Proposed British Isles fixed sea link connections

The Irish Sea fixed crossing is a proposed tunnel or bridge that would link the islands of Ireland and Great Britain via the Irish Sea. If a tunnel, it would be a railway tunnel, similar to the Channel Tunnel beneath the English Channel.

Possible routes

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Possible routes for an Irish Sea tunnel

Four possible routes have at different times been identified, the first two taken together as North Channel routes. These are:

• Kintyre Route (Campbeltown-North East County Antrim)
• Galloway Route (Stranraer-Belfast)
• Irish Mail Route (Holyhead-Dublin)
• Tuskar Route (Fishguard -Rosslare)

A fifth route, via the Isle of Man, would require two tunnels, but has never been seriously considered due to length and difficult geology. [1]

North Channel (Kintyre) route

This is the shortest route at around 19 km (12 mi), from the Mull of Kintyre to County Antrim but is very unlikely to be adopted. It would mean constructing a railway or improved roads (or both) following a roundabout route through some mountainous terrain, mainly in Scotland, but to some extent also in Northern Ireland, and also needing further undersea tunnels in Scotland. If it ever were adopted, passengers would to a high degree still use ferries and aircraft, since it would be a big detour for trains from England. Trains would have to go via Glasgow and around 250 km further to reach Belfast. Even if the High Speed 2 railway is fully built, the travel time London-Belfast would not be below 4 hours. Car travellers from England would have much shorter driving distance when using the traditional ferry routes.

North Channel (Galloway) route

This route has been proposed both as either a tunnel or a bridge.

If a tunnel was chosen, this would mean tunnelling from near Portpatrick to a point north or south of Belfast Lough.

This would result in a shorter tunnel than the southern routes (34 km (21 mi)), and one within the United Kingdom, though the Irish government and the European Union might contribute funds, nevertheless. However, because of the Beaufort's Dyke sea trench, this route would be deeper than the southern routes.

In general, travel to Belfast would benefit from this route. The London to Belfast distance would be about 750 km, taking about 3½ hours on a high-speed train. This route would improve travel from Edinburgh, Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, and most English cities, to Belfast and Dublin.

The Dublin-Belfast-Glasgow-Edinburgh route would be possible. However, the route between the two capitals (London-Dublin) would be indirect. If a high speed Dublin-Belfast railway (160 km) is also built, this route would take four to five hours, making it hard to compete with air travel.

It is believed that such a project was considered by railway engineer Luke Livingston Macassey in the 1890s as "a rail link using either a tunnel, a submerged "tubular bridge" or a solid causeway".

Irish Mail route

Another option is to follow the traditional route of the Irish Mail steamers from North Wales (Holyhead) to Dublin (Dún Laoghaire). This tunnel would be about 100 km (62 mi) long. The main London-Dublin route is more direct and high-speed trains would be competitive with airlines. Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham are on this route. The distance from London to Dublin would be 550 km, taking 2½ hours on high-speed trains. While this competes well with air travel, the trains would need to compete with budget airline prices.

The British portal of this route would connect to the North Wales Coast Line around Anglesey. The North Wales Coast Line connects North Wales to Crewe (and the West Coast Main Line) via Chester. It runs along the North Wales Coast for most of its length, parallel to the A55 road. The transport corridor is constrained by mountains to the south and by several seaside resort towns.

Increased traffic would mean that capacity along the transport corridor would need to be increased. There are two options for the location of the terminals:

• In Wales near the tunnel portal, with the A55 road being widened to motorway standard.
• In England near the M6 motorway, with rebuilt large loading gauge railway between tunnel portal and terminal.

There are no major population centres along this route (for this reason there have been no container trains from Holyhead Port for some years), therefore, most traffic would be between Ireland and England. An English train terminal would be better for the environment than roads, however, a Welsh terminal would bring development opportunities to North Wales. Either option would probably require a dedicated high-speed railway line.

Most of the route between Crewe and Llandudno Junction is flat along the coast and would be easy to rebuild. However, further west, there would be some problems. At Conwy, the line skirts Conwy Castle before crossing the River Conwy on the Conwy Bridge, and would probably have to be tunneled under (also making grade separation at Llandudno Junction easier).

From Bangor, the line rises from just above sea level and runs through tunnels before turning sharply to cross the Menai Strait via the single-tracked Britannia Bridge, 100 feet above the strait. Even if some trains were diverted by reopening the line to Caernarfon, a new crossing of the Menai Strait would probably be required, possibly in a tunnel, too.

