Timetable consultation for DART/commuter 2016 now online

[KSW]

The people along the Rosslare line it's about high time they had a decent service like every service on the network has probably a train every two hours. This line has really gone to the dogs.its getting worse and worse as the years go by. I don't know who is in management in IE but get into the times we do not want a steam like service taking 2 hrs just to reach Gorey even saying that times back then were quicker. Especially on Sunday's trains I remember took 1hr28min nowadays it's gone beyond a fare and time joke. As a train lover but I will not pay nearly €10 extra just from the city to Gorey for an extra 30 minute time journey with less train IE provide. Get into the times and fight back all your lost customers

[Inniskeen]

As far as I can see Irish Rail have little or no interest in this route and indeed some in the company would close the line if they thought they would get away with it. They will happily degrade the service and then start whining that it would be cheaper to pay for taxies for the remaining few passengers who refuse to go away. Step 1 to make the service effectively irrelevant is well in train !

The NTA appear to be on board with the "nothing can be done" strategy and parrot the same bull that suggests that the issue is the single track and the slow route south of Greystones rather than the half hourly service between Bray and Greystones and the pedestrian DART operation north of Bray.

[Thomas J Stamp]

what are the current DART lengths? Are they bigger fir runsh hours? Any additional cars being proposed in the new timetable?

[Inniskeen]

I imagine that DART train sets will be smaller in the new timetable given that at least four more sets will be required to operate it. This will have some interesting consequences. I would guess that most if not all peak northbound trains from Bray & Greystones will be four car formations !

[Dublin13]

Originally Posted by Thomas J Stamp

what are the current DART lengths? Are they bigger fir runsh hours? Any additional cars being proposed in the new timetable?

Most of the Northbound trains in the second half of evening peak are four carriages with the southbound being 6-8

Ex:
The 17:58 and 18:42 from Clontarf to Malahide are four cars, even though they are the only Malahide Darts between 17:30 and 19:00. People can be unable to board them and they are still like sardines after Howth Junction.

Between 17:32 and 18:31 there are five Howth Darts which are between 4-6 cars which generally have a good amount of room and barely have enough passengers to fill one carriage after Howth Junction.

The new timetable should fix that capacity and frequency imbalance.

[Thomas J Stamp]

i wonder if some best laid plans have gone astray somewhere. wasnt there a tender put out for rolling stock for the DART underground? maybe that is still going ahead in part and there may be more realistic stocking levels. would people prefer shorter more frequent trains or 8 car sets slightly less frequently?

[James Howard]

Surely with the new timetable having longer running times, all else being equal there will be less seats overall with the same amount of stock in service. It would obviously be better to have 6 4-car trains over an hour rather than 4 6-car trains.

But there must be spare DART cars around given that they reduced the capacity a couple of years ago without changing the timetable. Or have Irish Rail done the usual and left them to rot?

[Thomas J Stamp]

this is my point (and I have to admit I'm not really up to speed on the DART as I barely ever use it) - the platforms were all extended to accommodate 8 car sets operating at a fairly decent frequency. When they reduced this to 4 cars only about 2 or three years back they didn't increase the frequency by 2 (nor are they now..... from 00,15,30,45 to 00,10,20,30,40,50 ) so there ought to be stock floating around. I often hear people talking about how much is lying about in Clontarf and I often see DARTs in inchicore on my way into dublin.

[berneyarms]

Originally Posted by James Howard

Surely with the new timetable having longer running times, all else being equal there will be less seats overall with the same amount of stock in service. It would obviously be better to have 6 4-car trains over an hour rather than 4 6-car trains.

But there must be spare DART cars around given that they reduced the capacity a couple of years ago without changing the timetable. Or have Irish Rail done the usual and left them to rot?

Not all of the DART sets are in service every day - they rotate them around (with the exception of the Alsthom sets which are out of service).

This proposal will see more sets in use every day as the NTA are providing funding to allow for this.

[Inniskeen]

Originally Posted by James Howard

Surely with the new timetable having longer running times, all else being equal there will be less seats overall with the same amount of stock in service. It would obviously be better to have 6 4-car trains over an hour rather than 4 6-car trains.

But something like €170m was spent extending platforms to accommodate 8-car DARTs on the basis that the only practical way to increase capacity was to increase train size. Now it has been decided that that strategy was wrong and a frequent service of smaller slower DARTs on a deficient infrastructure is going to do the business. The impact on other services is deemed to be irrelevant. The proposed timetable is a bit like having a motorway with one carriageway per direction and insisting that all traffic must follow an ass and cart.