Intercity fares revision: New fares and fare structure from 4th February 2012
 

New Intercity fares and fare zones announced. Just to make it that bit more inconvenient, the information is all in a pdf and on the NTA's site, not IE's.

http://www.nationaltransport.ie/down...fing-Final.pdf

Some questions:

Will cheaper web fares still be available?

Will the various Dublin area day tickets (rail and LUAS for instance) continue to be available?

It looks as if the NTA have taken a transparent, rational and principled approach, which is to be welcomed. This should be acknowledged even by those who might not like some of the specific changes.

There are some weird anomalies in that report

• Services to Tralee are categorised as Express, even though the Express track ends at Mallow. This has a particularly negative affect on Cork-Tralee fares. Even though the categories of line used are broadly the same in terms of length, Cork-Tralee fares are much higher than Dublin-Kilkennt fares
• On the map, WRC fares are indicated as Economy2, but for pricing purposes are included in the Economy1 fares.
• On the map, Waterford fares are indicated as Economy1, but for pricing purposes are included in the Economy2 fares.
• Although it doesn't say it, I believe a Dublin-Athy fare will be less than a Dublin-Kildare fare

I'm sure there are others; that's just the first lot I noticed.

Abolishing the 5-Day returns will create significant fare increases on some lines.

For the life of me, I can't see why it wasn't just kept simple, with a charge per kilometre rather than the band system. In particular, this shafts people on routes like Cork-Mallow or Dublin-Newbridge, where the fare just creeps over the threshhold.

I'm just out of a (unrelated) meeting and off the phone to Mark G. I've only had a general look at the press release, but the language suggests something much better than had been there previously. Notably, these are maximum permissible fares, discounts can still be offered.
Mark advises that only the double track section is charge at the higher rate. The single track section is charged at the lower rate.

However, any new unfairness should be studied properly.
This may be to stop the system being overly complicated.
I think they are trying to make Dublin-Waterford and Dublin-Rosslare substantially the same.
Keep them coming
Possibly. However, I think there was a substantial element of unfairness in the distribution of discounted fares.
Administrative burden.
Potentially these need to be treated as suburban fares on the suburban matrix.

I like the way they highlight that there has been no fare increase since 2009. As far as I can remember, my commuter pass from Edgeworthstown to Dublin (I know - it isn't included) has gone up by a few percent each year.

Meanwhile as far as I can see, the CPI cumulative increase has been -3.6% and while I can't find any easy stats for it, median income growth must have been negative over the same period.

They still have the absurd prices for short rural journeys. A day return from Longford to Edgeworthstown is around €7.50 and it takes about 25 minutes each way by bicycle. They'll sell you a discounted day return to Dublin for €12 most days after 9:30. As it is, people don't pay for these tickets as they are so expensive that they feel justified in dodging them and there is no realistic chance of getting caught.

I'm not certain that's correct.

Cork-Tralee and Dublin-Kilkenny are both in the Up to 160km category.

Both involve some Express track and some Economy 1 track. In the Cork-Tralee case, this is about 35km from Cork to Mallow. In the Dublin-Kilkenny case, it's about 60km from Heuston to Cherryville.

So, if anything, you'd expect Cork-Tralee to be slightly cheaper. Instead, the single is €34 as opposed to €24 on the Dublin-Kilkenny leg. Quite a difference.

Incidentally, I'm a bit dubious of some of the distances given. Heuston-Kildare is down at over 64km, yet it's only 55km by road and the rail route as direct, if not more so.

Heuston-Kildare is 48.270km from Heuston platforms 2 to 5

There's another curious anomaly - the 'commuter' segments of the Dublin-Cork and Dublin-Dundalk lines are counted as express for Intercity fare calculation purposes but the Dublin-Maynooth section on the Dublin-Sligo line isn't.

In addition, the mileage calculations used for the Northern line are out of whack.

Drogheda-Dublin Pearse is a distance of around 53 kilometres by rail and should be counted as a class D fare (up to 64km) not a class E fare (up to 80km).

Dundalk-Connolly is 86 kilometres by rail and should be counted as a class F fare rather than a class G one.

This has an extremely negative effect on fares from those destinations - a single from Dundalk-Connolly should be €5 cheaper if the correct mileage is used.

Unless there is a secret Northern Line premium in their figures...

There is a strong suspicion that some station pairs use incorrect distances.

RTE's take on it : "65% of train fares to increase next month"

http://www.rte.ie/news/2012/0126/trainfares.html

30% go down and 5% remain the same

Doesn't make for as good a headline though.

It doesn't but for a passenger the fact 30% go down is seriously good news. Indeed the bulk of the reductions are on routes where the fares are considered over priced

Is there any way of making the NTA aware of this? After all, it isn't hard to calculate out the correct distances - the rather large mileposts along the routes should assist them considerably.

The NTA are well aware of the strange fares and distance issue.

MVA who did the study used our investigation http://www.railusers.ie/news/news.ph...2008&no=6.html as a source document to the study.

What about day saver fares for example Tue-Thur €37 before 11am Thurles-Heuston. or the Mon-Sat €18.50 day return to Limerick. Will these now be abolished?

Not necessarily. Irish Rail are still allowed do discounts and promotional fares, so some of them will stay.

However, hopefully some of the worst abuses, e.g. different fares for each direction, will not be allowed stay.

If they keep day saver return @ €18.50 to Limerick and now that 5 day return is to be abolished soon for day return, won't everybody Mon-Sat just buy the day saver. Hoping they will keep these offers anyway as I like taking the day trip to Dublin once a week and my gf lives in Limerick so i spend a lot of time going down to hers in the evenings for a few hours when i get off work. Will cost me an extra €2.30 on monthly return going to hers every weekend now that the 5 day return is to be abolished but the increase could have been much worst.