Shock, horror as passengers desert the railways!

Private Piles · 22-02-2012 02:45PM

lxflyer wrote: »

Unfortunately on single track lines, waiting at passing loops for trains to cross is unavoidable. The "delay" as you call it is actually built into the timetable. One train will always have about 6 minutes added to the schedule to ensure reliability.

There is no way to guarantee arrival times without it.

There is no way around it without doubling the entire line.

I know, the train still arrives in Galway pretty much on time each day, but yet can be 10 mins late arriving in Ballinasloe.

I find it very frustrating sitting there not moving, each minute goes by painfully slow and all I can think is 'why the heck didn't I drive I'd be there by now?'

The selection of trains is very poor, there is only really one in the morning and one back in the evening for commuters.
The train in the morning gets me to work about 1.5hrs early and the train in the evening leaves at 6.05pm, and that's all folks!

Next train leaving Galway City is at 10.15pm!!

I finish work at 6pm and it takes 10-15mins to walk to the station.

bk · 22-02-2012 02:47PM

dowlingm wrote: »

As for intercity bus services, some people don't like travelling by coach for various reasons - being stuck in a seat for hours doesn't appeal to some, no toilets on Bus Eireann buses, difficult to read or do work in a cramped seat etc.

Are you really trying to suggest, that people wanting a bit more leg room (buses can have toilets, see Gobus/citylink) justifies a €200 million a year subsidy and hundreds of millions more in capital grants!!!

That is nuts, I'm sorry, but that is certainly not a justification.

dowlingm wrote: »

What IE needs is for politicians to stop acting as if they were transport planners and allow them to determine service priorities and ensure that they can increase revenues and therefore service without Finance immediately clawing back every penny preventing such improvements, but conversely that the cone of silence be lifted ("commercial confidentiality") with IE board meetings being held in public and more IE service planning documents made public because you can't act like a private company if you want a subsidy of a couple of hundred million euro a year.

Well as soon as IE stops taking €200 million in taxpayers money each year via subsidy and stops begging for hundreds of millions in capital grants, the politicans can leave it alone to do it's on thing. Fair enough?

foggy_lad · 22-02-2012 02:52PM

bk wrote: »

Are you really trying to suggest, that people wanting a bit more leg room (buses can have toilets, see Gobus/citylink) justifies a €200 million a year subsidy and hundreds of millions more in capital grants!!!

That is nuts, I'm sorry, but that is certainly not a justification.

Well as soon as IE stops taking €200 million in taxpayers money each year via subsidy and stops begging for hundreds of millions in capital grants, the politicans can leave it alone to do it's on thing. Fair enough?

Many people also want a door to door service which can never be provided by rail. Adding on the cost and time of taxi, Luas or Bus from Heuston and many other stations to the respective town centers adds too much to the journey for the majority of people.

munchkin_utd · 22-02-2012 02:57PM

bk wrote: »

Well as soon as IE stops taking €200 million in taxpayers money each year via subsidy and stops begging for hundreds of millions in capital grants, the politicans can leave it alone to do it's on thing. Fair enough?

Is there anywhere that the figures of Irish Rail's costs and subsidies published and broken down in any way per route/cost type etc?

How much is spent on the infrastructure and how much on the actual trains and fuel and staff.

I've previously wasted time trying to go through the end of year report but its a lot of words and tables and not that much useful information.

mydiscworld · 22-02-2012 02:59PM

In the real world, IE won't get 50m a year for 5 years to upgrade some lines.

Why not use 5m/10m annually of your own IE passenger income/current subvention to improve one or two major lines, bit by bit.

I'd suggest your biggest earner first, which is probably the Cork to Dublin line and, and one which could win back drivers if 30 mins was knocked off.

corktina · 22-02-2012 04:05PM

i would think that €250m towards finishing the "motorway box" would bring better economic retrusn that spending it on Inter City.

