Irish Rail Website

Brewie

Is it just me or is the one of the worst websites to find travel/ticket prices on?

Nearly every trip I'm trying to price is unavailable.

I thought we as a society have moved away from ringing a real-life person when looking for information.

Does anyone know a site which has the prices of tickets?

I wouldn't mind but its a price from Drogheda to Pearse that I am looking for.
You'd think that ticket price information for such a "popular" route would be available.

bk

Took 30 seconds to find it:

http://www.irishrail.ie/index.jsp?p=118&n=199

However I agree, it should come up higher in the search results if you search for Drogheda, it probably should be the second result after the station information.

LXFlyer

It won't come up on the journey planner as it's a commuter journey and tickets are not sold online for those trips.

Carawaystick

lxflyer wrote: »

It won't come up on the journey planner as it's a commuter journey and tickets are not sold online for those trips.

Cos finding out the price of a trip is not part of the planning for a journey... :roll eyes:

Losty Dublin

Carawaystick wrote: »

Cos finding out the price of a trip is not part of the planning for a journey... :roll eyes:

You don't have to book a ticket on the site to find out ticket prices, that's what he means. OP just didn't find the info he needed as he tried to book tickets instead of looking for the prices, information which isn't hard to find at all as it's linked from the "fares and tickets" page.

n97 mini

Google usually ranks these higher than IE's pages:

http://www.railusers.ie/passenger_info/fare_calc_2012.php
and
http://www.railusers.ie/passenger_info/fares_matrix.php

finbarrk

It's a terrible website. Irishrail.

dowlingm

no google ads still makes it 100pc better than the old one

skeleton_boy

Looked up a return student price from Tralee to Dublin on Irish Rail Tuesday night. I had to pick which train I was travelling on for both legs and it quoted me €45.50. Went into the station as I wanted an open return ticket (which apparently you cannot buy online) and that was only €30. Absolute joke of a website

foggy_lad

skeleton_boy wrote: »

Looked up a return student price from Tralee to Dublin on Irish Rail Tuesday night. I had to pick which train I was travelling on for both legs and it quoted me €45.50. Went into the station as I wanted an open return ticket (which apparently you cannot buy online) and that was only €30. Absolute joke of a website

Don't forget next time to ask about any offers but the staff will usually sell the cheapest ticket available.

LXFlyer

skeleton_boy wrote: »

Looked up a return student price from Tralee to Dublin on Irish Rail Tuesday night. I had to pick which train I was travelling on for both legs and it quoted me €45.50. Went into the station as I wanted an open return ticket (which apparently you cannot buy online) and that was only €30. Absolute joke of a website

The €30 fare is a promotional fare that's available for the next month or so from stations (booking office and vending machines).

It is advertised on the website:
http://www.irishrail.ie/cat_offers.jsp?i=4479

meglome

Sorry to drag up the old thread. Been using the Irish rail site recently and it is a pain in the ass. I cannot for the life of me understand why you cannot buy online tickets for a large percentage of the trains. It doesn't need to be a special online fare, just that you can physically book the full journey online. Am I missing something?

It also took me until now to figure out where to find the standard fares pages, linked in this thread. Of course I made the mistake of trying to find it when I searched for the trains. Silly me.

schemingbohemia

You can't book commuter fares, what journeys were you looking to book?

dowlingm

meglome - some stations have not been fitted with Ticket Vending Machines (although Uncle Alan came through with one for Nenagh).

Of course what should happen is that the NTA should run ticketing and a TVM at a railway station should also issue tickets for BE and other NTA licences services. But instead it would turn into another hundreds of millions of euro project which went years past estimated launch.

Lapin

schemingbohemia wrote: »

You can't book commuter fares,

Why ?

foggy_lad

Lapin wrote: »

Why ?

Because Irish Rail are just useless with such things.

LXFlyer

Lapin wrote: »

Why ?

Currently the system requires people to make a seat reservation if they make an online booking, which can only be done on ICRs, Mark 4 and De Dietrich stock.

That apparently is being addressed for sometime in 2013 so that other routes can be booked online.

Victor

Buying an on-line ticket for a commuter service doesn't make a lot of sense in the current set-up.

There are no reservations and you need to go to an TVM/cashier anyway to collect the ticket.

If they went to self-printable tickets (unlikely for commuter services), the ticket gates would need to be fitted with a scanner, which is unlikely for a variety of reasons, not least cost.