[14-12-2005] DART disruption morning

[sean]

http://www.rte.ie/news/2005/1214/dart.html

No service North of Killester.

[Mark Gleeson]

Services restored roughly 8:30 however total absence of southbound DART services no hassle send 3 8 car railcars one after another though just to really mess things up

The incident as always is beyond IE's control that said they made a right balls of recovering from it. Of course they won't tell us what the incident was and as always "No Current Travel Alerts" on the IE site RTE managed it, the AA managed it but not the company running the service in the first place

This is third day of chaos since last Thursday, no sign of any explanation, no sign of management who are too chicken to come out of hidding. The Heuston crew come out but Connolly don't, I don't bite:eek:

[Mark Gleeson]

Finally the truth
Services disrupted after death on Dublin's DART line
09:20 Wednesday December 14th 2005

Commuters rail services in Dublin have been disrupted this morning following a death on the line near Harmonstown DART station.

All DART services north of Killester were suspended for around an hour after a person was hit by a train close to Harmonstown shortly before 8am.

The services have since resumed, but Iarnrod Eireann has warned that it will be some time before they are back on schedule.

Commuter rail services to Drogheda and the Enterprise trains to Belfast have also been affected by the incident.

http://www.unison.ie/breakingnews/index.php3?ca=9&si=83855
© Unison.ie 2005

[TomB]

What got on my nerves was they were terminating northbound DARTs at Connolly -- surely they could have turned some of them round to serve all stations to Bray? As Mark has pointed out, there were 29000 sets running south but no DARTs at all between 8:30 and 9, when I'm sure there were loads of sets hanging around somewhere north of Connolly.

I have been DARTing to work this month (Salthill/Monkstown) and it hasn't been a happy experience so far...

Obviously it's a tragedy about the death on the line though...

[PaulM]

So while the 'incident' was completely out of IEs hands, they have once again showed their contempt for the average customer by doing little to inform or accomodate (south side) them.

[James Shields]

I was relatively lucky to make it to work only an hour late. I agree the incident was out of IE's control, but how they manage it is completly within their power.

I don't understand why DARTS were all terminated at Connolly. Why not Clontarf Road or even Killester? And why couldn't they then turn around and continue to provide a southbound service?

Drogheda services seem to have been mostly terminating at Howth Junction, which is fair enough, but from what I hear, passengers were given no informatoin on how to get to work from there. I think more could be done to provide a replacement bus service. When Luas has had breakdowns, they've managed to get DB to provide a replacement service. Why can't IE, part of the same company, do the same?

[PaulM]

I don't understand why DARTS were all terminated at Connolly. Why not Clontarf Road or even Killester? And why couldn't they then turn around and continue to provide a southbound service?

Because this is IE.


Drogheda services seem to have been mostly terminating at Howth Junction, which is fair enough, but from what I hear, passengers were given no informatoin on how to get to work from there. I think more could be done to provide a replacement bus service. When Luas has had breakdowns, they've managed to get DB to provide a replacement service. Why can't IE, part of the same company, do the same?

Because this is IE.

You seem to think we are talking about a well run company with a good business strategy here. This is 'jobsworth' land where they can do what they like as customers are people who get in the way of breaks.

[Mark Gleeson]

Normally you don't need to turn the power off so in this case services could have been maintained Bray Killester using the new crossovers put in as part of the DASH project at Clontarf

Northside no reason why services could not have been maintained to Killbarrack

Its unreasonable to expect a fleet of buses on standby to go on the off chance given the rush hour there is no practical way such a fleet could be deployed in time regardless to the trouble spot. The one useful fact is we know Dublin Bus will honour rail tickets when things go wrong on Luas its not so clear. If the issue is long running (remember the Barrow Street crane) or several hours warning a fleet of buses can be obtained and staffed, this has been done in the past

The real issue with IE is the inability to make a quick decision on what to do.

Say we have a bridge strike in Grand Canal Dock, as we do every other week a DART is then stuck in Pearse and Lansdowne for 30-40 miniutes and a long queue forming behind, the logical approach would be to quickly (less than 10 minutes) make the decision to terminate services and to send trains back as this keeps services moving, ok its not so good if you have to get off but it minimises the disruption as soon as services are restored. The current approach stacks trains up so that when things get moving there is a huge gap