Is this true?

Beta Ray Bill · 13-05-2008 1:49pm #1

I just read on wiki that Irish rail had 43 million passenger in 2006

does anyone know if this is true? No sources are cited on the page and I find it very difficult to believe.

In 2006, Iarnród Éireann carried 43.1 million passengers; and this number is expected to rise to 48 million by 2009 and over 100 million by 2016.

taken from here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iarnr%C3%B3d_%C3%89ireann

Also on another note...

I seen on the DART this morning "Its all about timing" claiming that 98% of all Dart services were on time. now if thats not bullsh*t, I don't know what is.

Its says in small print that its excludes trains that were under 10 min late.

IE you stand at a platform for an additional 10 min after already waiting 12 minutes and according to CIE the train is not late.

Id love to see the report if the exclusion time was brought down to 3 or 4 mins

Id say only 50-60% of the trains would be on time if they were lucky.

cdebru · 13-05-2008 1:55pm

grahambo wrote: »

I just read on wiki that Irish rail had 43 million passenger in 2006

does anyone know if this is true? No sources are cited on the page and I find it very difficult to believe.

taken from here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iarnr%C3%B3d_%C3%89ireann

Also on another note...

I seen on the DART this morning "Its all about timing" claiming that 98% of all Dart services were on time. now if thats not bullsh*t, I don't know what is.

Its says in small print that its excludes trains that were under 10 min late.

IE you stand at a platform for an additional 10 min after already waiting 12 minutes and according to CIE the train is not late.

Id love to see the report if the exclusion time was brought down to 3 or 4 mins

Id say only 50-60% of the trains would be on time if they were lucky.

http://www.cie.ie/about_us/summary_of_performance.asp

Beta Ray Bill · 13-05-2008 2:04pm

hmm

I suppose it makes a bit of sense. if the count the little trips (IE 2 stops) and people have to come back from whereever they are going in the first place

now that I think about it I myself make in and around 600 train jourenys a year.

I think is a statistic to make Irish Rail sound good. When in actual fact its a very broad statistic that basically says we sold 43 million tickets last year.

cdebru · 13-05-2008 2:13pm

grahambo wrote: »

hmm

I suppose it makes a bit of sense. if the count the little trips (IE 2 stops) and people have to come back from whereever they are going in the first place

now that I think about it I myself make in and around 600 train jourenys a year.

I think is a statistic to make Irish Rail sound good. When in actual fact its a very broad statistic that basically says we sold 43 million tickets last year.

It is the figure for the number of passenger journeys.

Whats your point they carried 43.3 million passengers some of them took short trips some took long trips some had one way trips some had return
SO WHAT
do you want IE to lock people on the train and ensure they carry them a minimum of 50 miles before they become a passenger.
Seems to me that you want to have a moan you looked for something to moan about.

If you want to do some research it is easy to find out the number of Dart journeys then subtract it to find the number of mainline journeys

Ham'nd'egger · 13-05-2008 2:22pm

grahambo wrote: »

I think is a statistic to make Irish Rail sound good. When in actual fact its a very broad statistic that basically says we sold 43 million tickets last year.

You will find that almost every transport company uses the same context to count passenger trips. It would be very hard to count actual customers and repeat business from them unless you booked trips in a similar fashion to airlines.

Beta Ray Bill · 13-05-2008 2:35pm

I just think its a very high figure thats all.

10 times that of the population.

paulm17781 · 13-05-2008 2:40pm

The DART gets ~ 20M journeys per year, I don't have the latest figure.

IIRC, CIE trains are not late if they are within 15 minutes of the scheduled time. That is an absolute farce, bring it down to 5 minutes and see how punctual they are. I think it is the Government set this time, not CIE. They just are given very low standards to live up to. You can't blame them for being awful when the Government don't expect them to be better.

cdebru · 13-05-2008 2:53pm

grahambo wrote: »

I just think its a very high figure thats all.

10 times that of the population.

Dublin Bus carries 150 million thats about 100 times the population of Dublin so whats your point they are counting passenger journeys you hardly expect them to identify how many individual people used the service apart from being pointless it would tell you little or nothing

cdebru · 13-05-2008 2:55pm

paulm17781 wrote: »

The DART gets ~ 20M journeys per year, I don't have the latest figure.

IIRC, CIE trains are not late if they are within 15 minutes of the scheduled time. That is an absolute farce, bring it down to 5 minutes and see how punctual they are. I think it is the Government set this time, not CIE. They just are given very low standards to live up to. You can't blame them for being awful when the Government don't expect them to be better.

Yeah 15 minutes is a huge margin especially when you consider that they do not have to contend with traffic and they do not count circumstances beyond their control.

meathstevie · 13-05-2008 3:02pm

Looks like a realistic figure to me...despite all the discomfort of jampacked trains, bad timekeeping etc the train is still the most efficient way to transport high numbers of passengers on set trajectories for medium and medium long distances.

MysticalSoul · 13-05-2008 3:56pm

I do on average 15 DART trips a week. 10 for work alone, and then the others are random weekend, or shorter stops than I would usually do. Based on a year of 48 weeks usage (the other 4 could be away, or not communicating due to hols etc), it amounts to 720, so based on that statistic, I would not see the statistic re the number of passages as unusual.

Beta Ray Bill · 13-05-2008 4:54pm

cdebru wrote: »

Dublin Bus carries 150 million thats about 100 times the population of Dublin so whats your point they are counting passenger journeys you hardly expect them to identify how many individual people used the service apart from being pointless it would tell you little or nothing

Id well believe that

Dublin bus reaches to almost every corner of the city. However the dart which I'm sure makes up the bulk of Irish Rails income only serves the coastal areas

we then have 2 commuter lines which travel north west and north and a main line (heuston) that have services that aren't to frequent.

