[article] Rail Users in Ireland paying more for a weaker service

[dermo88]

Disagree. The market based mechanism is better once you know how it works and its transparent once its displayed online or at the railway station, it makes things much better. This enables the passenger to choose when to travel, rewards planned travel, enables the operator to balance out peaks and troughs in demand, and maximises revenue. PROFIT is not an evil word. Public service is not an evil word. Two conflicting objectives get balanced out.

I wrote on this before in July 2005 on another website (wording as below) copied and pasted from my archives - giving an opinion that the train ticketing system in Ireland is overpriced in some respects, and underpriced in others. It needs more flexibility to create travel opportunities and maximise revenue for the railway, while offering passengers value for money where needed. There needs to be greater banding in the style and type of tickets offered.

Therefore, we seperate the rail network into several bands:

High Quality Band A routes:

Dublin - Cork, Dublin - Limerick (Direct trains only, no changing at Limerick Junction), Dublin - Belfast,
Dublin - Galway

Where the average speed, point to point is equal to or greater than 100kmh (60 mph)

Then, seperate the ticket types into Peak and Off Peak (Peak meaning travel on Intercity Expresses, where a seat is GUARANTEED on the train. No seats available, means you wait for the next train, or you don't travel. This eliminates the crap service of overcrowded trains that has given Iarnród Éireann a poor reputation over the years. For this I recommend a price of 25 cent per kilometer on peak demand services (7:00 Heuston to Cork) for a walk on fare, which would give a price of EUR64.00. Peak services cater more for business travellers. A return fare would be at a 75% premium above this, meaning a fare of EUR112.00 return (Standard Class. A First Class ticket on the CItygold would be priced at between 30 and 70% more again.

However, before there is an outcry at this, there should be discounts for advance booking

24 hour advance purchase, means that you get a 50% discount and travel for EUR56.00 rtn
3 Day Advance purchase, means that you get a further discount of 30% and travel for EUR39.20 rtn
7 Day Advance purchase, means you get to travel for EUR28.00 rtn
14 Day or greater advance purchase means you travel for EUR21.00 (A Bargain for Dublin to Cork)

Off peak services are discounted also, with any train leaving Heuston to Cork after 10:00, and before 16:00 are discounted, with the walk on fare becoming EUR56.00, and the other fares discounted in proportion.

For a guideline, Dublin to Limerick (128 miles or 205km), Dublin to Belfast (111 miles or 180km), Dublin to Galway (135 miles or 215km)

Slower Band B routes

Dublin to Waterford
Dublin to Tralee (Beyond Mallow at 15 cent per kilometer)
Dublin to Westport prices at the same level as Dublin - Galway on account of slower services, and competition from Dublin Airport to Knock Air services)
Dublin to Sligo

Band C routes (regional), charged at a flat rate of 12 cent per kilometer

Dublin to Rosslare
Rosslare to Limerick
Ennis to Limerick

Other special offers and discounts apply, and there are also caps on fares. Severe restrictions on free travel and concessions.

But then.....we need to get services up to a European standard to even contemplate such things. These are only rough ideas, and modifications are required. Its complicated as it is, and a good balance between getting the best deal for all parties, from operator, to user to shareholder is required. We will agree on one thing at the end. No solution is ideal, but it should be reasonably transparent, with objectives, outcomes and performance made clear.

[Colm Moore]

Originally Posted by Garrett

Special offers should be limited to commuters ....... groups

You have to be careful. Groups should only get a discount if pre-booked or off-peak, as they mess things up for commuters and full fare passengers. They also have the habit of being high maintenance.

[Garrett]

Originally Posted by Victor

You have to be careful. Groups should only get a discount if pre-booked or off-peak, as they mess things up for commuters and full fare passengers. They also have the habit of being high maintenance.

Well of course groups should be pre-booked, with maybe a little flexibility in case they miss the train or something. They may be high mainatenance but hey, they're still passengers! And what's this about only off-peak? If a group books well enough in advance then it's up to IE to adapt. I maybe dreaming too much, but I feel that's how it should be.

Originally Posted by dermo88

PROFIT is not an evil word. Public service is not an evil word. Two conflicting objectives get balanced out.

I don't think anybody is saying that profit is an evil word, just that at the moment the "two conflicting onjectives" are not being properly balanced out. Also, when it comes to public service, the notion of profit is entirely different. A public company (e.g. Irish Rail) making a profit may not necessarily mean that the national economy is better off. That's where subsidies come in - they allow the public company to have an operational loss, but this is then balanced by the economic benefits obtained (in theory of course!).

Originally Posted by dermo88

But then.....we need to get services up to a European standard to even contemplate such things.

Yep, we're probably way ahead of ourselves. But then again, I can't see any reason why impovements in services and improvements in value for money can't progress in parallel.

