Quote:
Originally Posted by James Howard
Running a following stopping service doesn't really work as it would have to be at least 20 minutes behind and the 0545 gets you to town on time for 9AM. Adding another three cars in either Mullingar or Longford would work but the problem is that the two Longford-based drivers have left for the day running two earlier services and I guess you would have to have a driver in each set.
There is a lot of equipment tied up on the Sligo line primarily because there is a lot of traffic between Longford and Dublin but it is very strongly biased towards Dublin in the morning and away from Dublin in the afternoon.
But even services like the 15:05 to Sligo will run something like 70 - 80% full to Mullingar with a 6 car ICR. Cutting the capacity on the Sligo line is just stupid - all they are doing is driving business away. They will very quickly find themselves running 4 cars in place of 6 at the same occupancy level and while they will save something like 5-10% on running costs, they will find themselves losing 25-30% on income.
If they want to save money on the Sligo line, the way to go about it is to find ways of delivering more capacity to Longford without having it going to Sligo.
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As I said above, there's probably scope for the 05:45 to remain 6-car along with the 17:05 return, but I'd imagine that all the other Sligo services will become 4-car or remain 3-car.
Fridays may require reconfigurating beyond that to match with the increased demand.