I'm thinking we could have a motorway or at least high quality dual carrigeway from the 2nd to the 3rd city for that.

dowlingm · 22-02-2012 04:09PM

mydiscworld wrote: »

Why not use 5m/10m annually of your own IE passenger income/current subvention to improve one or two major lines, bit by bit.

What is to be cut to find this 5m euro?

bk · 22-02-2012 04:47PM

foggy_lad wrote: »

Many people also want a door to door service which can never be provided by rail. Adding on the cost and time of taxi, Luas or Bus from Heuston and many other stations to the respective town centers adds too much to the journey for the majority of people.

Exactly, and ironically Bus services can sometimes offer a better door to door service or at least closer to it.

Take Dublin to Galway, by train you can only go from Galway City Center to Heuston station, with a change required to get to Dublin city center or the airport.

GoBus on the other hand go from Galway city center to Heuston, followed by O'Connell Bridge and Dublin airport. Thus reducing the door to door journey time and cost for at least some, if not many people. In my experience of this service, over 2/3 of the passengers got off at O'Connell Bridge or continued onto Dublin Airport.

Also take my mother for example, she lives in Cork and is currently planning a holiday from Dublin Airport. She is seriously considering Aircoach as it will take her all the way to the airport, with no change required. That is despite here being an OAP and therefore cost not an issue.

Which all points to the one real good and sensible idea raised in this report. A new train station near the M50 on the Cork line, where every Cork/Limerick/Galway train would stop, with a direct bus to the airport every 30 minutes, all included in the cost of the one ticket.

This IMO is one really good, cost effective idea that I can't believe they didn't do years ago!! It might make them more competitive versus the direct non stop bus services to the airport that go via the city center and therefore have to deal with congestion.

corktina wrote:

i would think that €250m towards finishing the "motorway box" would bring better economic retrusn that spending it on Inter City.

Exactly, I don't see how knocking a few minutes off intercity rail travel is going to make much economic benefit, specially when you already have a faster means to travel between the destinations.

However if you could do the M20 for the same money, then it would have a far greater economic benefit. It would allow for much faster travel between our other cities, would help balance regional development versus Dublin * and most importantly reduce the number of deaths on a very dangerous roads (deaths on roads has a very big economic impact).

* This one is important, Irish Rails plan actually increases the importance of Dublin, with almost the entire investment going to speeding up links to get people too Dublin. The ARC on the other hand helps Cork/Limerick/Galway develop as a regional alternative to Dublin. I think this sort of investment should take priority now as Dublin is already well catered for with the new road networks.

Jehuty42 · 22-02-2012 04:53PM

That station kind of already exists in the form of Park West & Cherry Orchard, it just needs a better connection to the M50(dedicated on/off ramps).

http://g.co/maps/fsfm4

dowlingm · 22-02-2012 05:01PM

If buses (i.e. IE integrated services which can be booked as one ticket, not transfers of services like the South Wexford line) are allowed be part of the solution there is a LOT of things that could be done.

Reading through the report I've come across the passenger figures - the Northern Line, suburban and intercity, seems to have been the biggest hole in the last few years. Broadmeadow won't be the full cause of this but clearly it wasn't just a blip - a lot of people have been permanently lost above and beyond the general trends. Some routes have been holding their own quite reasonably. Others (Limerick-Ballybrophy)... joke.

Meanwhile they met with West on Track and there's a mention of both Athenry-Tuam and ultimately Athenry-Claremorris :rolleyes:

bk · 22-02-2012 05:14PM

Well I've read the entire report and some interesting facts.

- Intercity is down about 16% (4 million) from it's 2007 peak.
- They aim to get Dublin to Cork down to 2h30m's for the €50 * million cost, not 2h15m like I thought and said above, so it is even less worth it.

The Cork to Dublin line cost seems to be €50 million, the other €200 m for other lines.

