17:05 Dublin - Sligo 04.10.13

[joey]

On this train now and it is mobbed, jam packed not a seat to be had never mind standing room, unbeliveable.

[berneyarms]

And your point is?

There are trains at 1505, 1600 and 1905 as well, all of which are full six piece sets.

[Jamie2k9]

And trains half the way at 17.15 and 18.05. It's nothing unusual on Fridays all routes from Dublin are the same. One benefit of 7 car trains that are coming.

[Mark Gleeson]

It was a 6 coach set as was the 15:05, saw both in Connolly this evening.

[joey]

point is train was full, no standing room.

I had a reserved seat but this seems to go out the window.

Is it just a case that IR allow online booking to exceed capicity and then, even further sell tickets at the booking offices?

It doesnt matter that there maybe alternative times, I have booked and reserved my ticket online in good faith I'd get a seat on a train for a three hour journey, oh plus the 20 minute delay in Dromad.

[Jamie2k9]

The seat booked online was on the train, if someone was in it and you didn't ask them to move or find another seat you can claim a refund.

As for it being full, don't see a problem, it's up to people who buy tickets if they want to stand or wait for next train, there would need to be at least 100 standing to make it full so unless you saw all doorways you can't say it was full.

They don't sell all capacity online so they don't over sell tickets.

[berneyarms]

Originally Posted by joey

point is train was full, no standing room.

I had a reserved seat but this seems to go out the window.

Is it just a case that IR allow online booking to exceed capicity and then, even further sell tickets at the booking offices?

It doesnt matter that there maybe alternative times, I have booked and reserved my ticket online in good faith I'd get a seat on a train for a three hour journey, oh plus the 20 minute delay in Dromad.

Why did you not ask the person sitting in your seat to vacate it, which you were perfectly entitled to do if you had a reservation?

What time did you arrive at Connolly to board the train?

[joey]

Couldn't see the doorways, emergency situation not sure what would happen.

Eased a little now at carrick on Shannon

Why should I wait for the next train? Sure I'd be charged for travelling on a different service 10€
I shouldn't have to wait for themext train I booked the 1705 not the 1905

The punter that had my seat would not move Ã*nd unlike the cork or Belfast service there are no train stewards.

Train was definitely over sold

[joey]

When all seats are sold no further sales should take place

There must be a system in place they flags this once the 3 or 6 car set is full

[berneyarms]

Originally Posted by joey

Couldn't see the doorways, emergency situation not sure what would happen.

Eased a little now at carrick on Shannon

Why should I wait for the next train? Sure I'd be charged for travelling on a different service 10€
I shouldn't have to wait for themext train I booked the 1705 not the 1905

The punter that had my seat would not move Ã*nd unlike the cork or Belfast service there are no train stewards.

Train was definitely over sold

Again, what time did you board the train? Were the reservations on display?

Bizarrely enough trains are designed to carry standees as well as seated passengers - this is NOT regarded as unsafe by the regulatory authorities.

[Mark Gleeson]

If you had a seat reservation, and had no seat you are entitled to a refund. I understand that seat reservations were not displayed until 5 minutes before departure.

There are approx. 100 seats available after the online quota is exhausted, as it stands today next Friday's service has only 10 seats booked so far. I very much doubt the online quota was fully used.

I was actually standing on platform 4 as the train departed (late), it was certainly busy with standing passengers but from my vantage point standing in coaches A and B was at the door areas, stretching up to 1/2 rows into the carriage. I've seen much worse on a daily basis on other routes.

This looks like a blip, probably down to students returning to college. Given weekly, monthly, annual tickets its all but impossible to have a head count. The way Connolly is laid out makes it impossible to restrict access to any platform but platform 3.

Only possible solution would be to refuse access to those bound for Maynooth, that opens another can of worms, as you will have significant numbers boarding in Maynooth anyway so no net saving.

[joey]

I feel the problem may lie with Longford patrons.
They will ear mark that service 1705 to get home rather than wait for the 17.15 which calls at all the inner Dublin commuter stations broombridge etc.

[Inniskeen]

The system as a whole was unusually busy yesterday with a lot of overcrowding on services favoured by students returning home for the weekend.

If the 1705 remains persistently busy, the option exists to run it non-stop to Longford and divert intermediate traffic to the 1715 which in turn could run non-stop to Maynooth. There should be sufficient accommodation on other services to accommodate displaced patrons. Alternatively a Friday Only 1717 service to Maynooth would do the trick.

[joey]

Are Longford commuter patrons entitled to use an intercity service without paying an extra premium?

