Sympathies on the bus trip. I've been on a few quite long ones — Lawrence KS to Toronto ON, Phoenix AZ to Fort Worth TX, Dallas TX to Huntsville AL — but it never seems to get any more pleasant.
Considering the awful mess that seems to be the Dublin airport, I'd also suggest that Ireland install a high-speed rail link between there & Shannon, & have all the long-haul flights go into Shannon. More ambitious, but appealing to my warped sensibilities, would be to have the terminal itself — baggage check, ticket counters, Stupidity, & all — in Dublin proper, & treat the two airports effectively as concourses. They could definitely do that at Keflavik.
An Irish Sea tunnel similar to the one under the English Channel has been in discussion for a long time, without much progress that I've heard of, & now Brexit has really thrown a spanner into the works. Even with a rail link from Holyhead or Liverpool, though, there would presumably still be a lot of European air traffic into Dublin. A Brest–Cork tunnel would be a huge undertaking, something like 10 times the length of the Channel tunnel, plus it would run straight under Penzance. Similarly, the Dublin–Cherbourg ferry has to circumnavigate Cornwall, so even if SNCF were to upgrade the Basse-Normandie line to TGV, I'm not sure how much the trip time could be reduced. The W.B. Yeats, which I was on, has a service speed of 22 kt, over 40 km/h. 35 kt, really the highest practicable with conventional ships, isn't an enormous improvement (say 12 hours vs 18), & the trip is a long one for hydrofoil or hovercraft. Dublin–Cork by rail would only mean more changes, unless a train ferry were used to provide a through Dublin–Paris service — which I like the sound of, but such things seem to have fallen out of favour. And a canal from Burnham-on-Sea to Bournemouth via Glastonbury really raises more questions than it answers!
My observation was that, in addition to the expected Heavy Goods Vehicles, a great deal of the traffic aboard the W.B. Yeats was "caravans", presumably Irish holidaymakers headed for the South of France. This is undoubtedly a highly seasonal traffic, but it does make a good argument (in my mind anyway!) for SNCF to implement something along the lines of an Auto Train, especially if it could be routed around Paris. Certainly disgorging everyone at Saint Lazare & having them make their way through the city would not be a good plan. The Finns have Auto Trains, so the idea isn't unknown in Europe.
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Considering the awful mess that seems to be the Dublin airport, I'd also suggest that Ireland install a high-speed rail link between there & Shannon, & have all the long-haul flights go into Shannon. More ambitious, but appealing to my warped sensibilities, would be to have the terminal itself — baggage check, ticket counters, Stupidity, & all — in Dublin proper, & treat the two airports effectively as concourses. They could definitely do that at Keflavik.
An Irish Sea tunnel similar to the one under the English Channel has been in discussion for a long time, without much progress that I've heard of, & now Brexit has really thrown a spanner into the works. Even with a rail link from Holyhead or Liverpool, though, there would presumably still be a lot of European air traffic into Dublin. A Brest–Cork tunnel would be a huge undertaking, something like 10 times the length of the Channel tunnel, plus it would run straight under Penzance. Similarly, the Dublin–Cherbourg ferry has to circumnavigate Cornwall, so even if SNCF were to upgrade the Basse-Normandie line to TGV, I'm not sure how much the trip time could be reduced. The W.B. Yeats, which I was on, has a service speed of 22 kt, over 40 km/h. 35 kt, really the highest practicable with conventional ships, isn't an enormous improvement (say 12 hours vs 18), & the trip is a long one for hydrofoil or hovercraft. Dublin–Cork by rail would only mean more changes, unless a train ferry were used to provide a through Dublin–Paris service — which I like the sound of, but such things seem to have fallen out of favour. And a canal from Burnham-on-Sea to Bournemouth via Glastonbury really raises more questions than it answers!
My observation was that, in addition to the expected Heavy Goods Vehicles, a great deal of the traffic aboard the W.B. Yeats was "caravans", presumably Irish holidaymakers headed for the South of France. This is undoubtedly a highly seasonal traffic, but it does make a good argument (in my mind anyway!) for SNCF to implement something along the lines of an Auto Train, especially if it could be routed around Paris. Certainly disgorging everyone at Saint Lazare & having them make their way through the city would not be a good plan. The Finns have Auto Trains, so the idea isn't unknown in Europe.