Its time to stand up to the vandals and troublemakers

[Mark Gleeson]

Had the usual 15 odd teenager toe-rags with their ****ty dance music, cursing and so on, then the permanent marker came out and one member of the party wrote out all the names of those present down the window, bad move. There where several elderly passengers on board they not happy.

So I got out at my stop Seapoint, chat with the drivers, gave description and what was going on and driver got up brief discussion of that game plan and went for it out the interior door and the other driver took over instantly

Train passes me by and driver has located the vandal and is reading the riot act

So big thumbs up to the drivers of train E112 to Greystones today, very slick, no hanging around, driver took control of the situation and appeared mighty unhappy with what I reported

I'm sick of this class of anti social teenagers if you do see them causing trouble report them

[Kevin K Kelehan]

Sounds like a good outcome;

What can IE do from a technology point of view to curb this type of behaviour?

Where do the images from the onboard cameras go?

[Mark]

Yeah about the cctv, can the driver see the feed?

[Mark Gleeson]

Coach involved was one of the Alstom units so no CCTV, there is a large 14 inch screen on those fitted and the driver can flick through the cameras

52 out of 154 DART coaches fitted with CCTV, that will increase to 128 by mid 2007. 116 out of 180 diesel railcars also CCTV equipped. Its all digital recording and its very high quailty

[Kevin K Kelehan]

IE appear to be dragging the feet when it comes to protecting passengers from anti-social elements.

Every train should be on the programme to have cctv fitted

[Mark Gleeson]

Originally Posted by Kevin K Kelehan

IE appear to be dragging the feet when it comes to protecting passengers from anti-social elements.

Every train should be on the programme to have cctv fitted

Everything ordered since 2000 has CCTV. Digital CCTV equipment didn't really exist until the very late 1990's as computing power to handle it wasn't available at reasonable cost

The LHB DART refurbishment program does include CCTV fitment, there is funding with T21 for mid life refurbishment of the other stock

[markpb]

All the CCTV in the world won't stop kids acting the maggot. The only real deterrent is having people on the trains, moving from carriage to carriage. A mix of undercover and uniformed police and rail security guards does the trick elsewhere.

[alek smart]

Markopb unwittingly puts the Finger directly on the red button with his use of the term "Acting the Maggot".
Its our inbuilt unwillingness to call a spade a spade that underlines a glaring gap between the Social Structure of the British Isles and the Remainder of Europe.
The type of behaviour which Mark witnessed is to my mind the beginning of a career in initially "Petty" crime which inevitably leads on to "General" status.

Just take a look at the rap sheets of most of the "Big-Names" who have been responsible for such unbridled misery being inflicted on thousands of people in this City over the past three decades.

Invariably the perpetrators began their voyage along the Criminal Canal by becoming involved in "Acting The Maggot" and their ensuing experiences of a Legal System which bent over backward to be "Nice" and "Understanding" of their youthful need to be appreciated and valued.

This ensured a string of "Benefit of the Probation Act" verdicts along with being entered into the Juvenile Liason Programme and several other suitably professional sounding attempts to avoid recognizing a nasty little piece of work when faced with one.

The experience of perpetrating "Minor" criminal damage and then being SEEN to get away with it instills an ever increasing level of confidence into a youthful criminally inclined mind which eventually leads to the ability to look an innocent person in the eye and then pull the trigger.

The ONLY way to stop this never ending process is to Stamp it out at the Bottom Level BEFORE the increasingly confident youthful mind becomes the devious and evil ADULT which is where the entire "Liberal" approach starts to unravel with devastating results.

Our Public Transport System is provided for EVERYBODY to enjoy and utilize without fear or favour and it is high time we,the users and providers realized that like any other asset it has to be nurtured and protected from those who seek to deface and destroy every piece of infrastructure provided for the Common Good........Rant Over....Now where DID I put that Black Cap....?

[Dave]

I think we have just found McDowell's replacement

[alek smart]

As a piece of confirmative research I call on all interested McDowellites to make haste to the Inbound Bus Shelter (at one time the Jewel in the Dublin Bus Crown) on the Stillorgan Dual Carriageway (City side of Blakes Restaurant).

Just take a few moments to savour the atmosphere and admire the minimalist design features of this piece of expensively provided street furniture........Then ask yourself...."How did this happen,Natural Disaster ? Infestation of Dung Beetles ? ....OR was there a human element which contributed to this..?

Then put down a deposit on a Micra !!!

[Kevin K Kelehan]

Originally Posted by alek smart

Then put down a deposit on a Micra !!!

