DART heating to dangerous levels

Tipsy Mac

Why does the DART consistantly have the carriages heated to a level where it is often difficult for it's passengers to maintain consciousness. There is no need for this high temperature and nobody on the train wants it as every single window (if your lucky enough to be in carriages with opening windows:mad:) has been opened by passengers to allow fresh air to circulate in the carriages. CIE must not be aware that people arrive on the DART in clothes fit for the outdoors, they do not arrive in Speedos so don't require such high heat. I suppose the additional waste of energy and additional CO2 emmissions is another issue with all this wasted heat.

ixoy

Very true - my DART was delayed by 15 mins today, at rush hour, so it was very very packed. The heating was on, there were no windows that could be opened, and it was very warm (especially as people are dressed in winter clothing for the cold outside). It's ridiculous, stupid, incompetant and very Irish Rail.

mike65

Public sector = hot air, they aren't paying for it.

Mike.

lostexpectation

its very rail

Zoney

I'd nearly guarantee not one official complaint by a member of the public about this, or certainly not many. Get writing!! Obviously there are hundreds if not thousands of people just putting up with this. Sure it may not make much difference writing (at least if only one or two people do) but really, in such circumstances I feel there's little excuse for not sending IÉ a concise little complaint - it's not complicated. A lot of people have at least enough of a grasp of the English language to articulate their complaints on the web. 5 minutes thought is more than enough to express those complaints in a proper form for an actual letter to customer services. People can't be that traumatised from English lessons at secondary school that they won't put pen to paper.

Victor

Tell the driver to either turn it down or turn it off for a while.

Remove over coat.

Red Alert

It's a waste of electricity too as the DART's heaters probably pull a fair whack of power each.

Tipsy Mac

DART was grand this morning, the evening though was back to the quick death conditions.

ardmacha

Aren't there any health and safety regulations relating to trains? Are CIE obliged to monitor the temperature and keep it within certain levels.

godtabh

ardmacha wrote: »

Aren't there any health and safety regulations relating to trains? Are CIE obliged to monitor the temperature and keep it within certain levels.

As far as I can tell health and safety inside the train for passengers doesnt exist.

Decuc500

I just sent a complaint to Irish Rail this morning about the heating. The heating/air conditioning on my Dart was turned up to an oppressive level and a woman standing near me fainted just as the Dart pulled into Tara Street.

Overcrowding I have to accept due to the large number of people using the service but turning down the heat when it's not particularly cold out is something that can be done to make peoples journeys slightly more bearable and safer.

Ham'nd'egger

Decuc500 wrote: »

I just sent a complaint to Irish Rail this morning about the heating. The heating/air conditioning on my Dart was turned up to an oppressive level and a woman standing near me fainted just as the Dart pulled into Tara Street.

Overcrowding I have to accept due to the large number of people using the service but turning down the heat when it's not particularly cold out is something that can be done to make peoples journeys slightly more bearable and safer.

Without trying to pick an argument here, for every passenger who says a DART is too hot, there will be one who says it is too cold. In other words, it's a win lose situation. Victor has it right though, if it is too hot and it is uncomfortable, take off the coat/scarf/hat/gloves and you won't be anyway near as bad most of the time.

Decuc500

I think people will still feel weak with or without a coat on when they're standing and crowded on all sides and the heat is turned up to the max and there's no air circulating.
If there's no heat and it's too cold people will also complain but at least there's less of a chance of them fainting.

Victor

Fainting may also be related to how much the person has eaten and drank.

Red Alert

The sealed windows can't help either

Decuc500

Victor wrote: »

Fainting may also be related to how much the person has eaten and drank.

Yes, fainting can be because of a lot of things but the one thing Irish Rail can do to make Darts more 'faint free' is to turn the heat down and get some cool air circulating.

thebookofbob

it's drivers revenge for the eejits that stop the doors from closing when it gets packed because they won't wait for the next dart and instead will push & shove until it's dangerously overcrowded.. or the school kids that do it for a laugh

Tipsy Mac

Decuc500 wrote: »

Yes, fainting can be because of a lot of things but the one thing Irish Rail can do to make Darts more 'faint free' is to turn the heat down and get some cool air circulating.

Exactly, its like a sauna, taking off your jacket does little when there is zero fresh air circulating.

Cathmandooo

Please remember it's not just the DART, it's the commuter trains too. I'm on the maynooth line every day and was very close to fainting a week and a half ago but luckily I was taken off the train before losing consciousness. i went almost blind (everything was quite dark and red) and almost lost my hearing (everything was muffled and i couldnt understand what people were saying). I'm well aware there are plenty of other factors to fainting but I can guarantee that if I was anywhere else at that very moment i wouldnt have had that happen to me and believe me it was scary!

Taking off your coat isnt always an option, there isnt the room to do it!! And you have to assess the heat of the train before you get on! Plus asking the driver isnt an option either as i get onto the train at the opposite end to the driver and by the time you walk up mid stops the train will have pulled off.

There should be constant cool air circulating, it's not rocket science :mad:

Moonbeam

It is more the heat caused by the over crowding then anything.

Taking off your coat is a lovely idea,but horribly optimistic during rush hour as you can't even move to put your hand in your pocket.

Many letters of e-mail and complaint have been sent to Iarnrod Eireann about the issue.

It is back to the fact that commuter trains on the Maynooth,Drogheda and Dart lines are just too packed during rush hour.

I started getting the dart 10 years ago and the exact same issue of people fainting due to the heat and over crowding existed then too.

jlang

I've been getting the Maynooth train in recently and also do the Tara St->Connolly step at rush hour so having been in the squished against the door position a few times, I can sympathise. I will say, however, that there is always space to stand down the aisle without having to be up against on another person and even just across at the inactive door opposite, people will often be relatively comfortable reading newspapers/books just feet away from the most crowded section.

That said, enticing the people standing at the end of the aisle to move further away from the door is next to impossible, but really there's the same problem on the busses; the people standing tight at the front of a bus mean that the driver doesn't know about the empty seats to the rear, the

Gavin

How hard is it to have a thermostat in each carriage...