I wouldn't go so far as to say it makes it cheaper to drive to the city - I commute from Edgeworthstown and I reckon that driving cost me about three times as much as my Taxsaver and annual parking combined. Edgeworthstown is one of those stations that is quite impractical to get to without a car - being about a kilometre out of the town and further from the main housing estates.
However, I do know that a group of four people abandoned the train from Edgeworthstown when the parking charges came in and started car-pooling instead. That alone represents a loss of revenue now of 12 grand a year. When the charges came in, overnight the car-park went from being full to being less than half-full but as the economy was in free-fall at the time, it is difficult to say what proportion of the change was due to parking.
The car park probably collects roughly the same revenue two open returns to Connolly per day. It probably costs about half of that in terms of the cost of the ticket machine and the cost of sending somebody out a few times a week to check if people have tickets.
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