Irish Rail have announced plans to upgrade their rail network with the aim of bringing down travel times between the major cities to under two hours. This move would require a state investment of an extra €175 million between 2012 and 2016. This follows a similar scheme previously implemented, which brought down travel times between Dublin and Cork to less than three hours. The plan to enhance the service will presumably involve additional tracks and upgrading of the fleet.
Irish Rail suggest that this investment is necessary because, with the shorter travel times offered by the new motorways, they cannot compete with car journeys. The company suggested they have noticed a decline in passenger numbers, which will need to be counteracted through providing faster services.
As a regular rail user this announcement does not instil me with confidence that my experience on Irish trains will greatly improve. Rather it strikes me that this investment will be misplaced. It seems to me, from my own perspective and from speaking to others, that the most prohibitive factor to rail travel is not travel times but price. A return ticket between Dublin and Cork, a journey I regularly take, now costs around €80. You can do the same journey (albeit somewhat less comfortably) by bus for around €20. More significantly perhaps, you could make the trip in a (small) car for the cost of around €50 in petrol. It simply does not make sense that travelling on a train with a few hundred other passengers would be significantly more expensive than travelling alone by car. Over the last number of months, the cheaper seats that Irish Rail had introduced to bring up passenger numbers on certain trains have been steadily withdrawn. While ticket prices remain this expensive, I believe, passenger numbers are unlikely to go up regardless of improvements in travel times. There is very little incentives to use public transport in Ireland. If an investment of this sort were to be made, perhaps a better use of this money would be to subsidise ticket prices, thus allowing Irish Rail to increase their passenger numbers with the view to making these lower ticket prices more sustainable if more people were to be convinced to use the rail network on a regular basis. Of course, economies of scale play a part in all this. Countries with more efficient and cheaper rail networks often tend to have larger populations that Ireland. Nevertheless, I do not believe increased speeds will play as decisive a role as Irish Rail are making out, and if anything may result in further increases in ticket prices thus making rail usage more and not less prohibitive.
Cian O’Callaghan
Ireland after NAMA 
August 30, 2011 at 9:46 am
The other thing about the train is that its fare is only part of the cost of the journey. If I want to get from a place several miles outside one railway town to a place several miles outside another (as it might be to an industrial estate outside Dublin), I have to add bus or (more likely) taxi costs to the rail fare and I am restricted in when I can travel. It is possible that realistic (=high) road tolls might make for a fairer system, but in their absence I’ll opt for the car every time.
bjg
August 30, 2011 at 11:26 am
A quick search will let you know that while it costs €71 for a return ticket from Dublin to Cork, you can purchase a return ticket from Manchester to Cork (including ferry crossing) for €107. It seems that Irish Rail are more than happy to offer competitive rates through foreign affiliate providers, as they know domestic passengers are more than happy to pick up the slack.
DP
August 30, 2011 at 3:41 pm
While rail travel is now much more costly in most European countries than most people think (4 people can hire a taxi in London and be in Birmingham cheaper than with 4 individual rail tickets), Ireland has not always been expensive. Now it is, and there are many reasons for this. Principally, the organisation CIE is overstaffed with little by way of productivity. Though it now has more welded track and more modern rolling stock due to government investment over the past twenty years. It appears to have no real future plans to expand the network, or, its customer base. Donegal has been cut off for years and County Galway is very poorly serviced. A mixture of poor mangement and union intransigence has kept the organisation in the Victorian era, but without their efficiency.
September 1, 2011 at 5:48 pm
I agree. The exercise and cost of upgrading is pointless.It will not bring more traffic.The bus is likely to gain more and more passengers for the foreseeable future.
If the government want to upgrade the railways let them stop encouraging people to travel by air and eliminate the so called “public service obligations” which subsidize air travel in direct competition with another subsidized form of transport-the train.
January 18, 2012 at 11:10 am
Absolutely agree. Has anyone carried out a comprehensive survey to find out exactly why passenger numbers are dropping? The idea that travel times are putting people off is misplaced. The cost of rail tickets are prohibitively high.
January 27, 2012 at 1:19 pm
Neve,
thanks for your comment. I have been asked to fill out surveys from time to time by Irish rail (twice I think, and on both occasions this was on the train from Dublin to Maynooth). I’m not sure how systematically they do this – and if I was asked to fill in a similar survey on an intercity line I imagine the answers I’d give would be quite different. It would definately be interesting to see the results of a study like that. My hunch would be that the cost of rail travel would emerge as the main prohibitive factor. On an observational note, I get the sense that it is probably politically easier for Irish rail to make the case for a once-off investment in upgrading infrastructure than to make a speculative proposal for investing money in subsidising prices which is potentially longer term in nature. As with most pollitcal interventions in Ireland, they favour the short-term commitment over the long-term strategy.
Cian
May 23, 2013 at 8:06 am
Hi!
I travelled Irish Rail in December 2012, and they’ve got a very new rolling stock so the travelling times – in my opinion too – are not problematic but the high ticket prices. I saw also empty trains, very high ticket prices and very late departing times in weekend, what didn’t allowed to take a roundtrip from Dublin to farer cities. As tourist I think, this railway system has very good opportunities but a very bad management in prices an schedule too. Only the DART satisfied me, the DART system would be a good example for regional and InterCity lines.