To the question on how to pay for the €250 million, IE are claiming that they should see a return on this investment of €500 million for just the €50 million investment in the Cork line!!! I don't believe these figures, but if true, then there is no reason why they can't just borrow the money themselves and do it themselves, just like they did with the DART.

It seems private direct non stop bus services have a massive competitive impact on intercity rail.

Dublin to Galway Rail makes up 25% of journeys, bus 25%, car 50%
Dublin to Cork Rail makes up 40% of journeys, bus 10%, car 50%

So this proves, when offered an excellent, fast, affordable bus service, people flock to it. This also kills the idea that there isn't a massive money making opportunity available for a private operator to operate a similar service to Cork. It looks like there is massive demand for such a service.

It will be interesting to see what the Limerick numbers look like over the next two years since the introduction of the Dublin Coach service to Limerick.

The report acknowledges this, but they base their predictions of future stability and growth of rail on no more private direct non stop bus services being introduced!! Due to the fact that it might harm the rail service :mad::

Increased competition from the bus mode is likely to arise only if a policy shift to liberalisation of the bus market takes place.

....

The degree of future competition from the bus mode depends on two factors:
• The degree of liberalisation of access to the bus market; and
• The extent to which Expressway chooses to provide more non-stop or limited stop services.

....

While the NTA has discretion to operate within these guidelines, it is clear that full liberalisation
of entry to the market is not envisaged and that existing operators can influence the process by demonstrating that they are supplying existing market segments satisfactorily. In particular, the NTA may be reluctant to license additional services where the effect is to increase rail operating deficits and thus the PSO subvention required

Policy decisions on the part of the NTA will be a determining factor.

So basically what they are saying is that rail can't compete with much cheaper private bus services that cost the taxpayer ZERO and that we should instead continue to subsidise loss making, much more expensive and slower rail services to the tune of hundreds of millions per year :mad::mad:

This is crazy and I've yet to see a single justification why this should be left to continue.

dowlingm · 22-02-2012 05:42PM

bk - if private bus services are allowed to plunder the Dublin-Cork route, how do places like Mallow and the Tralee line get served? In some ways it might be better for IE to reconfigure the mainline as Dublin-Tralee and downgrade Cork-Mallow to a Limerick-Limerick Junction like service in order to retain self-justification.

LXFlyer · 22-02-2012 05:58PM

bk wrote: »

Well I've read the entire report and some interesting facts.

- Intercity is down about 16% (4 million) from it's 2007 peak.
- They aim to get Dublin to Cork down to 2h30m's for the €50 * million cost, not 2h15m like I thought and said above, so it is even less worth it.

I don't think you are correct in that analysis.

The report says the investment would reduce journey times to at most 2:30 on all services. That means reducing typical journey times by about 15 minutes.

Given the key business trains (06:15 Cork/Dublin and 17:00 Dublin/Cork) are already scheduled to do the trip in 2:30 I would expect that they would indeed reduce to 2:15 as a result of the changes.

LXFlyer · 22-02-2012 06:03PM

munchkin_utd wrote: »

one measure in the short term that is mentioned is :

Whats all that about?
I never saw any suggestion like this before.

If thats a proposal of bus services from say Cherry Orchard on the Cork/limerick/galway/mayo Mainline (with bus only slip road onto M50 only metres away??) to the airport then
A) its a stroke of genius
it sounds too good to be true and surely a competitior will complain that it is "Irish rail using their dominant position" leading to the plans being scuppered for one reason or the other

To be able to get from the airport to Cork or Mayo by train without having to encounter the city centre is be a great idea and if it was in place I'd have used this numerous times already on these 2 particular routes.

The map and text clearly state it is at the site of the present Clondalkin/Fonthill station.

dowlingm · 22-02-2012 06:52PM

Ah but who pray tell will operate the buses? And if it is a dedicated shuttle shouldn't DAA co-fund? And if this is such a great idea, shouldn't a similar shuttle run from Castleknock or Navan Road Parkway? Wait a minute, this gets stupider the more I look at it - they are going to stop 100mph services within the four track zone so that people can transfer to a bus?? Commuter yes, but Intercity should probably still use Airlink (to be deleted in this proposal) so that IC passengers get to Heuston faster.

