Iarnród Éireann - Irish Rail

JP Liz V1

€71.00 return Cork to Dublin ffs disgraceful and most of the seats are already prebooked :mad:

foggy_lad

Seats can only be booked in advance for 3 of the 6 carriages so there should be a few spare seats but sitting in one now there is no way it is worth €71 even if it was by some miracle on time!

pikachucheeks

It's a total rip off. 71 euro when the bus is under 20 and only takes about an hour more.

Also, driving on the new road takes less time than the train and costs less money in petrol ... Don't know how they can justify charging people the prices they do!

CRONIN35

Paid €66 one way from Dublin to Cork on the 11.00 train a couple of weeks ago. Was told at the desk that I should have booked online if I wanted a cheaper fare. When I tried to book online at the station a message came up saying that to book online you must have booked 90 minutes before train. Time was 10.32 so at that time I couldnt book the 12.00 either. So had a choice wait till 1.00 for €20 or go home now for €66. Choice to go home straight away - it still hurts.

Terrontress

Apparently "return fares are sold at a significant discount" which means that singles are almost as dear as returns.

Stinicker

Ryanair fly from Cork airport also and if booked in advance will also probably cost less than Iarnród Éireann.

The entire company is a joke and is ran by unions entirely for the benefit of lazy useless overpaid staff, customers well they are little of importance.

Run_to_da_hills

In the bygone days of the "Supertrain", my brother was once quoted £36 for a weekend return fare to Cork, At the ticket office he replied, "Mam I only want a return ticket to Cork, I don't want to buy the fcuking train".

I guess this still holds to this day.

x in the city

havent been on a train for ages, last time i was on dublin to kerry one it took about 20 hours it seems and troddled along at about ooooh, 40km/hr most of the way.

this was about 3 years ago, are they still as bad..?

when you see the trains they have in the rest of europe Ireland is truly in 3rd world poverty

elprez

Dublin to Sligo, would not let me book the 9 am train on Wednesday morning online for €22 had to buy in the station for €32 to add insult to injury it was billed as an intercity service when the train my gf boarded was a bloody commuter train. Who can I complain too?

bswan

Paid 37 euro one way from athlone to ballina, complete rip off. Also noticed they use there website for google ads and other advertisements, for a semi state run company that is embarrassing, would not see it in any other country.

Run_to_da_hills

x in the city wrote: »

havent been on a train for ages, last time i was on dublin to kerry one it took about 20 hours it seems and troddled along at about ooooh, 40km/hr most of the way.

this was about 3 years ago, are they still as bad..?

when you see the trains they have in the rest of europe Ireland is truly in 3rd world poverty

I took this route quite recently, it has improved with the introduction of the 22000 series DMU sets on the Mallow - Tralee leg of the journey. However you may need some sea sick pills on the Dublin - Mallow stretch with the notorious swaying from side to side with the MK4 DVT sets.

TBH CIE would have been better off hanging on to the MK3's for the Cork line.

91011

bswan wrote: »

Also noticed they use there website for google ads and other advertisements, for a semi state run company that is embarrassing, would not see it in any other country.

Yes you see in on websites worldwide, both private & semi state. - What is wrong with extra advertising??????????????

Its NOT embarrassing in any way shape or form. - Maybve we should ban all advertising and allow the rail users stump up a lot more for their tickets - is this what you want???

As for prices - try buying a ticket in a UK station for same day travel and you'll think what a bargain Irish Rail are.

Always best these days to book online - train / planes. That's where the best price always is.

pinkyponk2

Dublin to Cork return costs 56 euro if u book online.

I fly to Cork a lot, returning the same day. Most of the time the cost of the return flight is 14 euro.

Madness!!!! Irish Rail are a rip off!

ejmaztec

My wife and I fell into the clutches of these state-sponsored thieves, but it was our punishment for returning from some place that was warm for a week. Our previously arranged road transport got screwed by the snow, and we had no choice but to cough up hard-cash to the guy at the Heuston ticket-office who, after telling us the price, avoided eye-contact at all costs.

Our student daughter came down from Dublin with us, and those monopolistic robbing feckers charged €170 for the three of us to travel to Tralee. We couldn't get it cheaper online because our plane only arrived within the 90 minute window for doing so.

This is a good example of what the Irish State and their various money-grabbing entities have done to us all over the decades, not to mention the now rare visitors to this country, who have been stitched up once too often, never to return. At least they don't have to hang around to put up with this crap.

BogMonkey

Jesus christ. I buy child tickets for commuter trains because the adult tickets are over twice the price and I can't afford them.

Stinicker

ejmaztec wrote: »

My wife and I fell into the clutches of these state-sponsored thieves, but it was our punishment for returning from some place that was warm for a week. Our previously arranged road transport got screwed by the snow, and we had no choice but to cough up hard-cash to the guy at the Heuston ticket-office who, after telling us the price, avoided eye-contact at all costs.

Our student daughter came down from Dublin with us, and those monopolistic robbing feckers charged €170 for the three of us to travel to Tralee. We couldn't get it cheaper online because our plane only arrived within the 90 minute window for doing so.

This is a good example of what the Irish State and their various money-grabbing entities have done to us all over the decades, not to mention the now rare visitors to this country, who have been stitched up once too often, never to return. At least they don't have to hang around to put up with this crap.

I wonder what would a Taxi have charged in comparison? I bet there would'nt be a whole lot in it!

ejmaztec

Stinicker wrote: »

I wonder what would a Taxi have charged in comparison? I bet there would'nt be a whole lot in it!

