How good could the London to Dublin connection be?

[Bartsimho]

My friends and colleagues find my occasional use of overnight ferries a bit strange and wouldn't consider it an option. Liverpool - Belfast Stena line overnight service is both time efficient and cheap. £60 for a cabin is a bargain compared with the cost of a hotel. It only works environmentally because foot passengers are a microscopic addition to the carbon footprint of a car ferry. If that became a nightly journey by something similar to a cruise ship it wouldn’t be an environmentally friendly replacement to air travel. Expecting people to spend a day traveling isn't a realistic alternative either. People are accustomed to be able to get to places like Dublin after work. A night ferry essentially replaces this + first night in hotel and breakfast getting you to same position at 9-10am.

It's the same reasoning for night trains in Europe now. It's travel and a hotel. Maybe we need to market those ideas more

 

[Bletchleyite]

It's the same reasoning for night trains in Europe now. It's travel and a hotel. Maybe we need to market those ideas more

Most people don't sleep well enough on moving vehicles for them to be a genuine replacement for a hotel, though.

 

[Chester1]

It's the same reasoning for night trains in Europe now. It's travel and a hotel. Maybe we need to market those ideas more

Most people don't sleep well enough on moving vehicles for them to be a genuine replacement for a hotel, though.

I can sleep well in normal weather conditions on a ferry but gave up on sleeper trains after maybe my fifth attempt. I only had one decent sleep and that was because I was exhausted and had the cabin to myself. I don't think thats unusual when you consider how few people use sleepers on the remaining services. I think its been posted in previous threads that the lowland sleeper has a 2% market share. Lumo smashed that immediately. Sleepers ussually need a subsidy. Its not very relevant to the thread topic though....

 

[Meerkat]

Guess train/ferry route might get a bit quicker now Rishi has promised to electrify the North Wales line!

 

[zwk500]

Guess train/ferry route might get a bit quicker now Rishi has promised to electrify the North Wales line!

There is no indication that Rishi's repackaging of the RNEP list will be any more complete than HS2 itself.

 

[Bald Rick]

Guess train/ferry route might get a bit quicker now Rishi has promised to electrify the North Wales line!

Not sure an electric train will be that much quicker from Crewe to Holyhead than the diesels.

 

[Meerkat]

Not sure an electric train will be that much quicker from Crewe to Holyhead than the diesels.

Quite a few stops aren't there - shouldn't better acceleration help a fair bit?

 

[Bald Rick]

Quite a few stops aren't there - shouldn't better acceleration help a fair bit?

It’s reasonable to assume that if there was to be a quicker London - Holyhead service to serve the Dublin market, most of those stops would go.

 

[Trainbike46]

It’s reasonable to assume that if there was to be a quicker London - Holyhead service to serve the Dublin market, most of those stops would go.

If the electrification happens, and the stopping pattern stays the same, would the result not be slightly quicker services, whether that is for services to various places in North Wales, or for the ferry connection to Dublin?

 

[Cross City]

It’s reasonable to assume that if there was to be a quicker London - Holyhead service to serve the Dublin market, most of those stops would go.

Surely removing the stops defeats the point? People not near (in North Wales say) an airport might take these trains to the point because its easier than schlepping to MAN or LPL for a 40 minute flight.

There's no way these trains are solely for the purposes of Londoners/Midlanders who don't like flying.

 

[Bald Rick]

Surely removing the stops defeats the point? People not near (in North Wales say) an airport might take these trains to the point because its easier than schlepping to MAN or LPL for a 40 minute flight.

There's no way these trains are solely for the purposes of Londoners/Midlanders who don't like flying.

The thread title is about London - Dublin.

 

[berneyarms]

Ahh, that's a shame, thanks for the info though! So I guess we're back to Crewe to Holyhead taking 1hr 30m at best?! So we're looking at something close to 6hrs at best (and then you're only at Dublin Port, so another half an hour into the centre).



I'd suggest that the demand for this route will grow over the coming years as people try to reduce their carbon footprint, plus flying being such a horrible experience these days.

A flight from London to Dublin takes about 1hr 20m, assuming you check in 2 hours early and it takes half an hour from the plane landing to getting out of the airport, plus an hour getting to and from the airports to the city centres at each end that's also around 6 hours. So if the train and ferry companies made the route as good as it could be (ignoring upgrades), then it would be pretty comparable on time. And I'm sure the people of Rhyl wouldn't mind maybe one train from Euston 44,777,000 flying past a day.

I think that you’re being wildly optimistic about people reducing flights out of Ireland. Dublin Airport, which has recently opened a new runway to cope with the demand, is now reporting record numbers of people flying each month, exceeding pre-pandemic numbers.

As I’ve posted before, Aer Lingus alone have 88 flights a week between Dublin and Heathrow in each direction, and BA a further 36.

This summer there are 817 flights a week in each direction between Dublin airport and GB airports across all airlines, 320 of which are to London airports.

The notion that these people are going to switch back to train and ferry in large numbers is just fantasy.

