Timetable consultation for DART/commuter 2016 now online

[Thomas J Stamp]

what are the current DART lengths? Are they bigger fir runsh hours? Any additional cars being proposed in the new timetable?

[Inniskeen]

I imagine that DART train sets will be smaller in the new timetable given that at least four more sets will be required to operate it. This will have some interesting consequences. I would guess that most if not all peak northbound trains from Bray & Greystones will be four car formations !

[Dublin13]

Originally Posted by Thomas J Stamp

what are the current DART lengths? Are they bigger fir runsh hours? Any additional cars being proposed in the new timetable?

Most of the Northbound trains in the second half of evening peak are four carriages with the southbound being 6-8

Ex:
The 17:58 and 18:42 from Clontarf to Malahide are four cars, even though they are the only Malahide Darts between 17:30 and 19:00. People can be unable to board them and they are still like sardines after Howth Junction.

Between 17:32 and 18:31 there are five Howth Darts which are between 4-6 cars which generally have a good amount of room and barely have enough passengers to fill one carriage after Howth Junction.

The new timetable should fix that capacity and frequency imbalance.

[Thomas J Stamp]

i wonder if some best laid plans have gone astray somewhere. wasnt there a tender put out for rolling stock for the DART underground? maybe that is still going ahead in part and there may be more realistic stocking levels. would people prefer shorter more frequent trains or 8 car sets slightly less frequently?

[James Howard]

Surely with the new timetable having longer running times, all else being equal there will be less seats overall with the same amount of stock in service. It would obviously be better to have 6 4-car trains over an hour rather than 4 6-car trains.

But there must be spare DART cars around given that they reduced the capacity a couple of years ago without changing the timetable. Or have Irish Rail done the usual and left them to rot?

[Thomas J Stamp]

this is my point (and I have to admit I'm not really up to speed on the DART as I barely ever use it) - the platforms were all extended to accommodate 8 car sets operating at a fairly decent frequency. When they reduced this to 4 cars only about 2 or three years back they didn't increase the frequency by 2 (nor are they now..... from 00,15,30,45 to 00,10,20,30,40,50 ) so there ought to be stock floating around. I often hear people talking about how much is lying about in Clontarf and I often see DARTs in inchicore on my way into dublin.

[berneyarms]

Originally Posted by James Howard

Surely with the new timetable having longer running times, all else being equal there will be less seats overall with the same amount of stock in service. It would obviously be better to have 6 4-car trains over an hour rather than 4 6-car trains.

But there must be spare DART cars around given that they reduced the capacity a couple of years ago without changing the timetable. Or have Irish Rail done the usual and left them to rot?

Not all of the DART sets are in service every day - they rotate them around (with the exception of the Alsthom sets which are out of service).

This proposal will see more sets in use every day as the NTA are providing funding to allow for this.

[Mark Gleeson]

Even allowing a generous spare allocation of 18 coaches and allowing for the 10 Alstom units you can have an entire 6 coach operation, but since you can't currently couple a LHB 2 car to a Japanese set you can't get the maximum capacity option.

Best case assuming everything couples to everything
4 8 coach
15 6 coach
1 4 coach (this is the morning Dun Laoghaire extra with a DART 5 minutes either side)

If you cut the journey time by 5 minutes end to end you need 1 fewer set and works for the current fleet with no engineering required
7 8 coach
11 6 coach
1 4 coach (this is the morning Dun Laoghaire extra with a DART 5 minutes either side)

What you will actually get is
6 8 coach
11 6 coach (only LHB units can run in 6 car formation)
3 4 coach (this is the morning Dun Laoghaire extra with a DART 5 minutes either side)

[Dublin13]

So it looks like there has been a purposeful change in allocation on the Malahide branch, third day in a row now that this has happened so I doubt it is down to the fact of unit availability.

The laughable thing is they've strengthened trains that don't need to have extra carriages on them and left the ones that are fully packed alone. To top it all off they've cut an early morning peak train by two carriages as well.

The 7.07 from Clongriffin is now operating on a six car 8100 set instead of an 8 car 86xx set which is now completely like sardines.

The next 3 Malahide trains from Clontarf from 17:30 to 19:30 onwards now look like this:
17:58 ex Clontarf remains 4 cars and is still in danger of leaving people behind
18:46 ex Clontarf remains 4 cars and is still in danger of leaving people behind
19:12 ex Clontarf has been strengthened from 6 carriages to 8 at six cars it was easy to board even if busy.

Clearly the two extra carriages have been thrown at the 19:12 ex Clontarf because of the loadings on the service early in peak that the same train works to the Southside stations, the fact that said trains are already having more space than the Northbound evening peak services seems not to matter.

May as well just call it Southside Rail because that is all they seem to be bothered about, poor souls on the Southside with a train every 10-15 minutes must not have a train where there are no seats whilst us on the Malahide branch can't even be sure to be able to board our TWO trains between 5:30 and 7.00pm

[Inniskeen]

Originally Posted by James Howard

Surely with the new timetable having longer running times, all else being equal there will be less seats overall with the same amount of stock in service. It would obviously be better to have 6 4-car trains over an hour rather than 4 6-car trains.

But something like €170m was spent extending platforms to accommodate 8-car DARTs on the basis that the only practical way to increase capacity was to increase train size. Now it has been decided that that strategy was wrong and a frequent service of smaller slower DARTs on a deficient infrastructure is going to do the business. The impact on other services is deemed to be irrelevant. The proposed timetable is a bit like having a motorway with one carriageway per direction and insisting that all traffic must follow an ass and cart.

[Jamie2k9]

On board consultation of Belfast/Dublin schedule to take place next Monday-Thursday.

Been slightly political up in Belfast but very little noise made down here.

New timetable average speed of 47mp/h for 2h15m.

[Padna]

Originally Posted by Jamie2k9

New timetable average speed of 47mp/h for 2h15m.

Looks like that average speed has been calculated based on the distance by road between the two cities. Using the distance by rail, the actual average speed is around 50 mph. Still way too slow though!

[Thomas J Stamp]

Originally Posted by Inniskeen

But something like €170m was spent extending platforms to accommodate 8-car DARTs on the basis that the only practical way to increase capacity was to increase train size. Now it has been decided that that strategy was wrong and a frequent service of smaller slower DARTs on a deficient infrastructure is going to do the business. The impact on other services is deemed to be irrelevant. The proposed timetable is a bit like having a motorway with one carriageway per direction and insisting that all traffic must follow an ass and cart.

well not really. they havent decided that it was wrong (they'll point out the DMU's using them for example) they'll say that they have been prevented from using them properly through cutbacks, delays to the great cross river re signalling project, cancelling DART underground et all...

but even so it seems from what we are seeing here is that its not exactly the number of units they have, but how they are being allocated.

[Dublin13]

Unable to board the 5.54pm 4 car DART to Malahide from Connolly due to severe over-crowding once more. Happy I left work early to do some shopping and wasn't waiting at Clontarf, at least I could get the commuter to Dundalk from Connolly.

There was approx 50 people at Connolly who tried to board who were not able to with various sighs and comments about four cars at peak times being unacceptable and that yet again they were unable to board.

Of course, a few minutes before a six car Howth came with many seats free and a 4 car Howth with a few seats free came a few minutes afterwards, really shows the joke that it is having 2 Malahide DARTS in 90 minutes whilst having 5 Howths in just 60 minutes!