May 9th - Could Ireland's public transport fare plans be the blueprint for the UK?
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 9 May 2022
⏱️ 7 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Back to the future on the railways: for the first time since 1947, fares across Ireland on trains and buses have been cut by 20 per cent. It follows the astonishing 100 per cent cut in fares in Luxembourg in 2020 when all public transport was made free. Could it happen here?
Of course this podcast is completely free, as is my weekly travel email. You can sign up at independent.co.uk/newsletters.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Simon Calder, welcoming you to my independent travel podcast, bringing you the latest news on travelling, whether you're just dreaming of a great escape, looking forward to one, or actually away and having the time of your life. |
| 0:15.0 | Today, I'm talking to you from Sheffield Park Railway Station, Nowhere near Sheffield in South Yorkshire. |
| 0:22.6 | This is in Leafy East Sussex and it's one end of the Bluebell Railway, |
| 0:27.6 | which continues north from here to a place called Horstead Keens. |
| 0:32.6 | No trains running today because they're not yet up to full speed, but a good location to talk about |
| 0:39.7 | back to the future on the railways, which is exactly what they are doing in Ireland today. |
| 0:47.3 | They have, at a stroke, cut by 20% the prices of rail and bus fares nationwide. They've done that they say because |
| 0:58.9 | they want to bring people the benefits of rail travel, help them save money and reduce their carbon |
| 1:08.0 | footprint. Therefore for example the cost of a ticket between Dublin and |
| 1:15.0 | Cork has fallen from the equivalent of £35 to £28. That is quite a saving. And when you look at a |
| 1:24.3 | similar 160-mile rail trip, say, between London and Macklesfield, |
| 1:30.5 | that costs around about twice as much. |
| 1:34.0 | So they were good value already, but it's worth saying, of course, that the journey in the UK is about an hour faster than Ireland. |
| 1:41.5 | Ireland has some beautiful railway lines. I've travelled on many of them, but they are not renowned for going especially quickly. |
| 1:48.0 | It's also this deal available on local transport. And so, for example, if you are able to explore Ireland, there's a fantastic location. The Dart Railway, which runs all the way round |
| 2:06.0 | from Dunleary to Hoth in the north of Dublin Bay. It is one of the most spectacular urban |
| 2:15.8 | railways anywhere, I think, because it's just got beautiful outlooks and, of course, |
| 2:20.6 | it's very, very useful. So fares on that are being halved. Bus Iran, the Irish national bus |
| 2:28.4 | company is also doing exactly the same. And so you'll find, for that um crossing the country from uh places such as |
| 2:38.4 | Galway um or from Sligo uh the cost of those trips are reduced which is particularly useful if |
| 2:46.5 | you're flying in and out of um Dublin airport because a lot of those locations have direct links so you could get a cheap flight in and out of Dublin Airport because a lot of those locations have direct links. |
| 2:52.5 | So you could get a cheap flight in and start availing immediately of the opportunity to travel |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Independent, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Independent and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.