Online booking for Longford/Mullingar

[jscales1]

I am able to book online from Kilkenny/Carlow/Athlone/Dundalk/Portlaoise/Thurles/Rosslare Europort not Longford/Mullingar is this coming online

[Mark Gleeson]

We are in discussions with Irish Rail about various aspects of rolling out reservations to all stations with a ticket vending machine. Its not simple if someone wants to book Longford Dublin its easy, what about Longford Dun Laoghaire? that all has to be figured out and loaded in.

Longford and Mullingar are covered by the 10/12 euro day return fares available from the booking office thus making any online fare offer useless.

As of last week discounted fares and online booking is possible to/from all Rosslare line stations which have a ticket vending machine

[jscales1]

Hi there thanks for your responce but the stations I quote in the first thread except Kilkenny has the 10/12 euro fair available. Its useless that you can pay 15 euro's for a single fair from Dundalk/Athlone/Portlaoise etc to Dublin yet you can get a day return in the booking office for 10 euro's. I welome that the peak online fares before 9:30am are lower than the booking office fares from Dundalk/Athlone/Portlaoise etc. Overall I welcome the online facilities, on a different note when will there be cheaper day return fares to/from Sligo from Mullingar/Longford is this in the pipeline for this year or next year tourist season is upon us and people want to travel and want value for money thanks again for your responce

[Colm Moore]

There is a stated intention that all intercity stations should be able to have reduced fares on at least some services. However, there are technical, practical and managerial difficulties with this.

The main method of ticket collection is from ticket vending machines and ticket offices. Not all stations have these and with other stations decisions need to be made on where is practical to put them - its preferred to put them some that is somewhat sheltered (the units are waterproof, the customers less so) and there needs to be CCTV, electrical and data connections.

Separately, there is an acknowledgement that the fare structure is antiquated to the point of being almost broken. Part of rolling out of modern tickets is to revise that fare structure in such a way that doesn't increase the already high fares on some journeys, while balancing that with (a) doesn't introduce new inequities by a large percentage increase in those fares that are too low and (b) having enough money to run the railway. then there needs to be some sort of internal allocation of the money to determine what routes and stations merit investment.

Getting the timing just right is difficult.