Irish Rail September Timetable Changes

Euppy

Someone earlier was asking about the clongriffin passing loop. The northbound drogheda train im on has just overtaken a malahide dart that left connolly roughly 7mins earlier.

LEIN

Any mumblings from the level crossings yet?

gimli2112

It's working for me going home but only because the scheduled dart's been 2-3 minutes late. The one after it was 17 minutes behind today for some reason.

LEIN

Smooth morning and a disaster coming home.

DART to Greystones arrived 11 minutes late to Bray, changing drivers had a chat that was close to 2 minutes before moving and end up 13 minutes late into Greystones. How and why this is acceptable, I will never know.

Franz Von Peppercorn

Worked well in both directions today for me. Although it was probably past rush hour proper when I was going home. Nice to turn up and expect a train within a few minutes.

Chris_5339762

loyatemu wrote: »

there's room for a a loop on the Greystones side of the long tunnel. They could also (at greater cost/disruption) double the whole way between the tunnel and Greystones station, there's space but it would be a big job as they'd have to widen cuttings and embankments and replace a few bridges.

Doubling the whole section between Bray and Greystones - I'd imagine they'd have to dig an entirely new tunnel almost the full length of the hill, so crazy money and not justifiable at current population levels.

I think it'll just simply have to be done eventually. That one track section on the main interurban (we can call it that) and commuter route to the south of Dublin is just absurd, nice as the views are along it and a testament to the Victorian engineers that built it.



We need to seriously ramp up rail investment in this country. A new two way tunnel from Bray to Greystones will have to be done. The other thing that needs to be done ASAP is the removal of any single track sections to Galway because they are ridiculous, but thats for another thread.


Also DART Underground. Now.

thomasj

Apparently (according to twitter) last night's cancelled DART to malahide hasn't shown up again tonight , but the RTI apps and the station board is acting as if it's running and has shown up.

Meanwhile there is also a DART being used for culture night tonight .

A lot of tweets about it.

Infini

thomasj wrote: »

Apparently (according to twitter) last night's cancelled DART to malahide hasn't shown up again tonight , but the RTI apps and the station board is acting as if it's running and has shown up.

Meanwhile there is also a DART being used for culture night tonight .

A lot of tweets about it.

3 Trains didnt run from what I could see. Likely no available drivers to drive them.

thomasj

Infini wrote:

3 Trains didnt run from what I could see. Likely no available drivers to drive them.

And not a word from Irish rail about these cancellations today?

faceman

LEIN wrote: »

Any mumblings from the level crossings yet?

Was wondering this too. Any word on whether it’s even more painful for motorists?

Marty Bird

I’ve said this before the Greystones/Bray section only needs a shuttle service up and down to the bay for Darts and connect with services in Bray.

LEIN

Marty Bird wrote: »

I’ve said this before the Greystones/Bray section only needs a shuttle service up and down to the bay for Darts and connect with services in Bray.

Do you use DART between Greystones and Bray during rush hour?

Marty Bird

LEIN wrote: »

Do you use DART between Greystones and Bray during rush hour?

I have done yes.

LEIN

Marty Bird wrote: »

I have done yes.

Not regularly because what you are suggesting is madness. I've been on 8 car DARTs without a seat to be found leaving Greystones. It sounds like a logistical nightmare to me. It's a fairly busy service. The shuttle days are very far in the past at this stage.

Use the service at both ends of the day and see if your opinion remains the same.

XPS_Zero

bk wrote: »

I think the problem is too many people living in Dublin still think of it as a town, rather then a medium sized European capital city of 1.5 million people (metro).

I think most people don't realise how big Dublin has really gotten and don't realise that similar sized European cities would have 3 or 4 Metro lines and extensive tram networks. So they don't really know to shout for it, even though they are suffering every day during their commute into work. They don't know that it can be better.

That is why I think it is so important to get Metrolink built. I think it will completely change peoples thinking about infrastructure like this and lead to calls for more. Just like we saw we Luas was first built.

