September Timetable Change
September 8th 2018
Longer Journey Times Hurt All Passengers
The much heralded increase in DART, after years of broken promises arrives Monday Septmber 10th. While on southside evening peak services will see a real increase in frequency, the increase in daytime off peak DART services is signifcant.
- Every 20 minutes from Malahide and Howth up from every 30 minutes
- Every 10 minutes between Howth Junction and Bray
Many Maynooth and Drogheda line services are cut back to Connolly resulting in significantly extended journey times to/from Pearse and Tara Street and a serious challenge for those who require mobility assistance.
The increase in end to end journey time from Bray to Howth by 5 minutes, brings the scheduled time to 75 minutes compared to the original 1984 time of 60 minutes.
Every minute added to the DART schedule adds a minute to suburban and intercity services, while inconvenient to passengers the extra time in the DART schedule requires a full extra train to be provided and staffed to maintain the service frequency, this of course reduces the peak hour capacity and drives up costs which are passed on to passenger through paying higher fares for fewer seats.
Continued failure to address the shockingly poor off peak and weekend evening service on the Maynooth line and to deliver on the promises of an off peak service on the Phoenix Park tunnel route.
Despite months of weekend disruption to Cork, Tralee, Limerick and Galway passengers under the guise of a program to reduce journey times no reduction in times, in fact Galway and Waterford passengers see 5 minutes added to several trains.
The short notice of these changes is unacceptable particularly as they come just as schools return causing chaos for parents who had made childcare and work arrangements based on the timetable available.
Irish Rail themselves ignored there own board resolution to change timetables annually in December in line with all other European railways.
Mark Gleeson, spokesperson Rail Users Ireland said "Very much a timetable built to suit Irish Rail and generate nice soundbites about DART frequency but the daily and weekend user are left high and dry with a service which in many cases is worse than current"
There was no consultation conducted, while Irish Rail claim consultation occurred this was more than 2 years ago and the draft timetable presented then had more DART services at peak hour than what is now offered.