Timetable consultation for DART/commuter 2016 now online

[Inniskeen]

When the upgraded Enterprise started in1997 it was routine to reach Drogheda in under 28 minutes with under 26 minutes not particularly uncommon. My fastest trip was marginally over 24 minutes. So 47 minutes is almost double what uncongested infrastructure would deliver.

The amount of slots north of Connolly allocated to DART is already grossly disproportionate to the traffic carried, the revised timetable greatlly increases the imbalance. Even at the busiest point immeduately north of East Wall Junction DART only accounts for 58% of the numbers travelling.

Interesting this timetable proves my concerns about DART underground - without additional physical tracks trains more DARTs mean more congestion and slower journey times. This is not a strategy that will result in extra business but wiil simply drive people away.

[berneyarms]

Originally Posted by Inniskeen

When the upgraded Enterprise started in1997 it was routine to reach Drogheda in under 28 minutes with under 26 minutes not particularly uncommon. My fastest trip was marginally over 24 minutes. So 47 minutes is almost double what uncongested infrastructure would deliver.

The amount of slots north of Connolly allocated to DART is already grossly disproportionate to the traffic carried, the revised timetable greatlly increases the imbalance. Even at the busiest point immeduately north of East Wall Junction DART only accounts for 58% of the numbers travelling.

Interesting this timetable proves my concerns about DART underground - without additional physical tracks trains more DARTs mean more congestion and slower journey times. This is not a strategy that will result in extra business but wiil simply drive people away.

That's somewhat of a subjective viewpoint as you are clearly looking at it solely from the perspective of an Enterprise user. Most northern line commuter services are taking the same length of time (some off-peak taking longer) as before so I'm struggling to see how view this as "far worse than you expected" in your earlier post?

I'm not sure that the extra time on the Enterprise services is necessarily going to "drive people away", but on the other hand people may leave their cars/buses and revert to DART with the attraction of a 10 minute frequency. This very much turns DART into a "turn up and go" service between Howth Junction and Bray. Unfortunately, it's somewhat of a chicken and egg situation.

I do agree with you on one point - the infrastructure deficit on the Northern line does finally need to be addressed by solid capital investment proposals - four tracking has to become part of the overall strategy.

Unfortunately I have yet to see a single timetable change that has ever pleased everyone. That's kind of inevitable.

[ACustomer]

Strange how on the Heuston side a lot is being spent to increase line speeds and reduce journey times, presumably in the belief that this will attract more custom. Yet on the Connolly side they are blithely increasing journey times on Belfast, Sligo and Rosslare routes: do they expect that this will not adversely effect custom?

Someone please explain.

[berneyarms]

Originally Posted by ACustomer

Strange how on the Heuston side a lot is being spent to increase line speeds and reduce journey times, presumably in the belief that this will attract more custom. Yet on the Connolly side they are blithely increasing journey times on Belfast, Sligo and Rosslare routes: do they expect that this will not adversely effect custom?

Someone please explain.

The Heuston side isn't sharing track space with an intensive city suburban service - that's the simple difference.

Also the amount being spent on the Heuston side is miniscule by comparison with what would be required to deliver separate lines on the Connolly side.

[shweeney]

it's somewhat disingenuous that the consultation page on IE's website trumpets the 10 minute frequency but doesn't mention anywhere the increased running times.

[James Howard]

Technically, for a turn up and go user, the time will be worse. At 15 minute frequency, the average wait time is 7.5 minutes. So you'll gain 2.5 minutes from frequency but lose 3 minutes in journey time.

People I've talked to at my station are very unhappy about this. For the normal commuter train pair on Longford commuter (0545 Sligo up, 1805 down), we are looking at 20 minutes longer in the day.

[Commuter101]

Will any comments sent to IR re the proposed timetable be considered by IR at all? Or is it already decided upon and anyone who does take the time to comment will just be wasting their time?!