I think this is why we need policy wonks inside politics pushing for it as well. You're right I don't think people understand just how big a difference DU and Metro would make they don't take the time/have the time to study their maps and all the powerpoints put up on the TII or NTA or IE sites, normal people don't look at that stuff they rely on the media to explain it - and all the Irish media do about such projects is p1ss and moan.

Given that we need to be pushing from the inside too I'm doing just that - I'm strongly considering starting a "JUST F----G BUILD IT!" campaign.

n97 mini

bk wrote: »

I think the problem is too many people living in Dublin still think of it as a town, rather then a medium sized European capital city of 1.5 million people (metro).

It is a town. You can walk from one end of the core (Stephen's Green) to the other (Parnell St) in 30 minutes. Most of the rest of it is vast swathes of 3-bed 2-storey houses. Very few of the suburbs have anything of attraction in their own right. Most are housing estates with a single pub (usually owned by Charlie Chawke or Louis Fitzgerald), a Chinese takeaway, a Spar etc. The exceptions are few and far between... Ranelagh, Rathmines, and a few places on the coast.

Rashers72

thomasj wrote: »

And not a word from Irish rail about these cancellations today?

I imagine that was just a simple communications breakdown within Irish Rail. There are > 300 tweets sent mentioning Irish Rail today, and I would say 95% were complaining about the new timetable, so whomever was managing the IE Twitter account was under huge pressure and is only getting out responses to a small % of the questions posed. That person has been incredibly let down by overall/Corporate communication which was way too high level, given the depth of the changes. Significant service cuts on the Northern Suburban line at the weekends, and off-peak M-F, and most journeys now take longer (up to 40%), but they were barely mentioned in the press release. Very poor IMO.

XPS_Zero

Euppy wrote: »

Someone earlier was asking about the clongriffin passing loop. The northbound drogheda train im on has just overtaken a malahide dart that left connolly roughly 7mins earlier.

They are using this a lot, my DART on day 2 used it to let the Enterprise overtake us.

Chris_5339762 wrote: »

I think it'll just simply have to be done eventually. That one track section on the main interurban (we can call it that) and commuter route to the south of Dublin is just absurd, nice as the views are along it and a testament to the Victorian engineers that built it.

Since Brexit is mean to hurt us economically disproportionate to any other EU state, there is serious talk of ROI and NI keeping the regional devopment funds and other stuff we became net contributors to years ago. If we get these funds it should almost all be earmarked for finishing T21. It would be a HUGE stimulus package to the country for most of a decade during which (if my predictions, and the rumbling tea leaves are right) we will be facing into the aftermath of another banking crash and recession (FYI nothing signifigant changed in Europe or USA since the last one, a few rules were put in place, the ones in the US are now mostly gone again). It will keep people working and boost the economy during the down period.

Last time the problem was a property bubble popping then within a year a global financial crash starting in the UK and USA coming on top of it that decimated our tax base. This time it's going to be another financial crash (which will probably be a worse one if I'm honest) on top of the Brexit aftermath. So were going to be facing hard choices

BUT you can always always always afford something it's just a matter of priority: If we have a govt that once again puts short term political ambitions (ie cooling public anger at cuts) and reelection ahead of long term strategic goals in terms of their spending commitments and they delay or scale back these plans again then we will end the next recession a quarter century behind Western Europe in public transport and never catch up.

This will have a knock on effect with tourism or business and hurt our revenue MORE in the long term. One of the reasons I break my usual loathing of boards and social media for this forum is to inform the transport anoraks of the political issues controlling the fate of such projects, cos I see many of you think it has nothing to do with it, but all the forces deciding if they do or don't happen are political and electoral.

I'm surprised more has not been made of what business leaders looking to have their companies flee the BriTTanic before it sinks post brexit have said about Dublin.
It has not been widely reported (because even though the Irish media love to moan about everything, they seem to always wanna talk up how people outside see Irelands economy, a bizzare exception) but we were expecting a major influx of business... European HQ's from London, loads of high earning white collar jobs that would not only = spending money around those businesses feeding smaller businesses but boost our tax revenue...so what happened? Financial firms (HQs thankfully, not more banks to bail out) were the big one expected to move as they lose passporting rights when the UK leaves the EU. We did get some, BUT most went to Paris or Brussels. What was the two things cited by the CEO's of these companies? :


1. Dublin going OUT not UP, our allergy to high rise and weird obsession with having a garden = 2-3 hour commutes for their staff which none of them had the slighest interest in when cities with lighting fast undergrounds, BRT's and high apart buildings on the menu as competition. If you are asking staff to relocate it's hard enough, but asking them to ditch London with a tube every 3 minutes at rush hour for a drive from the exurbs in your car or on a bus that takes forever is asking too much.

