Irish Rail Fails to provide enought trains to Mullingar HIFI Fest

jjbrien · 07-08-2006 10:49am #1

Again IE failed to provide enogh trains for people travelling to the HIFI concert in Mullingar over the weekend. On friday I took the 18:00 train home to Mullingar IE had only put on a 4 carrage 2900 train. There was loads of people sitting on the floor and most of the carrages as far as Mullingar had standing room only. Irish rail was aware for months that HIFI was happening but failed to put extra carrages on its train to cope with demand. What planet are they on. This train is always full weather there is a event in Mullingar or not. But when there is a big event on they should provide more carrages.

BrianD · 07-08-2006 12:47pm

The Hi-Fi festival only had a capacity of 25,000. Would they have needed to put on extra trains?

MarkoP11 · 07-08-2006 4:17pm

1) There are no extra carriages and if there where they are needed every day
2) Every day people are sitting on the floor of the 18:00 to Longford
3) Bus Eireann have the sole contract for festival transport at this event thats extremely important

To be fair IE ran a large number of special trains for GAA on Saturday and Sunday all of which sold out, 1500 seats went in under an hour and everyone got a seat on those trains

I have spoken to IE about this and they are much interested in the special events train service but there are two problems, there is only a limited pool of rolling stock (note zero available on Friday evening) and they need staff to run the trains for what is only 10 times a year they can neither have extra rolling stock or staff for a just in case a munster team do well in the GAA combined with often short notice its not easy

I'm not defending the postion only saying in the context of the resources available the do seem to run a fair few extra trains noticeably more than in the past the numbers are in this morning 14% more passengers in the first 6 months than last thats double to tripple the best in Europe. In this case Bus Eireann had sole contract for services

jjbrien · 08-08-2006 9:14am

BrianD wrote:

The Hi-Fi festival only had a capacity of 25,000. Would they have needed to put on extra trains?

And how do you expect them to get to Mullingar if they dont use Public Transport then its lets say if 2 or 3 people travel to Mullingar by car then your looking at an aditional 10,000 cars heading towords Mullingar. Which cant cope with the cars it has already. Ok Bus Eireann is a joke. A bus can only take 53 passengers off the road. Why could of IE not have dugg up one of the old orange trains that they used to use going to Sligo for last friday when they knew extra people would be on the train.

BrianD · 08-08-2006 12:03pm

Is a possible 25,000 audience enough to put on extra train services for those who are travelling from Dublin or Sligo? How many are likely to travel by train?

There was free parking available on site plus there seemed to be quite a number of private coaches and mini buses doing drop offs from various locations. Furthermore, Mullingar Station is a few km's away so you would require a bus transfer from the station (you're back to 53 seaters again or smaller). Not everyone can travel by train from where they live.

In terms of traffic - as the concert was sold as a two event i.e no daily tickets the traffic is mainly on the Friday afternoon/Saturday morning and Monday. Mullingar is straight off the N/M4 and the N52 brought you right to the gates of Belvedere House. Almost no traffic at situations at all. I was working there over the weekend travelling up and down from Dublin each day and I can safely say I encountered zero traffic - not even when leaving Dublin (given that it was a long weekend).

jjbrien · 08-08-2006 3:30pm

BrianD wrote:

Is a possible 25,000 audience enough to put on extra train services for those who are travelling from Dublin or Sligo? How many are likely to travel by train?

There was free parking available on site plus there seemed to be quite a number of private coaches and mini buses doing drop offs from various locations. Furthermore, Mullingar Station is a few km's away so you would require a bus transfer from the station (you're back to 53 seaters again or smaller). Not everyone can travel by train from where they live.

In terms of traffic - as the concert was sold as a two event i.e no daily tickets the traffic is mainly on the Friday afternoon/Saturday morning and Monday. Mullingar is straight off the N/M4 and the N52 brought you right to the gates of Belvedere House. Almost no traffic at situations at all. I was working there over the weekend travelling up and down from Dublin each day and I can safely say I encountered zero traffic - not even when leaving Dublin (given that it was a long weekend).

The one thing IE did was provide private shuttle busses from HIFI to the train station where there was no extra trains or even carrages to cope with the extra passengers. Yes it was a bank holiday friday so more people were travelling on the trains with the added stess on IE of HIFI.

Bluetonic · 08-08-2006 3:38pm

MarkoP11 wrote:

To be fair IE ran a large number of special trains for GAA on Saturday and Sunday all of which sold out, 1500 seats went in under an hour and everyone got a seat on those trains

Their 'sold out' service from Kerry on Saturday to Dublin was only half full. People were unable to buy tickets for it towards the end of last week as IE were saying it was sold out. Surely half the people who bought tickets didn't just decide not to travel?

jjbrien · 08-08-2006 3:55pm

Bluetonic wrote:

Their 'sold out' service from Kerry on Saturday to Dublin was only half full. People were unable to buy tickets for it towards the end of last week as IE were saying it was sold out. Surely half the people who bought tickets didn't just decide not to travel?

I think for special event trains they should not prebook the train it shoudl be offered on a first come first serve basis on the day. I know it would cause some people to have to stand but there is not much we can do if people book a match train in advance and dont show up for it. Leving people who might jhave wanted to take the train on the day with out a train.

dowlingm · 08-08-2006 4:28pm

Galway services via Mullingar-Athlone would have added some capacity

another reason to re-open the "Shannon Rail Corridor" to traffic!

MarkoP11 · 08-08-2006 4:32pm

Due to mass public anger following a free for all on a Wexford special some years back, no special train will be over booked and turn up and go is no longer permitted

I do know in the case of a recent match in Thurles the 3 trains sold out in under an hour close on 1,500 tickets.

People should not have to stand on intercity journeys especially where a dedicated train has been provided.

As far as I know the Cork trains sold out very quickly Kerry was indicated as sold out though the tickets may have been withdrawn from sale on Friday since not enough time was left to dispatch the tickets to local stations

Between 15:55 and 19:00 5 trains left Dublin which called at Mullingar several of those trains had a capacity for 1240 people at full load, there is no way to fit an extra train in even if one was available

John R · 09-08-2006 1:50am

A free for all is just crazy, if the train has a fixed capacity and twice as many turn up on the day then it is bound to cause serious problems. At that stage it is too late for alternative arrangements to be made.

If people book seats in advance and don't use them then that's their business. As long as they still pay full price for taking up a seat the I have no problem.

Victor · 09-08-2006 3:49am

Another way of looking at this is the organisers failed to provide adequate tranport.

dowlingm · 09-08-2006 3:49pm

Victor - GAA matches cause havoc with weekend rail services. What does the GAA "provide" in the way of public transport?

Irish Rail Fails to provide enought trains to Mullingar HIFI Fest

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