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An HS2 type line is probably not going to happen. I’d imagine upgrade of existing track, some new track and electrification. It’ll likely be a mix but a €15bn price tag could deliver a fairly impressive service.
Belfast Transport Developments
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Yes - Translink put indicative (rough im sure of course) costs of €710 / £629 million for an electrified Belfast Dublin service at 90 mins.
So £15 billion across Ireland would certainly quite some investment!
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That seems about right as the 15bn also needs to cover the RoI tracks to Cork and Limerick as mentioned in the proposal.
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Do you know this for a fact? I would surmise that there is probably the odd bit wide enough to build passing places but who's to say there is enough free land to build a continuous third track
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I remember it being mentioned years ago, but when i went to find the report which discussed it, it turns out it was only from GVS to Adelaide had potential for a third track.
So... not quite Lisburn!
Not quite sure what benefits that would bring, and the report doesn't even bother finishing off the point (3.26) anyway.
NI Executive is responsible for the area of Northern Ireland, not ROI. Being from the Northwest there is systematic underinvestment here but also in the rest of Northern Ireland outside Belfast.
I’m not sure why you would prioritise and raise the necessity for electrification to Enniskillen, they don’t have a railway line at all and have extremely low population density. So why would you be jumping the gun to suddenly have services there when we have been waiting for improvements for decades, now suddenly you want to prioritise Enniskillen, a town of 13,000, but yet you think the line to Derry doesn’t need to be doubled?
The Derry line alone carried 3 million passengers last year. At the absolute bear minimum, it is not too much of an ask to have the whole line doubled.
Dublin or Cork are not a priority to me. Nor are they important. This line will once again only benefit people in Southeastern Northern Ireland.
Northern Ireland needs to improve it’s transport network outside Belfast. You have already had investment through the Glider scheme and now want the York Street Interchange. What have we got? A few passing loops with very limited changes to services. We still only have an hourly train service to a city of 110,000, that is a dire disgrace and well beyond excuse.
There are also a few roads that could do with being dualled, including the remaining sections of the A2 to Limavady and the A26 to Coleraine. Once again these roads will stay as single carriageway in preference for more dualling in Belfast and County Down, which is not really needed and would help less than our improvements would.
As usual the NI Executive continues to invest in Belfast and SE NI, continually bringing it ahead of the rest of NI, creating a substantial gap in infrastructure that never will be filled.
A train line from Dublin to Belfast is not “across Ireland”.
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Yes, I know, I was including Dublin, Limerick, Cork.
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The 'we deserve more, you get everything and we don't, Derry and the west of the Bann needs investment' is a pretty tired and repetitive argument. It just creates an us and them mentality and does not achieve anything positive.
All of Northern Ireland is completely under invested and is not befitting of a modern European country when it comes to transport and infrastructure. We live in a region where politicians are wasteful, negligent and are seemingly experts in wasting public money. Any questions of under investment or lack of needs to be directed here. Belfast is still very poor when it comes to transport and infrastructure and is way behind compared to other major UK cities. Some of the worst congestion in UK/Ireland, no rail links to either airports and 2 hours/10 minutes to Dublin by train isn't anything to gloat about.
Getting rid of useless bureaucracy, red tape and actually investing money which produce some sort of change at minimum would be a start.
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In a world where not everything can be built, investment needs to be focused on where it delivers the maximum return per £ spent. Factually, that means that Belfast will attract the majority of any available investment because it benefits a much greater number of people and brings much more in the way of economic benefits. To do otherwise would be wasteful and at the detriment of the entire country.
That's not to say that this can be used as a reason to ignore investment opportunities elsewhere, but it does means that billons won't be thrown at other regions, where the benefits are significantly smaller, or even negative.
Well that’s fine if you don’t have an aspiration to improve the living standards of people outside Belfast and have a desire to reinforce existing poor infrastructure. So a continued failing cycle.
I’m not sure investment in the NW would be “negative”. We’re not a wasteland with a population of 0!
I’m not sure investment in the NW would be “negative”. We’re not a wasteland with a population of 0!
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Dunno I say as a Belfast person is that the simple fact is more people in NI live outside the Belfast metro than in it. NI can't catch up or perform as a whole if only one bit of it gets all the infrastructure money. even if there are economies of scale in Belfast.
Same mindset is in England; where economic models major flaw was that return on investment for London was always going to be higher so Londoners got more and more infrastructure money, they then get the wealth and productivity benefits, and the rest (including NI) are meant to be greatfull. That thankfully (although yet to be seen) is changing.
The weighting of the population of the Belfast area is exaggerated. Derry city itself has about 110,000 people, then along the north coast you have about maybe 100,000, so the whole NW of NI is maybe about 300,000 people.
That is enough to justify some infrastructure projects, including the completion of dualing of the A2 to Limavady and the A26 to Coleraine. The A6 section over the Glenshane should’ve been dualled to connect with the new dualled section outside Castledawson, because as we all know infrastructure projects in NI may be started and not completed due to lack of funds.
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The dualling of the Glenshane pass is not going to happen, it’s an incredibly difficult and expensive engineering project through an environmentally sensitive area and a route almost impassable at times during the winter.
Other options around Glenshane are a better use of funds.
Other options around Glenshane are a better use of funds.
Proposal to extend Aldergrove for a new security area
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Not 'just' Belfast....
www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk
NI Railways takes delivers of new carriages in £60m project
NI Railways operator Translink took delivery of the first batch of new train carriages as part of a £60m investment programme.
www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk
I wish there was a magical money tree that could finance these projects. Converting the Glenshane to HQDC would be prohibitively costly and would offer little benefit, given current traffic volumes.
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That £1.2bn pension scheme would go a long way to completing these infrastructure projects.
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