2013 Draft Connolly Timetable
 

http://www.irishrail.ie/cat_news.jsp?i=4685&p=116&n=237

One interesting observation/error...

How is the Dublin-Rosslare service supposed to make it from Wexford to Rosslare Strand in 1 minute??

Looks fairly good to me, sensible changes made.

All the services I take currently remain unchanged expect for minor changes. The 9.40 and 11.40 Maynooth-Pearse services, in my experience, almost always have a delayed depature from Maynooth to allow an inbound Sligo train ahead and are consequently usually 5-10 minutes late at intermediate stations, so pushing them 5 minutes later is a good idea - in that it will be good for delay statistics.

The changes to the M3 off peak schedule means that customers from Clonsilla inwards are reverting back to an hourly service outside of the peaks, which is very crap and ridiculous for a commuter railway. The extra services to Connolly were handy and fairly well used from the D15 stations. Oh well.

The latest train out of the city centre is still early, but it now has a connection to M3 Parkway, which is great. Last train on a Sunday is still very early, but again has a connection. IE definitely seem to be trying to make the most out of the underused branch in this timetable, which is great. The loss of same platform interchange in favour of crossing over a footbridge to the bay platform will probably be grumbled about by some though.

I don't use the Sligo service, but am I reading right that the 1700 and 1900 from Sligo are amalgamated into a 1800? Seems like a noticeable drop in service to me, but I'll defer to people with more experience.

The 07.05 and 09.05 to Sligo are now changed to 08.05 and the 17.00 and 19.00 return changed to 18.00. They seem to be sensible changes to me as its just getting rid of services that are running almost empty. I agree there needs to be a later Maynooth service on Sunday even if it was at 22.00 its would be better than nothing.

No changes made to the Rosslare line what so ever. Another year of the same timetable. I know its a draft timetable but will ultimately be it.

•Dublin/Belfast (InterCity)
•Dublin/Dunboyne/Maynooth/Longford (Commuter)
•Dublin/Drogheda/Dundalk (Commuter)
•Dublin/Gorey/Rosslare Europort
•Dublin/Sligo (InterCity)
•DART
I did notice Dublin/Gorey/Rosslare Europort isn't labelled (InterCity) like the other routes !!!

Not happy with it

Has anyone spotted which Dublin to Balbriggan services will be cancelled? I use the line but was unable to find any changes in the draft timetable.

Looks like the 9:05 Bray to Balbriggan now terminates at Connolly at 9:43, and the 10:50 Balbriggan to Connolly that train currently forms is now cancelled.

Make a lot of sense - particularly delaying the 1700 Sligo - Dublin until 1800 which will do no end of good in improving the reliability of the evening down trains as everything before the 1805 gets a clear run to Longford and the 1805 gets to Edgeworthstown before crossing.

It is the best that can be expected with declining resources really.

To be fixed.

Having to change trains at Clonsilla will not help with customer levels on the M3 Parkway off peak services. But this is made far worse by the typical IE slack operating performance: between the M3 train arriving at Clonsilla bay platform and the connecting departure of the Maynooth train there is typically a 7 to 9 minute interval.

This is very sloppy given that the Journey time from M3 Parkway to CLonsilla is only 12 minutes, leaving very little excuse for late running. How will such a large increase in overall running times (plus the inconvenience of a train change) affect demand? Was this question even considered by IE?

So the 18.18 to longford is going and not a 21.00 in sight.......oh how different it could have been!

And I be live the 21.00 would have not been cancelled.

The 18:18 to Longford serves very little purpose except that it is useful for a few people commuting from Longford to Maynooth. I used to take it very occasionally when I was transferring in Connolly and missed the 1805 but even then I reckon I used about 10 times in 5 years of that commute and I haven't used it at all in the last 3 years of going straight from Connolly. Any time I did use it, there was never more than a couple of dozen on the train after Kilcock.

I agree that it would have been nice to introduce a 21:00 but it is extremely difficult to move a last train earlier so Irish Rail would need to be very sure about the business case before introducing a service that would be almost impossible to remove.

The big gaps in the morning down and evening up timetables are probably of greater concern - particularly with the last up train moving an hour earlier. But at least they have kept a 19:00 up train on a Sunday which is heavily used by students.

