Wicklow Rail Capacity Enhancement

If it’s not clear. We are speaking about the future of the service, not the present. The present situation is fine, but it cannot be continued into the future, because once there’s demand for that track-space from both DART and regional trains, DART will win.

You’re right that Rosslare trains do not get a path cleared for them right now. That’s because there are enough gaps in the DART service timetable to allow them through. When the DART frequency increases on this track, as it is planned to, those long gaps are going away. That means the diesels that go beyond Bray (or wherever) will have to wait behind the DARTs on their way to Pearse - unless a gap is left in the DART timetable to give a non-stopping service a clear run at Pearse. Because DARTs will be running more frequently, such a gap won’t be just one scheduled DART, but maybe two or three.

An all-stops solution won’t work either: because diesels have slower acceleration than the DART EMUs, they will take longer to clear their part of the track than the EMUs do, and this will require padding to be added to the DART times to accommodate, which would reduce frequency again.

Yes, it’s inconvenient for commuters from Wexford who want to go only to Bray or Pearse and no intermediate stop, but that’s not all of the people on the Wexford train. The upside is that the arrangement allows more trains to and from Wexford, at the cost that you will have to do a cross-platform change.

Are we Irish so weak and feeble that we alone in the world cannot handle the idea of a train-change? I managed it in Germany without dying… and that one involved using escalators.

It’s not unusual at all. As an example I knew of, the Munich S-Bahn had a compulsory stop and change at Dachau for passengers using the “regional” Altomünster service for 30 years until that branch was electrified (these days, the Altomünster service is now a branch of S2)

The reason for that, and the reason for Wexford services stopping outside Dublin, is to avoid having to mix diesel and electric trains on the same stretch of track. If the Wexford services were electrified, then there is no reason why they could not go onward all the way to Pearse, but again, this would only ever be as an all-stops service: your “regional” train would become, in effect, a DART service.

With regard to 'fast express' services for Limerick and Killarney/Tralee, they don't? You get off the Cork train and then tye Kerry and Limerick trains are all stops trains (Limerick just happens to have only the terminal stop on that line).

Going the other direction isn't comparible as you're nowhere near a city in the Dublin direction, and for Kerry services you stop at all stops currently in the Cork direction (Mallow and Kent).

The equivalent would be a Dundalk service having to terminate at Malahide to reduce impact on the DART (are there many/any Dundalk services that don't originate in Belfast?).

There is currently a programme under development to fully remove non DART services form the DART lines on the North side (FourNorth) because doing so is actually in the realm of feasible, unlike on the south side. It might cost billions to do and its under serious consideration because of its benefits to the DART network.

They aren't going to cut off services to/from the second largest city on the island and there is no other remotely feasible alternative route for running them on at present (unlike Rosslare/Wexford along the Waterford line) so we have AIRR proposals for a higher speed route from Drogheda (Benefiting DART) and FourNorth (Benefiting DART), and DART Underground (Benefiting DART) all aimed at removing non DART services from the line sections with multiple stops and reducing complexity of the DART service.

Given even the potential passenger service south of Greystones vs the Northern line beyond Drogheda its hardly surprising that the most effective solution would be terminating non DART trains before the restrictive sections.

I'm not claiming the via Waterford route will get built any time soon, but if they did a genuine good job of it, you're talking about a modern, 'fast' line upgrade and dual tracking from at least Waterford, mostly built through rural areas, so far cheaper to do, the time saved on travel to Heuston would more than cover the time from Heuston to Pearse by Luas/Bus

They have to go the same speed, despite not stopping, because otherwise they will run up against a DART service. To make the trip faster would mean taking up two slots. As it is, they take up a time slot that could be used by a DART service. That's fine today, because that extra DART service is only notional.

But, and this is getting a little tedious to keep saying, but it has to be repeated: soon, there will be more DART services on the South Coastal line. Once there are more DART services, then running a Wexford train is no longer “free”: it involves choosing between running that train through versus running a DART service. Both take the same time, but the DART has far higher utility: the diesel train cannot stop at intermediate stations because doing so will mean taking longer than its allotted timeslot (diesels accelerate slowly).

Look, it sucks that you can’t keep your seat all the way into Pearse station. On the other hand, if you miss your morning train in Wexford, you won’t be stranded for hours: the frequency of wexford-wicklow trains will increase too.

This is a big gain overall for a tiny amount of inconvenience for relatively few riders. It’s not going to be reversed.

@The Mathematician - Your distances are a good bit off: by rail, Munich to Dachau is 20 km, Dachau to Altomünster is 30 km. Divide by 1.6 for miles. The distance was not the point, the point was to avoid the mixing of a diesel service with electric on the same line. It doesn’t matter that this change pattern is rare in the UK. Other countries exist, and many have better urban rail networks than the UK, and it’s not rare in those places. bk has cited Copenhagen’s S-Tog as another example. Diesel and electric just do not mix well: separate them, and both will work better.

I agree that it is an upgrade in terms of frequency for the towns south of Wicklow, but it would be nice if we could do even better. As I say, I don't know if it is possible, but perhaps by skipping stops and even re-gearing the diesel trains so they have a better acceleration (maybe the top speed would have to be reduced as a consequence of this), we might be able to have something even better. After all, diesel is just a way of powering the trains, just like batteries for the new DART trains.

I don't know much about the Danish system but are we talking about towns of say 100 miles (or 160km) from Copenhagen? Or are we talking about towns much closer than this?

Why does it have to be a 4 coach DMU, it could be 7, or does this present platform length problems? And if there are platform length problems, can they be sorted out, perhaps with selective door opening? At the moment the numbers do not warrant a 7 coach train but that is since the service is so bad.

The DMUs won't be as quick to accelerate but that could be balanced out by skipping stops. In my experience, every problem has a solution if the will is there. While it won't get the passengers to Dublin any quicker, the overall experience will be much improved.

You're making an excellent argument for tunnelling the head here. Whatever about Wicklow not being commutable Greystones and further south certainly is, and will be growing thriving communities.

yeah, strip out the Bray/Greystones/Wicklow passengers and the numbers on the SE services are tiny - they're effectively commuter services with a lightly-used inter-city bolted onto the end. Obviously that's partly because of the slow and infrequent timetable, but the slowness is due to the indirect nature of the line beyond Wicklow which isn't going to change.

it gets from Arklow to Wicklow via Avoca and Rathdrum, that's not very direct.