2. Our shoddy public transport system, behind closed doors but even sometimes in the media, I've heard quotes from them like (paraphrasing) "it's something you'd expect from the 1970s", "why did you connect the Luas overground instead of underground... on the road mixed with busses instead of cars? I could overtake it with a brisk walk when I visited Dublin" and our bus network was seen as incredibly confusing, slow and inefficient, but at least were doing something about that now.

We need to really really wake up to this were falling behind losing oppertunites. Their big short term thinking excuse during the crash was "ah were borrowing enough to bail out the banks and keep the current budget afloat we can't borrow more for that", but the whole point of an investment is you get more money long term. Even with free tutition college is expensive (accomidation, laptops, food, travel) but it's an investment because you will earn 1m more over your lifetime with a degree than without, they don't seem to get this. How much revenue did we lose because those businesses went to Paris and Brussels instead of Dublin, how many builders and engineers who we could have retained working on T21 ended up going to Canada and Aus never to return? How many service jobs in Spars and Centras along the route were eliminated or set to useless zero hour contracts because those builders and engineers etc were not in and out buying drinks, getting lunches etc
But it's ok...cos we saved f----g AIB...and they're making us a fortune right? nope....

It was an enormous strategic blunder. I was actually told by someone in the party recently that Bertie announced a huge T21 extension at the party confrence before the 2007 election without discussing it with the cabinet first. The Taoiseach is basically the boss but usually major things like that would get discussed at a cabinet meeting because, in theory at least, the govt "meets and acts as a collective entity" as per the constitution, in reality if the boss wants something bad enough he/she could say "this is happening, so approve it 'collectively'". He was afraid they'd drag their heels and say no that's not how we win nobody cares about that stuff, we need to announce more tax cuts, more welfare hikes, more of the usual stuff we buy votes with in this country.
They were very worried about it because the polls were iffy and he hadn't yet said his money wasn't dodgy he was just hiding it from his wife in divorce proceedings! (cos that's WAY better Bertie! :rolleyes:). He thought the public had seen how well the Luas was going so would love more big infrastructure projects. Everyone had whinged and p1ssed and moaned about the Port Tunnel a year before but then when it was done they all loved it. So he just announced it and it ironically may have helped them win the election....an election in retrospect they'd have been way better off losing as the crash would have been blamed on FG-Lab then


All the stuff were living with, these mini-projects trying to tinker with this, it's all blowback from the decision not to finish this plan. Even now people are not saying "great were finally doing it" they're saying "but my local pitch!!!! MY LOCAL PITCH"...these very same people will be complaining about traffic and squished DARTs etc the very next day. We need to break out of this jigsaw mindset of only thinking about our local bit and we need to demand these kind of projects.

I've noticed that the public has seen them announced, in one form or another, so many times now with nothing happening they've grown bitter and cynical about it, and it's part of whats poisoning peoples reaction to BusConnects. They are treating BusConnects like DU and the talk of the DART to Drougheda, they think "sure....I'll loose my own route and yeh...a better service my ass....".

If we don't sort the core of this problem out and finish T21 it's going to start doing more than annoying morning commuters it's going to start doing serious economic damage to the country.

Marty Bird

LEIN wrote: »

Not regularly because what you are suggesting is madness. I've been on 8 car DARTs without a seat to be found leaving Greystones. It sounds like a logistical nightmare to me. It's a fairly busy service. The shuttle days are very far in the past at this stage.

Use the service at both ends of the day and see if your opinion remains the same.

I have stood on Darts for 90% of the time of my travels during rush hour. Have you ever commuted on the London Underground? I have for years and having a seat has never been a problem.

