[James Howard]

I would tend to ignore that article - it was completely riddled with errors. The rising fuel costs argument is dumb - this is also a source of demand. Rising fuels costs have now got to the point where it is cheaper for me to buy a family day return to Dublin than buy fuel and tolls for our thirsty people carrier. Taking the train is also a lot easier than driving for city centre stuff.

Here follows a bit of a tome, but this is how I believe Irish Rail should be dealing with this by stimulating demand rather than gutting demand for marginal savings. It is a bit tilted towards the Sligo line but most of the points apply elsewhere.

Like the rest of the public service, the problem with cutting services is that they massively impact the public while only having a marginal impact on costs. The vast majority of cost comes from the army of extremely generously paid staff and these need to be paid whether or not they are operating services. Redundancy is a poor option due to massive costs involved.

Unlike the rest of the public service, reducing the service has a consequent impact on revenue. The marginal saving from the service cost (largely fuel) is usually going to be more than offset by the consequent reduction in revenue.

Irish Rail have two major sources of revenue (commuters and leisure travel). The mythical business traveller doesn't really exist and isn't terribly worth worrying about. They need to be concentrating on improving revenue from these people in particular. Things that would help for me as a commuter would be

1. Throw us some sort of a bone on car-parking. The €2 per week Louth idea seems fair. I know for a fact that 4 people from Edgeworthstown swtiched to a car-pool when the parking came in. This alone represents a loss of nearly 14k annual revenue.
2. Add a later service from Dublin. A 21:05 to Longford stopping in Drumcondra, Clonsilla and possibly Leixlip Louisa Bridge would allow them to cover hospitals and Intel if that lined up with their shift changeover. With proper marketing and maybe shuttle busses, it should be possible to line up a hundred nurses from the major city hospitals to stops between Mullingar and Longford.
3. Make everything going beyond Maynooth a 22k ideally with no stops apart from possibly Drumcondra and maybe Clonsilla.

I wouldn't be so hot on the requirements for leisure travellers but I would guess that cost is huge part. Things I could see helping here are

1. Enable universal online booking - close station offices if necessary to pay for it. This would enable proper demand management and allow them to drive traffic towards poorly used services.
2. Allow unlimited daily Dublin Bus and/or Luas daily tickets to be added onto day return tickets for a nominal fee. I take the family up to Dublin on a family day return occasionally and it is a real pain to have to buy a full-price luas or bus ticket. A tenner for either bus/luas and 15 for both would sound reasonable on a family ticket.
3. Work with major venues to allow rail tickets to be tacked onto concert or match ticket purchases. This would give them enormously helpful marketing information in terms of determining the demand for specials for major events in addition to gaining extra sales.
4. Make more use of Drumcondra for Sligo trains. The Mater is major source of leisure journeys for visits and it is a lot shorter walk/taxi from Drumcondra.
5. More localised marketing pushing the cost savings - it is cheaper to buy a family day return than it is to pay for fuel, tolls and parking for a car. Use the local press more - everybody in Longford sees the Leader while only a fraction see the Irish Times.
6. Earlier weekend up-trains from Longford wouldn't hurt. You can't get to Connolly before 10am on a Saturday. This alone has resulted in my family not taking about 15 trips (2 people each) this year as we cannot get up in time for classes at DCU and for charity meetings.
7. A later evening train for commuters would probably help move leisure demand after the morning rush. It would be nice to have a leisurely meal after a day's shopping or traipsing the kids round the museums rather than having to dash for the 19:05 train.
8. Establish some sort of system for cheaper point-to-point fares down the line. It is ludicrous that it always costs around 8 euro return from Longford to Edgeworthstown. Maybe this makes sense at peak times (I doubt it) but there are never offers for this. I takes this journey (presenting my pass for the Taxsaver discount) a few times a year and the staff usually laugh at me for not dodging the fare. You never get a 10 euro Mullingar to Sligo day return fare. Why not? It's not like Irish Rail are going to get 10 euro for the seat any other way. In the up-direction, the 10 euro return could probably easily be sold for twice that.

For both groups, another major issue on the Sligo line is the drop-off on demand beyond Longford. There would probably be two or three trains a week than need more than three cars after Longford. It would make a lot of sense to split a 2x3 at the crossing point (usually Edgeworthstown) rather than sending 6 mostly empty cars onto Sligo. Longford might make more sense for this due to longer platforms. They could either send the extra 3 cars back joined to the up train, use it to increase Longford - Dublin frequency or just park it up to save fuel and maintenance.

And again, more offers down the line might stoke up some demand from intermediate points. Despite living within 10 miles of Edgeworthstown for most of my life, I've never been further down the line than Longford and I am about 10 times more disposed to the train than the average punter.