[markpb]

Originally Posted by James Howard

Technically, for a turn up and go user, the time will be worse. At 15 minute frequency, the average wait time is 7.5 minutes. So you'll gain 2.5 minutes from frequency but lose 3 minutes in journey time

People making short journeys (i.e. Dart passengers) tend not to think about it that way. Wait time is more of a consideration than journey time, especially for ad-hoc passengers.

Dart has a bad reputation for being infrequent and having silly, unpredictable gaps between trains. They've been working on it for the last few years but it'll take time to lose that image. A 10 minute gap goes a long way towards achieving that (notwithstanding the negative impact on other services).

[Inniskeen]

Originally Posted by berneyarms

That's somewhat of a subjective viewpoint as you are clearly looking at it solely from the perspective of an Enterprise user. Most northern line commuter services are taking the same length of time (some off-peak taking longer) as before so I'm struggling to see how view this as "far worse than you expected" in your earlier post?

I'm not sure that the extra time on the Enterprise services is necessarily going to "drive people away", but on the other hand people may leave their cars/buses and revert to DART with the attraction of a 10 minute frequency. This very much turns DART into a "turn up and go" service between Howth Junction and Bray. Unfortunately, it's somewhat of a chicken and egg situation.

I do agree with you on one point - the infrastructure deficit on the Northern line does finally need to be addressed by solid capital investment proposals - four tracking has to become part of the overall strategy.

Unfortunately I have yet to see a single timetable change that has ever pleased everyone. That's kind of inevitable.

While I am an Enterprise user, I also use DART and commuter services, the latter two more frequently than the Enterprise. Indeed a lot of my use of the Enterprise is to avoid the depressingly slow commuter trains which like the Enterprise have been subjected to significant cumulative journey time increases over successive timetable iterations.

At almost any time of the day, I can drive from my house to the city centre in about the same time as the Enterprise would currently take. In the morning I can leave home, by car, 15 to 20 minutes behind a commuter service and arrive in Sydney Parade at least 10 minutes before it shows up. So even point to point journey times are uncompetitive, let alone those that involve a change of train or change of mode. Add to that the significant delays that occur to morning or evening services multiple times a week and you have an offering which is of diminishing appeal especially to longer distance commuters. If you drive up the M1 at almost any time of the day it is buzzing and clearly the railway has lost very significant market share not just to motorists but also to express bus operators.

As for the proposed timetable, it is a credit to the architect in that a considerable effort has been made to produce something that might just be operationally deliverable. The poor signalling and track layout at Malahide, contention at Howth Junction, the lack of an up loop at Clongriffin and even tighter working between Bray and Greystones may well conspire to produce a significantly poorer operating performance than at present. There may well be six DARTs an hour but they will probably turn up in bunches. Alternatively Greystones passengers may find there train held in Bray to take up the path of the following service.

You suggest that this new timetable is effectively an attempt to reverse the long term decline in DART usage. It may do that to some modest degree although I suspect that any gains will be offset by a decline in the usage of other services which, with a few exceptions, have been significantly downgraded.

The issue brought into stark focus by this proposed timetable essentially boils down to whether it makes more sense to impose a journey time penalty of anything up to 20 minutes for passengers travelling to/from stations north of Malahide to facilitate a disproportionate number of comparatively lightly used off peak DARTs. North of Connolly DART accounts for something close to 55% of passengers during the course of a normal working day but already gobbles up 66% of the operating slots. Under this proposal at least 75% of northern line slots will be taken by DART.

The hopelessly uncompetitive journey times to stations south of Greystones means that this line will struggle to maintain even marginal relevance in the medium to long term. The minimal usage figures for stations like Wicklow, Arklow, Gorey and Enniscorthy set out in the 2014 NTA census are stark and depressing . The near empty car parks tell the same story. The same fate would now appear to await the northern line as Irish Rail seeks to implement tram style services on an inflexible and inadequate infrastructure.

And yes there will always be people who don't like a particular change to the timetable, but it is very rare to so significantly degrade one class of user in favour of another unless you are a commercial operator seeking to maximise revenue - this timetable most assuredly won't do that as the higher fare paying passengers are those most likely to walk given that the average DART journey is no more than 9 km !

