Northern Ireland's Transport: Translink in focus 

I think there's also one major factor you forgot to mention - The cost. Not only are our trains reliable, comfortable, on time, and frequent at peak times, they are also very affordable, which is a strong contrast to many English rail services which are less reliable, punctual, and significantly more expensive. Translink is by no means perfect, but we have to admit, they have got the fundamentals right when it comes to the trains. Any talk of expanding the service needs to be well thought out in order to protect the successful business they already have and grow it in a way that doesn't diminish their well-regarded service or add additional cost to the ticket prices. Regarding the Sunday services, you also need to bear in mind that many people in NI still regard Sunday as a day of rest. Many businesses don't trade on Sundays, and many events are Friday and Saturday focused, as Sunday is generally a poor day in terms of trade (Belfast Giants don't play home games on a Sunday as they don't get a good turnout. In GB, Sunday is the best day for selling these kinds of activities). So the demand for services in the manner that you describe might not exist in the volume necessary to warrant expanding the services to the extent that you mentioned. NIR, Goldliner, Metro, and Glider services run frequently on Sundays, however the intra and inter town/village services don't. It's also worth noting that a significant part of the bus fleet are built in Ballymena (Galgorm). For a very short period preceding the collapse of Wrightbus, Translink had seemingly stopped buying Wrightbus vehicles, but since the new Wrightbus ownership, it seems like we would be hard pressed to get them to buy anywhere else. Another interesting fact about Ballymena is that the owners of Wrightbus squandered the business to build an evangelical commune on the outskirts of the town, leading to the demise and collapse of the business. They also said that brexit was good for their business. They aren't the business masterminds that they were sometimes made out to be.

Most of the limitations of public transport in Northern Ireland are caused by the Department for Infrastructure being almost exclusively car focused, so hardly any money is invested in improving the system, sadly. When upgrades do happen they are usually miss a lot of their potential, such as the Dargan Bridge being built as single track, or Glider not having proper BRT busways. Translink mostly makes do pretty well with what they have, although rail reliability, particularly on the Derry line, seems to have decreased a lot recently.

The Enterprise coaches are actually De Dietrich stock, manufactured with by a company that has since been acquired by Alstom

I'd love to go to Northern Ireland some day. Recently I've become fascinated with their railway system, aided by the fact that the electric trains in Auckland were also built by CAF. Incidentally I've noticed from watching videos of them that the 4000 class DMUs sound very similar to the Class 172. Apparently there is one heritage railway in Northern Ireland. It's the Dunpatrick and County Down Railway, and one of their units is the sole surviving 450 class DEMU.

"The minister in charge of the department of regional development, who was Conor Murphy at the time, he instructed Northern Ireland railways to get a train in [to Derry from Belfast] before 9'o'clock. Northern Ireland railways then issued a new timetable and it said first train into Derry: 9:02. And I said, that's a bit strange, you know, 9:02, and eventually someone who works for Northern Ireland railways told me those two minutes represented two fingers to Conor Murphy." - Mark Steele's in Town

Ticket checks are actually rare in my experience, anytime I’ve been made going from derry to Belfast or Coleraine, rarely see ticket checks, only ever onboard staff selling tickets after small stations that aren’t staffed.

Contactless payment on all buses would be nice. Also, reopen the Lisburn to Antrim line and have a stop at the "international" Airport.

The new ticketing system across the network will feature tap on tap off smartcard that you can load with credit aswell as vending machines for paper tickets when Belfast Grand Central station is complete in 2024, supposedly you'll be able to use the same smartcard on the bus, train and the glider. I've noticed many train stations already have a small shelter built where a ticket machine might sit.

3:46 4000s do have charging ports but only on specific sets. The 3000 didn’t have chargers originally but a refurbishment was rolled out over the past 2 years to. They probably won’t last long tho, the general public seems to have a knack for shoving objects into the ports and taking them apart so they’re as much use as a door stop. Logo integration is pretty slow and around 15 years. The early Translink logo can still be found plastered on signs and flooring and some uniforms. The 2005 logo still has a good 5-10 years left and will probably still be left on something later on.

yo bro, wake up. translink listened to you. they added ticket machines at stations

They're an excellent company, with good trains and buses

I could legitimately see Armagh getting a railway back. Possibly even a southern route to Derry/Londonderry via Dungannon, Omagh, Newtownstewart & Strabane. For any other lines to be reopened - and to be clear, this is a matter of geography and population density not politics - reunification with the Republic would probably be a prerequisite.

It's a sunday. If you plan on going on a trip, you go on friday or saturday, inside a city, maybe, but Sunday is to sleep in and take walks and not go on adventures, i like sundays being quieter days.

Ballymenaaaaaa

I live 45 minutes from NI never knew until now what the transport service was called or knew such athing existed

EVERYBODY 💯💯💯💯💯 Agree about logo

I love the old translink logo. They worked it into most things. The stripes while an evolution still kept a consistent feel The T is bloody lazy. When translink first started they had thins like. NI railways - a translink company. This was changed pretty quickly to a translink service. Glidr would be a trial to see if a full tram service is viable in my opinion. Tickets. Most stations are unstaffed and 99% of the time bout on train. You missed the rediclous number of smart card systems in place on translink. Unless it's charged since I was last home. Edit. Just realised I had already commented This came up in my suggestions today. It's so unusual to see NI railways I clicked automatically.

5:40 a bit nit picky but they aren’t Wright Streetcars. They’re Van Hool EquiCities. But yes they are a fairly similar concept.

Also, those eclipse threes are GB hawks, and the eclipse ones are solars.

A Dublin Bus ticket in Irish issued in Ballymena! The DUP will have a fit.

No stations have ticket booths but some have ticket offices, which aren't always open though, also I noticed that the replacement of the old Ulsterbus fleet has really gotten underway in the last year or so

Ireland and the UK share the same loading guage for the most part. It's the track guage that's different. British built MK2s and MK3s for the Irish network w're the same exact size as the UK ones. Except for the bogies being slightly wider.

The same DMU set used in Ireland is a variant of the EMUs used in Auckland, NZ. AM class

Are they building a light rail in Belfast?

Pity that the illustration of the bus-style tickets was- erm - a Dublin bus ticket. The sometimes rather long black screens (at the start and between shots) are a little disconcerting to the viewer, but certainly better than BBC News' craze for beginning segments with a blurred picture! I agree the older logo is better, but don't agree that the new T is 'more modern' - it looks kinda retro to me.

Ballymena is pronounced ballymeena just so you know

Ballymena was pronounced incorrectly. Ballymeeeennna. :)

The new Translink logo looks like a Crypto scam lmao

Well Northern Ireland is different from England, Wales and Scotland despite still being part of the United Kingdom.

I wonder if they could do tram trains? Would help open new lines while still allowing connections to older lines. Not perfect, but better than the current system.

my general vibe of our trains and public transport is just... old outdated and dusty. But buses are quickly being upgraded so they are quite good, as for bus station and trains + train stations, its going pretty slow. But roads are basically getting all the funding to get bigger and bigger.

100% punctuality? I must be living in a parallel universe, as for Ballymena it's the end of the world!

The statistics are very old and very wrong! Ask any person who takes transport in NI. It would be terrible lol- guessing those stats are made up.

Hah Nice Adam something refference