Dublin - Metrolink (Swords to Charlemont only)

bk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121483936#Comment_121483936

Many Metro's are barrier free, including the Copenhagen Metro, which ML apparently is largely modelled off.

Anyway, the whole idea that barriers will stop anti-social behaviour is complete nonsense. The DART has barriers and still has plenty of anti-social behaviour happen on it. Same with buses.

It isn't like trouble makers won't just shoulder surf through an open barrier or force it open or hop over it. Of course they will.

I fear that this is one of these things that distracts from the real solution, which is proper security on our public transport and stations. Ideally a transport police service modelled after the British Transport Police.

This is the only solution to anti social behaviour on public transport, not a stupid barrier.

bk

BTW worth pointing out that there are major advantages to making MetroLink barrier free.

It helps with flow trough stations so a bottleneck doesn't form at the gates. This means you can build smaller stations as no need for lots of space for lots of ticket gates (typically need lots of width for this), which greatly helps with construction costs.

Also no cost to maintain gates, which can be substantial. Gates have complicated moving parts, while validators are much simpler. Also you can even greatly reduce the need for validators with app based ticketing, saving even more money.

The above savings would likely easily outweigh any lost fares.

Sam Russell

What could be the benefit of not having barriers?

Many Dart stations have removed barriers or have them open at all times. Is this an experiment?

Not much sign of Revenue Protection staff anywhere on public transport. Is this to save payroll, or lack of staff?

bk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121484205#Comment_121484205

Read my post above yours.

Loads of revenue protection staff on Luas. DART tends to have the revenue protection staff at the main city center stations, assuming that they get the majority of people at those locations.

Sam Russell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121484218#Comment_121484218

Well, I posted before I saw yours.

In Switzerland, the penalties for 'No Ticket' are horrendous, and the same in many jurisdictions in Europe - no excuses, or argument - just a big fine.,

If there are no barriers, then plenty of CCTV, and RP staff will be needed. When antisocial matters are under control, and revenue levels (and fare dodging) is at acceptable levels, then it will be OK for Dublin's ML passengers.

gjim

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121484205#Comment_121484205

Barriers impose a significant cost on 95% of users who are honest, while they don't do much to deter the other 5% who will jump barriers or tail-gate. They're costly to install and maintain pushing up the overall cost of providing PT and require significant extra complexity in station design for safety to ensure evacuations are possible, that crushes don't happen, etc. Barrier-free systems are far more accessible: no special facilities are required for disabled, elderly or even people struggling with kids, buggies, luggage, etc.. Nearly all tram systems are barrier free, many modern metro systems are as are many commuter and longer distance heavy rail systems. All public transport in Switzerland for example is barrier-free and lot's of existing systems are removing their barriers - Berlin, Prague are two cities that I've heard of who are removing barriers from existing systems.

Podge_irl

The penalty for no ticket in Switzerland is broadly similar to the Luas, albeit with no discount for immediate payment (they can, and usually if not always do, take payment right there also). However, ticket checking is incredibly infrequent.

gjim

Here's a story about Swiss fines - Aussie guy I know living in Zurich, decided that paying the (on average) once-a-month fine for not having a tram ticket was quite a bit cheaper than actually buying a monthly pass. So without any embarrassment he ponied up each time he was caught. Unfortunately, his scheme was undermined when they changed the system; the fine now increases by about 50% for every subsequent infraction.

spillit67

Barrier free is a disaster.

We won’t be like LA but we won’t be like Copenhagen either.

The DART is still far more safe than the LUAS. Where it is barrier free is a problem (mostly outside the city centre) but just by having barriers in the 2 out of 3 of the main city stations there is more security.

This will be the same old story of RPOs catching someone taking a chance whilst the trouble makers are left alone.

There was some discussion on cycling and planning for this. If that’s the case then policing has to be a planning condition. We need a full time transport police, at least 2 crews going up and down each line at any given time.

spillit67

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121484218#Comment_121484218

I doubt Irish Rail catch many. There isn’t the incentive there for Irish Rail. The service is a money pit and their PSO is not as rigorous. Both Pearse and Connolly are challenging to hop on without paying a fare regardless.