[berneyarms]

Originally Posted by Inniskeen

While I am an Enterprise user, I also use DART and commuter services, the latter two more frequently than the Enterprise. Indeed a lot of my use of the Enterprise is to avoid the depressingly slow commuter trains which like the Enterprise have been subjected to significant cumulative journey time increases over successive timetable iterations.

At almost any time of the day, I can drive from my house to the city centre in about the same time as the Enterprise would currently take. In the morning I can leave home, by car, 15 to 20 minutes behind a commuter service and arrive in Sydney Parade at least 10 minutes before it shows up. So even point to point journey times are uncompetitive, let alone those that involve a change of train or change of mode. Add to that the significant delays that occur to morning or evening services multiple times a week and you have an offering which is of diminishing appeal especially to longer distance commuters. If you drive up the M1 at almost any time of the day it is buzzing and clearly the railway has lost very significant market share not just to motorists but also to express bus operators.

As for the proposed timetable, it is a credit to the architect in that a considerable effort has been made to produce something that might just be operationally deliverable. The poor signalling and track layout at Malahide, contention at Howth Junction, the lack of an up loop at Clongriffin and even tighter working between Bray and Greystones may well conspire to produce a significantly poorer operating performance than at present. There may well be six DARTs an hour but they will probably turn up in bunches. Alternatively Greystones passengers may find there train held in Bray to take up the path of the following service.

You suggest that this new timetable is effectively an attempt to reverse the long term decline in DART usage. It may do that to some modest degree although I suspect that any gains will be offset by a decline in the usage of other services which, with a few exceptions, have been significantly downgraded.

The issue brought into stark focus by this proposed timetable essentially boils down to whether it makes more sense to impose a journey time penalty of anything up to 20 minutes for passengers travelling to/from stations north of Malahide to facilitate a disproportionate number of comparatively lightly used off peak DARTs. North of Connolly DART accounts for something close to 55% of passengers during the course of a normal working day but already gobbles up 66% of the operating slots. Under this proposal at least 75% of northern line slots will be taken by DART.

The hopelessly uncompetitive journey times to stations south of Greystones means that this line will struggle to maintain even marginal relevance in the medium to long term. The minimal usage figures for stations like Wicklow, Arklow, Gorey and Enniscorthy set out in the 2014 NTA census are stark and depressing . The near empty car parks tell the same story. The same fate would now appear to await the northern line as Irish Rail seeks to implement tram style services on an inflexible and inadequate infrastructure.

And yes there will always be people who don't like a particular change to the timetable, but it is very rare to so significantly degrade one class of user in favour of another unless you are a commercial operator seeking to maximise revenue - this timetable most assuredly won't do that as the higher fare paying passengers are those most likely to walk given that the average DART journey is no more than 9 km !

I find it difficult to believe that, unless you use the port tunnel, that you could get from either Drogheda or Dundalk (I'm assuming that it is one of those two stations) to Dublin City Centre in the same time at peak periods as the Enterprise?

But we have to face a reality here with the lines out of Connolly. Unless major infrastructural works are done on the Northern line, in other words four tracking for at least some of the line out of Connolly, and an "up" loop at Clongriffin, sharing track space between a high frequency commuter train and other suburban and Intercity services is going to need compromises.

The railway is competing against a high grade motorway, and once that was built, competition from express buses (be they Bus Eireann or private) was inevitable. I personally think people need to stop lobbying for the railway to be put back onto a level playing pitch, and for those infrastructure works that I mentioned above to happen so that the Northern line can become a truly competitive alternative to the motorway.

However, I still firmly believe that the 10 minute DART service is something that is needed and should go ahead. It will make a difference to user numbers, (and I think it will be more than modest) as it will truly be a turn up and go service, and will finally deliver a consistent service to Howth and Malahide which as we have seen here has not been the case heretofore.

