Dart and rail fares to increase 3%

[Colm Moore]

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/...289257317.html

Dart and rail fares to increase 3%
TIM O'BRIEN

DART AND other rail fares are set to increase by an average of 3 per cent from next month.

The increases, sanctioned by the National Transport Authority yesterday, follow increases of up to 10 cent per journey which came in on Dublin Bus on Sunday.

Spokesman for Iarnród Éireann Barry Kenny said the rail increases would typically amount to about 10 cent per commuter journey. These increases would apply to cash fares, and prepaid, “smart card” fares would not be affected.

The National Transport Authority has also approved an increase of up to 3 per cent on intercity routes where the single-journey cash price is less than €25. Mr Kenny said rail journeys where the cash ticket price was more then €25 would not be increased.

The rises will come in on March 1st, with the exception of increases on annual “taxsaver” tickets, which will go up from May 1st.

Iarnród Éireann had applied to the transport authority for a 5 per cent increase across all of its “booking office” sales. It said the reasons for the increases were a reduction of €28.1 million in State subvention to Irish Rail since 2009; an increase in fuel costs of €2 million per annum; and a reduction of €34.8 million in Irish Rail’s revenue over the past two years.

[Colm Moore]

http://dublinobserver.com/2011/02/gr...edium=Facebook

Group condemns Irish Rail fare increases

Train users group Rail Users Ireland is highly critical of an approval of fare increases for Irish Rail today.

The National Transport Authority said today that it will permit Irish Rail to increase Dart, Commuter and some Intercity fares by an average of 3%. It declined Irish Rail’s request to increase fares by as much as 5%.

Requesting the increases Irish Rail said it needed the extra money because of a decrease in the state subvention, rising fuel costs and declining passengers numbers.

But Rail Users Ireland said that the fact that Irish Rail carried 1.1 million more passengers in 2010 than in 2009 “makes a mockery of claims that business is continuing to decline”.

Rail Users Ireland, spokesperson Mark Gleeson said: “The fare increases further punish passengers who live just outside the Dublin City Area who already pay considerably more per journey than those inside the city area. These commuters are also those who are most affected by the introduction of parking charges two years ago.”

He said the price rise will impact on all rail commuters.

Rail Users Ireland said Irish Rail was not meeting its Dart punctuality targets and other services suffered from delays and cancellations. It claims passengers continue to travel in “appalling crowded conditions” while 80 intercity coaches and a further 20 Dart coaches are out of service as a cost saving measure.

It said that because of the poor service, there should be a reduction in fares, not an increase. It pointed out that commuters in Northern Ireland on the Newry/Portadown to Belfast route received a 10% reduction in monthly ticket prices due to a reliability target being missed by only 0.2%.

Gleeson said, “Irish Rail is performing poorly due to its inability to operate a punctual, reliable railway. Customer service is non-existent, information remains poor and inconsistent with out of date timetables now a frequent sight at stations. Passengers are bused between stations on a near daily basis.”

“Despite Irish Rail’s scare tactics, claiming the companies act prevents it from continuing to post a loss, conveniently it is ignored that Irish Rail of its own free will opened the Western Rail Corridor in the knowledge it would lose 2.5 million euro per annum,” Rail Users Ireland said.

Rail Users Ireland advice on avoiding the increases:
1. “For commuters within the Dublin short hop zone, smartcard is now always cheaper for any combination of single and return journeys Weekly, monthly, annual and some special tickets provide the best value for regular train users.”
2. “As annual ticket prices increase in May 2011, now is the time to avail of the current fare to lock in value for the next 12 months. Annual tickets are priced at the equivalent of 10 monthly tickets. Under the T2 taxsaver scheme a further saving of up to 50% is possible.”
3. “Intercity tickets purchased online are subject to significant discount particularly for single journeys and offer greater rights of refund to the passenger in the event of a train cancellation or delay.”

[James Howard]

One of the very few things that we should take from Britain's rail system is the idea of refunds for poor performance (or perhaps make it go the other way). I would happily pay a 5% (possibly even 10%) increase if they gave a 10% reduction for failing to meet a proper punctuality target.

That means something like 90% within 10 minutes AND 80% within 5 minutes measured only at peak times and at your home station.

The existing stats are meaningless for the vast majority of commuters because pretty much every peak time train to Longford is more than 10 minutes late at Mullingar, 5 minutes late at Edgeworthstown and then makes up most of it between Edgeworthstown and Longford.

I and at least 95% of commuters couldn't care less if the 1305 to Sligo is two hours late because I never get it.

[Colm Moore]

I imagine it could be weighted by the number of passengers on a service. Its not on to delay thousands of people, but neither is it fair to delay smaller numbers for an extended period of time.

[dowlingm]

Is that 20 including or excluding the 10 Alstoms? The 81xx and 85xx has 22 and 12 carriages out of service or in maintenance at the end of January, but presumably there's a reasonable minimum that would be out of service under the heaviest usage.

[Mark Gleeson]

Required fleet spares would be of the order of 20-22 coaches and thats being generous. 44 are out currently

Fleet - Current spare - reserved needed
68 - 12 - 8 Tokyu Car
10 - 10 - 4 Alstom
76 - 22 - 8 LHB

You can couple the Alstom units to the Tokyu Car ones but you can't couple the LHB ones to anything else except in an emergency

There is enough to make every train bar one 8 coach at peak time as was the plan

[karlr42]

What are the 80 intercity coaches? The MkIIIs?

[Mark Gleeson]

82 Mk3 coaches