Timetable consultation for DART/commuter 2016 now online
 

can be found here:
http://www.irishrail.ie/news/public-...muter-services

changes include:

19:00hrs connolly rosslare

19:15hrs connolly sligo

It is sadly a return to the chaotic timetable of the past. Clockface has be junked on Sligo and Rosslare

Still can't get into Dublin before 9am on a Sunday
No improvement in late evening departures
The morning Rosslare Dundalk now arrives Pearse too late for a 9am start

also extra 3-5 minutes running time on most Darts (why?), and the 0800 from Greystones is pushed back to 0804 making it useless for many commuters with a 9am start (this is the busiest train on the network).

I didn't see this thread when I posted the following on the Enterprise refurbishment thread. It's more relevant here:

The draft timetable may show more even departure intervals for the Enterprise, but the trains are mostly slower: nothing shorter than 2h 15m. The new early departure from Belfast takes 2h 26 mins.

What's driving this is the new 10-minute interval DART service, which seems to slow everything up. I know that this really needs a new thread, but the Rosslare times have really gone to hell, and the Bray-Howth darts are generally about 75 minutes (remember when they took just 60?).

So you have to wait about 5 minutes less for a DART, and then finds it takes maybe 5 to 10 minutes longer to make the journey. Brilliant! Only on Irish Rail.....

What a spectacular downgrade for just about everbody except DART users. If this disaster of a timetable is implemented most Connolly rail services will become a near irrelevance for Inter-City and longer distance commuters. There may well be some extra off peak DART passengers but many people who have other options will simply walk away from this hugely unattractive timetable.

Pay more, spend longer to get there and by the way the chances of this thing working reliably are next to nil.

Can't see myself renewing my very expensive annual ticket for this pathetic offering, far worse than I expected.

Sligo
So a new 07.30/09.30 M-F replaces 08.00 and 16.00 services. While I accept the 16.00 is not needed neither is an 07.30/09.30 service out of Connolly as the simple reason was in 2013 they were scrapped because of no demand and nothing has changes. The 07.30 will now operate the 11.00 up. Surly it would make more sense for the 08.00 to remain and stick a 7 coach on either the 15.35/19.15 instead and work the 11.00 that way. There is the "service in balance" argument however the reality is it does not matter once demand is been meet. It is a complete waste restoring morning service ex Connolly. Running the 16.10 everyday instead would make more sense or even push it to 16.35 and ease the 17.05 service instead of a 07.30 service. Only reason I can think of is 3 coaches wouldn't be enough for 11.00 up.

Journey times appear way to excessive for:
14.05 takes 3h28m
16.10 FO takes 3h35m

13.00 to Dublin drops Enfield.

Belfast
Good to see a much improved scheduling for this service despite a journey times been longer on a few.

will RUI be making a submission on this?

My main concern is Sligo so I haven't really looked at anything else. They've made a right mess of the departure times - all in the interest of the DART users I suppose. But specifically, I see a big issue with the 1705 service leaving Connolly to go behind a 1700 Docklands departure. This will never have the slightest hope of being on-time.

The 1915 will be positive if they've delayed this to avoid the 10 minute wait every evening at Killucan crossing with the 1800 from Sligo. Otherwise, it'll just be another 10 minutes gone from everyone's day.

The big problem is the 0545 to Dublin moving 10 minutes earlier without a significant change to the arrival time. We can also only hope that they might change the evening down Longford fast service to a 22k which would mean I could avoid the 1915.

Dublin-Gorey-Rosslare is a joke. Journey times are 1hr50 plus minutes. Fares are expensive for longer times and few trains. A complete joke, I haven't took the train in some years now do not see the advantage to it VS bus €19.50 Gorey Dublin return 1hr20 quicker and nearly €10 cheaper with four times more services than IRISH rail.

