Quote:
Originally Posted by James Howard
That's the problem with Irish Rail - they don't have enough flexibility. I think that it is a bit ridiculous at weekends in that the first train to Dublin is extremely late - particularly on Sunday when you can't get to Dublin before mid-day. This is kind of fair enough when it comes to doing the whole run - not many people are going to get onto a train at 6am on a Saturday in Sligo. But you would certainly have a reasonable level of business for getting on a train at 7:30 in Longford or 8 in Mullingar.
Irish Rail have valuable assets (a 6-car 22k cost something along the lines of 10 million euro) sitting around all weekend and there is an issue with these assets being needed elsewhere and for the lack of a driver at Longford, people are putting up with a sub-standard service both in terms of using inadequate trains and the very late first train to Dublin at weekends.
I think it is likely that Irish Rail are doomed in the long-term if they can't get out of this mind-set. There are private operators, who faced with the lack of an operator for a 10 million euro vehicle that is probably idle for about 75% of the week would just hire somebody and be able to let them go if the service wasn't profitable. The only reason Irish Rail and Bus Eireann can compete is that they are effectively getting the capital equipment for free. The only reason that this hasn't been stopped by the EU competition authorities is because the Germans and French are worse.
By comparison, look at the Aircoach service. They are running services all night with extremely light loads. I occasionally have a early flight and end up taking an Aircoach to the airport at about 10 at night. Only once or twice have I gotten on the bus to see more than three or four passengers. Yet, the combination of the sunk cost in the vehicle and the advantages of providing a reliable service that you can get home on if your flight is delayed by 4 hours means it is worth their while providing unprofitable individual journeys. The key point here is that the cost of the vehicle is built into their business plan and they must extract as much use as possible from that asset.
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To be fair, most railway companies around the world would have the same issue with outbased trains at weekends. There will always be trains that aren't used at weekends due to the reduced demand levels.
Frankly, IE are damned if they do and damned if they don't. Previously they were castigated by the press and politicians for not having local drivers based in Longford and incurring transportation costs in bringing crews to and from Dublin every day to operate the trains.
Now, when they do base crews locally they get criticised again!
Unless you expect them to give up their weekends, having worked a full week - where do you expect drivers to materialise from to drive these trains at weekends to and from Longford? Thin air?
At the end of the day the company is not exactly cash rich right now, so operating extra trains at considerable extra cost due to having to transport staff in, really is not going to happen.
As for the wider issue of inadequate trains - there are two trains a week to Sligo using 29k sets - not ideal but it is far from an epidemic!!