Cross-Border Fares

[danm14]

Is there any document online that lists walk-up fares to cross-border stations other than Newry, Portadown, Lisburn and Belfast?

For journeys wholly within the ROI and on one line, we can find the fares on the Irish Rail website. For journeys across lines, we can use the RUI fare finder, or find the mileage and use the table in the Fares Determination.

However, for cross-border journeys except to the three Enterprise stations and Lisburn, there appears to be no option other than to phone Connolly station and hope the clerk understands what you're looking for, or making a rough guess based on the Sterling fares on the NI Railways website.

It doesn't seem right that these fares are so well hidden when every other fare is publicly available or at least possible to calculate.

[Mark Gleeson]

We would like to add this functionality into our site but we do not have access to the fare rules and tables beyond Dundalk and we don't know the routing rules (is Derry via Bleach Green or via the closed routing?)

The fares determination does not include cross border fares as these are a quasi commercial operation.

We have some of the data but have no way to validate it, Irish Rail removed most NI destinations from the ticket machines so we cannot walk up and run a list of combinations quickly.

The IE fares and NIR fares have no relationship at all

Irish Rail refuse to issue us with the internal fares guide and will claim commercial sensitivity if we go after it under FOI, even though the RUI fare calculator fare is basically the guide in online form, but we never ever had access to the guide.

[Eddie]

I managed to book a train from Verona to Munich via Innsbruck for travel last November on thetrainline.com.

A case of 3 countries working together to operate the service and split the revenue.

I'd say the population isn't large enough and the network not extensive enough
for enough people to challenge the status quo and make through tickets happen.

[Padna]

Does anyone know if the revenue from the sale of cross-border tickets is retained by the operator that sells the ticket or if it's split between Irish Rail and Translink based on the mileage on either side of the border for the journey in question?

Does it depend on ticket type? I know that single and return tickets are sold by both Irish Rail and Translink but have to be bought from Irish Rail for journeys beginning in the Republic of Ireland and from Translink for journeys beginning in Northern Ireland. For weekly and monthly season tickets passengers should be able buy the ticket from either operator. Then there are some ticket types that are sold by one operator but not the other - for example, I know that annual season tickets are only available from Irish Rail and I think that 'carnet' multi-journey tickets are only sold by Translink.

[Jamie2k9]

Yes its kept by operator.

Ideally there should be a separate booking platform for the service.

[Padna]

Originally Posted by Jamie2k9

Yes its kept by operator.

Thanks for the reply. A couple of years ago I heard that the revenue was split according to the mileage on each side of the border but more recently I heard that it's kept by whichever operator sells the ticket (which agrees with what you have said).