The Enterprise cross-border service operates eight services per day between Dublin and Belfast, using four existing trainsets, which are approaching 30 years old. The Hub supported a wider Outline Business Case (OBC) for the procurement of eight new trains, which would enable an hourly service between the two capital cities, through the development of a Demand and Revenue (D&R) forecast to inform the case for investment through the Financial and Economic cases.

• We reviewed the previous D&R forecast for Enterprise, producing a ‘red flag’ report to advise the client on how this approach could be improved.
• We developed a bespoke, PDFH-aligned D&R model addressing the outcomes of the red flag report, as well as the outputs and assumptions developed in detailed discussions with the client, considering local factors.
• We assessed the impact of exogenous and endogenous demand drivers, applying demand growth and elasticities appropriately across a range of ticket types.
• We distilled large quantities of base ticketing data into origin-destination flows, across a base case and sensitivity scenarios to produce a robust forecast.
• We produced a Record of Assumptions and Key Outputs report to effectively communicate the outputs to the client to inform the OBC.

• Reviewed previous work and actively sought to improve the robustness of the approach.
• Held discussions with Ireland’s National Transport Authority (NTA) to secure their endorsement of our approach and gather growth forecasts to inform exogenous demand drivers consistent with other D&R modelling projects in the country.
• Developed a PDFH-aligned crowding model to constrain demand across the busiest services, to simulate the impact of observed busy services in the passenger count data, with assurance provided by our D&R Subject Matter Expert.