Irish Rail now require you to book a week in advance for some best fares

Would it be news if it was about Ryan Air instead of Irish Rail?

Karsini wrote: »

Not me. I see buses as for short distance travel - I don't even consider them for longer distances unless I have no other option.

bk wrote: »

And Karsini, I'll be heading down to Cork today, I won't even think of taking the train.

I don't mean to take a pot shot at both of you but I really wish this kind of personal preference posting would stop. I know bk won't take the train any more and I know Karsini and others have an allergic reaction to buses but constantly re-stating the same opinion on every thread is getting a little tiring. If you want to soapbox, get a blog. If you want to discuss something, this is the place to do it.

Then again, this is just my opinion

foggy_lad wrote: »

Most people cant book a week in advance because their journey requirements may change or they want to travel at short notice so this is going to cost them a lot more

provide the slightest shred of evidence for that please!
if you can book a flight no problem 6 months in advance why should the train be any different?

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

why not, there is basically one reason and one reason only to take the train over a bus and that the ability to bring a slab of cans.
Every other consideration is more or less equal (excluding price of course)

Bollocks. You can put it down to slabs of cans, or the ability to get up and walk around, or nostalgia, or for some people, a trainspotterish aspect. But none of those things really clinch it for the train. You're looking at this far too logically. People prefer taking the train. They just do. The fact remains that, all things being equal, most people will choose train over bus/coach. This is not acknowledged enough on this forum.

Of course, all things aren't equal, and there are now many cases where intercity coach journeys in Ireland are both faster and cheaper than the train. Some people will be logical about it, and take the bus. But there exists a significant group of others who still prefer the experience of taking the train. And you can't dismiss all of them as being trainspotters/drunks/pass holders/whatever you fancy. They just prefer the train. Although I've responded to this, I would tend to agree with markpb that people constantly restating their preferences is getting dull.

markpb wrote: »

Peoples preferences are an awful way to determine national policy.

I agree with this in many cases but not exclusively.

Surely quality of life (which is a popular preference!) should be a very important determinant of national policy. Of course that depends on whether or not you prioritise economy over society.

markpb wrote: »

Peoples preferences are an awful way to determine national policy.

Actually, they aren't, necessarily. There is an extent to which you have to accept that people's preferences play a role in their choice of mode. If you're trying to get people to switch to public transport, you have to be realistic about the extent to which that's possible with buses. Luas is an excellent case in point. It would be a hell of a lot cheaper, with probably the same capacity, if it were BRT. But then would as many people actually use it?

You can, of course, look at this another way, and try to tackle the image problem that buses have. Doing so is not easy, but might be a better use of money than putting rail/tram tracks absolutely everywhere. And of course, if road user charging were politically feasible, that would be by far the cheapest way of making people stop dismissing buses as an option.

foggy_lad wrote: »

I say this is not the case because everywhere you go in stations and on trains and in all the advertisements people are told quite aggressively from a marketing viewpoint that they can travel for less by booking online!.

I guess there are people who don't know when they need to travel, then. I don't remember the last time I bought a train ticket without buying it in advance, but perhaps I'm in the minority here. But I've often encountered people on board trains who didn't have a clue you can book seats, which in my opinion means they haven't ever bought an online ticket.

One of the defining characteristics, advantages and strong selling point of traveling by train is supposed to be the fact that it can carry a lot of people; Therefore, passengers can decide to travel at the last minute, go to the station, get a ticket and hop on. Irish Rail, for some reason, has consistently decided to turn these potential customers away on their most used services (Dublin-Cork, for one). They will either take the bus or, worse from an environmental point of view, drive their personal car.

Personal experience: went to Dublin a few weeks ago without a set time to come back to Cork. Took the bus on the way out, but the next day I didn't really feel like sitting another 3 hours in a very cramped space, with the heating set too high and no possibility of getting away from the inevitable group of obnoxiously loud teenagers, so I decided to take the train. Went into Heuston station, approached ticket machine...ticket will be 60 euro please. Turned around, took the Luas and paid 15 Euro for the next Aircoach - and guess what, I was lucky to get there early, the bus filled up and about half the people waiting at the stop had to wait for the next service. This was at 10 am on a Saturday morning.

I would have paid 20 Euro for the Train; I would probably have paid even 30, but 60 is an absurdity. If I am forced to travel on the ground, I would prefer the train as it's more comfortable than a bus, but it's not worth 4 times the price by any means.

A rail company can not enforce an airline-style pricing policy since the core nature of the services is completely different, but for some reason this is lost to Irish Rail.