[PR] DART Battery Train Tender Issued

[James Howard]

Originally Posted by Mark Gleeson

To be honest we need to pull in the commuting situation if you choose to live 20, 30, 40 miles out you will get a fairly basic service.

Speaking as somebody who spent 13 years commuting 70 miles from Edgeworthstown, this is an odd attitude to be coming from a rail advocate. The reality is that long-distance commuting is the only available option for an enormous number of people living in places like Longford, Athlone and Portlaoise and these people are going to drive if there is no train available.

I've been lucky enough to mostly work from home for the last couple of years but most people commuting to Dublin from around me drive already because the train times have deteriorated so badly over the last few years.

Nobody living in Longford expects half-hourly service but there is a major need to restore evening journey times to what they were 15 years ago and to provide a later service down in the evening (or at least allow passes to be used on the later buses).

[James Shields]

Originally Posted by James Howard

Speaking as somebody who spent 13 years commuting 70 miles from Edgeworthstown, this is an odd attitude to be coming from a rail advocate. The reality is that long-distance commuting is the only available option for an enormous number of people living in places like Longford, Athlone and Portlaoise and these people are going to drive if there is no train available.

Got to agree with you here. The reality in Ireland is that if you've got a place to live (whether you're an owner or a renter), it's quite difficult to move to be close to your place of work. The reality is it will take at least another decade to fix our housing situation.

People commuting from the outer commuter belt don't expect a magical service every ten minutes, they just want some improvements to make their journey a little less hellish. For example, I think most people would accept some standing time is reasonable at peak times, but on some routes at present you can be standing close to an hour. I think we should be aiming for a maximum standing time of 30 mins, and hopefully closer to 15 mins on most services.