What is the story with the Irish rail website?
Somebody asks me about fares for Dart services from Connolly to Howth so I figure I'll check online.
So I go to
www.irishrail.ie and notice that you can't find ticket prices unless you want to make a reservation - this is proper odd I thought, but whatever... its Irish Rail after all.
So I enter Howth and Connolly as my departure and destination point - all good at this stage,
"next". A list of services pops up and I'm prompted to select which train I want to reserve a seat on - I'm thinking "any" at this stage because all I want to do is find out the cost of the fare. So I
"proceed to reservation" and here I get some non-descript error message.
I'm thinking okay, this is the Dart so there's no such thing as reservations. I'm still no closer to figuring out Dart fares.
I go back to the Irish Rail homepage and search for a link that maybe I missed the first time... then I notice a link at the bottom "Commuter Ticket Sales", this must be it I figured but then the link takes me onto the Ticketmaster website where I'm being prompted to choose between a weekly or monthly ticket.
This is not what I want. I try
www.cie.ie and the only link I can find that possibly relates to Dart is the link to the Irish Rail homepage - having ended up nowhere on
www.irishrail.ie before there's no point in trying again.
It's only then that it occurred to me perhaps there's a
www.dart.ie - ah success. It took me ten minutes to get this information when it should have only taken one or two. It's like as far as CIE is concerned online the Dart just doesn't exist.
So frustrating