The changes to the Dublin-Belfast timetable should make the Enterprise service more attractive for commuters, especially cross-border commuters. Those travelling into Dublin will be able to arrive at 0841 (current equivalent 0904) and depart at 1710 (current equivalent 1650), which will be more closely aligned with the traditional 0900 to 1700 working day. For those travelling into Belfast a 0925 arrival, although still a bit on the late side, is a lot better than the current 0945 arrival. The peak evening departure will still be at 1805, so this would suit anyone who could work from say 0945 to 1745.

I would imagine that the 1710 to Belfast will be very overcrowded as most of the few remaining Dundalk commuters will try to get this train to avoid the miserably unattractive journey times on later services.

Dublin - Dundalk
 

17:13 train from Pearse now leaves from Connolly :mad: or am I mistaken. Are they nuts. That train is full leaving Pearse and the 17:07 to Balbriggan from Connolly is gone. That was another full train. So if you could make Connolly by 17:12 it's going to be crazy. For those of you who cannot make it, you have to wait till 17:23. So on top of the extra time it's going to take in the morning (trains leaving earlier and getting in later) its going to work out an hour exta a week from leaving home to getting back in the evening. It's a crazy schedule. It's time to start looking at other commuting options.

More on just how bad these proposals are:

1. The 10-minute fixed-interval DART service. This apparently applies throughout the day. Fine for peak hours but what about mid-morning or early afternoon, never mind later at night? The LUAS does not attempt anything like this: tram intervals range for 3 to 4 minutes at the morning peak to 7 or 8 minutes late morning etc. It must be hugely uneconomic in the off-peak hours to operate a peak-hour service.

2. The slower journey times. OK these are probably a consequence of the 10-minute DARTS, but there is a huge paradox in operating slower trains which reduce line capacity (because by definition they increase time spent in block sections) when the most acute problem is inadequate headway between trains.

Are they stuck with this 10-minute stuff because of some funding arrangement on service levels with the NTA? How slow will things be then the Park Tunnel trains start operating to Connolly?

I think there are some good things. The northern line commuter trains seem to have better spacing, and they no longer serve Portmarnock or Clongriffin, which takes a couple of minutes off journey times.

I can see the earlier morning Enterprise being a huge hit with commuters, and overcrowding seems inevitable. Would there be a case for making the extra commuter train serving just Dundalk/Drogheda/Connolly that's been running ahead of it during the refurbishment a permanent fixture?

James

Luas ranges up to 15-20 minutes before close of service, kicks in after 21.00 ish and early morning.

I think it's safe to say it will be 2 coach DARTS off peak and all 4 coach at peak times perhaps. The 10 minute freq is not remotely sustainable after 8pm or before 7am.

It's another ego boost just like the successful 06.15 out of Cork

Anyone able to see what slots have been left for Kildare-GCD?

who benefits from the extra frequency - whilst I like the idea of "turn up and go" most regular commuters get the same train every day - they will now need to get an earlier train to arrive at the same time because of the increased running time.

Irish Rail in the papers today admitting the slower Darts and saying this is a consequence of the increased frequency, but this still doesn't make sense to me - where is the time being lost, dwell times should reduce if anything (and they're already very leisurely).

The frequency excuse doesn't match, 70 minutes end to end is more than enough

Every minute saved on a DART is a minute saved on a commuter/intercity trip also

Pre 7am and post 10pm there is no justification for 10 minute service, could use the money saved by running 15 minutes interval here to provide the long sought after later services on DART and on Maynooth on a Sunday

To answer your questions, as far as I can figure out the new timetable proposes:

Deferring the 16:14 Pearse-Drogheda to 16:23
Deferring the 16:44 Pearse-Drogheda to 16:53
Deferring the 16:50 Connolly-Belfast to 17:10
Deferring the 17:07 Connolly-Balbriggan to 17:12
Deferring the 17:13 Pearse-Dundalk to 17:28
Deferring the 17:28 Pearse-Drogheda to 17:43
Deferring the 17:55 Pearse-Dundalk to 18:03
Deferring the 18:15 Pearse-Drogheda to 18:23

Looking a little deeper, the early morning Enterprise leaves Drogheda 07:54 and arrives 08:41, taking 47 minutes.