The LUAS system works well for its primary intention. It isn’t worth not paying the fare. It doesn’t work for stopping anti social behaviour though.

bk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121484374#Comment_121484374

I’m really not concerned about fare evasion. Keep in mind the Luas is the only profitable public transport system we have and it is completely open. So clearly this concept of free access but lots of ticket inspectors can work very well.

Sure you won’t catch everyone, but neither does a barrier, but the fines are high enough to both pay for the inspectors and typically cover the lost fares while helping keep most people honest. I don’t expect ML to be any different.

Add to that the tens of millions they can save by building similar stations and millions in yearly ongoing maintenance of barriers and it easily pays for itself.

BTW I’m very glad we are moving away with being obsessed with trying to catch every fare evader. It was such thinking that lead to Dublin Bus moving to the crappy single door controlled by the driver model. This lead to horrible dwell times, slow journey times and thus a terrible experience for the majority of honest passengers. Much better to focus on creating a great experience for the majority of fare paying passengers.

Make public transport attractive and it will attract far more passengers that will easily make up for any losses.

gjim

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121478234#Comment_121478234

It will never be usable with double decker buses, at least during peak/high frequency time.

You basically cannot avoid bus bunching on a frequent service when the dwell time grows with the number of passengers boarding and unboarding. This phenomena has been understood for decades and decades and plenty of peer-reviewed papers have been published on the subject.

It's not immediately intuitive so someone has implemented a visualisation to explain it - https://setosa.io/bus/ - click on the bus 1 or bus 2 label in the left panel for a second or two and then watch the inevitable result. The bus behind will start to catch up and as the gap between the buses narrows - even just a little bit - the bus in front inevitably ends up dealing with more passengers than the one behind. So the one in front slows while the one behind speeds up. A classic (bad) feed-back loop. This is a simplistic simulation of course, but the same result has been observed both empirically and with sophisticated simulation.

Because double decker dwell time - particularly with a single door entrance - is highly correlated with the number of passengers waiting to board or get off, these are the worst format for bunching. This is one of the reasons why most of the sane world only uses double deckers either as novelty city-tour type services or for long distances with very infrequent stops. Adding more doors can help but cannot overcome the inherent bottleneck of the one-way stairwell which has to be navigated by 75% of the passengers getting on and off.

If you want buses to be able to offer regular and reliable schedule along the entire route, then you simply have to minimise dwell time and make it independent of the number of passengers boarding as much as possible. So voluntary tag on/off, multiple doors and single deck only. There's a reason why double deckers have been abandoned as a city metro format globally since their heyday in the mid 20th century and it's not because the rest of the world is stupid and knows nothing about buses. BusConnects should have incorporated a long/medium term strategy to move off this obsolete format.

dublinman1990

Adding barriers to Metrolink would add a significant cost in both time and money to the project. It is also currently in the planning system already which means that if it ever was a consideration in the future; you could be waiting years to happen at this point. I don't think TII would actually consider adding barriers on every Metrolink station as they may not have the government funding required to fund the maintenance of these so called barriers in future.

However IMO; that is not the only reason why barriers won't be considered for Metrolink.

The preliminary design elements for every Metrolink platform is effectively setting Metrolink to not have barriers installed in the first place. Each Metrolink platform is set to a minimum length of 65m with 500 passengers per Metrolink vehicle. Each Metrolink vehicle is set at 64m. If that measurement is correct going from the plans written on the official Metrolink/NTA website; where it would be considered a safe location to actually install a Metrolink barrier at every station? It would be so restrictive to actually try and install them in every station to make them useful.

Look at the section called in this document

Other Characteristics – Differences between LR7 and MetroLink - Table 4

https://www.nationaltransport.ie/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/APPENDIX-O.pdf

I would like people here to tell me this the document that basically set up the application for Metrolink forward into the planning system at the moment. That would be very helpful to me if that were the case.

Size and space are two important factors when we are discussing the construction a project like this one so we can fully analyse it in the greatest detail possible.

If you are just installing additional barriers to force passengers to validate their leap cards/free travel passes upon arrival at a Metrolink station; they would also see barriers upon entry onto the Metrolink train itself when they are standing on the platforms.

You wouldn't want to make things too claustrophobic for people using it when push comes to shove in that respect. It would be a highly stupid exercise for having to install barriers when it could cause significant issues with health and safety legislation along with complying to targets for reducing our carbon emissions in PT as well.