I also think you are being very selective in your choice of timing differences on the Northern line. It's very easy to pick extremes, which are in fact very small in number and which mainly aren't at busy times.

Here are the statistics:

Northern line suburban services - northbound from Connolly:
Out of 25 northern line suburban services, 6 are faster by 1-5 minutes, 7 take exactly the same amount of time, 9 are 1-5 minutes slower, and 3 are 10-12 minutes slower from Connolly.

Northern line suburban services - southbound from Connolly:
Out of 28 northern line suburban services (I'm including the current morning relief service from Dundalk), 11 are faster by 1-4 minutes, 2 are the same, 9 are slower by 1-5 minutes, four by 6-7 minutes, and 1 slower by 11 minutes.

Belfast line northbound:
Out of 8 trains, 3 take the same time as before, 4 are 2-6 minutes slower, and one is 10 minutes slower.

Belfast line southbound:
Out of 8 trains, 5 are 2-6 minutes slower, and the other three are 12, 15 and 18 minutes slower (the latter being the last train southbound which has the lowest usage of the lot, so maybe not the best one to be quoting).

While I agree that having any trains taking longer is not good, it is far from being the absolute disaster you are making it out to be.

You're quite right to say that the timetable designer has gone to significant efforts to make this as effective as possible operationally, and I would hope with the slightly extended running times on DART that this will contribute to the timetable being more robust in practice.

With regard to the Rosslare line I think that people need to be realistic in their expectations. The line was never built as a high speed line, and the development of the M11 motorway has meant that inevitably the railway was going to suffer from a journey time perspective. It just cannot compete on time any more.

The introduction of the half-hourly DART to/from Greystones, something that locals campaigned for, means that the Rosslare trains have only two windows each hour to go around Bray Head, and the 10 minute DART service will inevitably lengthen times. The two paths each hour around Bray Head really are the main limiting factors as they dictate when trains reach crossing loops south of Bray and this can also mean longer waits at those points.

I don't really see what options there are for improving journey times on that route given the constraints of the 10 minute DART and half-hourly DART service to/from Greystones. DART is the main business on the route out of Pearse, and I'm afraid that the Rosslare line will inevitably have to play second fiddle to it, as there simply isn't any space along the route for trains to overtake one another. Again I'm afraid I think that the gains from the increased DART service will far outweigh the losses from the Rosslare services.

The only realistic options I can see for developing the line would be additional trains south of Greystones. The lack of paths around Bray Head just makes scheduling the route really difficult.

At the moment, with funding at a premium and company finances in a precarious state, I suspect any new services at the moment will be where there is a more definite chance of developing significant business.

[Inniskeen]

Berneyarms - what is the compromise ? The timetable is shaped entirely around the requirements of a ten minute interval DART which despite the clever crafting of the timetable will probably prove impractical to deliver. A simple double track railway can support a frequent service of fast trains, a frequent service of slow trains or a modest frequency of fast and slow trains. I can see no overwhelming case for a high frequency DART service delivered at the cost of a further incremental degrading of Intercity and longer distance commuter services.

On the northern line DART carries less than 60% of passengers proceeding beyond East Wall Junction yet under this timetable will account for close to 80% of train movements. This percentage of traffic attributable to DART drops off rapidly so that by Raheny the proportion carried by DART is less than that on other services. The obvious pattern of service would appear to be a Belfast express followed immediately by an express suburban service to Malahide and beyond followed by a DART. This pattern could be repeated every 15 minutes with or without the Belfast and or fast commuter service.

The main issue with DART is the gratuitous over crowding of peak trains despite lines of idle rolling stock in Fairview. While there is an increase in frequency of southside peak services, the number of peak DART services on the northern line is unchanged although they are a bit better balanced.

[berneyarms]

Originally Posted by Inniskeen

Berneyarms - what is the compromise ? The timetable is shaped entirely around the requirements of a ten minute interval DART which despite the clever crafting of the timetable will probably prove impractical to deliver. A simple double track railway can support a frequent service of fast trains, a frequent service of slow trains or a modest frequency of fast and slow trains. I can see no overwhelming case for a high frequency DART service delivered at the cost of a further incremental degrading of Intercity and longer distance commuter services.

