Timetable consultation for DART/commuter 2016 now online

[Inniskeen]

Just talking to a few people this morning on the train and they were of the view that the bus now looks the better option and their reason is that an already unattractively slow service is now even slower. Add to that a seat and lower fares and it is obvious that the railway will lose further market share and despite the growth in economic activity may suffer a decline in usage as well.

I have no doubt that this timetable will be pushed through although I imagine that politicians outside the DART area will be getting an ear-full over the coming weeks.

The average speed of most services to/from Malahide in the proposed new timetable will be between 20 and 25 mph. The highly restrictive infrastructure makes this hard to to avoid at the height of the morning and evening peak. Imposing this level of journey time penalty throughout the day is gratuitous and unjustified and probably dis-benefits the majority of passengers.

Tram like speeds may be appropriate and satisfactory for very short trips but have no place on an effective longer distance and commuter railway.

[Jamie2k9]

Those tram like speeds are actually slower than the Luas in city centre, quiet incredible when you analyse what is proposed.

Of course it will be implemented, no questions asked. Would be suprised if they bother reading half the submissions. Things such as retuning the last Northen Commuter to 23.30 etc will be the real test of commitment towards passengers.

[berneyarms]

Originally Posted by Inniskeen

Just talking to a few people this morning on the train and they were of the view that the bus now looks the better option and their reason is that an already unattractively slow service is now even slower. Add to that a seat and lower fares and it is obvious that the railway will lose further market share and despite the growth in economic activity may suffer a decline in usage as well.

I have no doubt that this timetable will be pushed through although I imagine that politicians outside the DART area will be getting an ear-full over the coming weeks.

The average speed of most services to/from Malahide in the proposed new timetable will be between 20 and 25 mph. The highly restrictive infrastructure makes this hard to to avoid at the height of the morning and evening peak. Imposing this level of journey time penalty throughout the day is gratuitous and unjustified and probably dis-benefits the majority of passengers.

Tram like speeds may be appropriate and satisfactory for very short trips but have no place on an effective longer distance and commuter railway.

The only problem with that is that looking at the current 8 morning peak inbound northern line services that arrive in Connolly before 9am, of their matching services in the new timetable three are actually unchanged, two will be faster and and only three are taking longer.

Similarly looking at the eight commuter services currently leaving Connolly between 16:20 and 18:40, of the corresponding services in the new timetable two will be faster, one will be the same, three will take a minute longer and only two will be 2-5 minutes longer.

[berneyarms]

Originally Posted by Jamie2k9

Those tram like speeds are actually slower than the Luas in city centre, quiet incredible when you analyse what is proposed.

Of course it will be implemented, no questions asked. Would be suprised if they bother reading half the submissions. Things such as retuning the last Northen Commuter to 23.30 etc will be the real test of commitment towards passengers.

I think that's a bit unfair - there have been changes after previous consultations.

And while I have said that I expect the 10 minute DART service to be implemented, that's not to say that other services could yet change around that to facilitate passengers.

[Inniskeen]

Originally Posted by berneyarms

The only problem with that is that looking at the current 8 morning peak inbound northern line services that arrive in Connolly before 9am, of their matching services in the new timetable three are actually unchanged, two will be faster and and only three are taking longer.

Similarly looking at the eight commuter services currently leaving Connolly between 16:20 and 18:40, of the corresponding services in the new timetable two will be faster, one will be the same, three will take a minute longer and only two will be 2-5 minutes longer.

The existing journey times for northern line commuter services are already uninspiring having been incrementally increased in nearly every recent timetable iteration.

Of the 36 southbound trains originating at stations north of Malahide on Mondays to Fridays, incidentally exactly the same number as in the existing timetable, 13 have an unchanged or reduced journey time while 23 have an increased journey time. The greatest reduction in journey time is 4 minutes. The increases in journey times are 18, 15, 12, 7, then several of six minutes, several of 5 minutes and so on down to 1 minute. In terms of congestion penalty the worst affected trains are the 0615 from Belfast, 0755 from Dundalk, 1400 ex Dundalk and 1444 from Drogheda, all of which are 15 to 20 minutes slower than they might otherwise be.

Average speed from Malahide to Connolly in several instances is no more than 20 mph including the so called "new" express from Dundalk.

In fact the whole railway from Malahide and Howth to Greystones delivers very few services averaging more than 20 mph. The average speed of a Malahide to Greystones DART in the new timetable is 19.88 mph - less than the average speed of a LUAS between Charlemont and Sandyford !

As I have said before I don't believe this proposed timetable is operationally viable, is economically sensible or will deliver significantly more passengers to the railway. The exercise is misguided and disregards the legitimate expectations of other users and the limitations of the infrastructure. It will probably go ahead but how long it survives remains to be seen especially if it makes services even less reliable than at present.

[KSW]

The people along the Rosslare line it's about high time they had a decent service like every service on the network has probably a train every two hours. This line has really gone to the dogs.its getting worse and worse as the years go by. I don't know who is in management in IE but get into the times we do not want a steam like service taking 2 hrs just to reach Gorey even saying that times back then were quicker. Especially on Sunday's trains I remember took 1hr28min nowadays it's gone beyond a fare and time joke. As a train lover but I will not pay nearly €10 extra just from the city to Gorey for an extra 30 minute time journey with less train IE provide. Get into the times and fight back all your lost customers

[Inniskeen]

As far as I can see Irish Rail have little or no interest in this route and indeed some in the company would close the line if they thought they would get away with it. They will happily degrade the service and then start whining that it would be cheaper to pay for taxies for the remaining few passengers who refuse to go away. Step 1 to make the service effectively irrelevant is well in train !

The NTA appear to be on board with the "nothing can be done" strategy and parrot the same bull that suggests that the issue is the single track and the slow route south of Greystones rather than the half hourly service between Bray and Greystones and the pedestrian DART operation north of Bray.

[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!

[Mark Gleeson]

Translink insisting on Lisburn stops isn't helping