New Timetable from 9 September.

[Inniskeen]

Originally Posted by berneyarms

Not at all. You’re vastly overestimating the rolling stock requirements.

Most will still be 6 or 8 car.

Several 4 car sets during the morning and evening peak on Monday. Reports of a 2 piece also.

[Mark Gleeson]

Commuters are well known not to able to count (my DART was a coach short etc) so unless someone has a photo of a 2 coach train we cannot comment.

There are certainly 4 coach trains out there, in the original draft timetable there was 7 trains per hour peak and the extra train was to be a 4 coach, that was fine but what has come to pass is a mess

There should be
8 * 8 coach sets (7 Tokyu Car + 1 LHB)
10 * 6 coach sets (LHB)
1 * 4 coach
Total 128 which is the agreed availability from 144, thats up from 122 previously so there are more seats per hour than last week.

The availability target is fairly soft it assumes 2 Tokyu sets our of service (8) and 4 LHB (8),

You need 19 sets in motion to make the timetable work,

If you reverted to the 70 minute running time gets rid of the 4 coach set for no loss but due to compatibility issues you can't run an LHB with a Tokyu car so you can't lengthen anything

Only short term option is to get 2-3 of the unloved Alstom units back

[Inniskeen]

Originally Posted by Mark Gleeson

Commuters are well known not to able to count (my DART was a coach short etc) so unless someone has a photo of a 2 coach train we cannot comment.

There are certainly 4 coach trains out there, in the original draft timetable there was 7 trains per hour peak and the extra train was to be a 4 coach, that was fine but what has come to pass is a mess

There should be
8 * 8 coach sets (7 Tokyu Car + 1 LHB)
10 * 6 coach sets (LHB)
1 * 4 coach
Total 128 which is the agreed availability from 144, thats up from 122 previously so there are more seats per hour than last week.

The availability target is fairly soft it assumes 2 Tokyu sets our of service (8) and 4 LHB (8),

You need 19 sets in motion to make the timetable work,

If you reverted to the 70 minute running time gets rid of the 4 coach set for no loss but due to compatibility issues you can't run an LHB with a Tokyu car so you can't lengthen anything

Only short term option is to get 2-3 of the unloved Alstom units back

Unless I have missed something, the new timetable requires 18 sets to cover advertised services - not all in motion given that turnaround in some instances is up to 20 minutes (at Bray). There may be a further spare set to cover failures & disruptions. The 0800 from Howth failed (at Howth) today but was replaced (from Connolly) by an empty 8 car set from Connolly southwards. Is this the 19th set ?

There is more than one 4 car set in service - I saw two one after the other at Pearse yesterday around 1700. Likewise today, around the same time, there were two four car sets working through Pearse.

Yes you could probably save one set by restoring Howth/Malahide to Bray journey time to 70 minutes, although turnaround times would be reduced to 5 minutes in some instances.

It is clear that this timetable has disrupted and inconvenienced many more people than it has benefited. The urgent priority should now be the restoration of capacity on key peak period DART trains even if this means abandoning the NTA's vanity fixed ten minute interval off-peak DART schedule.

[Mark Gleeson]

Some progress

0630 from Dundalk makes stops
0742 Portmarnock
0745 Clongriffin

0645 from Drogheda stops
0729 Portmarnock

Still doesn't address the multitude of other issues

[ThomasJ]

Given what happened on the Maynooth line this morning I would expect to see similar changes to services on that line.

[berneyarms]

Originally Posted by ThomasJ

Given what happened on the Maynooth line this morning I would expect to see similar changes to services on that line.

Not sure that a timetable change would resolve “an operational issue” that caused some trains not to operate - that suggests either no driver or a mechanical issue with the train that was to operate them.

To be fair as I see it there were clearly some timetable issues (primarily around Portmarnock), but IE were very unlucky this week with at least one DART failure and several other mechanical issues causing knock on problems for other services around them.

To blame the new timetable for everything is a tad simplistic and OTT.

There may well be further timetable changes needed but I don’t think they would solve all of the issues the railway had this week.

[Inniskeen]

Originally Posted by berneyarms

Not sure that a timetable change would resolve “an operational issue” that caused some trains not to operate - that suggests either no driver or a mechanical issue with the train that was to operate them.

To be fair as I see it there were clearly some timetable issues (primarily around Portmarnock), but IE were very unlucky this week with at least one DART failure and several other mechanical issues causing knock on problems for other services around them.

To blame the new timetable for everything is a tad simplistic and OTT.

There may well be further timetable changes needed but I don’t think they would solve all of the issues the railway had this week.

While there were indeed a number of train failures, as well as cancellations due to driver issues, most of the problems this week were self inflicted and arose from the obsession with increasing off-peak DART frequency at the expense of peak-time DART users, longer distance commuters as well as Enterprise, Sligo and Rosslare passengers.

Without investment in additional track, loops, crossovers, platforms and trains, the current operational mess will just get worse and hugely diminish the value of the railway to all but short distance users who might well be better served by an on-street LUAS rather than an expanded DART operation.

The weather this week (apart from today) was very benign - but it takes very little to unbalance the current house of cards and it was noticeable that the weather was adding to today's extensive delays.

[Underground]

Originally Posted by ThomasJ

Given what happened on the Maynooth line this morning I would expect to see similar changes to services on that line.

I think pigs will fly first. Maynooth line users are conditioned to being treated as second class citizens, and looking at twitter the complaints about services on that line are a magnitude less than those from Portmarnock users.

It's very frustrating that rail services to the city centre (Tara, and to a lesser extent Pearse) on the Maynooth line, which were already comparatively poor to the DART, can be cut back to give DART users an even better service. At weekends there isn't even an operational explanation for it. But Irish Rail will tell us were getting an upgraded service in December and these cuts are to make way for it. Sorry Irish Rail, but the bus beats the train to the city centre by a good 20 minutes for me under the new timetable. AND I can still interconnect with the LUAS at Trinity, something I can't really do with the new train timetable.

[ThomasJ]

This is a tweeted video from an Ashtown user on Saturday

https://twitter.com/soh1989/status/1...592656385?s=09

I do think this is worse than some of the DART pictures from the last week but it won't get publicised.