Judgement Day · 22-02-2012 07:29PM

Rail Catering: At last - after repeatedly asking the question on RUI, IRN and here - Barry Kenny let the cat out of the bag tonight on the special 'Hook & Kenny Love-in.' Incredibly, IE put the catering contract out to tender and then pay the winner to operate the service! Barry says that they (IE) see catering as a way of wooing the travelling public to rail travel - what planet is he living on? As long as I've been travelling by rail 40+ years rail catering has been an overpriced shambles. If Rail Gourmet are being paid to operate the service and IE want to use catering to attract the public - why aren't the refreshment products sold at cost? IE would gain from the good publicity and it shouldn't make any difference to Rail Gourmet's bottom line as they are being paid to operate the service.

dowlingm · 22-02-2012 07:49PM

If that wasn't a misspeak by the Information Minister and RG are in fact subvented to provide catering from general revenue, heads should roll and the head of Ryanair customer pillage recruited to improve onboard costs and revenues forthwith. Yes, it would be annoying to have someone coming up with a trolley offering scratchcards and airport bus tickets but you know what, at least there would never again be a train without a trolley in Ireland.

bk · 22-02-2012 08:04PM

lxflyer wrote: »

The report says the investment would reduce journey times to at most 2:30 on all services. That means reducing typical journey times by about 15 minutes.

Given the key business trains (06:15 Cork/Dublin and 17:00 Dublin/Cork) are already scheduled to do the trip in 2:30 I would expect that they would indeed reduce to 2:15 as a result of the changes.

There is only one train a day in each direction that does it in 2h30m. Most do it between 2h45m and 2h55m, the average time of all trains including the faster ones is 2h47m (I did that maths).

So even if they get one train a day down to 2h15m, spending 250 million to cut the majority of trains down by just 15 minutes is pretty pathetic and sounds like an awful waste of money to me.

dowlingm · 22-02-2012 08:11PM

I think the intention was that increases on Dublin-Galway/Waterford/Limerick would mean fewer stopping Cork services though, so in theory some services would accelerate more than 15 mins. Some of those cost/benefit numbers are iffy though. Apparently it would cost 0 (or more precisely less then 0.05m if we assume rounding) to upgrade Galway-Limerick to "Intercity" status. What is the operating cost of a 3x22 compared to a 2x28 I wonder... and that's before all the marketing crap and installing ticket pickup in line stations.

AngryLips · 22-02-2012 09:39PM

dowlingm wrote: »

If that wasn't a misspeak by the Information Minister and RG are in fact subvented to provide catering from general revenue, heads should roll and the head of Ryanair customer pillage recruited to improve onboard costs and revenues forthwith. Yes, it would be annoying to have someone coming up with a trolley offering scratchcards and airport bus tickets but you know what, at least there would never again be a train without a trolley in Ireland.

It really defies belief IE have managed to turn a concept that's a massive revenue stream in the airline industry into a cost and a burden on the rail network. When you look at the vast product offering on the Aer Lingus Sky Cafe, the comparable prices and the fact that they make money out of it it really makes you wonder what their vision is here.

LeftBlank · 22-02-2012 11:04PM

foggy_lad wrote: »

I have been on the Newbridge\Kildare commuter after 9.30 and it is a ghost train! Nobody/very few paying passengers use it after the commuters have passed through before 9am.

