Winner

I've chartered a train to collect my prize...:D

0620 Maynooth Pearse now terminates at Connolly.

Is this definite? Irish rail said on twitter this morning , this is on trial for a week.

Whats the problem with 06.20, arriving in Pearse at 07.05 isn't even peak.

The way things are going with Maynooth, Newbridge/Hazelhatch will have a far superior service to Pearse and GCD over a long established route.

i get the feeling, they are trying to make sure the 06.20 gets out of Connolly, Maynooth-bound at 7.05 to get to Maynooth in time so the 07.55 Maynooth Bray gets out of Maynooth on time.

seems to be some serious performance issues out of Connolly at the moment.

Wait until leaf-fall season kicks in!

http://www.irishrail.ie/news/december2018timetable

Proposeld timetable changes from December on Connolly side.

The 1655 up-train from Sligo again will be a disaster for the evening down timetable. This will end up crossing with the 1500, 1600, 1700, 1717, 1815 and the 1915 trains from Connolly. If any one of them is late the delay will just cascade back through the rest of the evening timetable getting later and later.

I'm loving the new Maynooth line timetable !

I fail to see the need for this on the Sligo line, not the extra service but rather returning the old schedule. They could think outside the box and offer a better service. 20-25 minutes added time M-F to the 16.55 service compared to Sat. They should at least remove Enfield as a scheduled stop because it might help the existing schedule and prevent mass disruption on a daily basis.

Take today (evening peak) as an example most trains left Maynooth on time but lost 5-7 minute after heading for Sligo/Longford.

Out of interest, what would you have done?

I don’t think closing removing most of stops at a station would go down well locally.

Well firstly the services were cut a few years ago along with Waterford to save costs because usage was pretty poor. I don't see whats changed so firstly I would like to know the NTA and IE rational around restoring because commercially there is not a case and more of the same from both IE/NTA. There are far more options to deliver a better service such as but not limited to:

Ex Connolly
Schedule the current 08.00 to 07.20
Schedule the current 11.05 to 10.20
Schedule the current 13.05 to 12.20
Schedule an extra service at 13.50
15.05, 16.00, 17.10, 19.15 to remain the same however I would like to see a more consistent xx.xx departure time.

or terminate 13.50 at Longford (M-Thu, Sligo Fri, No Sat Service) and extend the 18.15 to Sligo Mon-Fri. I know this could be more complicated in terms of rolling stock however its not impossible.

Ex Sligo
05.40
06.40
Schedule an extra 08.15
Defer 09.05 to 09.45
11.45
13.45
15.45
Defer 18.00 to 18.30

As for removing Enfield, they lost it years ago and I don't think there will be many traveling to Dublin at that hour. In addition, they barley had a Sunday service at all not so long ago.

The proposed timetable is not delivering for passengers when needed, just wasting capacity where demand is low.

* - Current 09.05 ex Sligo is heavily loaded regularly particularly in summer and an extra morning service would help this.
* - Fridays 13.05/15.05 are very busy and a 2900 is often used and capacity increased on 15.05. Thew new service could well allow them free up a 2900 and possibly reduce capacity on 15.05.

Another relatively low-cost improvement would be to have the current 17:17 terminate at Maynooth, run it back into town and use that unit to provide a later service to Longford. This is currently effectively an empty stock movement as it is of little use to anyone going further than Maynooth.

Another big improvement would be to provide earlier services to Dublin on weekend mornings - again from Longford would be good enough to start. First arrivals into Dublin at 10 and 12 on Saturday and Sunday are really not good enough - particularly from Longford and Mullingar which are not that far from Dublin.

I agree with Jamie2K9, the current changes are pointless - adding an extra service each way at time of very low demand is just a waste. What customers need are more services when they can use them - not changes that the NTA can point to and say that now we have X services per day.

The NTA seem to have a real focus on increasing the numbers of services at all costs irrespective of whether or not these services are actually wanted - this is that same thinking brought us 10 minute DART at a cost of massive overcrowding, regular calculations and a virtual collapse of the timetable. There is no point in adding more services if the result of the extra service is ongoing disruption to what is there already.

Im looking forward to the new timetable starting tomorrow. The half hourly frequencies all day mon-fri upto 9, up to 7 Saturday upto 7 Sunday and the later Sunday trains up to 11pm. Vast improvement.

One additional point. The last time the 7 and 9 services were introduced on the Sligo line and the 8.08 nonstop was introduced hastily, we had a suggestion that it should stop at clonsilla with a connection for broombridge - coolmine passengers using the docklands train ahead of it. It wasn't implemented then. Anyway the 08.02 ex Connolly to Maynooth will make just 2 stops at broombridge and clonsilla en route. Great news!

There was only around 5 passengers on the 06.55 to Sligo this morning with a few joining in Drumcondra. Would bet there was 0 departing Maynooth. I know the route gets a lot of local traffic but how IE and the NTA restored this service is crazy.

It was also a 29k however I understand its usually and 22k.

But how many were on the train as it arrived into Sligo which frankly would be the main market. I’d assume it picks numbers up from Mullingar westward.

It gives a 10:15 arrival into Sligo which would be useful for students. Local traffic may be reasonable too.

Within any timetable you will always have services which are partially positioning trips due to rolling stock or staffing constraints - hardly grounds for assessing it as “crazy”.

I agree and said it may pick up traffic but whatever it does pick up is insignificant to justify a restoration. It was a simple box ticking by the NTA.

I fully stand by my crazy comment. They had an opportunity to offer an enhanced service but didn’t.

You simply don’t know that unless you know the actual numbers arriving into Sligo. And you don’t know what they are (nor do I), but I am no fan of these sorts of sweeping comments without actually having hard and relevant data.

You’re just looking at the start of the journey where the relevant part really is the second half.

Without hard numbers to compare you’re not going to know if it’s making a difference. You’re just making suppositions.

What data did Irish rail have, absolutely nothing. Operational convenience was put ahead of the customer and signed off by NTA.

I’m sure they have an idea of how many passengers used it and are using it. More than you or I.

This frankly is a pointless argument without having hard data.

All it is based on is one observation at the wrong end of the route.