+ 1 - same old rubbish for the Rosslare line, currently investigating options with Wexford bus from 2013

Is there ANY chance of IR putting the 17.58 Pearse Dundalk Commuter before the 17.55 DART to Malahide.

The 17.58 stops at Howth Jn, Clongriffin, Portmarnock AND Malahide and makes an already long journey even longer .....

By swapping these and letting the 17.58 go first would mean no (or less anyway!) delays

It should be someone's job to make sure that commuter trains are given priority over Darts leaving Connolly, both northbound and southbound.

Far better to hold up a Dart for a minute or two and give a head start to those going further afield.

It's not just not someone's job, it's against IE policy as stated on page 17 of the 2011 Network Statement. DART first, then commuter, then Enterprise, freight, infrastructure.

Irish Rail frankly haven't an operational brain in their head. Was on the 1900 to Belfast last night. At precisely 1900 the 1800 DART from Greystones swung onto the main line at Ossory Road heading north. Aa a consequence the Belfast train didn't exceed 26mph until after Howth Junction and incurred a delay of 10 minutes as a consequence. Further delays followed due to speed restrictions at Clongriffin, Malahide, Mosney and Drogheda.

THe "congestion" argument doesn't hold up as the previous train left Ossory road northbound about 20 minutes earlier.

Thres more people on the DART argument does'nt hold up either as there wasn't.

Additional delay to the DART service would have been about 1½ minutes v 10 minutes to the Belfast service. What a joke !

I'm fairly sure the priority is coded into the signalling system and unless the signalman intervenes DARTs will automatically go first(or stick to the order in the timetable regardless of delays) everywhere. For example, a common occurrence at Pearse is for a Maynooth train to be sitting in the siding, ready to depart northbound, but a 5-10 delayed northbound DART is allowed to go ahead of it, delaying the Maynooth train for its entire journey. In the time taken to wait for that delayed DART to arrive and sit at the platform for way too long, the Maynooth train would have made it all the way up through Connolly and off shared track.

There's just a lack of interest on IE's part on trying anything clever or overrriding defaults.

I know all to well.The last Rosslare service from Dublin at 18.36 A DART train going to Greystones or Bray comes in and instead of allowing the Rosslare train go ahead it does only serve Tara St and Pearse and onto DunLaoghaire. We have to crawl all the way behind the DART. "lack of interest on IE's part on trying anything clever or overrriding defaults."

Another example is the way they handle crossing delays. During leaf-slip season, it is a regular occurrence for the 1805 Connolly to Longford train to sit in Killucan for 10 or 15 minutes waiting to cross with the 1700 from Sligo.

However, the run from Killucan to Mullingar can easily be done in 7 or 8 minutes. These delays then knock on to the other two trains coming behind. So instead of having one train with about 40 passenges being 20 minutes late instead of 10 minutes late, they end up with three trains carrying 400 - 600 passengers being up to half an hour late.

The exact same thing happens two or three days a week for three months in the autumn every year and nobody ever learns.

The half hourly DART service to Greystones means that there is only a ten minute window on the single track between Bray and Greystones every 30 minutes. This window can accommodate either a southbound or northbound Rosslare service. The ten minute window occurs immediately after the arrival of each southbound DART train at Greystones - hence the scheduling of Rosslare services behind Greystones DART services.

The only way around this mess is to either reduce DART frequency between Bray and Greystones or introduce overtaking facilities at Dun Laoghaire and/or Bray

Rosslare services add up to 10 total both ways Five southbound and Five northbound to Dublin. Dart services to/from Greystones add up to 35 total. For the passengers who are as frustrated as I about this 2013 draft, We have Three train services from 08.24am to 19.01pm from Gorey to Dublin its outrageous. Its a Five hour gap each service to Dublin. Its probably the most weakest line in this country but thats IE's fault not its customers. Still in 2013 proposed timetable draft the services remain unchanged. Do IE even have interest on their own line on this section of track because it seems to be a not bothered line.