The ferry companies aren’t interested in foot passengers, as evidenced by the ferry timetable change on Rosslare-Fishguard in July which breaks all the rail connections in Rosslare and the evening one in Fishguard coming from Rosslare.

Travelling on Wednesday 18th October I can get from my home in south Dublin, which is the far side of the city from Dublin airport, to Tottenham Court Road as follows:

Home depart 05:55
Airport arrive 07:13

DUB 08:45
LHR 10:15

Heathrow T123 dep 10:50
TCR arr 11:24

That’s 5 hours 30 mins.

Taking the normal ferry it is:

Home depart 05:55
City centre arrive 06:34

(Ferrylink bus)
City centre depart 06:50
Dublin port arrive 07:20

Dublin Port depart 08:05
Holyhead arrive 11:30

Holyhead depart 12:49
Euston arrive 16:35

Euston dep 16:46
TCR arrive 16:52

Total time taken: 11 hours

Taking the 08:00 SWIFT sailing arriving Holyhead at 10:15, the arrival time at TCR is 16:25 and that has two changes of train en route at Chester and Crewe using the 11:33 departure from Holyhead - total time taken would be 10 hours 30 mins.

You *might* make the 10:40 train from Holyhead if you were lucky, which would get you to TCR for 14:55 but that is still 9 hours.

(The connections from ferry to train are not quick in Holyhead as it is a bus transfer off the ferry - so you have to allow 30 mins to get to the station. Check-in time for ferry is 30 mins minimum).

To be quite honest, it is just not an attractive proposition unless you want to enjoy the delights of the countryside en route.

The notion that Irish people are going to revert to that kind of travel in any great numbers is bonkers.

 

[Chester1]

I think that you’re being wildly optimistic about people reducing flights out of Ireland. Dublin Airport, which has recently opened a new runway to cope with the demand, is now reporting record numbers of people flying each month, exceeding pre-pandemic numbers.

As I’ve posted before, Aer Lingus alone have 88 flights a week between Dublin and Heathrow in each direction, and BA a further 36.

This summer there are 817 flights a week in each direction between Dublin airport and GB airports across all airlines, 320 of which are to London airports.

The notion that these people are going to switch back to train and ferry in large numbers is just fantasy.

The ferry companies aren’t interested in foot passengers, as evidenced by the ferry timetable change on Rosslare-Fishguard in July which breaks all the rail connections in Rosslare and the evening one in Fishguard coming from Rosslare.

Travelling on Wednesday 18th October I can get from my home in south Dublin, which is the far side of the city from Dublin airport, to Tottenham Court Road as follows:

Home depart 05:55
Airport arrive 07:13

DUB 08:45
LHR 10:15

Heathrow T123 dep 10:50
TCR arr 11:24

That’s 5 hours 30 mins.

Taking the normal ferry it is:

Home depart 05:55
City centre arrive 06:34

(Ferrylink bus)
City centre depart 06:50
Dublin port arrive 07:20

Dublin Port depart 08:05
Holyhead arrive 11:30

Holyhead depart 12:49
Euston arrive 16:35

Euston dep 16:46
TCR arrive 16:52

Total time taken: 11 hours

Taking the 08:00 SWIFT sailing arriving Holyhead at 10:15, the arrival time at TCR is 16:25 and that has two changes of train en route at Chester and Crewe using the 11:33 departure from Holyhead - total time taken would be 10 hours 30 mins.

You *might* make the 10:40 train from Holyhead if you were lucky, which would get you to TCR for 14:55 but that is still 9 hours.

(The connections from ferry to train are not quick in Holyhead as it is a bus transfer off the ferry - so you have to allow 30 mins to get to the station. Check-in time for ferry is 30 mins minimum).

To be quite honest, it is just not an attractive proposition unless you want to enjoy the delights of the countryside en route.

The notion that Irish people are going to revert to that kind of travel in any great numbers is bonkers.

Don't spoil things for people! There is a section of the population whose replacement religion is reducing carbon emissions, both their own and other peoples at every opportunity.

I have used the ferry, when I lived along the line. I am not knocking it as an option for residents of Wales and English people with a lot of spare time but Chester is the absolute eastern limit before it becomes a terrible option for most people. The Halton curve probably moved the boundary west by opening up non car travel to Liverpool Airport.

 

[Mikey C]

This is rather optimistic. There's still healthy flights between London and Paris and London and Amsterdam, despite the train journey time being 2.5 or 4hrs respectively. Only Brussels, which is a smaller market and is only 2h away, has seen substantial replacement of flights by the train. France has had to introduce restrictions on internal travel to force people to use the TGV.

A number of people flying between London and Paris will be on connecting flights. Plus not everyone flying from "London" airports lives near London. Flying from Luton, Stansted or Gatwick might be a lot easier than getting to St Pancras.

Those French internal restrictions on scheduled flights were more of a "politician's headline" than a major restriction on internal flying anyway, seeing that the limit was 2.5 hours and excludes connecting flights. The restriction on private jets might be more significant though.