And yes the "under 15 min late - is not late" rule is a joke.

OTK · 13-05-2008 6:48pm

Irish Rail's target for punctuality is agreed with the dept of Transport annually. You should take it up with Minister Dempsey. Irish Rail is considered on-time within 10 minutes of scheduled time- not 15 minutes. By comparison, SBB in Switzeralnd has a 3 minute limit for being considered on time.

Of the 43m journeys in 2006, 33m were commuter trips. So that's only 10m for the rest of the country. In other words, on average everyone in the state made 1.25 return train trips in 2006 apart from commuter rail journeys such as DART and arrow.

29m Luas journeys were made last year.

I don't know what the number of car journeys in Dublin was last year for comparison but I would guess it's about 600m-800m

KC61 · 13-05-2008 7:10pm

It's also worth noting that the "on-time" statistic is measured at the ultimate destination and not anywhere en route.

Therefore a DART could be "late" at Connolly but be "on time" by the time it reaches its destination.

jjbrien · 13-05-2008 8:17pm

I used to take the arrow from Coolmine everyday change at Pearse to the Dart to Broombridge so that would have me at 4 train trips per day 20 per week thats 960 per year just for me taking into account for 4 weeks holidays so the figure seems logical. i also would go to the partents in Mullingar every 2 weeks so thats another 8 trips a mount taking into account for chaning at maynooth and not to mention the trips into town on a saturday i take. seems right to me.

road_high · 13-05-2008 8:34pm

Any break down (excuse the pun

) on how many each IR line carried for the year?

Beta Ray Bill · 14-05-2008 8:01am

mfitzy wrote: »

Any break down (excuse the pun ) on how many each IR line carried for the year?

I'd like to see that too

OTK · 14-05-2008 9:32am

mfitzy wrote: »

Any break down (excuse the pun ) on how many each IR line carried for the year?

very approx
Dub-Cork 2.7m
Dub-Belfast 1.4m
Dub-Galway 1.4m
Dub-Waterford 1.1m
Dub-Sligo 1m
Dub-Limerick 700K

road_high · 14-05-2008 10:20am

OTK wrote: »

very approx
Dub-Cork 2.7m
Dub-Belfast 1.4m
Dub-Galway 1.4m
Dub-Waterford 1.1m
Dub-Sligo 1m
Dub-Limerick 700K

So even though Waterford line carries more than Sligo, they get the new trains ahead of us, nice :rolleyes:.
Limerick would have thought would be higher, maybe a lot just go to & from Limerick Junction and the figure is skewed that way?

MOH · 14-05-2008 11:54am

grahambo wrote: »

I seen on the DART this morning "Its all about timing" claiming that 98% of all Dart services were on time. now if thats not bullsh*t, I don't know what is.

Its says in small print that its excludes trains that were under 10 min late.

IE you stand at a platform for an additional 10 min after already waiting 12 minutes and according to CIE the train is not late.

Id love to see the report if the exclusion time was brought down to 3 or 4 mins

Id say only 50-60% of the trains would be on time if they were lucky.

The notice at the bottom of the posters only went on this year (although it may have been there a few years ago). Last year they were just baldly claiming that 93% were on time. They agreed to put the small print in this year after complaints to the ASAI.

paulm17781 wrote: »

IIRC, CIE trains are not late if they are within 15 minutes of the scheduled time. That is an absolute farce, bring it down to 5 minutes and see how punctual they are. I think it is the Government set this time, not CIE. They just are given very low standards to live up to. You can't blame them for being awful when the Government don't expect them to be better.

It's 10 minutes, and it's nothing to do with the Government. Irish Rail claim 10 minutes leeway is an international standard. It's 5 in the UK, and I've been unable to find any online reference to this "standard". They also make no distinction between DART, suburban, and intercity trains.

KC61 wrote: »

It's also worth noting that the "on-time" statistic is measured at the ultimate destination and not anywhere en route.

Therefore a DART could be "late" at Connolly but be "on time" by the time it reaches its destination.

Exactly - so as long as the train is less than ten minutes late at its ultimate destination, it's "on time".

Of the DARTs I've taken this year, over 90% have been late. As in arriving at my destination a minute or more after they were due. Almost 50% have been late by 5 minutes or more. IR's figures are a joke, they choose the criteria to measure as those that will gibve them the most impressive sunding figures.

KC61 · 14-05-2008 12:27pm

mfitzy wrote: »

So even though Waterford line carries more than Sligo, they get the new trains ahead of us, nice :rolleyes:.
Limerick would have thought would be higher, maybe a lot just go to & from Limerick Junction and the figure is skewed that way?

Yes, but the Waterford line is currently operated using Mark 3 rolling stock which was designed for Intercity use. Sligo has been operated by Commuter rolling stock that clearly was not designed for long distance Intercity use. Hence it is appropriate that they got the new stock first.

Your interpretation on the Limerick services is correct - it relates to the direct trains and excludes the connections via Limerick Junction that would be included on the Cork train figures.

road_high · 14-05-2008 1:59pm

KC61 wrote: »

Yes, but the Waterford line is currently operated using Mark 3 rolling stock which was designed for Intercity use. Sligo has been operated by Commuter rolling stock that clearly was not designed for long distance Intercity use. Hence it is appropriate that they got the new stock first.

Your interpretation on the Limerick services is correct - it relates to the direct trains and excludes the connections via Limerick Junction that would be included on the Cork train figures.

Oh right I see, inappropriate for that distance for sure. I wouldn't begrudge Sligo their new trains so in that case

Is this true?

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