Irish Rail - 4 Carriage DARTs and rising fares (speculation)

Ignoring the whole 4/6/8 car issue for the moment, I think you will find that commuter railways around the world are designed to accommodate large numbers of standing passengers. Would you expect to get a seat on the tube in London at rush hour, when joining a train that has already taken on people at 10-15 stations ?

With long distance intercity trains you *may* have a point if you booked a seat as well as a travel ticket, but on suburban railway anywhere in the world you are not guaranteed a seat.

If you think the trains are full now, wait a week or two until the schools come back. Then you will know all about packed trains. However, this will most likely co-incide with IE re-introducing those extra cars. At least it better.

z

zagmund wrote: »

Ignoring the whole 4/6/8 car issue for the moment, I think you will find that commuter railways around the world are designed to accommodate large numbers of standing passengers. Would you expect to get a seat on the tube in London at rush hour, when joining a train that has already taken on people at 10-15 stations ?
z

One difference with the Tube is that you are more likely to get a seat after a few stops of discomfort, as people are continually getting off at stations along the way.
Whereas the early morning Dart has 95%, maybe more of passengers planning to get off at the same 3 stations.

Africa wrote: »

Often I find myself waiting 20 minutes for a Dart.

Would you try the 4, 7 or 46E? They use QBCs and have a higher frequency than the Dart.

Africa wrote: »

Since Im paying what is a rather expensive monthly ticket, I would expect a seat.

Do you avail of taxsaver.ie ?

Yet they want to raise prices?

Has there been any mention of a price increase?

The reduction is because of summer hoildays. ie-schools, collages and many business close for about 2 weeks over the summer. Would expect that normal 8 carrages will be back by mid september when everybody starts back working or studying.

It happens most years so I don't see a problem.

Jamie2k9 wrote: »

The reduction is because of summer hoildays. ie-schools, collages and many business close for about 2 weeks over the summer. Would expect that normal 8 carrages will be back by mid september when everybody starts back working or studying.

It happens most years so I don't see a problem.

Many public sector, a lot of whom are based in the city centre, also go on a reduced working week during the school summer holidays.

Many can also avail of "family friendly" working where they can take the entire summer off (and get paid for 9 months of the year, but spread out over 12).

The next fare increase will not be until 2013.

Papers got the wrong end of that one.

Perhaps they should pave over the tracks and make it into a cycle lane? You would be faster cycling than using the dart.

bk wrote: »

I believe that due to some stupidity in ordering DARTS by Irish Rail, they can only be 4 or 8 carriages long. Which doesn't give them enough flexibility.

The original DARTs ordered in 1983 can be put in 2,4,6,8 formations. The new ones ordered in 2002 onwards can be 4 or 8 only.

All the old DARTs should be left as 6 car sets and the new ones as 4 or 8 as demand requires. That's the way it used to be up until this summer and there were no problems.

N64 wrote: »

Perhaps they should pave over the tracks and make it into a cycle lane? You would be faster cycling than using the dart.

I cycle from East Point to Blackrock and save myself 10-15 minutes on average. The *worst thing* is getting to Clontarf Road and seeing "14 minutes" on the display. In those 14 minutes I would be half way home on a slow day on the bike.

The other worst thing is just missing a train by seconds after walking the length of the station back from East Point direction, getting through the turnstiles, running back down the platform to catch the 4 car train which pulled in as far away from the entrance as possible . . . and then seeing it pull in and sit for a few minutes worth of driver change 100m down the line at the depot.

Yes, it's one of those days.

z

Captain Chaos wrote: »

The original DARTs ordered in 1983 can be put in 2,4,6,8 formations. The new ones ordered in 2002 onwards can be 4 or 8 only.

My understanding was that 8100s or (heh) 8200s could be marshalled with 8500s to create 6 car sets?

bk wrote: »

This bit sounds like another monumentally stupid decision by Irish Rail.

There really is a too big of a gap between 4 and 8. While numbers are down during the summer, they wouldn't be down 50%.

http://www.irishrail.ie/index.jsp?p=123&n=211

For the moment, the 4-car trains can be used for 4- or 8-car trains. They make better use of train length by not having a cab on all carriages like the originals (8100 and 8300 cars).

Currently, after ~28 years, there are 76 out of 80 of the originals left. By the time there numbers become problematic that you can't form 6-car trains, they will have to have had others delivered.

Maybe the prayers have been answered with a days turnover? Was on an 8 car dart northbound from Booterstown at 14:50, and the Dart I got back out from Pearse was also 8 carriages just after 5.

