Irish Rail web site
 

Gents,

Is it me or is the Irish rail Web site useless?

I was trying to find out various fares i.e Dublin to Limerick or Limerick to Tralee. It comes up with the times of the trains and even what platform they are on, but no where does it give you the fare. I then clicked on the special web fare page, once again put in my requirements, everything appeared apart from the fare!

Is it me? Am i going mad, or is this the worst rail web site in the developed world?

David

Yes, the information can be hit and miss.

These two pages seem to be the best:

http://www.railusers.ie/passenger_info/fare_calc.php for ordinary fares

http://www.irishrail.ie/news_centre/...ew&news_id=402 for discounted fares

Its fairly useless

If you want to know the fare, go online, make sure reservation is selected and search for the trains you want

Select the train you want using the tick box for first or standard and then click the button at the bottom to check the fare

There has been a curious pattern of when we add something to our site a few months later Irish Rail follow

The Irish Rail website is completely useless. It could win an award for being the most user unfriendly website on the internet! The cheapest fares available, in my experience, are those purchased at the booking office or from the ticket checker if you are able to board a train without a ticket. Stay well clear of the Automatic Ticket Vending Machines.

So thanks to you guys I've finaly cracked it!

You have to search for a seat reservation to find the price of the journey! How clear is that?
All the other rail companies have got it wrong with their "check for fares" banners on their web pages!
But if the journey involves a rail car it can't give you a price because you can't reserve a seat!!!!

Oh well, I think I'll buy a 4 day rail rover from inter rail.

Quick question: What stock is being used on the Rosslaire route?

David

Irish Rail, if you're reading:
http://www.ns.nl, or in English: http://www.ns.nl/cs/Satellite/travellers

e.g. type Amsterdam Centraal -> Rotterdam Centraal

Notice the box on the left which gives the 6 trains before/after you requested, the main box which gives details, and the data below which gives prices! All in a single search! Wow! :rolleyes:

The links open up more details about stops and prices!

Oh, and with regards where to purchase a ticket.. they make it very clear the cheapest tickets are from the TVM:
http://www.ns.nl/cs/Satellite/travel...=language%3Den

(it's +0.50c if you buy from the ticket office).. but then again the fare structure (for a hugley bigger and more complex rail network) is simpler than in Ireland.

Rosslare-Waterford and Limerick is generally a two- or four-car 2700 commuter. Rosslare-Dublin is generally a six-car 2800 or four-car 29000.

If you check the price of a return ticket on the website, then go back to the main page and clear the 'Returning on' box and try to check the price of a single fare, you can't - it keeps insisting that you pick a return journey. It's obviously go the previous data stored somewhere. You have to reload the page

Yes it's generally quite awful - not as bad as the bus eireann site however. I don't know why they even bother with the reservation system when they only sometimes implement it.

I booked a seat to athlone from heuston last Wednesday only to have them send half a train.

Bye bye reservation. Think i'm entitled to a refund actually. Tis like extracting teeth that though.

If you had to stand -> refund

http://www.railusers.ie/passenger_in...ty_heuston.pdf

State "reservation not honored due wrong/short train used on service"

http://www.railusers.ie/forum/showth...ewpost&t=10214

Irishrail.ie is currently offline, either the northern line notices are being updated or the new timetable is being uploaded?

That makes the 3rd crash today.

Its a database problem is appears, could be overloaded

Back up, or works for me at least.

It was down yesterday morning too

I was on the IE website yesterday I typed in Dublin to Gorey for 28/Sep and it gave me the same times for the current timetable.

Today when I did the same thing it didnt process, Maybe the new timetable is going ahead...

[2-9-2009] 11:35 - site unavailable
 

site is down at the moment.

Was back is gone again

[3-9-2009] 11:57 - unavailable
 

Site gone again!

The journey planner search screen on the irish rail website has been updated. It now doesn't give you option to search by timetable or reservations and instead the results page tells you if resrvations are available

Or, in my case, tells you that reservations aren't available, irrespective of the journey I want to make :mad:

What station combination? Can get that fixed ;)

Its meant to be "DART journeys always return timetables and Dublin-Cork will display reservations automatically."

you can do it from clonsilla online! :p

Browser friendly image attached.

They still allow way too much time Connolly-Heuston.

Had a chat with Thomas, figured out the problem with the reservations. Its messy but we will let IE know, they asked...

The reservation bug is fixed, I'm told!

Works for me anyway.

Website is down again, since about 3pm

Its still down

Back up as of 21:20

Both the intercity and suburban real-time webpages are returning the timetable not the real times

And here was me rushing to the station thinking my train was ontime for the first time in weeks, turned out to be 4 minutes late as always

And the realtime page http://www.irishrail.ie/realtime is gone, so no luck for iPhone owners looking for the next train

It's back!

Real time suburban and intercity is gone again

The platform displays died yesterday, came back and died again

As of now, the realtime displays for Heuston, Cork, etc seem to be OK, (i.e. loads of late trains) but for Connolly all trains are shown as exactly on time. Not a single deviation from the timetable. Worthy of North Korea.

The suburban ones are showing no trains at all

The one in Heuston doesn't work anyway, it takes a pot guess at Adamstown as to the arrival in to Heuston. That would be fine but for the regular stops at Inchicore to pick up staff

Back finally but the strange destination game has returned

Attachment 1088

I notice that when I go to the Irish Rail website I get three separate adverts for Hertz Car Hire surrounding the home page.

Nice of them to let me know what the alternatives to the train service are!

Yet another change to the interface. Little green map of ireland icon in each station picker box brings up the rubbish network map, you can click your station there to select it. Though I can't see why anyone would bother, especially given thos awful maps.

Realtime info though is now much improved (shock, it galls me to give credit for anything), much better interface.

Biggest shock though is that there's now only one combined real time system - which seems to work for all stations nationwide!

[edit]
RSS feeds of realtime data, google map integration with real time location of trains? They're obviously finally outsourced the development