Luas disruption today

delta_bravo

I work very close to Harcourt station and noticed around lunchtime the screen was displaying a very long message across only the first line of the board saying the luas was serving Brides Glen - Ballally and Dominic - Broombridge. A good few people spent time waiting there not really sure about the message.

I don't understand why they don't display the message on the entire board (rather than having it roll across just the top line) and also they didn't do the PA announcement they had on constant repeat the Friday before the Pope was coming just to announce of potential delays that weekend. In the case of an actual lack of service it was silent.

Also another gripe I have about this is that the ticket machines still work fine during this disruption. I stopped a couple of people paying for them telling them it wasn't running. It seems rather silly and unfair to be selling tickets for a service that isn't working.

Tow

Day 2

The tram which caused the damage is still at Charlemont, the lines are still down and there is no one working on them. It was the same at 18:00 yesterday and 8:30 today.

So what is the true story?
- Union trouble.
- No qualified employees to do the work.
- No spare parts.
- Or another problem.

Added a couple of photos taken this morning showing no work done on repairs:

schemingbohemia

I think you'll find it wasn't the Tram that caused the damage but the Trees.

Tow

schemingbohemia wrote: »

I think you'll find it wasn't the Tram that caused the damage but the Trees.

There are no trees near the Charlemont Luas stop. There was one down just near the Ranelagh stop.

zom

schemingbohemia wrote: »

I think you'll find it wasn't the Tram that caused the damage but the Trees.

I think it wasn't the Trees that caused the damage but the Wind.
Anyway - Wind is gone. Trees are gone and tram is still there not fixed. Pathetic.
BYW - isnt it the same 5028 that caused disaster at the very begining of introducing 55m Luas in February?

3000-serie was at least waterproof

HeidiHeidi

I drove under the Charlemont stop at about 10.30pm last night and there was a big posse of orange yellow jackets up there, looked like there was plenty of work going on.


They have said all along it's not a quick fix, and it was likely to be well into today before they got the line running again.

Tow

On overtime, but did nothing?

BTW any damage to your yacht?

HeidiHeidi

Tow wrote: »

On overtime, but did nothing?

BTW any damage to your yacht?

Can't answer the first question but I'm assuming they weren't up there scratching their arses. Like I say, Luas always said this would not be a quick fix. No more can I add.


Can't answer the second question either :eek: But I'm assuming since we haven't heard from the club, all is ok.......

errlloyd

I really can't see what the damage is in that close up, am I blind or something.

coylemj

When they announce that a section of the line is closed and 'Dublin Bus are accepting Luas tickets', does nobody tell the DB drivers? Grumpy bus driver yesterday refused to accept my brother's annual Luas ticket and he had to pay cash.

zom

coylemj wrote: »

When they announce that a section of the line is closed and 'Dublin Bus are accepting Luas tickets', does nobody tell the DB drivers? Grumpy bus driver yesterday refused to accept my brother's annual Luas ticket and he had to pay cash.

Surely LUAS and Dublin Bus have not cooperate well, despite millions spent on army of consultants and agencies like Transport For Ireland etc..

errlloyd wrote: »

I really can't see what the damage is in that close up, am I blind or something.

5028 was going from Ranelagh to Charlemont but got a piece of branch hanging on the lines adt then pulled it along to the Charlemont sections connection, tearing it down. Pantograf and few brackets broken but I still can't get why it takes so much time to fix..

Qrt

zom wrote: »

Surely LUAS and Dublin Bus have not cooperate well, despite millions spent on army of consultants and agencies like Transport For Ireland etc..



5028 was going from Ranelagh to Charlemont but got a piece of branch hanging on the lines adt then pulled it along to the Charlemont sections connection, tearing it down. Pantograf and few brackets broken but I still can't get why it takes so much time to fix..

Replacing a whole pantograph sounds like a big job, so that probably.

MOH

Last night's update was that there would be a service from Beechwood this morning, then this morning it turned out to be Cowper. Then promised a detailed update at 12.45 today which is still outstanding.
It's also unhelpful that the timestamp on the travel update page is the time you read the update at (which presumably you know yourself), not the time it was posted. Makes it hard to judge how up to date the info is.

Tow

Qrt wrote: »

Replacing a whole pantograph sounds like a big job, so that probably.

It is a job to be done in the depot:
Lower pantograph, cut away cables if necessary. Attach diesel unit to the front, manually release brakes and tow it in.

Pelvis

Full service back tomorrow according to Irish Times tweet a few minutes ago

MOH

Luas update backdated to 12:45 says the same

Information on Green Line Service Disruption


Luas Green Line Service Update 12.45pm Thursday 20th 2018

The Luas Green Line will not operate a full line service until tomorrow morning; Friday 21st 2018 at 5.30am.

The service will remain for the rest of the day: Brides Glen – Cowper and Dawson - Broombridge

No service Cowper to Dawson. Tickets are valid on Dublin Bus.

Customers who are using the bus service are advised to alight at Balally or Dundrum Stops for onward travel.

