[27+29/5/2016] Services before and after Bruce Springsteen concert
 

Full details here
http://www.transportforireland.ie/tr...concerts-2016/

There is also a 23:40 Drumcondra Longford on the irish rail timetable for sunday not listed there

yet again irish rail seem to have a problem with concert fans not from Cork/Limerick as the specials don't services intermediate stations.

A lot of these services are not in the IE journey planner, so there is some doubt as to the accuracy of that list.

Galway one stops at 5 stations and Cork one stops at 4. I guess there is an element limiting capacity to a certain level as if they added more stops they would nee more services.

I'm more annoyed that they have yet to operate to Sligo and Waterford as they saw fit to schedule services last minute for Garth Brooks before he cancelled and I think they had good uptake.

cork train stops only at the junction to allow change to limerick.

ah yeah but GB is like Shaws, almost countrywide, the Boss must be a big city thing. :D

Presuming that they're running Longford because of the convenience thing (ie train be running empty hours later anyway)

Sligo would cost money (ie driver, fuel etc)

Yep I have to agree with you on that. There seems to be. A mismatch between the 2. I wonder where nta/tfi got that list from

the cork/galway lates are on the main page, but they remind you that you have to book the next day for returns.

maybe because the others are local trains they aren't bookable and so they haven't put them up on the planner?

The Longford / Sligo thing is probably because numbers fall off so dramatically beyond Longford and a bus would probably easily manage the load.

In this like so many things, it would make a real difference to the Sligo service, if Bus Eireann and Irish Rail services were integrated so that you could use the return part of a rail ticket on a bus. This would basically cost nothing and would make the service significantly better.

For bonus points, they could have the later busses stop somewhat near the railway stations so people didn't have to walk a mile in the pouring rain in the middle of the night to get their cars from the carpark.

Numbers may fall however that's not the reason they are not operating. The issue here is the half baked special services which Irish Rail operate.

Services scheduled less than 3 weeks before concert, you know when 90% of people have decided to book hotels almost immediately they secure tickets. So they expect people to not make plans until they decide to maybe provide a service.

If they were to provide a service on any route other than regular Cork/Galway they would not advertise it as people at this stage do not expect them to provide such services on other routes so why would they even bother checking.

I don't buy "no demand" for a second, there is always demand if people know about it. I will accept there will be some events where this is correct but for a concert in Croke Park there is demand.

Translink announced additional rail/bus services on 22nd February for this weekend.

So can we all see the problem here, one company is prepared and accommodating to customers while the other is well lazy and unprepared to make such services work.

Beyonce and Rihanna will be the test to see if anything happens and this two gigs specifically should be a lot more appealing to train users prehaps more so than this weekends given they would attract a lot more younger people. Translink announced there special services on 22nd Feb and 5th Feb respectively.

If they even worked with ticketmaster to advertise such services during sale of tickets it would help a lot or even if possible get locations where most tickets have been sold etc.

I really fail to see what's changed since they were prepared to run services to Sligo and Waterford for 5 days before the GB gigs were cancelled and Sligo/Waterford who added at very short notice well after the usual Cork/Galway etc. At the time there was no advertising of them but the schedules were:

Jamie,

You have hit the nail on the head, the Belfast specials are bookable for months in advance, the Irish Rail arrangements appear to be made up at the last minute. Queries on twitter a few days ago (in respect of local services around Dublin) were producing the response "we are finalising arrangements".

One suspects that trains like the 1435 from Dundalk on Sunday will have almost zero patronage as almost nobody knows about it - this and most of the other trains listed in previous posts above were not in the journey planner a few days ago and are not advertised at stations.

Could it perhaps be because the manager responsible for organising them would rather not do any work and leaves it to the last minute so as to be able to say nobody uses the specials and so there is no need to run them.

The reluctance to run late-night specials is probably related to the historical need to keep dozens of people on for a couple of extra hours to man signals and open level-crossing gates.

There is also an unhelpful clause in the PSO contract which requires IE to pay the NTA a cut when PSO funded trains are used for commercial purposes.

There is also an unhelpful clause in the PSO contract which requires IE to pay the NTA a cut when PSO funded trains are used for commercial purposes.

Is that such a bad thing? It's not terribly fair for a private bus operator providing the equivalent service to have to compete against a public operator with the vehicle being provided for free.

They really should announce it a minimum of 6 weeks before an event

It is rather unhelpful and something which the NTA should review particularly in relation to new services, fair enough charge for Cork/Galway but others should be exempt for a period of time.

I still don't believe it would make of break these services.

Do the NTA apply same rules to BE and DB?

Really depends how you view both the train and bus would be doing nothing overnight, both must cover operating costs, both must cover wear and tear in maintenance cycles and so on. Could be considered another reason why public cannot compete with private transport.

It's just the NTA been full of bureaucracy. Such charges shouldn't exist if they are a deterrent to pubic transport in any way. Wonder what Mr Ross thinks about it?

The problem is about cherry picking, there are lots of intercity bus services who operate around the clock and almost 24 hours a day regardless of what events are going on who make a loss on some of the services but want to offer a comprehensive service, if IR decide that they only want to operate when there are plenty of cheeries around ussing public assets they should be protected against that.

I'm not convinced that IR does want to run these services anyway, they are only doing so to look good but they really don't want a railway that is run around the clock or anything like it and the later they start and earlier they finish the better, so anything they can do to quell demand and prove the services are not needed, the better in their view.

The losses if any would be small as they are helped by airport traffic. IE would have no selling point for regular night services on intercity routes and you would need significant numbers to breakeven.

They should be allowed run at certain events free of charge as most people who use intercity bus routes never use the train largely for cost reasons. I mean was it ok for BE to cherry pick their night services after they saw private operators doing so well?

There is a reluctance to run them however I would be happy to see them at least try once and them review and not assume low demand or do those rubbish surveys. Just take the 16.15 to Waterford last March which was ran because they were not going to squeese over 500 passengers onto a 6 coach train. It has ran every week since. There is no way IE would of ever sanctioned such a service unless it was needed and now they are expected to go daily at next timetable change and may even also restore 16.00 up to daily also. The only reason that started was because it was either operate the stock empty at 15.35 and find another 3 coaches to boost capacity on 14.50!

All the reports indicated it was an unmitigated disaster people trying to get to croke park and aviva from the maynooth line . There were a lot of people left behind on the platforms at castleknock , navan road and ashtown because of the small capacity trains and low frequency and people not able to board the train. There are pictures on Twitter of people standing inside the toilet cubicle on a 22k train.

The inbound docklands trains diverted to drumcondra and Connolly and then had to make a couple of reverses etc to get back to docklands . There are also reports inbound Sligo trains made additional stops.

To be fair on a Friday evening they would never of had capacity to cover especially with it been peak hours.