Hotblack Desiato

TBH I think most, if not nearly all, of the people who like to complain about the Luas red line never use it. I'm not saying it doesn't happen but I've never seen any trouble on it even late at night.

bk

Yes the entire concept of Metrolink is built around barrier-less operation.

I don’t think people here realise just how relatively small, simple, compact and narrow the Metrolink stations will be. I think people are picturing some very big stations like some London Underground stations, that is definitely not the case with ML.

The concept of ML is that trains will be very frequent, every 3 minutes, even down to every 90 seconds. As a result, the idea is that people won’t spend much time in the station waiting and they don’t need much platform space.

Enter the station, down two flights of stairs and only wait a minute or two on the platform if that.

It will be a really fast flow of people into and out of the station, think more like Luas is.

Barriers would slow this flow down and would result in needing much larger stations, which of course would add tens of millions to the cost of the project.

Just look up the plans or artist renderings of the MetroLink stations and you will see how relatively small and simple they are. The cut and cover stations are particularly simple, just a single flight of stairs onto a simple semi open platform that isn’t much larger than a Luas platform.

BTW I was just watching an interesting video on the Copenhagen Metro, there you buy tickets either by their equivalent of Leap card, paper tickets from machine or via an app.

The app looked particularly well designed, it made it visually very easy to see how far you can travel on the zones selected. Obviously with tickets bought on the app, no need for gates, ticket machines or even validators, just carry your phone with you once you bought the ticket. Nice.

spillit67

I accept the design points but contend that is a failure in planning.

This is wishful thinking stuff.

Underground stations are going to be a magnet for anti social behaviour.

The LUAS and DART is night and day in terms of anti social elements. I say that as a regular user of both.

bk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121486032#Comment_121486032

You keep saying this, but personally I've seen more anti-social behaviour on the DART, then on the Luas!

What about the lady that was pushed under a DART?

You really want us to spend hundreds of millions more building much larger and more complicated stations?

Wouldn't it be better to spend that money on setting up a transport police service?

bk

Seriously folk should go watch this video of the Metrolink route and stations:

https://vimeo.com/726973697

You will see just how small and relatively simple the ML stations are. In particular the cut and cover and ground level ones. Just largely open platforms.

Interestingly the one big station is Glasnevin as it is actually a shared station with Irish Rail. You can see how much larger the above ground station is due to the need for a wide concourse for all the ticket gates for the DART, while next to it the ML is just two simple stairs!

Now imagine if you had to build large stations like Glasnevin at every other ML station location. Not only would it be much more expensive, but it would also be much more disruptive to the surrounding homes and thus at greater risk of complaints from NIMBY's and planning issues.

All that extra cost and trouble for a very misplaced idea.

spillit67

The LUAS is significantly worse in the city centre. Both on board and in the stations/stops.

I have not said that DB and IR don’t have anti social incidents- they absolutely do. On a like for like “reportable” incidents Irish Rail & Bus Éireann had 600 combined incidents last year vs. 1,000 on the LUAS.

The LUAS is also the one that has an active presence of more regular security to “cool things down” etc. Irish Rail do very little so things tend to escalate when they do happen.

Whatever about the stats though, there is no doubt about the difference in the city centre for both. I would even say Tara Street where barriers are often opened has a worse vibe than Connolly or Pearse- although the one difference is that the trouble makers want to move point to point within the city centre so it isn’t as much use to them.

I dread to think what more barrier free stations (particularly underground) will do to the city. I hope the stations are manned with security all day.

bk

I have not said that DB and IR don’t have anti social incidents- they absolutely do. On a like for like “reportable” incidents Irish Rail & Bus Éireann had 600 combined incidents last year vs. 1,000 on the LUAS.

Irish Rail had 272 complaints in the second quarter (three months) of this year alone, so your above number of 600 is wrong and very little difference with Luas.

https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/sharp-rise-in-anti-social-behaviour-on-irish-rail-services-1518375.html

The LUAS is also the one that has an active presence of more regular security to “cool things down” etc. Irish Rail do very little so things tend to escalate when they do happen.

So in other words you agree, barriers make little or no difference to issues of anit social behaviour, but security and ideally police do.

In other words, focus on the right thing, focus on investing in security and policing and not useless barriers.

