Improving the Dublin Belfast Rail Service to Lower Barriers between North and South

Transport links provide a critical facilitator for increased integration within this strategic east coast region between the island's two major cities. Significant investment has gone into the improvement of the roads connection with the completion of the M1 motorway and investment in the A1 and in particular the completion of the Newry by-pass. This investment in the road infrastructure has eliminated the speed advantage that rail used to have. In this context the paper outlines some basic facts about the Dublin-Belfast rail link, reviews some of the relevant literature on factors driving demand for rail, and conducts a benchmarking analysis comparing the Dublin-Belfast rail service with similar services across Europe. The latter is achieved via regression analysis. This analysis found that the Dublin - Belfast rail service does not match the expected level of service one would expect between two cities of the size of Dublin and Belfast accounting for factors such as distance and the number of stops.