The damage done to the Luas overhead power lines by Storm Ali yesterday was extensive.

As previously stated an overhead wire in the Beechwood/Ranelagh area became entangled in a tram pantograph; there was significant pulling on the overhead wires, resulting in extensive damage. A pantograph is the apparatus mounted on the roof of the tram used to collect power through contact with the overhead line.

This maintenance work takes time and as a result the full line will not operate today – normal service will resume at 5.30am, Friday.


All Red Line services are operating normally.

Connolly & Dundrum Lifts are out of order. We apologise for the inconvenience caused.

All other lifts and escalators are in full working order.

Kind Regards,

Luas Customer Care

Tow

So they say. Apart from the lads clearing the branches yesterday, has anyone seen any actual repair work being done?

Pelvis

Tow wrote: »

So they say. Apart from the lads clearing the branches yesterday, has anyone seen any actual repair work being done?

No. It's all a conspiracy.

zom

Pelvis wrote: »

Full service back tomorrow according to Irish Times tweet a few minutes ago

Hopefully it will be back in operation - with culturenight.ie coming tomorrow it would be disaster if not.

Stephen15

coylemj wrote: »

When they announce that a section of the line is closed and 'Dublin Bus are accepting Luas tickets', does nobody tell the DB drivers? Grumpy bus driver yesterday refused to accept my brother's annual Luas ticket and he had to pay cash.

What route was it? I think more information needs to given as what routes the Luas tickets are actually valid on. Are all the Luas monthly and annual tickets not on Leap now. How one tell if someone has a Luas ticket downloaded on a leap card or not.

HeidiHeidi

Well, someone's doing something.......



https://twitter.com/Luas/status/1042820789664448512

Tarabuses

Tow wrote: »

It is a job to be done in the depot:
Lower pantograph, cut away cables if necessary. Attach diesel unit to the front, manually release brakes and tow it in.

I am glad you correctly say pantograph. RTE was calling it a roof connector on the news last night!

bucketybuck

Pelvis wrote: »

No. It's all a conspiracy.

I'm sure Luas operators are perfectly happy to lose a full days revenue and are not too concerned about when their revenue generating machines are going to start operating and earning them revenue again.

HeidiHeidi

Well no-one can accuse them of not keeping their customers informed via Twitter anyhow!


Every second tweet on my feed seems to be #GreenLine - I've just counted up 41 of them from when the whole thing started, all basically saying the same thing.

hmmm

HeidiHeidi wrote: »

Every second tweet on my feed seems to be #GreenLine - I've just counted up 41 of them from when the whole thing started, all basically saying the same thing.

They're doing a good job with updates in fairness.

I wish the NTA or whoever is responsible for transport this week would look at giving proper and simple advice for people as to alternative bus services during LUAS disruption, and would also see whether it would be possible to put on extra services to cope with the numbers.

zom

hmmm wrote: »

They're doing a good job with updates in fairness.

Pity they don't have maintenance team as good as social networking team.

HeidiHeidi

zom wrote: »

Pity they don't have maintenance team as good as social networking team.

Do you know what damage was caused?

Or are you just slagging off the repair crews out out in ****ty weather for the last 24 hours for the hell of it?

zom

HeidiHeidi wrote: »

Or are you just slagging off the repair crews out out in ****ty weather for the last 24 hours for the hell of it?

There was beautiful weather while I walked beside that broken Luas today morning. It is not my fault they choose worst time to do repairs - with current weather forecasting technology they should know it.

And this is really ridiculous that having only two tram lines in Ireland we fail to fix them in few hours making half of the system literally useless for 2 (3?) days.

HeidiHeidi

zom wrote: »

There was beautiful weather while I walked beside that broken Luas today morning. It is not my fault they choose worst time to do repairs - with current weather forecasting technology they should know it.

And this is really ridiculous that having only two tram lines in Ireland we fail to fix them in few hours making half of the system literally useless for 2 (3?) days.

Again I'll ask - do you know what damage was caused?

Tow

Appart from the branches on the line. Not too much more than in the photos. Some of the other booms were bent. Line may be streached etc. Problem is they were not actually fixing it when they had a window of good weather. I have since been told they did not have the spare parts available. Hard to believe. All comes down the bad management in the end.

But even that does not explain why they did not bother to shift the damaged tram last night.

mcginty28

can't shift the failed tram until the overhead cable is fixed. failed tram has to be towed back to the depot by another tram using the power from overhead cable! they don't have a diesel vehicle to tow it back as somebody mentioned. always surprises me the amount of idiots that will pretend they know what they're talking about on here when really they're just guessing and like to have a moan!

zom

mcginty28 wrote: »

they don't have a diesel vehicle to tow it back as somebody mentioned. always surprises me the amount of idiots

No need to call someone "idiot" just because he/she is not aware of Transdev equipment. In fact it may be god idea to purchase one special diesel unit able to tow trams in cases like that.
In a matter of fact - first series of French TGV(fast speed) trains from Alstom were fuel not electric powered (1970's).

Tow

What happened to their diesel?

