HSS withdrawn from Dun Laoghaire

As of Tuesday Jan 5th the Stena Explorer has been withdrawn from service, officially for its annual refit.

There has been a lot of speculation about this for some time. Stena now have two ships operating from Dublin port to Holyhead and it appears that the HSS will not be returning to service.

Dun Laoghaire Harbour Company have plans to refit the smaller linkspan berth which may lead to a summer only Seacat service.

As it is now, though, for the first time since 1830, it's no longer possible to book a ferry trip from Dun Laoghaire.

Nothing too surprising about this, it has been rumoured for years. As one marine engineer said to me a few years ago "the HSS is a high performance, highly stressed, high maintenance and high running cost machine" and he did not see it lasting for long.

Pity the tax payer paid 18M (from memory) to build its dock, which is not really suitable for anything else.

Hoagy said:

As of Tuesday Jan 5th the Stena Explorer has been withdrawn from service, officially for its annual refit.

As it is now, though, for the first time since 1830, it's no longer possible to book a ferry trip from Dun Laoghaire.

Click to expand...

I think it's common for the HSS to have refit/overhaul between the busy Xmas and Easter periods. From the stena website you can still select Dun Laoghaire-Holyhead after Jan 6th and it shows on the RHS that the outward journey is DL-H, the booking section however automatically changes from DL to Dub port. This is very misleading as someone can still select DL outward, this option should be removed until the service is back on

It will be sad to see this service end.

There's a lot of waffle about "integrated transport links" these days.

The trip from Dublin to North Wales was one of the first such integrated services.

A train brought you to the recently demolished Mailboat Pier [as we called it] and you walked a hundred yards under cover to the boat.

It was a short walk with cases at the time, back in the 1960's-70's, before wheeled cases were widely available and it was a blessing.

A similar occurence took place from the boat to the train in Holyhead and travellers to both places could change to cars.

Its no-brainer convenience stuff like this that will woo people back to public transport, however densely built a city might be.

Having to walk out from under cover to cross roads and giant car parks doesn't display too much joined up thinking for foot traffic.

Still, its better than getting taxis...

FWIW

ONQ.

Towger said:

Pity the tax payer paid 18M (from memory) to build its dock, which is not really suitable for anything else.

Click to expand...

Yet again another instance of a corporate Giant having the Irish Tax payer pay for its own infrastructure. Why oh why have Governments simply thrown vast sums at these entities to provide a service and as soon as it suits they up and off.

An Irish answer to an Irish problem.

Stena have been paying 5M a year or so since 1996 to use the thing so for once I think the taxpayer has had value for money.

The Harbour Company were in with the Oireachtas Joint Committee in December, the transcript is [broken link removed]. It's worth a read.

Hoagy said:

The Harbour Company were in with the Oireachtas Joint Committee in December, the transcript is [broken link removed]. It's worth a read.

Click to expand...

Not a bad salary for running a small semi state company!

Update from Stena:

The STENA LYNX III will operate Holyhead - Dun Laoghaire March - June then
Fishguard until September, then back to Holyhead. At Holyhead she will
operate one return trip per day apart from April - June when she will
operate two roundtrips. At Fishguard she will only operate one roundtrip.

The STENA EXPLORER will only operate July and August and only one roundtrip
per day.

The STENA LYNX III will have a 2 million Euro refit to provide a new
Barista bar/Coffee House, new Stena Plus, Met Grill and enhanced shopping/