DART+ (DART Expansion)

But this is gross hyperbole. The proposal is to increase services.

But the point is that with an aspirational document, if they are recommending it (rather than some new lines), then you have to pause.

The journey time posts are not great- 5 mins extra from Maynooth? Why not include the whole line? Have you factored in electrification of part of the line, new signalling…? If you are coming to as little as 5 minute without that then I’d say it isn’t as big an issue as you are suggesting.

You keep saying a diminution of service - yet more frequency is not included in your definition of service.

You haven’t doubled capacity on the Bray-Connolly line tho.

It won’t do anything to change demand north of Shankill in to the city.

Re the AIRR - it’s still only draft and there is absolutely no guarantee that it will be implemented. Years of reading reports that have ended up gathering dust tells me that much. I’ll take it with a degree of skepticism for now.

Re-read my post on Sligo - I did factor in electrification.

And my point is that it is not just 5 minutes, it’s 5 minutes added to the 9 minutes longer that the the Sligo trains are already taking between Connolly and Maynooth when compared with older timetables. The journey times on that route are just getting longer and longer.

I don't know why some people are excusing longer and longer jounery times. I would have thought it was something we should be striving to reduce and make it a selling point to get communters out of their cars. We're too quick to settle for mediocre in this country.

Makes sense. Punctuality on the line this year so far ranged from 69.6%- 77.1%. A 5-minute DART frequency after DART+ would likely make things even worse if they tried to force direct services . Given our history with political fudges in this country, I think we will end up with a handful of direct services, with the rest requiring interchange with the DART.

The existing infrastructure south of Greystones is significantly underutilised, so it makes sense to utilise that capacity through the use of a shuttle in the short to medium term. Some people have raised concerns about journey times, but in last year's timetable consultation, the top request nationally was to increase service levels on the line, while reducing journey times ranked much lower at #21. I think the main issue is making the shuttle as convenient as possible for passengers to use.

Perhaps it's worth considering trialling an increased service using DART interchanges on weekends (currently there are only 3 or 4 services on weekends) to get passengers used to the idea.

True, but the option is there. Not simple, but possible and not gonna cost an extortionate amount.

Bray-Connolly just doesn’t have it.

Any more information on this Maynooth to Hazelhatch link?

Its a line on a map in the AIRR document, nothing else has been set beyond that.

90% of the things "recommended" in the AISRR is mnimum 3 decades away. It isn't worth referencing in terms of actual rail investment.

The issue northside is the delays around Connolly due to congestion. But Commuters do often delay slightly for Dart passengers that are transferring. Similarly for Luas passengers transferring at Broom Bridge, travelling west.

only for those not using either the wexford services or the darts they will be turfed on to.

this is only the best plan for a couple of posters on boards.ie and a clueless unelected so-called transport authority.

forget it, it's not going to happen.

this was supposed to quote the post by IsaacWunder.

it's not a slight inconvenience.
it's throwing passengers off an intercity/regional service with all of the types of people traveling including with luggage etc, on to an already over-crowded or will be quite soon up the line over-crowded suburban service.
the supposed sweetener for this **** service, something they could deliver direct to dublin today if the drivers and rolling stock were available wich once dart + is running it will.
so we lose, a mostly comfortable direct service where we can work, sleep, whatever that brings us direct into the city centre.
in exchange for a service where we are turfed off to the suburban service, with increased journey times, only have a much shorter time to use the benefits the train actually has and all else, for an increased frequency of the subpar service perhapse?
nope, no thanks, you can shove it.
the dublin to limerick route is not a valid comparison as they are not being chucked on to a suburban service, and in actual fact limerick only has that change as a rolling stock saving exercise as it could absolutely support a direct all day service of at least 2 hours or even an hour, the change is not to increase frequencies there.
there is no evidence passengers are actually happy to change, they simply have no option because that is how it has been for decades, and chances are passenger numbers are being suppressed.

i mean we are rehashing the same arguments that have been done to death for a discredited idea only supported by a couple of people on boards, and the NTA who haven't got the message.

but the service is not being upgraded, it's actually being downgraded.
4 up and 5 down direct trains direct to the city which allows working and anything else, replaced with maybe, a more frequent service where passengers are turfed off to a suburban service, with increased journey times and losing the benefits the train offers.
it looks like an upgrade to you because you don't have to use it.
the whole point of this is to kill off services to wexford altogether, because if they were serious about increasing frequency and capacity, then they can do it without this discredited idea.
the only way there would be no change to journey times is if everyone was expected to stampede over to the other train which is stupidity and unrealistic and is not going to happen, an extra 10 to 15 minutes will be added to the journey time for nothing.
at least with longer journey times on direct services, people still get the benefits compared to the disbenefits they would be getting with this subpar service that is being proposed.

there was only 217 on 1 day in 2019, irrelevant ultimately.

the fact is the trains from rosslare are beyond full from very far down the line and all trains at that.

that's the fact from a regular user.

The rail census figures are the figures everything is based on. It is selected to be a perfectly representative day. If there is significant disruption, they re do it to get accurate figures.

The chances that there was an odd occurrence that caused a lines passenger numbers to collapse on that day is nil (there is a chance of a random occurrence causing them to be higher, e.g. a school trip). The figures are valid.

The idea that said magic occurrence would happen on every rail census day, ever year, resulting in permanently low figures is laughable.

it's not a sleepy rural anything, it's a long distance regional main line serving sizable towns and it has multiples of 500 passengers, more like multiple thousand now with full trains on the line all of the time.
sligo is not a city either but its ultimately irrelevant as in ireland the regional product is to almost intercity standards so as to attract patronage.
absolutely laughable that your answer to lx's legitimate points is so what, anyone who was serious about public transport would not hold the contempt you have for rail passengers.
so desperate to have this discredited idea implemented which you will never use, on people who don't want it, that you will show the ultimate contempt for them while claiming to be a public transport advocate.
yet dispite the buses being everything you state, rail is still being used and growing, funny that, it's almost as if the buses can't offer rail users what they are looking for, or at least at the time they are using the train, so your so what about killing off rail services is even more of a joke as you want them to then use a method of public transport they don't completely want to use just to get your way.
a more frequent rail service that runs direct will lead to more passengers yes.

the increase to 20 minutes needs infrastructure works between Bray and Greystones to allow trains to pass going in opposite directions. Originally the plan was to double the line between Greystones and Bray Head but it's now rumoured they'll only be doubling a short section just before the tunnels.

Currently there's a 30 minute frequency but there's an extra slot in each direction each hour available for Commuter/Intercity trains as 2 trains can use the line in the same direction on after the other provided they're with 10 or 15 minutes of each other

e.g.

12:00: Dart Bray→Greystones

12:15: Intercity Bray→Greystones

12:30 Dart Greystones→Bray

IDK if they're planning a higher frequency from Bray, but from Dun Laoghaire seems possible if they run some of the new Drogheda darts to there. There was a document with suggested service patterns in it released early in the Dart+ process but I can't find a copy.