Commuting

Commuting is periodically recurring travel between one's place of residence and place of work, or study, and in doing so exceed the boundary of their residential community. It sometimes refers to any regular or often repeated traveling between locations, even when not work-related. A distinction is also often made between commuters who commute daily or weekly between their residence to work place, and are therefore considered respectively local or long-distance commuters.

History

The word commuter derives from early days of rail travel in US cities such as New York, Philadelphia, Boston and Chicago, where, in the 1840s, the railways engendered suburbs from which travellers paying a reduced or 'commuted' fare into the city. Later, the back formations "commute" and "commuter" were coined therefrom. Commuted tickets would usually allow the traveller to repeat the same journey as often as they liked during the period of validity: Normally, the longer the period the cheaper the cost per day.

Commuter (Iarnród Éireann)

Commuter is the brand name given to the suburban rail services operated by Iarnród Éireann in Ireland. These operate in and around the suburban rail networks of Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Galway, in contrast to the majority of services which are classed as InterCity. In recent years, Iarnród Éireann has put a significant amount of effort into upgrading its network, with new tracks, signalling, station upgrades and trains. The majority of Commuter services are operated by diesel multiple unit train sets. An exception to this is the DART service - this shares the line with several other services. It is the only electrified heavy rail service in Ireland.

History

Arrow

The brand was introduced in 1994 as 'Arrow', the first specific branding for diesel suburban services, with the launch of the Arrow brand on the newly opened Kildare line. This brand was applied to stations on the line, as well as the 2600 Class railcars. It was also applied to the 2700 Class and 2800 Class railcars upon their introduction (however in the case of the latter, it was removed shortly after their introduction into service and replaced with the National Development Plan logo). Thus the Arrow brand became the first major branding for suburban railway services in Dublin (officially, its use remained limited to the Kildare line, but Arrow branded or liveried trains were used on most suburban services).