There's also a non-stop commuter train at 08:20 arriving at 09:09 - 49 minutes.

The rest of the Enterprise services running between Connolly and Drogheda take between 36 and 39 minutes. On the current timetable most take 30 to 35 minutes, and when I first moved to Drogheda there were a few that did it in 25 minutes!

James

Connolly Drogheda I think got to 27 minutes at best in the very early days, only a 22k/C3K could really do that. 30 miles from a standing start with the first mile at 20mph and 4 miles at 70, then a brief 90 before 50 through Malahide.


There is some fun and games, the 16:53 Pearse Drogheda is overtaken by the 1710 to Belfast between Skerries and Ballbriggan

When the upgraded Enterprise started in1997 it was routine to reach Drogheda in under 28 minutes with under 26 minutes not particularly uncommon. My fastest trip was marginally over 24 minutes. So 47 minutes is almost double what uncongested infrastructure would deliver.

The amount of slots north of Connolly allocated to DART is already grossly disproportionate to the traffic carried, the revised timetable greatlly increases the imbalance. Even at the busiest point immeduately north of East Wall Junction DART only accounts for 58% of the numbers travelling.

Interesting this timetable proves my concerns about DART underground - without additional physical tracks trains more DARTs mean more congestion and slower journey times. This is not a strategy that will result in extra business but wiil simply drive people away.

That's somewhat of a subjective viewpoint as you are clearly looking at it solely from the perspective of an Enterprise user. Most northern line commuter services are taking the same length of time (some off-peak taking longer) as before so I'm struggling to see how view this as "far worse than you expected" in your earlier post?

I'm not sure that the extra time on the Enterprise services is necessarily going to "drive people away", but on the other hand people may leave their cars/buses and revert to DART with the attraction of a 10 minute frequency. This very much turns DART into a "turn up and go" service between Howth Junction and Bray. Unfortunately, it's somewhat of a chicken and egg situation.

I do agree with you on one point - the infrastructure deficit on the Northern line does finally need to be addressed by solid capital investment proposals - four tracking has to become part of the overall strategy.

Unfortunately I have yet to see a single timetable change that has ever pleased everyone. That's kind of inevitable.

Strange how on the Heuston side a lot is being spent to increase line speeds and reduce journey times, presumably in the belief that this will attract more custom. Yet on the Connolly side they are blithely increasing journey times on Belfast, Sligo and Rosslare routes: do they expect that this will not adversely effect custom?

Someone please explain.

The Heuston side isn't sharing track space with an intensive city suburban service - that's the simple difference.

Also the amount being spent on the Heuston side is miniscule by comparison with what would be required to deliver separate lines on the Connolly side.

it's somewhat disingenuous that the consultation page on IE's website trumpets the 10 minute frequency but doesn't mention anywhere the increased running times.

Technically, for a turn up and go user, the time will be worse. At 15 minute frequency, the average wait time is 7.5 minutes. So you'll gain 2.5 minutes from frequency but lose 3 minutes in journey time.

People I've talked to at my station are very unhappy about this. For the normal commuter train pair on Longford commuter (0545 Sligo up, 1805 down), we are looking at 20 minutes longer in the day.

Will any comments sent to IR re the proposed timetable be considered by IR at all? Or is it already decided upon and anyone who does take the time to comment will just be wasting their time?!

People making short journeys (i.e. Dart passengers) tend not to think about it that way. Wait time is more of a consideration than journey time, especially for ad-hoc passengers.

Dart has a bad reputation for being infrequent and having silly, unpredictable gaps between trains. They've been working on it for the last few years but it'll take time to lose that image. A 10 minute gap goes a long way towards achieving that (notwithstanding the negative impact on other services).

i hate that there is an outbound maynooth train at connolly at 17:58 followed by a 22 minute gap, then a train coming from bray at connolly at 18:20, then a train at 18:50

given past performance, if there is delays to inbound services south of Pearse, especially the increased number of DARTs, if something goes wrong, thats a very long wait for Maynooth line passengers.