The lunch time service from Connolly to Rosslare seems to be a commuter 29k operated train on every weekend. People were told about the new 22k trains but actually getting to travel on them is another thing on the Rosslare line. If I could meet with these people one to one and just get their insights on the operational side of things. IE is junior infants toward other countries who are literally college degree for running and timing of trains and know the meaning of correct train timings.

The problem is there could be people connecting to that maynooth line train. Connections are going to be more crucial now there are cutbacks planned for the coming timetable.

It is very misleading to say Maynooth services will remain unchanged when in fact the off peak frequency for most stations on the Maynooth line are being halved.

The move to reduce the off peak service, from half hourly to hourly, in both directions for Drumcondra, Broombridge, Ashtown, Navan Road Parkway, Castleknock, Coolmine and Clonsilla Stations is unacceptable and goes against where we should be going in developing a proper transport service for Dublin. Irish Rail should be looking to increase the off peak frequency on the line to eventually achieve a DART level of service instead of providing an effectively useless service to people in these areas.

The Navan Road Parkway is an example of an underutilized asset which could be promoted and benefit from a reliable frequent service. One only has to look at the successful Red Cow Park and Ride to see how the provision of a reliable, frequent service will attract people to use it. If the potential wait for a train is 1 hour this is much less attractive to people who might park and ride.

What had once looked like developing towards a proper commuter/rapid transit railway has now been pushed back to nothing more than a skeleton service. However this is not surprising given the history of Irish Rail running our railways

Can't believe how few trains are now going to Sligo. They should be upping the number of trains during hours that would suit people who work and study in sligo. I finally just got a taxsaver ticket to commute from carrick on shannon to sligo. I had to change my hours to fit the trains to 10.30 to 6.30. With the new timetable there will only be 6hrs 50mins between the first train arriving and the last train leaving, no way of fitting a working day in there. It's rediculous. If they want to increase revenue they should be looking at a commuter service for sligo. By not driving I save about €40 a week. I know plenty of people who would use a commuter service, especially if they marketed on the savings you could make. Given sligo has a hospital, two colleges and numerous large businesses and schools it's a neglected oportunity for making revenue, the only people who will be able to use the new trains are people with free tickets who fancy popping into sligo for lunch or shopping. :mad:

They can't even organise the trains such that they can match hospital shift hours going into Dublin so that nurses further out than Maynooth can use the train to commute to the big Dublin hospitals so it might be a while before they manage to organise trains that match the shifts in Sligo.

What any business should be doing if faced with a lack of trade is to find out the reasons they are giving people not to use the service. To do this, they should be visiting large employers near stations (if sufficiently large - near the line with a view to adding a station) and finding out what they can do to increase commuting business. Things like shuttle buses, special deals on parking - even just visiting a company and doing a presentation with a few free tickets is how you build business.

The odd thing about this is that I perceive a distinct jump in the level of business on the trains I use on the Sligo line over the last few months. The 1805 to Longford is consistently jammed now with people standing all the way down the aisles and a need to arrive before 1750 to be guaranteed a seat. The same goes for the 0545 from Sligo. A year ago, I could be fairly sure of having a bay of four seats to myself as far as Enfield if not Kilcock but lately I rarely have the bay to myself after Mullingar. On Monday this week I had to share a bay of seats when I got on in Edgeworthstown.

As far as the 1805 is concerned, I know that the 1817 only has a handful of passengers going beyond Maynooth but if these get displaced onto the 1805, it is going to be well beyond capacity.

I don't know where this coming from and if it is just my own perception but it would seem to be to be a good idea to leave the resources on the Sligo line while it is doing well with the hope of growing overall business. They also desperately need to get online booking in place so that they do something about pushing some of the demand onto the less used services.

I just filled out their surveymonkey thing. One thing I noticed when going back over it is that the last up-train between Longford and Maynooth is now a whopping 90 minutes earlier.

This is an occasional bother to me as I sometimes take a train up in the evening if I have an early flight in the morning. It is a fairly dramatic reduction in the coverage.

Is Tara street the only station that has not updated its timetable notices almost a month after the introduction of the new timetable?

Pearse is the same with the posters showing big Dublin area diagrams and all the departures for the full day on them. if they can't replace them straight away they should at least cover the times or take them down.

It was raised with Irish Rail 2 weeks ago