I see statements like "a lot of money for only x minutes" in various projects and it irritates me because it assumes the perspective of occasional passengers and does not indicate how much money it would be okay to spend to get that x minutes.
First of all, for commuters, that's 2*5*x. A 7 minute improvement (for example) over a journey gives regular travellers an hour of their lives not stuck on a train - two entire days over the course of a business year.
Secondly accelerating a train by that amount of time can allow it to squeeze ahead of trains it would otherwise be stuck behind.
Thirdly, it's not just passenger hours - it's driver hours. Waterford-Dublin is 16 sectors a day so a 7 minute saving works out to just shy of 2 hours of driver time saved daily and if all of the 7 minutes is north of Carlow the saving can be applied to 20 sectors a day, not 16. That doesn't include deadheading to/from Laois Train Care if applicable or if the freight services on the line can take advantage of a higher speed limit (especially if it is a raise of a 5mph PSR to say 25mph or whatever).
Now, that 7 minute gain isn't always realisable on all routes because of slot restrictions but my point is merely that small improvements when counted over the course of a day or more's operations can add up to quite a bit. The question is therefore what is the correct threshold in mEuro/minute where a speed increase passes a cost/benefit test.
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