I remember when in Spain travelling from Salou to Barcelona I had to pay a premium to travel on the non stop inter city service (which was actually an overnight service from Valencia to Barcelona) or pay a reduced fare to travel ina commuter type train which stopped at every station between Salou and Barcelona.

[dowlingm]

There should be two queues to board any intercity service. One if you have a reservation, one if you don't. In this case it should not be possible to reserve a seat for a destination up to and including Maynooth. If the Maynooth issue was solved then a stop at Drogheda could be restored to the 1650 northbound Enterprise.

[Inniskeen]

Why would you want to stop the 1650 Enterprise at Drogheda ? - the service is already miserably slow and normally standing room only. This service never stopped in Drogheda and up until a few years ago didn't serve Dundalk eiher.

If you want to improve the Drogheda service, the better approach would be to drop stops and accelerate the 1713 ex Pearse wth the 1707 Balbriggan following. Alternately terminate the 1713 ex Pearse at Drogheda and run the 1707 ex Connolly at 1720, express to Laytown and then Drogheda, Dundalk and heaven forbid Newry. Given that the 1713 ex Pearse hangs about in Connolly for almost five minutes the express service could take a connection off the 1713 - win win for everybody.

[Jamie2k9]

In general IE need to drive the message home about online reservation. 4 ways to improve it would be.

1 - Money is tight but a group of people needs to be employed for 4 to 6 weeks and be places on platforms and checking trains and making sure pre booked seats are not taken. Anyone remember them in yellow tops before.

2 - Reservations must be up before train boards, commonly not.

3 - Better capacity management online, instead of putting all coaches on line for sale, for 6 coach services have 3 online and for 3 coach services have 2 online and if demand increases add more but keep to the current online amounts. It means pre booked passengers are all together and not all over the train.

4 - Most trains board at least 30 minutes before departures (who are there and if your lather than 20 minutes well its pot luck if you get your seat), announce all passengers with pre booked tickets board first, then allow all remaining passengers.

I know point 4 could cause problems but the first 3 will help improve it.

The problems seemed to be from Heuston when seats are taken and not towards Heuston. In Waterford they put leaflets on seats that have being booked, that should be done from Heuston to help people.

Leaflets are the only way as they work very well on Waterford services and 99% of the time people don't take them until after Carlow and by that stage the passenger has not come of sat somewhere else. It will be the most effective and best cost to.

[Inniskeen]

The basic problem in enforcing reservations is the lack of any customer service presence on most of Irish Rail's services compounded by the erratic display of reservations.

A simple approach which might be the use of prominent notices on the entrance to each coach with reserved seating reading "You are not entitled to occupy a seat in this carriage unless you are in possession of a valid seat reservation for this service. Passengers occupying a seat in this carriage without a reservation will be deemed to be travelling without a valid ticket". This would need to be accompanied by an enforcement campaign and might not be overly popular - headlines such as "Pensioner with heart condition and two broken legs forced to crawl along train floor by heartless rail official !".

Requiring passengers with reservations to occupy seats 20 minutes in advance of departure (is this not the current rule ?) is a cop-out - the very attraction of reserving a seat is that it is reserved.

[berneyarms]

Originally Posted by joey

I feel the problem may lie with Longford patrons.
They will ear mark that service 1705 to get home rather than wait for the 17.15 which calls at all the inner Dublin commuter stations broombridge etc.

Originally Posted by joey

Are Longford commuter patrons entitled to use an intercity service without paying an extra premium?

I remember when in Spain travelling from Salou to Barcelona I had to pay a premium to travel on the non stop inter city service (which was actually an overnight service from Valencia to Barcelona) or pay a reduced fare to travel ina commuter type train which stopped at every station between Salou and Barcelona.

With respect, since when have Longford or indeed Edgeworthstown passengers ceased to be Intercity customers? Last time I checked it was still an Intercity station in either direction.

There is no differential pricing on the Sligo route.

[berneyarms]

Originally Posted by Inniskeen

The system as a whole was unusually busy yesterday with a lot of overcrowding on services favoured by students returning home for the weekend.

If the 1705 remains persistently busy, the option exists to run it non-stop to Longford and divert intermediate traffic to the 1715 which in turn could run non-stop to Maynooth. There should be sufficient accommodation on other services to accommodate displaced patrons. Alternatively a Friday Only 1717 service to Maynooth would do the trick.

The problem with that is that there would presumably be students travelling west from Maynooth unnecessarily inconvenienced, and what about someone who wishes to travel from Mullingar west?