Bray Air Show - DART Doors forced open following delays and discomfort.

Incompetence in Irish Rail management - what's new?

But at least there is public transport in Dublin for people to moan about.

I'd hardly call it strange behavior but I think it needs to be looked at in context. I, walking a scarcely used cross country single track branch line in a rural location of a sunday afternoon is a very different kettle of fish to walking along a busy double tracked DART line in the Dublin suburbs. The former is benign and the I would admit is idiotic and pretty dangerous.

It is reasonable to fear that someone on the tracks in Dublin is a strung out suicidal junkie about to top themselves or fall under the train wheels as a result of a drug and drink induced stupor. It is not reasonable to assume that someone walking a branch line on its last legs in a rural location with a dog on a lead is going to voluntarily inject themselves into the train's undercarriage.

Anyhow, regardless of opinions contrary to mine, the threat of Gardai, and the fine print of the IE rule book, I have been walking that line on occasion for the last 25 years or so and I will continue to do so for the next 25, nomatter what anyone thinks.

There was a technical issue on a train earlier in the day. That caused a knock on effect where trains were running too close together and leaving large gaps between services. This combined with a possibly larger than expected crowd lead to very large crowds accumulating at stations. Irish rail admitted that 10 stations were unstaffed yesterday. Staff should have been deployed to all stations and should have limited the numbers allowed in stations to prevent trains and stations becoming dangerously overcrowded. The airshow started at around 14:45 around the time the dart was stopped just outside Bray. Possibly the frustration at the delays caused by a technical fault, the overcrowding, the heat and the fear of missing out on the action caused passengers to open the doors. That of course resulted in the dart behind near Shankill being stopped. What should have been a manageable issue earlier in the day was allowed to snowball out of control. Thank god no one was seriously injured or worse.

The regular weekday timetable has trains between Bray and Dublin every 10 minutes. If all trains in the couple of hours prior to the air show were 8-carriage this would have given a capacity of at least 5,000 per hour. If fact I think that the maximum capacity of an 8-car DART is over 1,000. What was the interval between trains last Sunday? Was the problem due to the length of time it took to disembark a full train and clear the platform of people for the next arrival?

Why didn't they close bray dart station

Then run buses to the next station either direction

4 buses, 1 being loaded while the other is being unloaded and repeat

No tickets were checked/tapped getting on the trains as in a rush to get people moving.

So if they ran buses then people had to tap/check tickets they wouldn't have lost that money (and could use some to cover driver's etc for say two hours)

That would not even come close to the capacity needed.

Each completely rammed 8 car train carries at least 1,200 pax. A double decker bus holds approximately 80 safely. This would mean for every DART pulling in, you would need 15 buses lined up ready to go. The DARTs were running about 10 minutes apart at the peak on Sunday. Allowing for loading up, drive, unload and back, you would need about 5 batches of these buses to cover the amount of trains arriving. That would be 75 buses.

As you can see, that would be completely un workable. DB and GAI can't even come close to covering their own schedules at the moment, never mind provide one extra bus.

Heavy rail is the solution for an event like Bray it can lift large numbers away more than any bus or certainly car can. But it has to be managed effectively, which it wasn't on Sunday. Hopefully Irish Rail have learned from this and will hire in stewards to assist with the crowd control and put in a an effectively management plan around the level crossing (routing pedestrians away from that area) and running 8 car DARTs throughout along with supplementary specials with 29s and clear communication to passengers on board.

At the risk of seeming to be pedantic, the Maynooth line is obviously not (yet, at least) a DART service, and is a very poor relation of the DART service in terms of frequency at the weekends in particular as a result. There may have been extra services on that line for the All Ireland, but with the focus they'd have had on clearing Drumcondra, I don't think anyone travelling from further east would have benefited from it, and by the sounds of it normal schedule would have resumed by the time you got as far as Connolly.

On a Sunday evening, the Maynooth line only has an hourly service; 19:17, 20:17, 21:17, 22:17 and 23:27 ex Connolly.

In Bray, I joined the queue at 18:20, one DART loaded up and departed. We made the next one which departed at 18:45 from Bray (with a seat). That was in Connolly at 19:40. If I was travelling to Clonsilla, the next train would be the 20:17 and in Clonsilla at 20:43. That would have been 2 hours 20 minutes to do that journey on Sunday. Not sure what you were doing til 23:10 to get to Blanch?

Leap card allows a free transfer to a bus. So you could have alighted at Tara St. and headed for a 39 to Blanch?

I wrongly decided to park the car at M3 parkway (not navan road parkway as drive more and no free parking) to use public transport with the "help" of google maps to go and come back from Bray

Where I live in Blanch its 38/38a or walk the centre/village and get a 39 etc, no dart or luas near us and i HATE the bus (late if it shows up in the first place)

I left the pier just as red arrows was a no show, 520 or so seen the crowds so gave up and came back and got onto a train around 720-730

Got into connolly around 820 and missed a train and had to wait around 920

Then got to Clonsila around 950, google said the wrong platfrom and time and eventually got on a train at 1050

Drove out of out of M3 parkway at around 1110

So 2 hours queueing or having a chipper or whatever and then another two or less waiting on tains so if i left the show at 7ish and the stars alined and got 3 trains in a row with a resoanal gap, then yes would have been 2/2.30 hours or so travel time

I used both

Connolly as I got of the bray train, it was 55 minutes on the board for maynooth train

Clonsila i got in at 950 the same time as the train left, then no time on the board and rang SOS and he said the time and the right platfrom (clonsila is two platforms then its like the 3rd one is cut into the side of one of them as the train stops there)

So its not like i was in the stations and missed a train by my own fault, if was in clonsila earlier then yes that would have been my fault

Ok - in your earlier post you said you’d arrived into Connolly “just after 8” - hence I was struggling to see how you missed the 20:20 service to Maynooth.

But are you saying that the connecting train for M3 Parkway left the bay platform at Clonsilla before passengers could cross the footbridge from the train from Connolly?

That sounds really crazy if true.

But there is no 22:10 train from Clonsilla to anywhere on Sundays, so I don’t know where you’re getting that information from.

You keep saying “Google” but I’ve no idea what you were looking at?

If you had looked at the Irish Rail website and timetable it shows that there’s a connection to M3 Parkway due to leave at 21:48 - now it is supposed to wait for the train from Connolly as it’s only purpose is to provide a connection.

There is a train due to leave M3 Parkway for Clonsilla at 22:10 - maybe you checked the wrong place?

For future reference, I can only suggest you bookmark the Maynooth line timetable pdf below - unfortunately it sounds like you were looking at the wrong place for accurate info.

https://www.irishrail.ie/IrishRail/media/Timetable-PDF-s/Connolly-DART-timetables/14_m3_parkway-longford.pdf

I’ve nothing to do with them - I’m just a public transport user, but perhaps a more frequent one than yourself by the sounds of things.

I was merely puzzled how you managed to miss two trains.

Unfortunately there is only an hourly frequency on the Maynooth line in the evenings on Sundays so unless you time it right, you can be stuck.

But the reason I asked if the M3 train left without sufficient time for you to get across the footbridge at Clonsilla is that it simply shouldn’t - that’s supposed to be a guaranteed connection.

I was just trying to be helpful with the timetable link. It’s always worth checking in advance.

Luas trams have opening windows. None have a/c as far as I know and it wouldn't really make sense for them to.

I use a-b.ie, find it very good.

http://a-b.ie/nta/XSLT_TRIP_REQUEST2?language=en