor bus from Sutton
2. Southside looks good on paper if you are happy with 1 bus an hour that sits in traffic for ages at peak and charges 10+ euro single


the Dublin Bus airport service leaves from Busaras which is directly opposite Connolly. It's both fast (using the tunnel) and reasonably cheap.

[Inniskeen]

If you have 2.8billion under the bed let the minister know. The problem with metro north is the large up front capital cost and that it only benefits a single corridor

Its an impossible sell outside Dublin

Metro North opens up an entirely new corridor with a capacity of 12000 pdph and could be expected to carry significantly more than 16 million passengers using the current DART system. It would be idiotic to dismiss it despite the up front capital costs. It is better to get it right than to throw a few hundred million at a hopelessly flawed scheme.

I would love to see both DART and mainline trains in the airport, but only if the proposal is operationally viable and delivers improved service. While
Metro North doesn't integrate well with existing mainline rail services it ticks a lot more boxes than a spur from Clongriffin to the Airport.

[James Howard]

With Metro North levels of investment, you could open up 4 or 5 tram corridors with roughly half the capacity each which would resolve the entire city's transport problems far more comprehensively.

It's an impossible sell because the benefits are entirely limited to the 150,000 or so people who live on that corridor - and of those only about 20% would even want to travel into town to work.

DART underground and airport spurs are an easier sell because the entire population of country can see the possibility that they might use it once or twice a year.

[Eddie]

A dart spur to the airport clearly makes sense, but it would have to utterly reliable and would mean Darts would have to start earlier and finish later.

I can't see the duration being much different from the bus, but would assume frequency would be at least half-hourly.

[James Howard]

I would see the frequency as needing to be at least every 15 minutes. I agree it would need to start a lot earlier than the present DART system - probably early and late enough to allow people to take it to work at the airport.

But my question would be why bother build it at all if it is no better than the present bus arrangement. If it's so we can keep up with those fancy europeans with a shiny impressive railway to the airport, maybe we should think about why. By better I mean, faster, more integrated or more comfortable. There is some argument towards having it to give arriving tourists a good impression of the country but Irish Rail would want to seriously up their game for that to work.

There is a possible argument for integration but that is dubious at best with the present rail network. As it stands a huge number of Bus Éireann buses already go via the airport and an express bus can get you to Connolly or Busaras in 20 minutes through the tunnel. If DART underground ever gets built, then the possibility of Airport - Connolly - Heuston suddenly starts making a lot more sense but if there is no plan for this to happen, the airport spur is a waste of money.

The other problem is that it will be bunging another 4 trains an hour and all the attendant crossing of the existing line onto a corridor where Irish Rail already have massive difficulties maintaining a timetable. While the city centre resignalling project will help with that, there is so much rubbish floating about at trains for Galway, Cork and Limerick running straight to Connolly, that they'll need to be able to put 30 trains an hour over the loop-line bridge.

[Mark Gleeson]

04:30 has been quoted as start time, every 15 minutes.

[Inniskeen]

04:30 has been quoted as start time, every 15 minutes.

"All change" for Howth and Malahide - presumeably shuttle on the Howth Branch (or convert to LUAS, increase frequency and eliminate the barriers at the four level crossings)

Malahide preumeably keeps peak period DARTs but looses the rest due to capacity constraints !

[dowlingm]

Here in Toronto we're about to kick off a service between Pearson and Union Station (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Pearson_Express) with two stops in between. It was deemed necessary to build two dedicated tracks to get this done. Supposed to operate 19.5 hours a day, 4 times an hour per direction (initially with DMUs)

Instead of extending DART wires over a spur and spreading the DART fleet more thinly, how about insisting that a 3rd Northern Line track be the priority, with airport service being then operated by refitted 2700s with additional luggage space on a semi-express basis (DUB-Howth Jct-Connolly-Pearse-GCD-turnback). A third track would offer the opportunity to increase total capacity rather than crudely carving out some of the existing, creating resistance to/resentment against the airport service.

[Colm Moore]

With every change that a passenger needs to make, public transport can lose 50% of it's potential passengers. Operating direct from the airport to strong demand-generating locations (South County Dublin, coastal areas of the northside, Cork) means that Irish Rail could grab a substantial amount of business. Potentially twice the share it gets now. It would pose a substantial challenge to those coach services that operate from the airport to regional locations.

Instead of extending DART wires over a spur and spreading the DART fleet more thinlyI don't think the DART fleet is being pushed at the moment. However, in the next 5-10 years, they will need to look at mid-life upgrades and possibly fleet renewal.

[James Howard]

This reluctance to change is especially bad in Ireland and is primarily due to poor service frequency and reliability.

The idea of an express diesel shuttle on a third line makes more sense than just thinning out the Malahide DART service. I really don't think the airport spur idea makes very much sense at all without DART underground. If they went ahead with this spur on a stopping DART service, you would need an average 7 minute wait followed by a 30 minute journey to Connolly. Plus wherever they put a station in the airport is likely to be a 5 - 10 minute walk and possibly a 15 - 20 minute walk from the more distant terminal.

Compare this with a 20 minute door-to-door taxi spin through the tunnel to the financial district and you know which route the business travellers will take. The 30 quid for the taxi is still less that the Heathrow Express. Southside passengers are adequately served by Aircoach and intercity travelers for a lot of the country are very well served by Bus Eireann.

But as part of a properly integrated city transport system, an airport rail service becomes a far more important link than as simply an outpost of half of the city's rail service that poorly serves about a quarter of the population.

[Inniskeen]

A rail connection to Dublin Airport could be a major addition to the state's transport infrastructure and a huge opportunity for Irish Rail but only if the proposal is realistic in terms of frequency, operational practicality, integration with other services, reliability and journey times.

Doing it properly means more tracks north of Connolly, a station under the main airport terminals and direct services to Cork, Belfast, Killarney etc etc ...

And yes people don't like changing trains for all the reasons stated.

[dowlingm]

Toronto's airport link operation posted a status report today. Could be a guide to what Dublin should be seeking in terms of quality of product:
http://www.metrolinx.com/en/docs/pdf/board_agenda/20150303/20150303_BoardMtg_UP_Express_Readiness_EN.pdf

[eugene]

Here in Geneva where I am now, all Swiss area start and finish in general from under the airport.. Dublin needs something as close to this as possible..

Can I ask when the Dublin resignalling is now going to be completed.. seems to be in progress for an age.

[Inniskeen]

The city centre resignalling scheme is unlikely to be completed for at least 18 months to two years. It is essentially a renewal of end of life assets with some additional intermediate signals, a purpose designed turnback at Grand Canal Dock and a partial reconfiguration of signals on the Howth branch to reduce delays for motorists at level crossings. A new loop and third platform at Clongriffin provides some operaltional flexibility in the northbound direction but track has not been provided for the matching facility in the citybound direction.

While the new signalling will facilitate more trains, north of Grand Canal Dock, the proposed pattern of operations will result in journey time penalties of as much as twenty minutes for the majority of passengers travelling beyond Howth Junction.

The resignalling project does not form the basis for a reliable or worthwhile service to the airport or for significant useful expansion of services north of Connolly.

The main practical benefit of the scheme will be the ability to run additional trains northbound from Grand Canal Dock, some of which will run towards Kildare via the Phoenix Park tunnel.

[Jamie2k9]

According to media reports they suggest that Luas to airport/Swords will be likely outcome come June.

Personally I think leaving Dart until there is sufficent infrastructure in place ie. Dart Underground is the only way to deliver quality service for the whole country especially thoses who use N Commuter lines daily.