Quote:
Originally Posted by Inniskeen
The major stations are normally staffed, particularly on the Derry and Dublin lines. Other locations are staffed at times of heavy passenger flow, notably during the morning peak.
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I couldn't believe the state of affairs the last time I had to travel from Belfast. I needed to get the train from Botanic @ Queens to Belfast Central and then the enterprise the whole way down to meet my Dundalk monthly to dublin Connolly.
Staffing: 1st let me say that I like ticket machines. I don't like doing people out of a job but when you're in a rush and you don't have questions, they can speed you up. Plus every train service in the western world has them, let's face the real world here. The staff at Botanic poured over my IE student card before telling me it wasn't valid for internal NI travel which I had forgotten but all of this is eating up time. They had to confer between themselves a number of times. Then started giving me grief over my fold up bike: it's up to the conductor as to whether he'll let you on. So I had to pay full whack and then fold up the bike in a hurry. Needless to say I missed my train and the enterprise I was looking to get. When I got on the train? Beautiful new, clean trains, but almost empty! And other people just walked on with regular bikes, not a bother! What was the point of all that?
In Belfast Central, 5 people checking tickets coming off from 2 exit points, that's right, 5. Any machines for buying tickets, no. 2 windows open and luckily short queue. No wifi either or coffee shop nearby with wifi. Station is on top of a bridge over all the tracks, so nothing around, I had to cycle 10 minutes.
The total cost: single botanic adult to Central and single student Belfast to Dundalk = same price as online fare Belfast to Connolly. Could I buy any of the tickets I needed online? No. If I had bought a web fare from Belfast to Connolly and cycled to Central, I would have made my train for the same money and encountered less stress.
I know Northern Ireland priorities are always the Eastern European model of must give people jobs but they're going to find the withdrawals hard as "the mainland" pulls funding, ie the moving of motor tax to Swansea.
I wonder what the stats would show if you compared the financials, Translink's vs IE. I bet NI gets a lot more subsidy for the train sizes, duration, distance & passenger numbers. IE updating with all the ticket machines, TVMs, cost reduction programs, ability to operate 1 driver per train, etc., has made them a much tighter ship and better able to weather the reduction in subsidies. Plus it's nice for the tax payer and even nicer for the banks and their bailouts.
NI civil service type areas are going to start incurring drops in funding as "London" stops throwing money at it now that peace is here. If they don't start implementing the kinds of models rolled out by IE, that's going to end up in big fare increases for everyone up there.
Making a long story even longer, I wouldn't be in a hurry to knock IE's progress here.