Presently, Holyhead-Liverpool trains follow a circuitous route from Chester to reach Liverpool. The Wirral Line offers a more direct route via the Wirral peninsula but is a commuter line and would be unsuited to very high speed trains. The Borderlands Line crosses the North Wales Coast Line at Shotton station, but this terminates on the Wirral and does not reach Liverpool; current plans see it being integrated into the Wirral Line. Journeys would be shorter using a new rail line through a tunnel under the Dee Estuary, across the Wirral (probably partially in a tunnel) and in a tunnel under the River Mersey to connect to Liverpool Lime Street. This could be a possible second phase project after the main works.

Tuskar route

The Institute of Engineers of Ireland's 2004 Vision of Transport in Ireland in 2050 imagines a tunnel to be built between the ports of Fishguard and Rosslare along with a new container port on the Shannon Estuary, linking a freight line to Europe. This report also includes ideas for a Belfast-Dublin-Cork high-speed train, and for a new freight line from Rosslare to Shannon.

Although London-Dublin and London-Belfast routes would be competitive with air travel, subject to ticket prices, routes from central and northern England and Scotland to Ireland would probably not be competitive.

On the British side, a high-speed line duplicating the Great Western Main Line has been proposed. However, this would be likely to be a lower priority than one running between London, Birmingham and the North West, duplicating the West Coast Main Line. Congestion through the Severn Tunnel is already so great that much freight from the Welsh ports travels a circuitous route via Gloucester; the increased traffic generated by an Irish Sea Tunnel would demand a new crossing of the Severn Estuary.

Recent proposals for a barrage across the mouth of the River Severn have included the option of running a new road and rail crossing between Cardiff and Bristol, which would help this issue.

The M4 motorway ends near Llanelli. Any motorway extension would pass through rural areas and close to the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park, which would generate opposition, however, terminals could be located further inland.

As the IEI's report notes "[This report's object] was to cast a vision, essentially an optimistic vision, of transport in Ireland in the middle of this twenty-first century". It also includes a second English Channel Tunnel.

History and politics

Linking Britain to Ireland by tunnel was first suggested in 1890 and again in 1897, with a British application for £15,000 towards the cost of carrying out borings and soundings in the North Channel to see if a tunnel between Ireland and Scotland was viable. The link would have been of immense commercial benefit, was significant strategically and would have meant faster transatlantic travel from Britain, via Galway and other Irish ports. Sixty years later Harford Hyde, Unionist MP for North Belfast, called for a tunnel to be built.

In 1994 the Channel Tunnel opened between Great Britain and France. Technical challenges of constructing a tunnel were overcome. However, the Channel Tunnel was delivered overbudget and predicted traffic levels have never materialised.

A tunnel project has been discussed several times in Dáil Éireann (the Irish Parliament). and in the British parliament.

Economics and politics

Half the air traffic at Dublin Airport is to Britain, with 8,300,000 passengers per annum. The Dublin to London air route is one of the busiest international routes with 1.974 million passengers in 2007, and there were about 12.3 million air passengers between the republic and the United Kingdom (2007).

The Channel Tunnel has failed so far to generate the original passenger numbers expected (partially because of low cost airlines). It now has nine million passengers per year, more than air travel, if only counting those who have destinations near London, Paris or Brussels.

The Channel Tunnel also illustrates the funding problem that a tunnel cannot be built and funded in stages, so cost over-runs (such as experienced on the Channel Tunnel) cannot be spread over time. Construction would also take a long time to complete, so the project would be an expensive, long-term, high risk investment.

Opposition to the tunnel might be mounted by powerful corporate interests, particularly ferry companies, shipping lines and airlines. NIMBY local interest groups and environmental groups might oppose individual infrastructure changes.

Various Irish government studies have concluded that an Irish Sea tunnel is, as yet, economically unfeasible. The benefit compared to air and ferry travel does not justify the cost.

Change of gauge and electrification

One of the problems for an Irish Sea tunnel would be the break of gauge between the 1,435 mm standard gauge in Britain and the 1,600 mm Irish broad gauge. This wouldn't be a huge problem for passenger trains, as passengers could change trains on one side of the tunnel.

For onward freight services, the gauge difference might be overcome either by transshipment, building new standard gauge lines in Ireland, regauging the existing network to standard gauge, the use of variable gauge axles, or by the use of dual gauge.

See also

• Rail transport in the United Kingdom
• Rail transport in Ireland

• List of bridge-tunnels
• Saudi-Egypt Causeway
• Bridge of the Horns
• Orkney Tunnel