[ccos]

The argument over journey times is all well and good but most people dont use a train for intercity journeys because its quicker then a car.
Even with a substantial reduction in Cork Dublin times its never going to be quicker from A to B unless you happen to be going from Lwr Glanmire road to the Guinness brewary wall and that would assume you have to be there around the time the train arrives.

In the much vaunted days of the mark III´s the nonstop train on Sunday evening left at 18.00 (I think) and did the journey in 2.18, but the train before that left about 14.00 taking a bit more then 2 1/2 and the one that left half an hour afterwards .stopped everywhere and took over 3 hours. The effect of this is if I had to be in Dublin at 7.30 pm I had to be getting a train at 2 o clock giving a 5 1/2 hour travel time and if I had to be there at 10 pm I would have had to leave Cork on the non-stop giving me a real journey time of 4 hours despite the train doing the journey in times not seen now. The 2.18 minute journey time was as much use as tits on a fish except to the 3 people on board who had appointments in Dublin at 8.30 pm

Frequency is of much more importance.
With the hourly service there is no more 4 or 5 hour travel times needed, I think more effrort should be put into increasing the frequency at peak times to half hourly, this would have the effect of cutting travel times by up to 30 minutes.
Most intercity rail users care less about they are spending 15 minutes longer on a train then having to waste hours away waiting for the next one.


The first and last segments of any long distance railway journey are always going to throw any time advantage away unless you happen to be just traveling between two major train stations and increases in frequency are more effective ways of reducing journey times.