I have noticed with me having to take the Dart more often over the summer that I have had to make the dreaded run all the way up the platform more often than I normally do, but I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to board the train from the ticket office in Booterstown, without a crazy sprint after the train.

I was surprised on the way home though. There was a two car 8100 set on the way home leading a 6 car set. I know that the 8100's can be run in 2 car sets, but it's not something I've seen very often, though to be fair it's not something I've been looking out for for very long. Out of interest, is it something that's done often, or is it a fairly common occurrence that I've simply missed by never having to take the Dart at rush hour?

Pretty sure it was a 2 car 8100 in front of a 6 car 8100, I may be slightly off on the set up, but I do definitely remembering the two car set out front, which I thought of as slightly unusual. It might just be me being stupid minded and miscounting (stress of accepting college courses can do that to you, so it may have been a 2 car set in front of a 4 car, which I presume would make more sense? Though, 6 care 8100 set's aren't particularly out of the ordinary are they?

Right, well in that case I was probably correct with the 2 car set in front of a 6 car set, 8100's all down the line. Not sure if I mentioned 8500's but I apologise for the confusion.

So, any idea how common the two car set of 8100's actually is? Gotten very used to 4 car sets on the recent runs I've done on the line and wanted to know if this is actually something unusual or if I'm just a bit unobservant and just haven't noticed it in the past.

Where are the savings made by reducing the number of carriages to 4 ? Is it simply energy savings, and if so, would they be considerable in the overall Irish Rail costs ?

bk wrote: »

Perhaps they also use this downtime in the summer months to do increased maintenance and refurbishments.

That's what I was thinking of back when all this started. When the DARTs were reduced to 4 car formations this summer there seemed to be less of the 8500s around and more 8100s covering and operating as 8 car formations which they hardly ever do as it's better suited to 8500s.

It got me thinking that maybe they were fitting WiFi to the newer units first. IE made a statement that all DARTs would be fitted with WiFi by the end of the year.

keith16 wrote: »

hey all, slightly off topic but I'm just curious.

Why are some DART stations closed for big events nearby? AFAIK, Tara St. was closed as the tall ships festival was on. Also, I remember Grand Canal Dock and Lansdowne Road being closed after a number of games at Lansdowne?

Why would they do this? Is there a single good reason?

Crowd control. Taking Tara St. as an example, if it were open, everybody going to the tall ships would go to/from Tara St, pushing it well over capacity. By closing it, it forces everybody to go to the further away stops. The idea is half would go south to Pearse, the other half would go north to Connolly - meaning that the stations aren't pushed over capacity.

That Tara Street has only the two through platforms is a bit of a strike against it though - makes it difficult to do something like terminate extra Bray services there while having all crossriver services run non-stop to Pearse (reducing the likelihood of people opting to go further than Connolly to get to the "closest" station). When the Loop Line resignalling is complete then there would be more train capacity through Tara Street but then the question is are turnstile/escalator/elevator/platform capacity there to take advantage for an event that primarily slams Tara as opposed to normal commuter flows.

At the end of the day though transport infrastructure in Ireland comes from money hard wrung from DofF and thus must be geared to year-round demand rather than surges with the exception perhaps of a bit of capital expense like redundant elevators.

To my mind the GAA and festivals like Tall Ships should provide more direct compensation to CIE/RPA for the impacts their events have, since event transport is rarely a profitable endeavour. While it's hard to think of how this would work particularly for open/free events, compare to something like the Vancouver Olympics where every event ticket had a transit contribution built into it so that no fares needed to be taken (better loading efficiency, no incentive for evasion, less cash handling, cross subsidy from people who didn't want to bus/subway it to the venues). There was probably a lot of moaning when that was brought in because it raised the ticket price but I assure you as someone who used the transit system a lot it made a huge difference.

Getting Grand Canal Dock sorted as a turnback station is something that will hopefully make Lansdowne events more tolerable - anybody know how that's progressing?

dowlingm wrote: »

To my mind the GAA and festivals like Tall Ships should provide more direct compensation to CIE/RPA for the impacts their events have, since event transport is rarely a profitable endeavour.

I've never quoted myself before but here goes:

markpb wrote: »

Dublin really needs to move towards the model of other cities and either deny event permission for venues that are badly served by public transport, levy a fee on the event organisers to pay for improved public transport for the event or make it a condition of event permission that public transport is provided.

dowlingm wrote: »

Getting Grand Canal Dock sorted as a turnback station is something that will hopefully make Lansdowne events more tolerable - anybody know how that's progressing?

what was the point of pulling up Pearse's 2 additional platforms and ruining it as a terminus/ turnaround only to try and reinstate it at GCD?

All the terminal platforms in Pearse were far too short and facing the wrong direction...