Dear Irish Rail, Here’s 6 ways you can improve your service
I hope you are well.
I have been a regular customer of yours since 1997. I have been travelling with you so long, I even remember the ancient carriages with black bench-style seating and windows that could open, which were perfect for tunnelling howling wind throughout the train.
Many’s the time I got the 5.30am train to Dublin, grateful for the bench-style seating to allow more sleep, but needing to wear most of the clothes in my luggage to keep warm.
As the bank holiday approaches, I reminisce (not fondly) about the days before seat reservation systems when I would spend the whole three-hour journey wedged in the armpit of a large stranger heading to Cork to go jazzing.
I often had terse exchanges with people who used ‘hold’ seats for their imaginary friends. Blessedly, the days of telling people to shove over and let me sit down are over.
There have been huge improvements in the last three decades, and for that I am very grateful, but there are still some basic 21st century considerations that need to be put in place.
The good news is that none of these upgrades require a budget akin to the GDP of a small country to be implemented.
1. Healthy food - Bacon fries, chocolate muffins and potato snacks that come in a tube are not really what I’m looking for at 7am in the morning. Amazingly, the offering from the train trolley is largely unchanged since 1997.
Sure, I could have a Danish pastry with my cup of tea for breakfast, but how about broadening the healthy offering beyond a bag of popcorn and a sandwich? Customers might welcome breakfast-y food in the morning, lunch-y food from noon, and an afternoon snack in, well, the afternoon. Just a suggestion.
2. Resuable cups - My reusable coffee cup was not accepted on a recent journey because of “health and safety” concerns. I don’t understand how my reusable cup is any less safe than your disposable cup.
Plus, I’m sure you’ve heard the world is drowning in plastic and waste, so any efforts to not add another coffee cup to the pile would be most welcome.
3. No cash – I hate to go on about the trolley, but only accepting a bank card as payment on a national transport carrier seems very unfair to all the passengers who prefer to use cash.
5. A carriage made for bikes - If I’m travelling by train, whenever possible, I bring my bike with me so I can cycle from the train station to my final destination and don’t have to engage in the maddening traffic of all of our major towns and cities.
Most of the time it’s straightforward because I can shove my bike into the front cargo carriage which has (just) three spots for bikes, but sometimes I’m forced to play a high stakes game of find-the-bike-carriage as the time of departure ticks down.
Last week, I sprinted up and down the platform at Portlaoise station, dodging disembarking passengers, trying to find a place to put my bike. There was no designated cargo carriage at the front of the train so I ran to the rear, where a rail worker leaned out a window telling me there was, in fact, bike space at the front. Back again, I weaved my bike through the melee of passengers.
In the Netherlands, almost half of all train travellers arrive by bike. Imagine! And in the cycling utopia of Copenhagen, I have seen photographic evidence of whole train carriages dedicated to bikes.
Would you consider copying and pasting the approach of the Danes, to encourage more people to travel to and from the train station by bike, and remove the unnecessary travel tension of hoisting your bike into a spot that took some time to hunt down? If you build it, the cyclists will come.
6. Price - My kids love getting the train. The novelty of sitting at a table playing cards or colouring while speeding though the countryside hasn’t got tired for them yet.
But now that they’re over five years of age, it’s gotten stupidly expensive.
Under 9s are due to go free on public transport from next year, but there is something wrong when the cheaper option is to fill up the car with diesel and spend three hours driving up the M8.
Incidentally, a return family trip to Galway from Dublin, on the same date at the same time, with the same semi-flexible tickets, would be only €93. Can you explain?
Is Cork a better place to visit, therefore warranting a stiffer ticket price?
I do hope you take my suggestions into consideration.
I know as part of the National Development Plan you are going to be spending lots of money on 790 new train carriages, new stations, and facilities and infrastructure, and I do hope you are ambitious in your plans and imagine a rail network where the bike can be included.
Yours hopefully,
Kathriona Devereux
App?
