Comment & Analysis: A new zonal fare system will be introduced to Irish Rail’s Dublin area services tomorrow (Monday), but the system again lacks fairness. It should be kept in mind, as this website has previously covered, that the issue of unfair pricing is likely to fuel calls for ‘free fares’.
The changes are outlined on the National Transport Authority’s Transport for Ireland website and can be checked for individual trips at the IrishRail.ie Fares Calculator.
One of the main issues people have focused on is that Balbriggan, Skerries, Sallins and Naas, Graystones, and Kilcoole have jumped from the old “Dart and Short-Hop Zone” and into the new Zone 2. This will mean increased fares — which people from those areas are understandably annoyed with — but that’s not exactly the unfairness that this article is focused on.
Inversely, people in the new zones beyond the old single Leap card zone should be happier with cheaper prices. But there’s a huge unfairness when passengers cross zones, which happens a lot on relatively short trips in outer areas.
We have been told time and time again that travel patterns have changed, so why then are the National Transport Authority so focused on trips to the city centre?
Regardless of the reason, the pricing structure for the new system is overly focused on commuting trips to the city. This has resulted in short trips that cross a zone boundary costing more than much longer trips.
For example, this results in a trip between Bray (Daly) and Wicklow being more expensive than a trip between Bray and Maynooth, despite the latter being 39% longer. But the longer trip is three times cheaper because it’s in the central zone.
| Trip | Distance | Leap adult | Leap youth/student | Leap child |
| Bray (Daly) to Wicklow | 28km | €6 | €3.00 | €3.00 |
| Bray (Daly) to Maynooth | 46km | €2 | €1.00 | €0.65 |
This is one of the worst cases because Bray to Wicklow crosses three zones, but these issues are repeated on the northern and western lines.
For example, a 41km trip from Kildare to Clondalkin and Fonthill station costs €7.50 for adults and €3.75 for children and youths/students because it goes from Zone 4 to Zone 1.
That’s 5km shorter than the second trip in the table above, but 73% increase in the adult fare and an 82% increase in the child fare.
| Trip | Distance | Leap adult | Leap youth/student | Leap child |
| Clondalkin and Fonthill To Malahide | 27.5km | €2 | €1 | €0.65 |
| Skerries to Malahide | 13km | €3 | €1.50 | €1.50 |
| Enfield to Kilcock | 12.7km | €3.90 | €1.95 | €1.95 |
| Enfield to Leixlip (Louisa Bridge) | 24.54km | €6 | €3 | €3 |
| Kildare to Clondalkin and Fonthill | 41km | €7.50 | €3.75 | €3.75 |
Then group travel — with a family or just with friends or colleagues — adds an extra dimension and makes hopping in a car so much easier.
We’re not just into fairness here, but questions of climate action, climate justice, and just not taking account for trains more likely not being full in outer areas.
Making the choice to drive easier in the commuter belt has all sorts of negative issues beyond climate, including air pollution in towns, land use (more road and parking demand), and making it harder to roll out active travel and public realm improvements.
| Trip | Distance | A family of two adults and two children | A family of two adults and three children | A group of four adults |
| Bray (Daly) to Wicklow | 28km | €18 | €21 | €24 |
| Bray (Daly) to Maynooth | 46km | €5.30 | €5.95 | €8 |
| Skerries to Malahide | 13km | €9 | €10.50 | €12 |
And all of the above require having a Leap card for everybody involved, which affects families where children regularly lose their cards or people who don’t use public transport often.
Without offering other products such as online or app-based group tickets, the only way many families will be able to avail of the cheapest fares is to top up 3-4+ Leap cards individually. This, I can tell you, is a pain.
In the previous article mentioned above, I argued:
But those against free public transport are also not dealing with the realpolitik of the situation. People in positions of power who advocate that some level of payment is a good thing are not addressing the climate justice and fairness issues, which can be addressed — at least partly — without free fares.
These measures could include discounts on group travel, discounts on family travel or wider free/discounted travel for children, and maybe even making a 90-minute train or bus journey down the country cost no more than it does in Dublin. You don’t need a whole system based around Leap cards for this, and it could be especially useful in areas where trains and buses are rarely full.
Not only has the NTA not implemented any of this, but within the new Dublin area zonal areas, all family tickets have been removed.
So, even if you wanted to pay extra for a family ticket — if you didn’t have Leap cards or didn’t want to top up a few cards — you now don’t have that choice of paying extra for the convenience of one ticket.
While staying in Skerries and going on a family day out in Belfast before Christmas, we discovered you cannot buy family day tickets to Belfast from Skerries when the station is unmanned. And we had to purchase a family day return ticket to Drogheda before doing the same for the Drogheda-Belfast leg of the trip.
My guess is that not being able to buy the direct ticket from Skerries to Belfast is linked to an over-focus on the commuter area, which does not account for the rail system being a full network. By removing more options, the NTA is now doubling down on this commuter focus when we need a transport system for all sorts of trips.
On the fare changes starting tomorrow, there are also some odd, smaller differences. Skerries to Rush and Lusk (5km) or Kildare to Newbridge (7km) are both €2.30 for one stop, while Donabate to Howth (16km) is €2. What’s more unfair is that the child fare is €1.15 for the shorter trips in the outer areas, but just €0.65 in the central area.
That’s not as significant as the differences in the tables above, but it’s an unfairness that should not exist. It’s just odd that these fares, especially the child fares, could not have been at least aligned (even then, the central zone trip would be more than twice the length).
The Leap Card Capping has maybe been one of the underappreciated developments of public transport ticketing in Ireland — once you reach the daily, weekly or monthly cap, there is effectively unlimited free travel within the allowed area for the rest of the timeframe.
On the TFI page for new zones, only the Zone 1 daily/weekly/monthly pricing includes a mention of capping. If automatic capping does not kick in within and across other zones, this is another issue of fairness.
The daily/weekly/monthly tickets are to be available to buy vie the Leap app from tomorrow. Some longer-distance commuters, depending on their work patterns, will be travelling for free once they make a certain number of trips, but any fairness in this is complicated by the fact that commuters from stations just a few km closer to the city centre don’t have to spend as much before reaching the Leap card capping for the central area:
Overall, we need to stop pretending that fares are a bureaucratic or technical issue. How we price public transport is a political issue.
If the planned revamp of the national ticketing technology — which will include bank card and phone payments among other things — drags on, it will become clearer that the whole issue is political. In the meantime, we need fairer fare determination choices.
Brilliant piece. Thank you Cian – my thoughts exactly on seeing the new posters all over Luas stations.
Has the zones affected bus fares as well as obviously a child getting on in dublin going to skerries will still tap on so how does the nta justify the rail increase if bus fare does not change
These are rail-only zones. Zone one for buses continues to include areas beyond the rail Zone 1.
In some cases the cost of a family day return has gone up significantly. They previously had a family day return ticket from Tara Street to Rathdrum for €28. As far as I can tell that will cost €52.80 for 2 adults and 2 kids now? So annoying they told everyone we were getting free travel for under 9s in the last budget but still no sign of it!
Does anyone know if the weekly capping includes Go Ahead? The app mention Dublin buses but I’m not sure if it’s specifically the dubkin bus operator.
It includes Go-Ahead Ireland services in the Dublin City Bus network. So, on the kind of routes which Dublin Bus would have run.