My issue with DART is not frequency but reliability, the last 4 or 5 weeks have been particularly poor. I know Irish Rail think people are unreasonably critical but DART seems extraordinarily susceptiple to slipping (it rarely goes fast enough to slide) and I dread to think what the 2016 season will be like if this new timetable is implemented.

the vast majority of Dart users are not ad-hoc passengers though, they're regular commuters and they'll notice the difference. I also suspect there's a disproportionate number of commuters from further out (e.g. DunL to Greystones on the southside) who will all have an extra 10 minutes added onto their days. For some commuters this may be cancelled out by being able to get a later service than before but I doubt anyone will be spending less time travelling overall.

Also - is this actually adding any capacity, I don't think there are any Darts sets lying around idle during the rush hour so it'll be the same number of carriages in service just split into more trains, yeah?

this new timetable looks like they're implementing an autumn schedule all year round. Every train I've been on since October has been at least 5 minutes late so presumably they're getting crucified on the punctuality statistics (not that that has any real consequences for Irish Rail).

Solution? Extra timetable padding all year round. They're banking on people accepting this because the alternatives (driving or getting the bus) are even worse.

Any changes of under 5 minutes have a "slim" change however any sort of bigger changes will be completely off the table unless significant volume of passengers for example request x service to not change.

Let's be honest DART reliability could be better even outside of the Autumn leaf fall period.

I suspect that this change is a recognition that the current timetable is simply not achievable and that as a result more realistic running times are being developed.

Personally, I'd prefer that the timetable be robust, particularly given the increase in frequencies, even if that means slightly longer journey times.

There's no point in maintaining a timetable that isn't achievable.

I understood that the increased frequency was to be at peak time only. This seemed like a good idea. If it was a success, then increased frequency at off-peak periods could then be investigated.

It's only a couple of years since 2 carriage Darts were introduced off-peak. It's a while since I've seen one of these, and 6 or 8 carriage Darts off-peak does seem to be quite wasteful. My recollection is that passenger traffic growth is only in single digits, probably not enough to warrant longer trains or increased frequency off-peak.

Increased frequency should bring growth by itself. Luas does quite well all day long but Dart carriages are like morgues after rush hour - perhaps it's because Luas is convenient for passengers?

While I am an Enterprise user, I also use DART and commuter services, the latter two more frequently than the Enterprise. Indeed a lot of my use of the Enterprise is to avoid the depressingly slow commuter trains which like the Enterprise have been subjected to significant cumulative journey time increases over successive timetable iterations.

At almost any time of the day, I can drive from my house to the city centre in about the same time as the Enterprise would currently take. In the morning I can leave home, by car, 15 to 20 minutes behind a commuter service and arrive in Sydney Parade at least 10 minutes before it shows up. So even point to point journey times are uncompetitive, let alone those that involve a change of train or change of mode. Add to that the significant delays that occur to morning or evening services multiple times a week and you have an offering which is of diminishing appeal especially to longer distance commuters. If you drive up the M1 at almost any time of the day it is buzzing and clearly the railway has lost very significant market share not just to motorists but also to express bus operators.

As for the proposed timetable, it is a credit to the architect in that a considerable effort has been made to produce something that might just be operationally deliverable. The poor signalling and track layout at Malahide, contention at Howth Junction, the lack of an up loop at Clongriffin and even tighter working between Bray and Greystones may well conspire to produce a significantly poorer operating performance than at present. There may well be six DARTs an hour but they will probably turn up in bunches. Alternatively Greystones passengers may find there train held in Bray to take up the path of the following service.

You suggest that this new timetable is effectively an attempt to reverse the long term decline in DART usage. It may do that to some modest degree although I suspect that any gains will be offset by a decline in the usage of other services which, with a few exceptions, have been significantly downgraded.

