More Commuter Hell
March 27th 2006
The evening of Monday the 26th March was yet another disastrous experience for long suffering commuters. For the third time in 2 weeks the 18:15 Pearse Drogheda service broke down. This time it took three hours to get the train moving again after breaking down in Laytown.
The consistent delays experienced by the 18:15 service, which carries well over a thousand people are totally unacceptable and represent a failure within Iarnród Éireann to recognise that the train set used on the 18:15 had consistent serious problems which needed to be fixed. Why do they run the most failure prone train set in the very middle of the rush hour, at the most critical point where any delay results in chaos?
While the passengers of the 20:45 Dublin Belfast service where treated appropriately in line with the customer charter, the passengers trapped on other commuter trains where left stranded in the Meath countryside, clueless to what was going on. Intending passengers in Dublin later that evening where forced to play a game of musical chairs as trains had there starting point swapped from Pearse to Connolly with only minutes notice. Once again Iarnród Éireann failed utterly to keep passengers informed of the nature and scale of the delays. Iarnród Éireann also failed to explain the entitlement to refunds. In the ultimate insult to passengers, you won't find any contact details for management not even there names on the Iarnród Éireann website. So how does the passenger complain? You won't find a explanation or apology either on the Iarnród Éireann website or in Connolly station.
Rail Users Ireland reminds all passengers of the availability of refunds if you experienced a delay of greater than 60 minutes, or in the case of passengers traveling on a Enterprise branded service 30 minutes. It comes as no surprise that the only place to get the refund form in electronic format is on the Rail Users Ireland website.