Another Website Wonder
 

On the IE homepage there is the proud headline that there are now 31 services a day between Dublin and Cork.

How do they do that? Run a train empty on one direction to balance things? Accumulate endless sets in Heuston until they figure out they are short at the other end?

The answer is simple: they can't even count the number of trains they run. There are 15 CDE services each way between Dublin and Cork. There is an additional one service each way provided by a connection at MAllow with the Tralee Intercity service (and it's quite quick too).

So that makes 30 trains (direct) plus 2 with a change. Last time I was in school 30+2 =32. Sorry to go on, but these guys really get to you.....

There are 31 trains on the hourly service, they ignore the 18:30 Dublin Tralee

Of course it reads Trains Every Hour between Dublin and Cork! which implies 48 trains, after all 24 hours in a day

It really should say

Hourly Service*

*Hourly services operate between XX:XX and YY:YY

Otherwise it could potentially be seen as misleading and false advertising.

And if we report it to the ASAI, Irish Rail will come up with a load of bull which will be believed. They are like the mafia, these guys.

Heh, they already lost once on the "You can go from anywhere to anywhere", someone wrote to the ASAI saying that they wanted to book a ticket on the Sligo line ;) and the complaint was upheld! IÉ's response was 'um, well we intend to make that possible in the future, so that means the ad is OK'. Possibly the worst response I've ever seen in an ASAI decision (other than Ryanair, who just don't bother answering half the questions any more).

OK, so they get 31 trains by ignoring the 1830, simply because it doesn't quite fit the hourly pattern. However it is a very useful and fast connection and it's a bit pedantic not to count it. If I want to be both consistent and pedantic, then the 0515 ex Cork shouldn't count either as it does not exactly fit the hourly pattern.

Don't get me wrong, the hourly Cork service is a superb development and I hope it lasts and gets accelerated a bit when some track works are completed. I just wish they could advertise it in a straightforward way, without worring too much about the advertising standards nit-pickers

They could also say that there is a train during every hour......

Really, nobody cares how many trains there actually are, just that there is an hourly service. "Trains hourly from X to Y" should be sufficient.