Glitches with seat booking system top Irish Rail gripes list

An Iarnród Éireann passenger recovering from a broken leg wound up having to stay standing the whole way from Mullingar to Maynooth earlier this year because someone had taken their prebooked seat.

To add to their frustration, the passenger wound up having to stand on the way back again as the same thing happened on their return journey.

The passenger with the broken leg made clear they were not criticising Irish Rail’s staff as it was not their fault.

The incident was one of eighty-six complaints lodged with Irish Rail to date this year from passengers on the Sligo-Dublin line, and released in anonymised form to Shannonside Radio, which lodged a request with the firm for the information.

Frustration with the seat booking system featured in many of the grievances. Users claimed that particularly at Connolly Station the names of booked passengers are not being displayed over the seats sufficiently early, with the result that often passengers sit in pre-booked seats not realising that they are not entitled to.

Many passengers described how people sitting in seats pre-booked by others will sometimes refuse to give up the seat to the person who has pre-booked it. This was the scenario that faced four colleagues travelling together from Mullingar to a work event in Dublin in May: “When we got on the train our seats were taken and the people were not willing to move,” the complainant wrote.

They continued: “What is the point of pre-booked tickets if this is the case. Disgrace.”

On the flip side, a passenger who had to move twice because they twice sat in seats that were pre-booked but where the display panel over the seat did not show this, spoke of how the experience was “highly embarrassing and degrading in front of everyone”.

“I wouldn’t mind if it [was] a rare occurrence but I [am] a frequent traveller and it happens all the time, no names up,” the complainant wrote.

Passengers travelling with bicycles also featured on the complaints list: one 60-year old woman stated that she suffered a back injury due to the fact that the bike rack was located so high up and she had to lift her bike up to it.

“I have travelled all over Europe with my bike and never have I come across such restrictive placing of my bike,” she wrote. “When cycling and healthy living is encouraged I feel Irish Rail should accommodate in a far easier accessible way bikes for their customers.

Another described a day when there were four cyclists all attempting to board the train with bikes and made the point that there is a lack of clarity on whether the two bike spaces allocated on each train are booked: “Would it be possible for intercity tickets to show when a bike has been booked?” they asked. “The 16.58 from Mullingar to Dublin already had at least two bikes on board and there were four passengers with bikes trying to board the train in Mullingar...They can’t all have booked a bike and the staff didn’t seem to see who did and who didn’t book a bike.”