[Mark Gleeson]

Translink/NIR is said to have a better customer attitude than IE that said the Larne line farce, closed line to relay, relay takes several months, relay finished, NIR don't have enough drivers to provide a service on the line makes IE look like a top class outfit in comparison

Suburban fares are generally higher up north as well

Problem is the trains and infrastructure are in a poor state and no matter how good the customer focus is nothing will get you out of that kind of mess, its more of less the opposite of IE where you get decent infrastructure but non existent customer focus

That all said NIR are unique in actually reopening lines and building a new line to link Yorkgate and Belfast Central roughly equivalent problem to Heuston Connolly but without a Park Tunnel

Behind the scenes there is a lot of cooperation going on, having a common rule book across an international boundary is quite an achievement. It took only 2 test runs for IE to gain approval to run the 29000 units across both routes to Belfast. There are a few things that could have been done in the mid 1990's like standardised radio and cab signaling but they wheren't and can't be done now due to EU rules

From a passenger point of view I can't see much benefit really, you can already get a ticket from say Cobh to Bangor and it works, for all it matters Dublin Belfast looks as if it is run by a third company, its all but impossible to know if its IE or NIR operating the train you are on since its a common fleet.