On the northern line DART carries less than 60% of passengers proceeding beyond East Wall Junction yet under this timetable will account for close to 80% of train movements. This percentage of traffic attributable to DART drops off rapidly so that by Raheny the proportion carried by DART is less than that on other services. The obvious pattern of service would appear to be a Belfast express followed immediately by an express suburban service to Malahide and beyond followed by a DART. This pattern could be repeated every 15 minutes with or without the Belfast and or fast commuter service.

The main issue with DART is the gratuitous over crowding of peak trains despite lines of idle rolling stock in Fairview. While there is an increase in frequency of southside peak services, the number of peak DART services on the northern line is unchanged although they are a bit better balanced.

Clearly the NTA feel that is how the railway to be developed - based around a high frequency DART service.

Surely the extra running time with the DART will help make the timetable more robust?

As I pointed out above - a significant number of northern line services aren't affected from a journey time perspective (and some are faster), which you conveniently seem to ignore in any of your posts, merely fixating on the last train from Belfast which really is not representative.

[Traincustomer]

With regard to the Rosslare line I think that people need to be realistic in their expectations.

While acknowledging the various constraints I think that IÉ & the NTA need to be more innovative and positive with regard to this line rather than an overwhelming focus on what cannot be done.

The compromise/trade off for the enhanced DART frequency is already significant and at least one measure to counteract this such as reduced car parking fees at certain stations (as one poster suggested in recent days) ought to be considered. There are links between certain pairs of towns which the line provides which are not available by other public transport (or are slow & not particularly user-friendly) and that is one area for modest development.

For the Rosslare line this proposed timetable is 95-99% “take” and negligible “give” (the only aspect of the proposed timetable that is likely to be well-received by the majority is that it is intended to defer the last train from the city to the slightly later time of 19.00).

[Inniskeen]

Originally Posted by berneyarms

Clearly the NTA feel that is how the railway to be developed - based around a high frequency DART service.

Surely the extra running time with the DART will help make the timetable more robust?

As I pointed out above - a significant number of northern line services aren't affected from a journey time perspective (and some are faster), which you conveniently seem to ignore in any of your posts, merely fixating on the last train from Belfast which really is not representative.

The policy of addressing poor operational performance with more and more timetable padding is certainly an approach that has been used time and again without any great measure of success. In fact DART journey times have been extended by about 25% since the service was introduced and is now 1hr-15min from Howth to Bray compared with an hour or slightly less in the 1980s (and yes I know there are two extra stations). This approach gobbles up track, station platforms, rolling stock and personnel, reduces capacity, creates congestion and does little or nothing to the make the service more attractive.

In what way am I fixated on the last train from Belfast ? I do certainly think it is pathetic that the two principal morning business trains from Belfast will have their schedules extended by 12 minutes and 15 minutes respectively when it is patently obvious that reduced journey times are critical if the service is to have any long term future. The 0615 from Belfast takes an utterly extraordinary 47 minutes non-stop from Drogheda, probably the slowest advertised regular "express" schedule on this section of the line since the 2nd world war. Frankly this is a farcical. The DART underground schedule will no doubt see this schedule extended to about an hour.

Also noticeable is that the token Irish Rail morning commuter service from Newry has been removed from the schedule - admittedly this is replaced by the 0615 from Belfast but unlike Dundalk, Newry doesn't get a new "express" service to replace the 0650 from Belfast.

As for passengers travelling beyond Greystones (not surprisingly a rapidly declining number) - they will experience journey time increases of between 6 and 18 minutes one way. Will this line still be open in 5 or 10 years time ?

On the Sligo line the service has been re-organised in such a way as to reduce the number of afternoon and evening trains from Dublin by a quarter. There are some accelerations, although as elsewhere there are significant journey time extensions including one of 18 minutes and another of 26 minutes.