New Irish Rail Website
 

Its now public http://new.irishrail.ie

The full details of what it can do http://new.irishrail.ie/cat_news.jsp?i=4385&p=116&n=237

Rail Users Ireland members were involved in testing of the site in recent weeks. This feedback resulted in many minor changes in content. There are still some issues to be resolved but none are major

Bookings made on the new site appear on the old one and vice versa

The next phase is a new booking system which will finally allow booking between any pair of stations. This is somewhat dependent on a new fare structure being in place.

Secret trick

http://new.irishrail.ie/StationName

So

http://new.irishrail.ie/Drogheda will give you the page on Drogheda and all information including real-time train information

I emalied this to the feedback email they posted on twitter:

The DART and Short Hop Zone Fare page(http://new.irishrail.ie/index.jsp?p=118&n=198) doesn't seem to recognise Tara St or Pearse as destinations or depature points. For example, you can't get a fare from Clonsilla to Tara St, or Balbriggan to Pearse, or from Connolly to Pearse, or from Pearse to Maynooth, and so on. Instead you get "There are no fares available for your selected stations."

They are still using the old fares engine for the Dublin area, it only accepts Dublin City Centre

New fares engine will solve this

Its quite complicated system

1. Website graphical design and content management is by Strata3 an award winning Dublin web design agency

2. The journey planner and mapping is the Hafas system by Hacon of Germany. This is the same system as used by Deutsche Bahn and many others

3. The real-time train information is IE's internal IT department

4. The booking engine is another in house creation

5. A mobile version is in development

6. Personalised timetable generation is also due soon

new map is not great - I'd thought they'd moved away from identifying the suburban service as 4 separate lines, its much more confusing and not really an accurate reflection of the service anyway (even more confusing with the docklands branch shown as a really long extra line)

Intreresting point. I presume that they wanted to distinguish the Northern line from the Maynooth/M3 lines.

However, I think there are other efficiencies in the map that would allow the Maynooth line to be moved further 'west'.

Like the new site, booking system is much better and they have the real time info fixed.

Like the way they have a Live Train map showing trains but mainly in areas with Real Time info.

they're all now branded as "Commuter" (though I notice the real-time info on the site is once again describing commuter trains as "Arrows", a brand they haven't used for about 10 years). You can get a train from Maynooth to Bray, or from Arklow to Dundalk, no point drawing them as separate lines.

The branding issue on the real-time is a known issue and will be resolved in the near future

Waterford - Limerick Junction
Limerick - Ballybrophy via Nenagh

Service: Intercity. Eh, I don't think so....

Also, some Sligo trains STILL Commuter which is quite shocking really.

New ICR will start passenger service early in 2012 according to the new site so would expect sligo services to be high on the list.

Three typos on one page... eep.

Have submitted a feedback report.

How is IE going to handle Irish do we know?

The underlying journey planner speaks many languages

Legally I don't think Irish Rail has to provide a site in Irish

It seems to fall under Language Schemes. IE hasn't submitted one (not listed in approved or draft) and it's not clear if a section 11 request has been made to them to do so by the relevant Minister.

still unable to book from loads of stations (presumably those with no facility to collect)

I must say, this website appears very much like the train service. It looks a bit prettier, will probably decay quite quickly and I presume they spent a lot of money on it but it doesn't seem to do anything that the other site didn't do.

It looks very much like an average corporate 2008 website. The old site looked like something from around 2001. The branding is weak but that is a general pattern across all Irish State organisations - a bit of text and a Nike swoosh and that's the logo done. (See the national transport authority for details).

I do like the four tabs across the top in the shape of a train. They give the site its strongest branding cue and make it relatively quick to find the information you want with a relatively amount of hunting. However, the "Travel and Station Information" has most of its links duplicated in three different places on the page with one notable exception.

This notable exception which I am sure is entirely accidental is the passenger charter which is only present in the tiny site map section at the bottom of the page.

Last year, I did an incomplete exercise, where I took all the data from the station information pages and tried to create a master list, which I've attached. Note the data is from June 2010 and Irish Rail have added some additional data fields, stations and edits.

Now, I've suggested to Irish Rail that they update all the information by surveying local staff, however, I do need a second opinion on the master list.

Certainly, the red bits need a bit of reconsidering.

The station list needs a bit of tidying up, especially for the new or closed stations and NIR owned stations, where no data has been presented.

Feel free to make suggestions.

There seems to be no / very information little about Enterprise on the new site and still no ability to book to NIR stations not served by Enterprise. It appears that while Translink treat the Enterprise as a proper part of their service provision IÉ want to hide it!

Irish Rail does not have a license to use the internal Northern Irish timetable so only Enterprise served stations are shown (all of which are bookable provided the origin is from the Republic of Ireland). Northern Irish railways do not support reservations in any shape or form so booking makes no difference.

This issue is under discussion with Irish Rail

Irish Rail booking offices can issue tickets to any Northern Irish destination upon request