Either way, the Railway order has been put in for MetroLink and it is barrier less, so that isn't going to change.

If you truly care about anti social issues on public transport, put your energy into contacting your local politicians to ask them to form and properly finance a transport police service.

spillit67

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121486421#Comment_121486421

Reports does not follow through to incidents or cases. You can have multiple reports.

https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-41180230.html

Nope- the rest is an incorrect inference. I believe barriers, RPOs and an active transport police make a difference. The LUAS has very efficient revenue collection and I don’t have an issue with that but the lack of barriers is a massive issue for ASB. The point on the LUAS was that there was still a high level of anti social behaviour despite the presence of security which is far more visible than IR. The LUAS likely needs 3x the current numbers to get the problem in any meaningful sense though.

I never said it is a fail safe but it is delusional to suggest that barriers in central areas do not make a difference on the levels of anti social behaviour. I take the LUAS and the DART daily. I might not feel as safe in a suburban location where IR don’t operate the barriers properly, but I absolutely feel safer in their city centre stations.

I think we can do more on the policing front but I am dubious about your costs assessments. If the cost is €500m we won’t be long in getting there with police and security manning stations and trains. I can appreciate the trade off on operational performance but I’d also point out that we are slightly undermining that by suggesting an unknown security cost going forward.

I think we’ll be closer to Copenhagen than a LA here but I think transit planners are fairly delusional if they think it will all be grand. Perhaps they did it just to get it through the CBA and in some ways I applaud that . This will 100% be a magnet for anti social behaviour in 10 years though.

prunudo

A train every 90 seconds really is phenomenonal when you think about it. The signalling, sensors and automation that make this happen will never truly be appreciated by the travelling public.

bk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121486787#Comment_121486787

Very simply, I think anyone who thinks barriers will do anything to stop anti social behaviour is delusional, to use your own words.

I've travelled on public transport all over Europe and I've seen tons of crime and ASB on "closed" systems.

Someone tried to pick pocket me (unsuccessfully) on the Metro in Prague back when it had gates.

I watched three teenagers steal from another persons backpack on the Paris Metro.

I watched two fights break out in the period of 15 minutes on the same Subway in New York!! (Really crazy experience!).

I've seen beggars and scam artists and "musicians" on Metro's all across Europe.

This were all "closed" systems and it never stopped the crime.

It doesn't matter if you have gates or not, you still need security and policing, it is only way to make it safer.

For feck sake, bus drivers are out there getting assaulted and you think the scum will care about a gate!

spillit67

There is simply no doubt that barriers reduce ASB.

I never said it was a fail safe.

The question as to how effective it is and the trade offs involved is debatable. I can absolutely see the argument against them, but I think it is a mistake in Dublin.

timmyntc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121487179#Comment_121487179

There is simply no doubt that barriers reduce ASB.

There clearly is doubt - I for one doubt it. Have you any evidence to back up your claim other than anecdotes?

Luas having more ASB than DART could be due to the fact that the Luas goes to more undesirable parts of Dublin for starters.

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121487179#Comment_121487179

Not one shred of viable evidence has been given for this supposition of yours

bk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121487386#Comment_121487386

Plus the Luas carries 48 million people per year while the DART carries just 20 million people. So talking in absolute numbers of incidents versus incidents per million trips doesn't make sense.

tom1ie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121486243#Comment_121486243

Just on this point- seen as Metrolink will carry so many people (if it’s ever built!!) is there room for expansion of the train lengths- ie more carriages, if we are building relatively small stations?

In other words on the day it opens, will metrolink be at or near capacity considering we are gonna have a much bigger population in Dublin- or is there a lot of spare capacity built into the system?

salmocab

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121487766#Comment_121487766

From memory the capacity can be increased just by increasing the amount of trains. So the max would be a train passing every 90 seconds but it won’t be starting at that. Probably every 3 minutes at the busiest period meaning they have room to double capacity.

CatInABox

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121487766#Comment_121487766

There's no way to extend the trains, that'd involve extending the platforms, either by mining out or by doing another cut and cover dig. Neither will be cheap or easy.

As salmocab has said, any capacity upgrade will be from running more trains on it, with the frequency moving from one every three minutes to one every 90 seconds. The frequency and capacity that's in the RO is 3 minutes, meaning one every 90 seconds would be a rough doubling of capacity.