The issue brought into stark focus by this proposed timetable essentially boils down to whether it makes more sense to impose a journey time penalty of anything up to 20 minutes for passengers travelling to/from stations north of Malahide to facilitate a disproportionate number of comparatively lightly used off peak DARTs. North of Connolly DART accounts for something close to 55% of passengers during the course of a normal working day but already gobbles up 66% of the operating slots. Under this proposal at least 75% of northern line slots will be taken by DART.

The hopelessly uncompetitive journey times to stations south of Greystones means that this line will struggle to maintain even marginal relevance in the medium to long term. The minimal usage figures for stations like Wicklow, Arklow, Gorey and Enniscorthy set out in the 2014 NTA census are stark and depressing . The near empty car parks tell the same story. The same fate would now appear to await the northern line as Irish Rail seeks to implement tram style services on an inflexible and inadequate infrastructure.

And yes there will always be people who don't like a particular change to the timetable, but it is very rare to so significantly degrade one class of user in favour of another unless you are a commercial operator seeking to maximise revenue - this timetable most assuredly won't do that as the higher fare paying passengers are those most likely to walk given that the average DART journey is no more than 9 km !

I totally agree with the earlier comment that the line needs to be widened to 4 tracks between Connolly and Malahide. This will not be cheap, and to be honest, I don't see money for it becoming available while FineGael are in government.

I don't think it's a showstopper for DART Underground, but I think the northern line is a bottleneck that's going to have to be looked at eventually.

While I have nothing against increasing the DART to every ten minutes the effect on the Rosslare line is truly dire with increases in journey times of over ten minutes for the majority of trains.

Measured end to end the increased journey times for Connolly – Rosslare trains M-F would be: +12, +12, +20 (no typo), + 9 & + 13.

The corresponding journey duration increases for City-bound journeys would be + 17, +6, +8, +13 & +8.

Appreciably with infrastructural constraints an enhanced DART offering is going to result in a level of trade off and as a previous poster commented the timetable needs to be robust.

But increases in journey times of the order that are proposed appear considerably beyond the reasonable parameters of robustness and give & take, are a step too far and raise the question as to what exactly is the medium to long term plan for the entire line along the eastern seaboard south of the capital?

The line could for instance facilitate commuting between the key towns in Co. Wicklow such as Wicklow and Arklow. Yet the first train from Wicklow to Arklow is well after ten in the morning. No daytime service for Kilcoole. No additional service, even as a shuttle south of Greystones, to grow business. Plus a number of scheduled out of service train positioning movements at least some of which could operate in service.

The NTA press release and indeed IÉ’s own release are silent when it comes to the South Eastern line. This timetable is essentially fuelling a vicious circle. The only aspect of the proposed timetable that is likely to be well-received by the majority is that it is intended to defer the last train from the city to the slightly later time of 19.00.

The apparent absence of any vision in Iarnród Éireann, the National Transport Authority and The Department of Transport for this line is extremely disappointing.

Nobody is expecting the “sun, moon & stars” but users have a reasonable expectation to a better service than this plus a targeted plan to incrementally enhance the service offering along the line.

Given the dramatic impact on other services of increasing DART frequency from 4 to 6 services per direction per hour, the DART underground proposal (based on the published business case frequencies) would have a crippling effect on journey times along the northern line and reduce the average speed of Belfast services to about 30 mph between Dublin and Drogheda. Does anybody think this is sustainable ? The strategy seems to assume that longer distance commuters and Enterprise users either don't matter or should be so grateul to have a service that they should lap up whatever journey time or service contortions that are required to suit DART operations.

As for the South Eastern line, south of Greystones, it will propably linger on in a Nenagh-like limbo for five or ten years until either a new financial crisis emerges or some major piece of capital expenditure arises. Comparison with the huge success NIR have made of the Belfast - Derry line gives an idea of what could be achieved with a decent service and moderately attractive journey times.