[MrX]

200km/h service between Cork and Dublin does make sense in the medium term. Cork-Dublin is a major money spinner for Irish Rail. They can grow passenger numbers by offering a quality high speed product.

Cork's our only seriously large urban area outside of Dublin and is growing very rapidly. It has the size and the number of regular business travellers to sustain a 200km/h intercity link. Also, unlike Galway, it's far enough from Dublin to make intercity train service more attractive than motorway connections to many people.

Cork's urban population is over 300,000. There is absolutely no point looking at the official city population statistics as the city boundry's ridiculously tight. It's really like if Dublin city's population was only counted as the residents of Dublin 1,2,3 and 4. Cork City and County Councils are about to go into a major turf war, so you could see the official city population soar when the new boundaries are finalised. The simple fact is that the city council controlled area doesn't include most of the post 1950s suburban developments.

Having 200km/h service from Dublin to Limerick Junction also provides excellent fast access to Limerick city and the midwest.

West Cork and Kerry also form the country's most profitable tourism regions pulling in over 3 million visitors a year and producing about a billion in reveune (2004) - That's 1/4 of all of Ireland's tourism revenue. It's highly rail accessable via Cork City or any of the stations on the Mallow Branch line

To give you a breakdown of the 2004 figures:

Region: ---- Visitors (millions) ---- Revenue (Euro) ---- (revenue per visitor bracketed)
Dublin ---- 4.848 ---- 1371 million ---- (282.79)
Cork/Kerry ---- 3.057 ---- 922 million ---- (301.60)
Southeast ---- 2.089 ---- 420 million ---- (201.05)
Midlands/East---- 1.680 ---- 345 million---- (210.71)
West ---- 2.544 ---- 686 million---- (269.65)
Northwest ---- 1.290 ---- 302 million ---- (234.10)


Personally, I think 200km/h high quality service to Cork makes a whole lot of sense.

It's not that expensive either in the big scale of things.

Also, the Cork-Dublin line being efficient cuts down on the number of cars that would otherwise be carrying a single passenger on the 160mile route and also reduces the need for high environmental impact flights between the two cities.

From an environmental point of view high speed intercity rail's excellent. The amount of CO2 produced per passenger is much lower than any other form of land transport.

I would like to see IE teaming up with some of the car rental companies and offering Train + drive options.

e.g. you visit dublin, board a train link to say Tralee and have a hire-car waiting for you to cover the dingle area at your leisure.
or Dublin - Galway and onwards to the west.

Also, it would make a hell of a lot of sense on the Cork-Dublin route for business travellers.

i.e. drive to Kent station, park your car. Car parking included on your rail ticket.
Board the CDE to Dublin. Get out at heuston, pick up your hire car and you're in the city centre.
or visa versa.

Even with the CDE at its current speed a service like that would wipe the floor with Ryanair and Aer Arran. i.e. CityGold + discounted hire car at the station.

All they need to do is think outside the box a little and add value to the intercity services!

Public transport / bus-based tourism links should also be available as add-ins.
e.g. Dublin to Dingle on a single ticket.