It is incomprehensible that additional time journey time should be added to already slow Belfast, Rosslare and longer distance commuter services.
Time is important to everybody these days not just DART users. If DART is developed at the expense of other services, these other services will become irrelevant and what remains can be turned into a high frequenccy, low speed tramway style operation. It is questionable if this would produce a net growth in passenger numbers let alone revenue.
While usage of services on the northern line beyond Howth Junction has not declined that much in volume terms the failure to make the service more attractive has led to a very significant decline in modal split, something which is all too evident by the huge volume of traffic now using the M1.
As for services beyond Greystones, the addition of almost 20 minutes to journey times has made the railway to Wicklow and beyond almost irrelevant.
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