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Unread 03-12-2015, 00:41   #47
berneyarms
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Join Date: Aug 2013
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Inniskeen View Post
While I am an Enterprise user, I also use DART and commuter services, the latter two more frequently than the Enterprise. Indeed a lot of my use of the Enterprise is to avoid the depressingly slow commuter trains which like the Enterprise have been subjected to significant cumulative journey time increases over successive timetable iterations.

At almost any time of the day, I can drive from my house to the city centre in about the same time as the Enterprise would currently take. In the morning I can leave home, by car, 15 to 20 minutes behind a commuter service and arrive in Sydney Parade at least 10 minutes before it shows up. So even point to point journey times are uncompetitive, let alone those that involve a change of train or change of mode. Add to that the significant delays that occur to morning or evening services multiple times a week and you have an offering which is of diminishing appeal especially to longer distance commuters. If you drive up the M1 at almost any time of the day it is buzzing and clearly the railway has lost very significant market share not just to motorists but also to express bus operators.

As for the proposed timetable, it is a credit to the architect in that a considerable effort has been made to produce something that might just be operationally deliverable. The poor signalling and track layout at Malahide, contention at Howth Junction, the lack of an up loop at Clongriffin and even tighter working between Bray and Greystones may well conspire to produce a significantly poorer operating performance than at present. There may well be six DARTs an hour but they will probably turn up in bunches. Alternatively Greystones passengers may find there train held in Bray to take up the path of the following service.

You suggest that this new timetable is effectively an attempt to reverse the long term decline in DART usage. It may do that to some modest degree although I suspect that any gains will be offset by a decline in the usage of other services which, with a few exceptions, have been significantly downgraded.

The issue brought into stark focus by this proposed timetable essentially boils down to whether it makes more sense to impose a journey time penalty of anything up to 20 minutes for passengers travelling to/from stations north of Malahide to facilitate a disproportionate number of comparatively lightly used off peak DARTs. North of Connolly DART accounts for something close to 55% of passengers during the course of a normal working day but already gobbles up 66% of the operating slots. Under this proposal at least 75% of northern line slots will be taken by DART.

The hopelessly uncompetitive journey times to stations south of Greystones means that this line will struggle to maintain even marginal relevance in the medium to long term. The minimal usage figures for stations like Wicklow, Arklow, Gorey and Enniscorthy set out in the 2014 NTA census are stark and depressing . The near empty car parks tell the same story. The same fate would now appear to await the northern line as Irish Rail seeks to implement tram style services on an inflexible and inadequate infrastructure.

And yes there will always be people who don't like a particular change to the timetable, but it is very rare to so significantly degrade one class of user in favour of another unless you are a commercial operator seeking to maximise revenue - this timetable most assuredly won't do that as the higher fare paying passengers are those most likely to walk given that the average DART journey is no more than 9 km !
I find it difficult to believe that, unless you use the port tunnel, that you could get from either Drogheda or Dundalk (I'm assuming that it is one of those two stations) to Dublin City Centre in the same time at peak periods as the Enterprise?

But we have to face a reality here with the lines out of Connolly. Unless major infrastructural works are done on the Northern line, in other words four tracking for at least some of the line out of Connolly, and an "up" loop at Clongriffin, sharing track space between a high frequency commuter train and other suburban and Intercity services is going to need compromises.

The railway is competing against a high grade motorway, and once that was built, competition from express buses (be they Bus Eireann or private) was inevitable. I personally think people need to stop lobbying for the railway to be put back onto a level playing pitch, and for those infrastructure works that I mentioned above to happen so that the Northern line can become a truly competitive alternative to the motorway.

However, I still firmly believe that the 10 minute DART service is something that is needed and should go ahead. It will make a difference to user numbers, (and I think it will be more than modest) as it will truly be a turn up and go service, and will finally deliver a consistent service to Howth and Malahide which as we have seen here has not been the case heretofore.

I also think you are being very selective in your choice of timing differences on the Northern line. It's very easy to pick extremes, which are in fact very small in number and which mainly aren't at busy times.

Here are the statistics:

Northern line suburban services - northbound from Connolly:
Out of 25 northern line suburban services, 6 are faster by 1-5 minutes, 7 take exactly the same amount of time, 9 are 1-5 minutes slower, and 3 are 10-12 minutes slower from Connolly.

Northern line suburban services - southbound from Connolly:
Out of 28 northern line suburban services (I'm including the current morning relief service from Dundalk), 11 are faster by 1-4 minutes, 2 are the same, 9 are slower by 1-5 minutes, four by 6-7 minutes, and 1 slower by 11 minutes.

Belfast line northbound:
Out of 8 trains, 3 take the same time as before, 4 are 2-6 minutes slower, and one is 10 minutes slower.

Belfast line southbound:
Out of 8 trains, 5 are 2-6 minutes slower, and the other three are 12, 15 and 18 minutes slower (the latter being the last train southbound which has the lowest usage of the lot, so maybe not the best one to be quoting).

While I agree that having any trains taking longer is not good, it is far from being the absolute disaster you are making it out to be.

You're quite right to say that the timetable designer has gone to significant efforts to make this as effective as possible operationally, and I would hope with the slightly extended running times on DART that this will contribute to the timetable being more robust in practice.

With regard to the Rosslare line I think that people need to be realistic in their expectations. The line was never built as a high speed line, and the development of the M11 motorway has meant that inevitably the railway was going to suffer from a journey time perspective. It just cannot compete on time any more.

The introduction of the half-hourly DART to/from Greystones, something that locals campaigned for, means that the Rosslare trains have only two windows each hour to go around Bray Head, and the 10 minute DART service will inevitably lengthen times. The two paths each hour around Bray Head really are the main limiting factors as they dictate when trains reach crossing loops south of Bray and this can also mean longer waits at those points.

I don't really see what options there are for improving journey times on that route given the constraints of the 10 minute DART and half-hourly DART service to/from Greystones. DART is the main business on the route out of Pearse, and I'm afraid that the Rosslare line will inevitably have to play second fiddle to it, as there simply isn't any space along the route for trains to overtake one another. Again I'm afraid I think that the gains from the increased DART service will far outweigh the losses from the Rosslare services.

The only realistic options I can see for developing the line would be additional trains south of Greystones. The lack of paths around Bray Head just makes scheduling the route really difficult.

At the moment, with funding at a premium and company finances in a precarious state, I suspect any new services at the moment will be where there is a more definite chance of developing significant business.
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