Daily Parking rate up by 50% next Monday
 

Irish Rail have just given 6 days' notice of a 50% increase in the daily parking rate. You can avoid some of the increase by switching to Park by Text but they seem to nickle and dime their way up to an extra charge of around 50c per day with account maintenance charges, text message charges and "convenience charges".

http://www.irishrail.ie/news_centre/...w&news_id=1256

East Cork stations
 

With this increase, the carparks at Midleton, Carrigtwohill, Glounthaune and Little Island should just be sold off, as they are currently not being used with the current charge, they are definitely not going to be used if the price goes up even more.

http://irishrail.ie/news_centre/news.asp?action=view&news_id=1256

This is disgusting.

I'd like to use other words but my post would be deleted.

It looks like the park by text is the only reasonable option for commuters. It is really annoying for me as I end up buying a lot of daily tickets as I usually only commute 4 days per week and also end up taking every third or fourth week off for travelling.

I can see the standard daily charge being a fiver before too long. The lack of notice is terrible behaviour - how is anybody supposed to budget in these times when Irish Rail put up charges on a week's notice?

Between fuel, parking and the cost of keeping a 13 year old car I use for nothing else on the road, it now costs me more to drive 6 miles each way to the station that it does to take the train 70 miles.

Turn the stations and car parks over to the local authority in each town. Keep the cash local (all net proceeds from the car park to be reinvested in station upkeep, installing water/services for small retail units etc) and allow the LA to decide a charging regime appropriate to the locality (especially in towns where train parking is used by locals to park for business in the town as cheaper than on-street).

But maybe that can't happen now because the outsourced pay parking provider has been given a long hard to break deal?

Do they change in Waterford, they have the machiens there but they started to charge then it was dropped and now not sure if its back or what, don't see many cars with tickets.

http://irishrail.ie/your_journey/carpark_information.asp

There is no notification of any change in Edgeworthstown station. Do they not have to give people some kind of notice? Twitter or website updates don't count for the majority of people.

Irish Rail has curiously deleted the story off the front page of its website (its still shown on the non public test site)

There is confusion as to this convenience charge, on one hand I've been told it won't apply to IE stations from Dec 12th on the other hand there is no mention of that in public.

Well I still have the tweet and the link there still works.

What a ridiculous situation. Now I don't know if I need to sort myself out with a Park By Text account before next Monday. Is this some numpty gone on a solo run?

Also, I would love to know where they came up with "convenience charge" when to use the service you have to create an account, connect it to your credit card, top it up and send a text message every time you want to pay for parking. How is this more convenient than sticking two euro in a coin slot and putting a ticket on the dashboard? The only thing convenient about it is that NCPS don't have to empty machines or fix them quickly when they are broken.

Is there anything we can do to fight this increase???

I just registered for the park by text thing as I needed to leave the car at the station for the weekend and didn't have enough change.

It looks like you can avoid most of the extra charges by using the park by text facility to pay online (as opposed to using the text facility). You definitely avoid the text message charge and as far as I can see it avoids the convenience charge. This just leaves you with the 50c per month account maintenance charge.

James,

When you say "if you pay online" do you mean top up online or do you mean you need to go online for each parking transaction ?

Unfortunately, you need to go online to do the transaction which works OK for me but may be problematic for others.

this notice is up at clonsilla station.

It would.be helpful if they put in the carpark first! :rolleyes:

Will this mean a change in the parking terms. They say cars are parked at owners risk yet if i'm being charged to park in one of their car parks I should be entitled to come back and not find my car windows smashed and should be compensated for any loss. Is this money really for the security of the car park/insurance etc or just a money making scam with no cover if one their car parks attract criminals.

We are fully aware of the legal significance of a charge and the fact it does change in part the liability.

This is just Irish Rail trying to gouge out some more cash as the NTA will never give them the full fare increase they want.

Again I ask is there anything we can do to fight this increase? It seems totally unjustified

6% increase announced on fares. So roughly adding €2-€3 if my sums are correct to the Thurles-Heuston fare to be honest it's not as bad as the last increase. €39-€46

Lesser of two evils i guess trying to raise some money outside of the fare increases rather than getting a higher percentage increase like 10% from the NTA. At least with the car park charges you can find ways to avoid them. I don't park in their car parks much anymore, I use to a lot when it was free. Bit of a walk but you can park in Lidl for free or up near Semple Stadium. But then you have the elderly who can't park by text who will no doubt be affected.