Franz Von Peppercorn

Marty Bird wrote: »

I have stood on Darts for 90% of the time of my travels during rush hour. Have you ever commuted on the London Underground? I have for years and having a seat has never been a problem.

?

You’re saying that getting a seat is easy on the London Underground or that not having one is ok?

Infini

In all honesty the transport network does need to be overhauled expecially the rail network. It was left to rot for a decade because of the recession the heavy rail network is no better than a century ago. Said it before, the politicians treat Rail as the bastard child of transport, they balk at the costs and dont think at the longer term or the capacity that could be gained. A number of things could change this but they need to seriously overhaul several parts of the network including:

1) Building DU, no excuses. going underground and splitting the Dart into 2 lines works in the long run. Having everyone change at Pearse is more efficient than ramming everything through Connolly. Also no need for seperate Hazelhatch-GCD services through the loop.
2) Close all the southside level crossings in Dublin CC, Build the bridge at merrion, CPO the houses and tell the residents to put up or shut up it needs to be done.
3) Triple or Quad track the Northern Line to allow Darts and intercity/commuter to be able to run seperate from one another.
4) Build a heavy rail spur to the airport/swords from Clongriffin. Use that station as an interchange with intercity or commuter services to allow fast access to the city. Would be most effective with the triple/quad tracking of the Northern Line.
5) Build the Line from M3 to Navan, Redesign it to link to the existing Navan line and expand it into a long range loop line. Plan towns along that said line and you help take housing pressure off Dublin and at the same time have a good link into Dublin.
6) Doubletrack the Bray to Greystones line and doubletrack down to at least as far as Wicklow. Help grow those towns with houses and a fast link into Dublin or at least a regular service up to Bray with an interchange to the Dart there.
7) Metro should not be a "light rail +" project it should be a heavy rail system using DARTs. It can be it's own route but it should be connected to the existing heavy rail to allow transfer of rolling stock as needed.

Zebra3

bk wrote: »

I think the problem is too many people living in Dublin still think of it as a town, rather then a medium sized European capital city of 1.5 million people (metro).

I think most people don't realise how big Dublin has really gotten and don't realise that similar sized European cities would have 3 or 4 Metro lines and extensive tram networks. So they don't really know to shout for it, even though they are suffering every day during their commute into work. They don't know that it can be better.

That is why I think it is so important to get Metrolink built. I think it will completely change peoples thinking about infrastructure like this and lead to calls for more. Just like we saw we Luas was first built.

I think building up will have more of an effect on changing people’s perceptions of Dublin.

Putting up a cluster of 20 storey towers would change how people see the city, IMO.

LEIN

Marty Bird wrote: »

I have stood on Darts for 90% of the time of my travels during rush hour. Have you ever commuted on the London Underground? I have for years and having a seat has never been a problem.

My point was, the level of use, not trying to find a seat.

LEIN

Problems in Shankill this morning, failed set taken out of service.
More cancelled services this pm, I reckon.

Atlantic Dawn

What kind of timeline are you talking if you wanted to order more DART carriages? Is it years or months from ordering until they are ready? Would Irish Rail even have enough room to store them?

LEIN

https://twitter.com/IrishRail/status/1039762266114150400?s=19

devnull

Odd happenings on early darts from bray this morning. Apparently they're running up to the platform on time and departing very late?

L1011

Atlantic Dawn wrote: »

What kind of timeline are you talking if you wanted to order more DART carriages? Is it years or months from ordering until they are ready? Would Irish Rail even have enough room to store them?

Years. Tender process could be 6 months easily on its own

gimli2112

LEIN wrote: »

Problems in Shankill this morning, failed set taken out of service.
More cancelled services this pm, I reckon.

Yea I was waiting on it, couple of announcements simply saying expect delays, crowds building up on platform, staring forlornly down the track. Decided to work from home and suffer the consequences from my employer.

Marty Bird

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote: »

?

You’re saying that getting a seat is easy on the London Underground or that not having one is ok?

That should have read getting a seat was a problem but that was just life on a rush hour commute.