Sail/rail possible improvements

Thrashssacre

A lot of my family are big into sports including myself (mainly football/rugby) and with the amount of people from Ireland heading to England/wales for both sports throughout the year would an early and late sailing times to allow people to daytrip to away pro 14 games and premier league games not make stena line or Irish rail an absolute fortune? As it is currently it's basically impossible to day trip sporting fixtures without going though a travel agent who'll charge you 500 euro plus. Surely there a market with the amount of people traveling for a cheep and cheerful daytrip options for sports fans

Jamie2k9

Thrashssacre wrote: »

A lot of my family are big into sports including myself (mainly football/rugby) and with the amount of people from Ireland heading to England/wales for both sports throughout the year would an early and late sailing times to allow people to daytrip to away pro 14 games and premier league games not make stena line or Irish rail an absolute fortune? As it is currently it's basically impossible to day trip sporting fixtures without going though a travel agent who'll charge you 500 euro plus. Surely there a market with the amount of people traveling for a cheep and cheerful daytrip options for sports fans

Foot passengers don't make ferry companies money, schedules are designed around Freight.

Isambard

how can it be impossible if a travel agent can book it?

Thrashssacre

They ussually charter a plane for the daytrip hentes the hefty price tag

Del.Monte

Jamie2k9 wrote: »

Foot passengers don't make ferry companies money, schedules are designed around Freight.

Is that like Fastrack didn't make money...

Hilly Bill

Thrashssacre wrote: »

A lot of my family are big into sports including myself (mainly football/rugby) and with the amount of people from Ireland heading to England/wales for both sports throughout the year would an early and late sailing times to allow people to daytrip to away pro 14 games and premier league games not make stena line or Irish rail an absolute fortune? As it is currently it's basically impossible to day trip sporting fixtures without going though a travel agent who'll charge you 500 euro plus. Surely there a market with the amount of people traveling for a cheep and cheerful daytrip options for sports fans

Just stick to league of Ireland, you will save a fortune.

Thrashssacre

Hilly Bill wrote: »

Just stick to league of Ireland, you will save a fortune.

It's more the family who are interested in the football to be honest I'll watch an odd match or two but it's not the most entertaining for me.

More of a rugby man myself but anyways regardless of where my loyalty should be a later sailing back to Ireland would definitely increase passenger throughput but if it's the case that the passengers are worth sweet f all and it's all about the freight then I suppose it's not worth the hastle for them

Hilly Bill

Would they be restricted by the tides anyway?

Jamie2k9

Hilly Bill wrote: »

Would they be restricted by the tides anyway?

No issues.

Is that like Fastrack didn't make money...

No sea/rail is pittance to both operators. Freight and Vehicle + Drivers are the money spinners.

Vic_08

Thrashssacre wrote: »

A lot of my family are big into sports including myself (mainly football/rugby) and with the amount of people from Ireland heading to England/wales for both sports throughout the year would an early and late sailing times to allow people to daytrip to away pro 14 games and premier league games not make stena line or Irish rail an absolute fortune? As it is currently it's basically impossible to day trip sporting fixtures without going though a travel agent who'll charge you 500 euro plus. Surely there a market with the amount of people traveling for a cheep and cheerful daytrip options for sports fans

What sporting fixtures are impossible to do? I think what you mean is that the times and length of travel mean that for most people the options are uunattractive.

02.15 from Dublin will get you to Liverpool for 9.30, Manchester for 10 and London for 11.

Latest departures from Liverpool,Manchester and London are 21.45, 20.50 and 20.10

Most people now don't consider anything other than air travel, just mention a 3.5 hour sailing plus a 3+ hour train journey and they will reel away like you have just asked them to eat dogsh!t. "but the plane only takes 45 minutes".

Face the fact, the market for foot passenger travel collapsed years ago and will never be more than a very low profit niche product for the ferry operators.

I hate to break it to you but there will be LESS sailings for most of the sport season as Irish Ferries plan to run the Swift only in the summer season from this year onwards once their new ship finally arrives.

Both operators will continue with their current 2 ship schedules meaning a sailing from each roughly every 6 hours, unfortunately for you the freight companies schedule rule so there is little chance of either operator breaking away from the times they run at now as whichever company moved away from the prime sailing times would loose business.

The only scenario I can see where the gaps would be filled in is if one of the operators went bust and the other added more ships to cater for the increased traffic.

Another issue is with the train companies, Holyhead gets a relatively poor service currently with an inconsistent hourly service from Arriva and some extras.

They have done nothing to provide good connecting services, in fact the opposite is true, the late train from Chester is timed to miss the 03.30/02.40 sailings so the connection is 1h30 longer than it needs to be.

Similarly with the connection off the evening sailings from Dublin; the night trains were pushed later and eventually removed leaving more than a 4 hour wait at Holyhead for the first departure.

Thrashssacre

Vic_08 wrote: »

What sporting fixtures are impossible to do? I think what you mean is that the times and length of travel mean that for most people the options are uunattractive.

02.15 from Dublin will get you to Liverpool for 9.30, Manchester for 10 and London for 11.

Latest departures from Liverpool,Manchester and London are 21.45, 20.50 and 20.10

Most people now don't consider anything other than air travel, just mention a 3.5 hour sailing plus a 3+ hour train journey and they will reel away like you have just asked them to eat dogsh!t. "but the plane only takes 45 minutes".

Face the fact, the market for foot passenger travel collapsed years ago and will never be more than a very low profit niche product for the ferry operators.

I hate to break it to you but there will be LESS sailings for most of the sport season as Irish Ferries plan to run the Swift only in the summer season from this year onwards once their new ship finally arrives.

Both operators will continue with their current 2 ship schedules meaning a sailing from each roughly every 6 hours, unfortunately for you the freight companies schedule rule so there is little chance of either operator breaking away from the times they run at now as whichever company moved away from the prime sailing times would loose business.

The only scenario I can see where the gaps would be filled in is if one of the operators went bust and the other added more ships to cater for the increased traffic.

Another issue is with the train companies, Holyhead gets a relatively poor service currently with an inconsistent hourly service from Arriva and some extras.

They have done nothing to provide good connecting services, in fact the opposite is true, the late train from Chester is timed to miss the 03.30/02.40 sailings so the connection is 1h30 longer than it needs to be.

Similarly with the connection off the evening sailings from Dublin; the night trains were pushed later and eventually removed leaving more than a 4 hour wait at Holyhead for the first departure.

The earlier and later ferries don't allow foot passaengers I don't believe

Vic_08

Thrashssacre wrote: »

The earlier and later ferries don't allow foot passaengers I don't believe

I don't believe either.

Stena take foot passengers on all Dublin-Holyhead sailings and have done so since about 2013.

Irish Ferries don't take foot passengers on Epsilon sailings.

Mebuntu

Vic_08 wrote: »

Irish Ferries don't take foot passengers on Epsilon sailings.

What's their reason for banning foot pax?

Jamie2k9

Mebuntu wrote: »

What's their reason for banning foot pax?

Capacity only 500 passengers allowed. Will be replaced by new ship with 1,885 capacity and allow foot passengers then.