New Irish Rail Intercity, Commuter and DART Timetable Public Consultation

Not sure if this is sarcastic or not? It must be because this is nothing but a bit of tinkering around the edges- the later evening trains are all still sorely lacking and there’s practically no major investment in the infrastructure like passing loops etc or even dual track to Expand capacity. We’ve had a dose of the Greens in government now for long periods and all they’ve managed to do is expand the nanny state and tax ordinary citizens even more. No metro, no new rail lines. Nothing radical at all

The majority of which are still nice pretty plans. I’ll try imagine myself on the metro from city centre to the airport- that might work?

the last few times I’ve gotten the train from Kilkenny I’ve noticed it gets pretty full now from there. People in Carlow onwards really struggle to get a seat and certainly little luxury of picking where you want to sit. In reality the line needs at minimum an hourly service, perhaps more at peak commute times. That time in Kilkenny is going to be seriously popular as it leaves 7.30 and arrives in Dublin 9.00am- that will suit a lot of people.

The lack of later evening services is a particular Achilles heel but not unique to the Waterford line of course.

If the service was equally bad on all intercity trains I would accept this explanation but it is not. Services on other lines have been improved over the years but Waterford line customers get fobbed off with excuses and overpriced fares. Overcrowding is getting dangerous on the 06:45 (formerly 07:00) from Waterford since Kilkenny was incorporated into the itinerary.

It is not acceptable to ask people to pay so much to stand for over an hour twice a day.

Why is Irish Rail deliberately running down the Waterford line when there is such demand for the service but fund other lines? People from Sallins and Naas pay a reduced rate and get a great selection of trains. People in Newbridge and Kildare pay full fare but get a fantastic service. The Portlaoise service is much better than the service on the Waterford line with more frequent trains.

The service is so bad that there are people in Athy who drive 30 minutes to Kildare to get the train to Dublin rather than walk 10 minutes up the road to suffer the Waterford line. Not very environmentally friendly but if there is no adequate service what else is there to do?

Would Irish Rail be willing to reduce fares for regular travellers on the Waterford line until an adequate service is provided? I think this is reasonable. The excuse "reduced fares will increase demand" won't wash because the trains are full to capacity including aisles and spaces between carriages already!

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Agree with this. I don’t think the Waterford trains should be stopping in both Kildare and newbridge- while I get it’s important for connections and newbridge is a big town in it’s own right - though I guess that still doesn’t help Carlow athy much. The new late morning service will hopefully ease some of that pressure

they would in their hoop.

south eastern passengers get nothing and will get nothing, we are not wanted but are just tolerated.

nobody to stand up for us and irish rail are a law on to themselves and do what they do because they can.

forget about the NTA they couldn't give a toss either, just more management to manage the management and so on and shur you know the rest.

anyway my genuine sympathy to you and the other waterford passengers.

Interestingly it is party policy of both FF and FG to extend the short hop zone. It must be the Greens holding them back.

this is absolute nonsense straight out of the 1960s and was destroyed even back then.

waterford has already got plenty of private coach operations and yet the train line is heavily used.

guess what, close the train line and all you will do is mostly increase car traffic, because even if the private coach companies stepped in, they won't get much more then they are already getting since if the rail passengers felt the coach was more suitable they would already be using it.

you also won't free up very much trains.

2022 and people are still parroting this crap.

again, why would we do that given the trains are busy?

if we close it temporary then given the coach companies cant get staff and there are now no trains that means increased car traffic which makes things worse for the coach users.

so you have taken away capacity and thrown it on to the roads ultimately for nothing because closing it until things improve rather then keeping it open and improving things delivers nothing.

Stupid? Nice attitude. You need to calm down here.

The Waterford line is not dying (pretty far from it) it’s actually a victim of its own success as the numbers using it have grown massively. It would be unthinkable to close it. Very little relative investment would do massive improvement

There’s a ton of room at Kilkenny station- seems frankly ridiculous that if there’s an issue with the platforms that they cannot be extended if that’s what’s needed.

apologies for stupid ideas here. But I keep seeing ICRs on cork-dublin . Why not replace these with mk4 sets and just run more waterford trains . I thought they'd brought all the mk4 sets back from mothball ( or do I have that right ? ) or is that there isnt enough double track sections to run more sets ?

the lack of late evening/night trains to places such as portlaoise which is only 40 mins from dublin is shocking, eamon ryan would want to wake up and get his finger out!

from what i can gather there are 67 mk4 coaches but i don't know the exact configurations.

it will either be 8 sets of 8 with 7 in service, 1 in maintenence and 3 spare coaches.

 or 9 sets of 7 with 8 in service, 1 in maintenence and 4 spare coaches.

There should be 8 MkIV sets.

Unfortunately I don't have the current diagrams at hand, but in the 2017 WTT, I only found five MkIV diagrams in service... Keeping in mind that this could have been at a time when less sets were available.

In that same timetable, some of the Dublin/Cork services were ICR operated, as they looped in with the Cork/Mallow/Tralee services. A 4-car ICR would have [day 1] gone down as the 21.00 A230 service to stable in Cork, [day 2] forming the 6.25 A300 to Tralee, doing two laps of Mallow and one of Cork, stabling in Tralee, [day 3] doing three laps of Mallow (with a Mallow/Cork commuter in the morning), before finishing as the 19.05 A315 and stabling in Cork, [day 4] to form the 5.50 A203 to Dublin. The direct Dublin/Tralee services were 5-car in that timetable, and as such should not have mixed with the Cork services, doing the 17.05 A312 down, stabling, and the 7.05 A303 up the next morning.

With the amount of changes in the last five years though, who knows how much of this may still be applicable to anything.

ie's own web page looks like there's only 5 mk4 sets out and about see https://www.irishrail.ie/en-ie/About-Us/Iarnrod-Eireann-Fleet/interCity-Fleet

this does not square with p1 of this thread where IE state the full fleet is being utilised so no more room for peak services