£2m revenue & 60% of passengers lost by 'Enterprise' disruption

[jamesontheroad]

Article below from UTV in Northern Ireland. Also word in this morning's Northern Irish edition of the Daily Mirror that some pretty aggressive discounting will be on offer to lure passengers back onto the Belfast / Dublin Enterprise when it resumes service, hopefully in November.

£2m lost after railway bridge collapse
Tuesday, 20 October 2009
Source (with video): http://u.tv/News/Translink-could-lose-%C2%A32m-in-lost-revenue/4ef2ed3d-1329-4a65-bd6f-b1962be6f35a

Translink is set to lose up to £2m in revenue after a railway bridge collapsed into the sea in the outskirst of Dublin in August.

Tickets sales for the Belfast to Dublin Enterprise train service are down almost two thirds since the collapse.

It is expected that the viaduct at Malahide, which carried more than 90 trains a day, will be repaired by the end of next month.

Until then passengers will continue to travel on the Enterprise as far as Drogheda with a bus completing the final leg of the journey.
Article Continues

"We acknowledge there has been a downturn in Enterprise figures", a Translink spokesperson told UTV.

"We have assurances from Irish Rail that the line should be re- opened in November."

It is suspected that the railway bridge collapse was caused by seabed erosion, following low tides and heavy rains.

Heroic train driver Keith Farrelly averted tragedy when he spotted subsidence on the track moments after evening rush hour commuter services carrying hundreds of passengers passed over it on August 21st.

Engineers had examined the structure four days earlier after a member of the public raised concerns about suspected erosion and markings on the piers.

© UTV News

Doesn't ultimately solve the problem that the Enterprise has always been chronically unreliable, and only about 15 minutes faster than the bus (where Ulsterbus / Bus Eireann and Aircoach are now competing head to head). With IE selling off or scrapping most of their spare stock of mk. 3s, I can only imagine that the hourly service could be achieved with new build DMUs, still some way off.

 

[4SRKT]

Doesn't ultimately solve the problem that the Enterprise has always been chronically unreliable, and only about 15 minutes faster than the bus (where Ulsterbus / Bus Eireann and Aircoach are now competing head to head). With IE selling off or scrapping most of their spare stock of mk. 3s, I can only imagine that the hourly service could be achieved with new build DMUs, still some way off.

This is the heart of the matter. The road has improved so much in recent years that the railway is ever more uncompetitive, especially on price. In the past, people would put up with all sorts of nonsense just to get through because the alternative through bus journey was just too awful to contemplate. The number of times I've been on a bus from Newry to Dundalk in the early '90s I couldn't even count! With this bridge collapse removing any advantage for through Belfast - Dublin workings the railway still has (in fact making the railway journey substantially worse), how much traffic will come back to the railway once the bridge is repaired?

If I were a senior manager in NIR I would be seriously looking at suing IE or the Irish Government for loss of earnings, both present and future. The Enterprise must represent a significantly higher proportion of NIR's revenue than IE's, and IE by their negligence, are directly responsible for the disappearance of this revenue. A comparable situation would be that if through Network Rail's negligence the sea wall at Dawlish fell into the waves, FGW, Cross Country et al would have their lawyers all over their asses like a shot.

 

[jamesontheroad]

Bumpity bump for this old thread. Since it's more than eighteen months since I started it, thought I'd check in. Over the last few weeks I've had a few opportunities to use the Enterprise again (first trips in quite a while). Was delighted to see it absolutely packed on two 08:00 departures from Belfast in two successive weeks, and also full into and out of Dublin at lunch time today. The speed restrictions are a bit odd - two out of three journeys arrived about ten minutes behind schedule but one was bang on time.

The business on the Belfast / Dublin corridor is probably shifting a bit. The new motorway is now fully open and silky smooth, but on the other hand Aircoach are closing their Belfast route (which has operated since 2004 or 2005) next Wednesday. It was originally going to last until the end of October, but it seems that the Belfast drivers are slipping away to new jobs and it's no longer viable. Bus Éireann and Translink seem to have the bus market sewn up.