One-Way Special Offers?

[packetswitch]

How is this a special offer? It's just half the price of a return!

(appeared on irishrail.ie recently)

[sean]

Originally Posted by packetswitch

How is this a special offer? It's just half the price of a return!

(appeared on irishrail.ie recently)

By IE standards, that is a special offer. One way on the Sligo line is the same price as a return And given that only Monthly Return tickets can be used on a weekend, you may end up paying more to go one-way to Longford as you would to Cork. Even if you're travelling against the peak.

Nice to see IE finally making some move to sort out their moronic fare structure.

[Mark Gleeson]

Its a classic trick in 99% of cases you will need to come back and incur no saving, who cares really Cork Dublin day return is €44, if you know the system you can beat it

What is interesting is a sneaky move to charge €3 for a reservation and no ticket

Of course we know the staff and management don't give a monkeys about you getting the seat you resereved

[packetswitch]

Putting on the no-ticket reservation is very interesting. Has all sorts of contract law implications that have not been clear before :-D

[comcor]

I think you understimate the number of people who want to take single journeys. Next week, for work I need to fly from Cork to Holland, fly back to Dublin for a meeting and then make my way down to Cork. It'll be expensable in this case, so I don't really care, but it's still going to be more expensive than a single flight.

When I lived in Dublin, if I was going home to Cork, I would often find that I had a lift down on a Monday morning, but because the guy who gave me the lift would come up on a Monday morning, while I had to be there for nine, I would end up getting the train on a Sunday evening. In this case, I used a credit union ticket, but I had to know my way around the system for this.

There's no logical reason for single prices to be so high. I know there are higher overheads in terms of ticket issue, but that accounts for a couple of Euro. I wonder how many train journeys aren't taken because of the price of single tickets.

Incidentally, a single to Tralee is more than a five day return.

[Mark Gleeson]

The offical story from Irish Rail and it really sounds like a makey up kind of thing

Single prices are at the approved level, but returns are discounted. So if you went into Heuston last year and asked for a 3 month return to Cork they would have charged you over €110 for it, 5 day return on the other hand is only a few euro more than a single.

The classic question in the past was I'm going to Cork and I'll be coming back from somewhere else, well we now know a return to Cork is valid from Killarney for example

Of course I could have got to Belfast for free this morning on the train, work that out

[Mark Gleeson]

Everything is on discount on single trips, so normal fare single Thurles is €32 its now quoting €25, indeed any combination of stations where you don't do the full trip seem to quote €25

You can get to Ennis for €25

Based on some simple maths there could be over 4,000 seats a day at these prices. Load factors to Cork have been low since the new timetables owing to the massive extra capacity

Still do I remember the good days of the day return to anywhere for tiny amounts of money

[Colm Moore]

Originally Posted by Mark Gleeson

Of course I could have got to Belfast for free this morning on the train, work that out

Pray tell.

[Mark Gleeson]

Well book first on a train which has no first class seats

Failure to honour reservation == full refund

[Maynooth_Line]

Back on the topic of the one-way "Special Offers";

If I select Cork - Dublin Heuston the one-way price is €31.

If I select Cork - Dublin City Centre the one-way price is €32.20 (as it includes the €1.20 Luas add-on)

All fine so far you say.

Well if I select Cork - Dublin Connolly the one-way price is €57.70 (the standard single fare plus €1.20 Luas add-on).

Bit of an over-sight on IE's part - surely this should be the same as the Dublin City Centre fare. A few people I know enter in to go from/to Connolly to get the Luas add-on on their ticket when getting trains from Heuston. I'd bet most people don't know that Dublin City Centre is an option on the on-line booking thing.

[Mark Gleeson]

In fact they goofed up the City Centre fare originally quoted the non discounted price

Dublin City Centre only appeared in March previously it returned an error if you keyed it in