[undo]

Originally Posted by dermo88

24 hour advance purchase, means that you get a 50% discount and travel for EUR56.00 rtn
[...]
14 Day or greater advance purchase means you travel for EUR21.00 (A Bargain for Dublin to Cork)

Germany has had a similar system for a couple of years - and it's highly annoying. It always seems like rail is trying to imitate cheap airlines here. There is a difference between how people use rail vs. air travel. Flights you plan ahead and use for long distance journeys. Rail trips are often spontaneous, shorter trips. Having some discounted fares for those that book in advance is fine. But basing it all around this is a bad idea. The walk-on fares is what will affect most consumers and so those should be kept reasonable.

[dermo88]

Thats solved by tweaking the system. You keep the walk on fare for distances of less than 160km at a reasonable level. Beyond that, it becomes long distance, and as a result, advance booking becomes necessary.

Depends what you call "long distance", thats a very arbitrary concept. In my eyes its anything other than commuter distance, which is less than 110km.

There will be annoying discrepancies cropping up no matter what happens, but the objectives are the same. Some routes have a higher level of business travel, others have more recreational use.

Yes its annoying until people know how it works, and it becomes an accepted and transparent system.

High walk on fares on a Friday evening, which is the traditional peak period should be acceptable. People will get into the habit of booking early, and having their seats guaranteed. That never happened before.

[undo]

Originally Posted by dermo88

High walk on fares on a Friday evening, which is the traditional peak period should be acceptable. People will get into the habit of booking early, and having their seats guaranteed. That never happened before.

I never bought into the idea of higher on-peak fares. Public transport is supposed to serve people's daily needs - to be there when they need it.

There are rush hours in the morning and evening as people travel between home and work. What exactly is a higher on peak fare supposed to do about this? Push them onto services at different times of day? That's not when they need to get to and from work. Trying to shift the demand is nonsense as the demand is based on people's working hours and will not change. All it does is either milk those who have to travel at that time or make them upset enough to switch back to their cars. The only sane way of dealing with rush hours is adding more services. If there is more demand around 9am and 5pm, services should be more frequent around those hours. Public transport should adapt to demand, not the other way around.

Also, I think there is a second misconception in railway pricing. Discounts for those who buy their tickets way in advance make good sense for airlines. They need to have their airplanes near 100% full to make a profit and cannot adapt to short-term changes in demand as flight plans are arranged far in advance. For railways, there is no need to run at 100% capacity all the time (it's still a state run company after all, serving the public should be #1, turning a profit #2). There is a lot more flexibility as well - if a particular slot is not very popular, there is no need to lure people into filling it up using low prices. Just reduce the number of coaches to adjust the train to the given demand. Also, commuters, certainly the majority of train users, are wonderfully predictable. There is no need to have them book in advance. You *know* they will predictably be working 9 to 5, Monday to Friday. Discounts for early booking make sense if you need to know precise numbers as far ahead as you can. With railways, that's simply not the case.

[Garrett]

Originally Posted by undo

I never bought into the idea of higher on-peak fares. Public transport is supposed to serve people's daily needs - to be there when they need it.

There are rush hours in the morning and evening as people travel between home and work. What exactly is a higher on peak fare supposed to do about this? Push them onto services at different times of day? That's not when they need to get to and from work. Trying to shift the demand is nonsense as the demand is based on people's working hours and will not change. All it does is either milk those who have to travel at that time or make them upset enough to switch back to their cars. The only sane way of dealing with rush hours is adding more services. If there is more demand around 9am and 5pm, services should be more frequent around those hours. Public transport should adapt to demand, not the other way around.

I think most of us would agree with you, but there still is a place for peak fares. The basic principle of what I (and some others) are proposing is the introduction of higher peak fares on weekends (Fri and Sun night, Sat and Mon morning) and holiday periods (e.g. Paddy's day), but that commuters would more or less avoid these peak fares by buying weekly, monthly or annual tickets. Peak fares should only apply to Intercity trains (i.e. not based on distance but on service) as applying peak fares to a commuter system would of course be ridiculous. For example, if you took an Intercity train from Heuston to Portarlington on a Friday evening then you would pay a peak fare, but if you decided to take the commuter train you would pay the regular flat fare.
That's my view on the issue anyhows.

With regards your point on selling tickets in advance, I again think that most will agree with you, but again nobody's talking about making advanced reservations on a commuter service - only Intercity services. In theory, there are many, many advantages for a company who promotes advanced booking: less queues at the station, more efficient boarding, fuller trains, ease of mind for passengers, ability to respond to unexpected demand, less handling of cash, and so on...

[ACustomer]

undo wrote: "For railways, there is no need to run at 100% capacity all the time (it's still a state run company after all, serving the public should be #1, turning a profit #2). There is a lot more flexibility as well - if a particular slot is not very popular, there is no need to lure people into filling it up using low prices. Just reduce the number of coaches to adjust the train to the given demand."

Just because railways happen to be either state-owned and a "public service" doedn't mean that efficiency goes out the window! I accept that the peak versus offpeak fare discussion applies almost exclusively to inter-city, but the existing fare structure provides almost no incentive to avoid overcrowded trains and use relatively empty ones. This generates huge dissatisfaction and inevitable demands to invest more in increasing peak capacity (at huge expense).

There is no reason why average fare needs to increase using peak-hour pricing: increases for some trains would be offset by discounts for others. Passengers would then be able to balance their allocation of time versus their financial outlay.