Next time, we'll get in a crate and go DHL, because that's the last time that I get on a feckin Irish gravy-train, they can go screw themselves instead of me.

The only upside was that it would have cost more, had our daughter not got a student discount on her ticket.:rolleyes:

JohnMearsheimer

I used to commute up and down to Dublin fairly regularly for work. I paid Irish Rail 70 odd quid so I could stand on a train all the way down to about Limerick Junction. This was usually on the Friday evening trains so it was to be expected but this was the case every Friday and I couldn't understand why Irish Rail didn't lay on some extra carriages for peak times.

Then I started flying up and down with Ryanair for less than half the price of the rail ticket. On Friday I jumped on an empty 747 bus after work, strolled through security, had a coffee and got on the plane and would be in Cork half an hour later. I used to get the 7.20 flight on Monday morning and be at my desk in Dublin at 9.00. Irish Rail can't compete with that but they are charging crazy prices for a much inferior service.

galah

hehe, was just coming here to open a thread about Irish Rail, but someone has beaten me to it.

It's a joke - Galway - Belfast via Dublin costs 88.90 Euro webfare when booked as one journey.

HOWEVER: if you book 2 separate journeys, you pay 25 Euros Galway to Dublin, and another 18 Euros Dublin to Belfast. (both webfares, plus an additional credit card charge and the fare for the Luas to get you from Heuston to Connolly. That's roughly half-price, unless the Luas is 45 Euros? I think not...)

Chancers...

ejmaztec

galah wrote: »

hehe, was just coming here to open a thread about Irish Rail, but someone has beaten me to it.

It's a joke - Galway - Belfast via Dublin costs 88.90 Euro webfare when booked as one journey.

HOWEVER: if you book 2 separate journeys, you pay 25 Euros Galway to Dublin, and another 18 Euros Dublin to Belfast. (both webfares, plus an additional credit card charge and the fare for the Luas to get you from Heuston to Connolly. That's roughly half-price, unless the Luas is 45 Euros? I think not...)

Chancers...

When you're caught on the hop with no time for a bit of research, you get well and truly shafted by the robbers, and complaining to them is a complete and utter waste of time. Another government cowboy-outfit charging boom-time prices in a recession.

The fares should be the same wherever you buy the ticket, but they prefer to stitch up as many commuters as they possibly can with their fare-charging roulette operation.

...and the less commuters use them, the more the others will be charged for the privilege of travelling by train to make up for the shortfall.

ejmaztec

At least they found a couple of people who could afford to get ripped off.

http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/independent-woman/celebrity-news-gossip/bono-and-edge-forced-to-take-the-train-home-2470033.html

Bono and Edge forced to take the train home
By Ken Sweeney
Wednesday Dec 22 2010

SOMETIMES 'you can't make it on your own' -- so U2 escaped getting 'stuck in a moment they couldn't get out of' yesterday thanks to Irish Rail.
Passengers travelling on Iarnrod Eireann's 14.20 train from Cork to Dublin were astonished to find themselves sharing a carriage with Bono and Edge.
Jetting back into Ireland from the latest leg of their world tour in Australia, the U2 stars were forced to land in Cork after Dublin airport closed.
With roads hazardous due to snowfalls and ice, the group's singer and guitarist contacted Irish Rail to reserve first-class tickets on an early afternoon train from Cork to Dublin

Groinshot

TOok me fourty minutes to get a reservation last night for a train today, my "ten euro" train fare from waterford was actually 18 euro, at 6:35 on a thursday, hardly peak time... plus the two euro transaction fee, plus another euro for using my visa DEBIT card.... I'll walk nextr time.

WhiteNoSugar

and anyway... what's this whole "booking fee" nonsense?

Laser purchases cost the retailer 25c

Credit card purchases cost 1-2% max (given IE's likely volume of Merchant transactions) so what's the f***in story?

Booking fee charges are horse manure, pure and simple and if they are charged on a per ticket basis rather than on a per transaction basis then they should be built into the price. If our Directors of Consumer Affairs did a little less navel gazing things could be a little better for the Irish consumer.

€40 now for a one way ticket from Cork to Dublin... a €1 price hike for no justifiable reason whatsoever.

BogMonkey

The enterprise train between Dublin and Belfast doesn't seem to be that bad. From Drogheda to Newry its 18.50EUR return, to Portadown its 20EUR return. From Drogheda to Belfast its 30EUR return so I'm guessing from Dublin its 40. The northern Ireland commuter trains aren't any cheaper than the ones down here. From Portadown to Lurgan it costs something like £5 return. The bus is equally expensive. Public transport in Ireland and NI seems to be a ripoff in general. In America I got a train from Washington DC to Montreal for $40. Thats about 3 times the distance between Dublin and Cork.

smk89

BogMonkey wrote: »

The enterprise train between Dublin and Belfast doesn't seem to be that bad. From Drogheda to Newry its 18.50EUR return, to Portadown its 20EUR return. From Drogheda to Belfast its 30EUR return so I'm guessing from Dublin its 40. The northern Ireland commuter trains aren't any cheaper than the ones down here. From Portadown to Lurgan it costs something like £5 return. The bus is equally expensive. Public transport in Ireland and NI seems to be a ripoff in general. In America I got a train from Washington DC to Montreal for $40. Thats about 3 times the distance between Dublin and Cork.

To be honest for short journeys the value is always going to be bad, Portadown to Lurgan is £2-3 return by bus and to be honest Portadown to Belfast is pretty much the same to Lurgan by train