Dart - How Busy ?

journeyman

I'm in the process of relocating London -> Dublin, and will be working in the city centre.
I'm thinking of initially getting a place on the southside, somewhere near the Dart. My question is how busy is the Dart in the morning ?

e.g. If I want to catch the Dart at Dun Laoghaire or Salthill sometime between 8 and 8:30am, will I be able to actually get on the train ?
Might seem like a strange question, but in London, it is quite common not to be able to get on to the tube in the inner-suburbs in the morning, because it has filled up further out. Often, one has to wait for 3 or 4 trains to pass before being able to get on.

Assuming I can get on, how busy is it (i.e. presume I won't get a seat, but will it be sardines on board), and how reliable (e.g. will it regularly stop for 10 minutes between stations for no apparent reason) ?

Also, can someone fill me in as to what the Dart zones are - on their web site, I see 2 prices for commuter tickets - one for "Inner Zone", and one for "Short Hop" - but nowhere on the web site can I find out what these zones are.

thanks,

journeyman

Borzoi

It's exactly like the tube in terms of crowdedness and reliability - but it does have a better view*

Fun, if you like sweaty cattle car conditions

*Unless your stuck looking at someone's armpit

Trojan

I've gotten the dart from there a few times at that hour, it's _fairly_ reliable with the occasional delay. They are quite full, but there is enough room to get on - not Japanese style - and a load of the kids get off for school at Booterstown so it's better from there in.

It's e1.80 one-way from Salthill or DL into town.

John R

Inner zone is from Bray - City - Rush and Lusk, short hop extends out to Balbriggan northbound and Kilcoole southbound.

From next year there will be a big improvement in capacity on the Dart line so crush loading should not be a big problem.

dmeehan

from what i remember of the DART in the morning, its sardines all the way
(that was a few years ago at this stage, so i dunno what its like now)

Winters

Problem with the dart is that if you miss one there isint one 5 minutes later. I know of times where if you miss a train at 8 you have nearly a half an hour wait till the next one. On Mon-Fri a wait of nearly half an hour during morning rush hour is a disgrace.

DARTs were more regular 10 years ago then they are today.

Trojan

My experiences with the dart are completely different to Winters - it's rare to have a wait of longer than 12 minutes any time between 7.30 and 9, cancelled services excluded.

The schedules are on irishrail.ie so you can make your mind up.

loyatemu

from bray there are a couple of 15-20 minute gaps between 7 and 8 and a ridiculous 25 minute gap at 0840 but it is fairly frequent between 0740 and 0840

all the morning darts are 6 carriage now - they're pretty crowded but you can get on at every station (though between DL and Booterstown it might be a bit of a squeeze)

as mentioned above all rush hour darts will be 8 car from next summer but I'm sure passenger numbers will increase to fill the space (they're building 1000s of new house in Greystones for a start)

journeyman

Thanks for all of the answers. Sounds like it's marginally better than (some of)the tube lines, as at least you can get on ! Also the fares are cheaper, and you can buy the ticket out of gross salary, making it *much* cheaper (provide your employer participates in the relevant scheme). View better too.
Dublin 1 London 0 on this one.


journeyman