Quote:
Originally Posted by dowlingm
Comparing the DART and the Branch is the height of ludicrousness. Boards.ie has been hopping this week about 4-car DARTs being used and them jammed to the rafters. Obviously providing that capacity means offpeak and so on there will be some light loads but at least the train is packed to the gills at some parts of the day. The Nenagh branch needs there to be an All Ireland championship game in Croke Park involving Tipp about five times a week to make money.
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Not remotely convinced of the necessity of running 8 car DARTs off peak especially at night when these monster trains rattle around for the most part with barely a handfull of passengers. While four car DARTs at peak periods can be fairly stuffed the level of overcrowding is typically less than Maynooth and northern line commuter services. Personally I suspect the real reason for the short formation DARTs is that IR have mothballed additional units in recent months to join the Spanish sets which haven't run for years.
While the comparison with the branch may be a bit tongue in cheek, the fact is that there are plenty of DART sets running round with hundreds of spare seats particularly at night while perversely 4-car sets appear almost exclusively at busier times. Also, like it or not, there are probably less than a half dozen peak period DART workings daily which require anything approaching the design capacity of an eight car japanese set and even then mostly between Connoly and Tara Street only.