You're wrong (kind of)

1000 Newbridge/Heuston is usually almost full/standing room after Hazelhatch.
1055 Kildare/Heuston is the same
Have not been on any later trains in a while

Loads start picking up in the other direction around the 1610 Heuston/Newbridge train and are usually quite high until the 2010 Heuston/Carlow.

foggy_lad · 23-02-2012 02:05AM

The cork train passing Kildare earlier today was so late the 14.50 Waterford-Heuston service was deliberately delayed to allow it pass, this kind of nonsense must stop if rail is to have a future! If a train is delayed why not be honest about it and nevermind trying to wriggle out of trouble by claiming that ten minutes late is still on time especially with the serious amount of padding on the cork service! And when one train is late there is little sense or intelligence in delaying a second train just to make the statistics look good!

Alfasud · 23-02-2012 02:23AM

Was at a football match in Portlaoise on Sunday. Several trains passed the pitch. All seemed to be empty. Would it not be better charge £10 flat rate to any destination and have a full train.

dowlingm · 23-02-2012 04:35AM

Under yield management 10 euro fares might well have been available.

munchkin_utd · 23-02-2012 09:15AM

Alfasud wrote: »

Was at a football match in Portlaoise on Sunday. Several trains passed the pitch. All seemed to be empty. Would it not be better charge £10 flat rate to any destination and have a full train.

theres a railcar depot in Portlaoise so the empty trains could have been manoeuvering/being tested etc rather than in passenger service.

bk · 23-02-2012 10:52AM

kieran4003 you claim that speed restrictions can be removed at a stroke of a pen.

I assume that isn't true, the speed restrictions must be there for a reason, e.g. inadequate and therefore unsafe track or track bedding and I assume these restrictions can only be lifted if the issues are fixed and that this is where the €50 million comes in. Otherwise why haven't they already done this.

As for electrification, it is estimated to cost €500 million, excluding new rolling stock, just for the Cork line!!

It is expected to have a negative return on investment of €250 million, so doesn't seem like a high priority and unlikely to even be considered until we need to buy new rolling stock again, probably well past 2030.

One thing that really annoys me is that there is definitely lots of padding in the Cork route, so that they can meet the punctuality guidelines set out by the NTA. This is an example of where badly thought out statistcs based management is driving the wrong behavior.

The NTA should change how this works, either by requiring quicker journey times or somehow rewarding Irish Rail for early arrivals times. Make it in Irish Rails interest to get in as early as possible.

munchkin_utd · 23-02-2012 11:21AM

bk wrote: »

As for electrification, it is estimated to cost €500 million, excluding new rolling stock, just for the Cork line!!

It is expected to have a negative return on investment of €250 million, so doesn't seem like a high priority and unlikely to even be considered until we need to buy new rolling stock again, probably well past 2030.

whats more shocking is that the existing rolling stock will take something like €2billion to maintain over the next years.

If I read it right, each engine on every railcar needs a major €100,000 euro service per engine every 4 (yes four) years

LXFlyer · 23-02-2012 11:51AM

bk wrote: »

There is only one train a day in each direction that does it in 2h30m. Most do it between 2h45m and 2h55m, the average time of all trains including the faster ones is 2h47m (I did that maths).

So even if they get one train a day down to 2h15m, spending 250 million to cut the majority of trains down by just 15 minutes is pretty pathetic and sounds like an awful waste of money to me.

It's EUR 50m for Dublin/Cork not EUR 250m.

Run_to_da_hills · 23-02-2012 12:18PM

Has anyone ever been on the 8.50pm Enterprise service from Dublin to Belfast?

I took the Saturday night one recently and had a complete carriage to myself, not joking.

(First carriage after the engine) The second carriage had about 6 people in it.

Why isn't there Ryanair type seat sales to fill this and similar trains that run at odd hours. ?

bk · 23-02-2012 12:45PM

lxflyer wrote: »

It's EUR 50m for Dublin/Cork not EUR 250m.

Yes, I mentioned that in a previous post, it is €250 million for other lines including Limerick, Galway, etc.

Even €50 m to save just 15 minutes isn't really a great investment.

Shock, horror as passengers desert the railways!

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