Station car parks pull in €1.76m for Irish Rail

[Traincustomer]

IRISH RAIL earned €1.76m from car parks at five railway stations in 2014, according to figures revealed under the Freedom of Information Act.

At Kent station in Cork alone, the company earned €618,746 from parking charges.

The above is an extract from a recent article at source (http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/ireland/article1633421.ece?CMP=OTH-gnws-standard-2015_11_14)

[Inniskeen]

If the numbers in this artice are correct then about 200 to 250 cars are parked in Cork every day, so the commuter stations around Dublin should be good earners despite the reduced rates ?

[James Howard]

I wonder how much business they've driven away. The charges are fair enough in stations in city centres and for a lot the suburban stations but 4 euro a day for parking in a station in the middle of nowhere is absurd.

[Jamie2k9]

If the numbers in this artice are correct then about 200 to 250 cars are parked in Cork every day, so the commuter stations around Dublin should be good earners despite the reduced rates ?

and that's only at 50-60% capacity, in saying that Irish Rail charges are the same as the two or three car parks around the station area.

[ACustomer]

Did IE not abolish or drastically reduce carpark charges in Mideton and other East Cork suburban stations because people were being deterred from using the rail services?

What about making parking much more attractive in places like Gorey and Arklow where by all accounts carparks are under-utilised?

[Inniskeen]

The pathetically slow and infrequent service is a bigger problem than car parking charges but as the saying goes "Every Little Helps"

[hoopsheff]

I wonder how much business they've driven away. The charges are fair enough in stations in city centres and for a lot the suburban stations but 4 euro a day for parking in a station in the middle of nowhere is absurd.

Especially seeing as a lot of those stations arent really useable without driving to the station.

you add the parking charge to the ticket price, and its nearly as cheap (or cheaper) to drive to the city centre and park in Connolly for the day

[James Howard]

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.

[vegas82]

interesting that they pull in lots of money yet many are in shocking condition. For example the dart station in clontarf road you can't even see the lines in a lot of places with the result of people parking haphazardly.

Also - to say that the carpark floods with even a smidge of rain is an understatement.

Is NCPS or Irish Rail responsable for maintenance?

[Thomas J Stamp]

We were contacted by the St for this and gave a lot of comment, cant tell if it made it as i'm not a subscriber.

If it didnt, the gist of what we said to them was as follows:

The parking rates are too high. The reasons given for them being either introduced where they had not existed or raised where they did was to raise money to improve parking and also to discourage casual parking by non rail users.

as you can imagine we have always been sceptical of these reasons.

surely on these figures any improvements have been long paid for - and these are not even national figures - and as for discouraging casual parking, there is no evidence we know of to either prove or disprove this theory.

However we have advocated that if these charges are simply a deterrent, then a simple refund system for weekly, monthly and yearly ticket holders (there are several ways of doing this) can be put in place.

(one example regarding the last part is a simple validation system along the lines of which the likes of tesco in the jervis shopping centre use).

(another one is to inbuld a yearly parking pass fee into the taxsaver scheme)

the real reason was simply to raise money lost at the fares box and by way of reduced subvention, but thats always the way.

[Thomas J Stamp]

interesting that they pull in lots of money yet many are in shocking condition. For example the dart station in clontarf road you can't even see the lines in a lot of places with the result of people parking haphazardly.

Also - to say that the carpark floods with even a smidge of rain is an understatement.

Is NCPS or Irish Rail responsable for maintenance?

unless they have transferred the car park ownership, its still irish rail, and they would never do that. NCPS just put up their signs, ticket machines and clamp you for whatever fee/fee structure they have agreed with the property owners.

[ACustomer]

James Howard's example (post #8 above) of 4 Edgeworthstown commuters clubbing together to car-pool and costing Irish Rail €12k shows the folly of Irish Rail's policy. Management who believe that discouraging rail commuters by charging them for parking must be unbelievably incompetent and totally lacking in any form of business sense.

Their refusal to implement sensible ideas such as rebates for season ticket holders or integration with the Tax Saver scheme shows that they are lacking in any imagination and initiative whatsoever.

[Thomas J Stamp]

we put all those things to them years ago. i guess they figured that they could make more money this way, but people are not that dumb.

they park on the road outside templemore, they park in ballybrophy (still free).

they car pool, they get lifts to and from the station.

to give a good example to prove what this is about, the heuston car park was the cheapest in the city centre area, now it is the dearest. it was only full once in my memory (christmas one year) and now it is usually one third full, but they are making far more money now, and there isnt even a guy on site like there used to be.

its now cheaper to park and ride from the luas red cow.