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Unread 08-12-2016, 17:24   #4
James Howard
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Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: Sligo Line
Posts: 1,115
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The Alan Kelly express is being used now as evidence that extra services don't work which is completely out of order since it was a fairly pointless service. As you said the real issue is the lack of limerick-facing commuter service.

About 15 years ago the Sligo line was really not in the best of shape - there were only about 4 or 5 trains a day and the timetabling was ludicrous - they first train past Longford to Dublin didn't get in until 10am which was useless to a lot of people with hospital appointments or other business in Dublin.

It being boom-time, they invested and increased the service to 2 hourly and the response was huge. Now, you can get on a 7 car ICR in the middle of the afternoon and it will be packed. The Sligo line caries nearly the same numbers as Belfast now despite the terminal station having about one 15th of the population. I think the 1705 was the single busiest evening intercity service on the network in the last census.

So basically, investment can work - it doesn't mean that the line is profitable as there is a lot of Free Travel on it but it is providing a socially useful service to a lot of people. The same reasoning may not apply to the other lines but the present approach seems to be to let lines bleed to death with slow inconvenient service on uncomfortable trains. What seems to be utter madness in a lot of cases is that CIE is competing with itself by running loss-making expressway bus services in competition with its own train services.
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