As for shortening off-peak trains: this could be wildly impractical: what if (say) the 1100 to Cork is only 20% full, but its return working at 1500 is 95% full? Also adding and subtracting coaches can be a time-consuming and costly affair, which plays merry hell with turnaround times.

[Mark Gleeson]

Pre booking is not practical for the vast majority of passengers since the bulk of passengers on intercity weekdays are commuters, they already get very highly discounted fares through monthly and annual tickets

We are lossing sight of the actual issue, that someone showing up on spec should be charged a reasonable fare. There are massive inconsistencies in the fares charged particularly where the journey requires a change cross city in Dublin. There is a total lack of transparency in the fares system, no one can work it out

A peak time there shouldn't be a discount, a off peak there should be considerable discount to fill seats. If you book considerably in advance it should be possible to get a level of discount on peak fares but not much.

[Garrett]

Originally Posted by Mark Gleeson

We are lossing sight of the actual issue, that someone showing up on spec should be charged a reasonable fare. There are massive inconsistencies in the fares charged particularly where the journey requires a change cross city in Dublin. There is a total lack of transparency in the fares system, no one can work it out.

I've always disagreed with you on this issue and it appears I always will. I don't believe that we are loosing sight of the actual issue. What we are discussing is a radical overhaul of the ticketing philosophy (pretentious maybe, but so be it). The testimonies of passengers on this forum show that the ticketing system doesn't work and pisses them off. It's not just the pricing inconsistencies. The ironing out of inconsistencies, although useful in the short-term, will not allow for the development of a progressive ticketing system in the long term. The current ticketing system won't get better using plasters for its wounds, it requires major transplants in almost every area.
- in my, not so humble, opinion

[Mark Gleeson]

The current system is staying in place on the pure and simple grounds that its a public service and the public have the right to turn up and expect to be accommodated. There is a fundamental requirement that the booking office can always issue a ticket and that ticket is charged at a fare appropriate for the journey being undertaken

At the moment the fare layout is structured such that unless you know exactly how it works you are likely to get ripped off by up to 30 euro, which is impressive when you consider the maximum day return fare is 65.50. The journeys in question are so rarely made they go unnoticed. Regardless of any fancy yield managed system all these glitches have to be fixed.

The vast bulk of the country still hasn't got decent internet access (myself and Tom live with phone lines so poor even modem dial up is flaky) which makes using web sales as the primary sales method unacceptable. Irish Rail manage to charge more online than at the station in a long list of cases

[Colm Moore]

Actually, money aside, encouraging people to pre-book may actually appeal to people own sense of well being if they can see that all the seats on the 17:30 are constantly full, but those on the 16:30 or 18:30 aren't.

[undo]

Certainly the *option* of pre-booking is great and can take the hassle out of many journeys (as long as your reserved seat actually does get marked as such so that you can count on it being free). But *requiring* pre-booking to get a decent price is a ripoff.

[Thomas J Stamp]

and we havent even mentioned the Credit Union discounted tickets yet

[Garrett]

Originally Posted by Mark Gleeson

The current system is staying in place on the pure and simple grounds that its a public service and the public have the right to turn up and expect to be accommodated. There is a fundamental requirement that the booking office can always issue a ticket and that ticket is charged at a fare appropriate for the journey being undertaken

I think you misunderstood what I meant by "system". I wasn't suggesting moving away from the current system of issuing tickets, as indeed that would have been loosing sight of the issue. I was suggesting moving away from the current system of pricing tickets, and I was disagreeing with your suggestion of removing the inconsistencies in IE's current pricing practices. Those inconsistencies could indeed be removed, but that would be no guarantee that ticket pricing will be easy to understand (for your ordinary Joe and Jane Soap out there), nor that ticket prices will represent the best value for the customer. Also bare in mind that I am primarily discussing intercity ticketing, but some of the suggestions also relate to commuter/luas/dart.

As far as i understand the situation, simply removing the inconsistencies will still mean:

- the practice of charging an arm and a leg for a one-way ticket which gives less choice to the customer who, at the time of booking/buying the ticket may not be sure of when or how he/she will be returning, and that's only assuming they wish to return. A tourist, for example, may decide to do a Dublin - Cork - Limerick - Galway - Dublin trip.
- that one-way tickets are only valid for the date printed on the ticket, and not the more customer friendly option of a specific time frame, e.g. a month. This possibility, I believe, has been hindered due to the whole issue of ticket validation.
- that one-way tickets cannot be used in both directions, e.g. using an unused Dublin-Mullingar single ticket to go from Mullingar to Dublin.

[ccos]

Thats solved by tweaking the system. You keep the walk on fare for distances of less than 160km at a reasonable level. Beyond that, it becomes long distance, and as a result, advance booking becomes necessary.

Thats a nonsense, I frequently do far longer trips (not in Ireland) at a moments notice, why should I be penalised for not having my life rostered.
Recently I had to buy 1 ways to Cork on the day of travel and they're not cheap, I don't want to imagine what they could be if IE had airline priceing