To answer my own question.

https://thewandererphotos.smugmug.com/LUAS/Red-Cow-LUAS-Depot/

A quick Google shows the original diesel sitting at the Red cow depot.

It also shows a shiny yellow shunter as well. So ones assumes they still have the ability to shift trams without power.

MOH

HeidiHeidi wrote: »

Do you know what damage was caused?

Or are you just slagging off the repair crews out out in ****ty weather for the last 24 hours for the hell of it?

Not sure if you're in Dublin, but the weather was grand from lunchtime Wednesday (just after the incident happened) up until Thursday lunchtime.

I've no idea what damage was caused - I gather a branch got caught in the pantograph and tugged a load of wires down as it went along. But all the mention of the storm is irrelevant, it was the end of it that a single branch put an entire service out of operation for 36 hours.

If that's really the quickest the issue could be resolved (bearing in mind that it wsan't this), then some serious thought needs to go into working out how to mitigate the impact in future

hmmm wrote: »

They're doing a good job with updates in fairness.

They were doing an abysmal job along the line itself.
Got to Bride's Glen yesterday evening, all the platform signs off. Luas sitting there marked 'Spesialta', which was unhelpful, but I figured maybe there wasn't a display option for Cowper.
Luas pulled off a few minutes later, no announcement of any kind, until we got to Sandyford and all got kicked off as it went out of service.
Stood there in the dark and rain with zero information until another northbound tram arrived about 15 mins later, incorrectly marked 'Bride's Glen', although it actually ended up continuing to Cowper.
45 minutes journey time from Bride's Glen to Cowper.

Overall the available information I got was unhelpful or incorrect. Information on the website Wednesday evening had been that they would run a service from Beechwood southbound on Thursday, Thursday morning that had changed to Cowper.

The whole thing was a complete shambles in the way it was handled.

XPS_Zero

mcginty28 wrote: »

can't shift the failed tram until the overhead cable is fixed. failed tram has to be towed back to the depot by another tram using the power from overhead cable! they don't have a diesel vehicle to tow it back as somebody mentioned. always surprises me the amount of idiots that will pretend they know what they're talking about on here when really they're just guessing and like to have a moan!

The no1 reason I usually avoid talking on social media about public issues, and this is the only exception I make, is that there is a phenomenon of people who have the least understanding of a subject tending to be the most hysterical and loud and passionate about said subject.


Boards.ie is a big victim of this but Journal.ie is the home of it. The ebola crises featured people screeching for an end to flights to Ireland from subsaharanAfrica when no such flights actually existed and for a total ban on flights and ships in and out of said countries which would have caused societal collapse and spread the virus 100 times worse. Just the other day when I made the mistake of reading comments on Brexit, a huge error, I saw a guy, with 126 upvotes I'm so so sad to say (top comment) hysterically bit1ching about how the EU was telling us what to do with OUR border (it was a story that the EU is willing to compromise a little on the backstop)...the person apparently not understanding that "the EU" is us that the govts, including ours, gave instructors to our negotiator to do this, that there was no mysterious EU monster telling us what to do.


Dunning Kruger effect, apparently, contrary to popular understanding, we all suffer from it to an extent, as in we all overestimate our knowledge, but EITHER:


(A) Something happens to peoples brains when they go online that it enhances this effect 100 fold
(B) The people most affected by it get funneled to social media.

zom

XPS_Zero wrote: »

The no1 reason I usually avoid talking on social media about public issues, and this is the only exception I make, is that there is a phenomenon of people who have the least understanding of a subject

This is Motoring & Transport > Commuting & Transport > Luas disruption today forum. There may be people with some knowledge and even experience here.
If you know better (more serious) forum to talk about Luas / trams / public transport systems just let us know.

L1011

mcginty28 wrote: »

can't shift the failed tram until the overhead cable is fixed. failed tram has to be towed back to the depot by another tram using the power from overhead cable! they don't have a diesel vehicle to tow it back as somebody mentioned. always surprises me the amount of idiots that will pretend they know what they're talking about on here when really they're just guessing and like to have a moan!

If the uniloks can't tow them to a section with power they really need to buy a diesel shunter sufficient to do so

Jamie2k9

L1011 wrote: »

If the uniloks can't tow them to a section with power they really need to buy a diesel shunter sufficient to do so

They have a mini loco for moving trams however its never left the depot. I am not 100% but it should be able to do such a job.

MOH

XPS_Zero wrote: »

The no1 reason I usually avoid talking on social media about public issues, and this is the only exception I make, is that there is a phenomenon of people who have the least understanding of a subject tending to be the most hysterical and loud and passionate about said subject.


Boards.ie is a big victim of this but Journal.ie is the home of it. .......

May as well shut down boards then.

It's a discussion forum. If everyone had perfect information about everything then nobody would need to discuss anything.

For example, I clearly have no idea how the Luas works, because I'm totally confused as to how a disabled vehicle and damaged line leads to an inability to provide basic information, such as putting the correct destination on the front of a tram 12km away. But I'm sure it's all interconnected somehow.