Quote:
Originally Posted by Inniskeen
Am I mistaken in thinking that there are actually two four car DARTs one after the other northbound from Connolly, at 1747 and 1754, the first relatively lightly loaded and the second heavily overcrowded. Assumming that "all carriages are in use" at this time, would it not make sense to combine the two trains into an 8 car set and run this to Malahide. This would reduce overcrowding a little as well as reducing congestion.
|
It's a little more crazy than that, this is the way it normally is
17:24 Malahide (6 cars)
17:28 Howth (6 cars)
17:39 Howth (4 cars)
17:47 Howth (6 cars)
17:54 Malahide (4 cars)
18:08 Howth (4 cars)
18:27 Howth (6 cars)
18:42 Malahide (4 cars)
18:53 Howth (6 cars)
19:08 Malahide (8 cars)
The laughable thing is after the 17:54 which you can't always board there is the biggest gap of peak of 48 minutes and when a train does eventually come it's 4 cars and just as overcrowded as the previous 4 car train. Then the next train has the shortest gap of the whole of peak on the branch (26 minutes) and it has the same capacity of the previous two trains combined when it's not needed.
Lets not mention the fact pretty much all of those Howth trains would struggle to fill two carriages after Howth Junction whilst after Howth Junction the Malahide DARTs are absolutely jammed, still. A couple of times I have seen people unable to board a train to Malahide at Howth Junction because it's still full. Thankfully that has not happened since the summer though.
This is why the 17:54 and 18:42 trains always are at least 5 minutes late and mostly nearer 10 and always delays the commuters behind because of the awful dwell times.