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Unread 24-12-2015, 12:23   #36
James Howard
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Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: Sligo Line
Posts: 1,115
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The real problem with dedicated express paths is that Irish Rail seem to be so lackadaisical in general about keeping to a timetable. There really is no reason with the chronically unambitious timetable that trains shouldn't run to time. Yet of the three trains I get regularly, the morning train is almost always 2 or 3 minutes late at Edgeworthstown and the 1905 is almost never less than 10 minutes late arriving at Edgeworthstown.

A few minutes late arriving at Maynooth makes a mockery of any kind of dedicated express pathways and then this knocks on into the rest of the timetable because the next train leaving Maynooth has to cross onto the northern line out of its slot thus knocking the entire system's timetable out of whack. When you couple this with the almost daily Enterprise breakdowns, it's a wonder anybody gets anywhere by rail any more.

There is an excuse every time, "poor rail adhesion", fog, operational matters, numpty hitting level crossing, but it appears to be simply impossible to have a train that runs within 5 minutes of timetable despite having average end-to-end average speeds of around 60kph. Whether it's poor industrial relations, bad morale or bad management - for whatever reason nobody seems to care enough to put a bit of effort into making up lost time. If there is a unsolvable problem like rail adhesion, maybe they should have a poor rail adhesion timetable for the 2 or 3 months that it is in place so that at least everyone knows how late their train will be. But it is hard to see why this should be necessary when my journey already takes at least 10 minutes longer than it took when I started commuting 12 years ago.
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