Jamews Nix's sentiments exactly re Sunday public transport timetables as the principal driver of car ownership amongst those in their early 20's

I differ it is second to the damn auwful weather that means that such conveniences must be maintained in perfect working order for at least 6 months of the year.

Brat Camp was a great bit TV thats what I'd do with them

[Thomas J Stamp]

Mark, given the general state of lawlessness I would suggest that you subscribe to one of my favourite magazines:



A man well known to those of us with SKY/NTL/Chorus digital!!

[Red Alert]

We need enforceable fines, security guards and gardai. It shouldn't be a surprise to see gardai/security on the train.

When you think about it there's stickers on emergency door buttons etc saying that there's a financial penalty for misuse. Of course the scumbags don't bother messing with that gear anyway because getting caught will be easy. We need similar threats for graffiti, alcohol consumption and to back them up.

No excuses should be accepted. People should be put off the train and arrested. There's no need for a new 'transport police force' or any other McDowell-ism, we need a suitable number of gardai allocated to the LUAS, DART and certain bus routes. They should then liaise with the security guys in DB, IE etc so that these scumbags are not allowed to run riot on the public transport system. Automatic fines with imprisonment for non-paying (like the Standard Fare) should be the order of the day. Anybody without ID should be arrested.

I've never seen as much vandalism in Paris' metro, Munichs U-Bahn or London's Underground as i've come across here. I'll never forget my first trip in the then-new Volvo buses back in 1994 - downstairs 'smelled' new still, yet upstairs the seats were ripped from front to back and the windows were festooned with graffiti. These scum kids have no respect for the public transport because their parents probably don't either. If I ever did anything like that when I was a kid my parents would have killed me.

We need a get-tough, no excuses policy. Because there's no point spending ridiculous amounts of money refurbishing and replacing if they're still going to stink of urine after a month.

[Thomas J Stamp]

Older viewers will remember the american vigilanties on the tube in London called the Guardian Angels.

[MrX]

I would have to say that this type of problem isn't by any means unique to Ireland and the UK. I have seen way more graphiti and damage on French, German and Spanish trains than I have noticed on IE's fleet. The DART's generally very clean and tidy compared to many commuter systems.

I remember an incident aboard a Spanish Cercanias (like the CAF commuters) where a kid spraypainted an entire internal window and slashed the seat with a knife!
I've also had a window smashed in by a flying brick outside Paris on an RER service.

I actually don't think irish passengers are all that tollerant of anti-social behaviour, during the day at least.

I saw a few teens "acting the maggot" on a DART a few days ago and a couple of old ladies gave them a seriously tough dressing down in the strongest old dublin granny way.

[Mark Gleeson]

You are dependent on someone taking action.

I did have the pleasure of watching the security guys westle two guys to the ground. They had been thrown off the train ahead of mine, both drunk and in posession of the tell tale brown bag of cheap lager. Security arrived on site just before my train rolled in, needless to say everyone swaped seats to get a view.

Problem is people are put off traveling because of this minority

[Donal Quinn]

was chatting to a few connex ticket checkers last night

they said that they had been involved in an 'incident' earlier on yesterday and seemed pretty shook up over it

apparently the rule is that following an incident the checkers have to leave their tool belt (including smart card reader) in the cab so if the scum come back they are less vulnerable

also they said the green line was as bad if not worse than the red line

[craigybagel]

Having travelled in a train in yorkshire one night that got bricked i know its not a fun experience (even if the guards reaction was to merely look up and say "oh the locals are throwing bricks again" as if he was talking about the weather) but at the risk of sounding stereotypical dubliner im sure theres people in tipperary who throw cow s**t at the train! at least ive seen kids standing near the tracks, followed by some loud bangs, and then a strong but familiar smell........

[MrX]

I was also on an Acela Express (the world's slowest TGV - normally running at or below 125mph hehe) just en route to boston when we were pelted with stones by local yobs.

Seems to be a world-wide phenomon.

Footnote:

The Alcela express is a bit like the Enterprise of the TGV family. It runs at 125-150mph for a short stretch of the journey (18 miles!), where the track allows and spends the rest of its time at <125mph and has suffered horrendous damage to its breaking and suspension systems due to poor track quality that took it out of service for months. The US regs also required it to gain serious weight which didn't help much either.

Although, to be fair to it, it does make decent time along the North East Corridor, it's just a shame it's not a proper TGV link!

[EMD]

Either that or Massachusetts (especially Boston) are not as strict as other US cities. Out of all of the commuter agencies in the Northeast, the MBTA is the sole one that retains "ghetto grids" over its locomotive and cab-car windows.

The Alcela express is a bit like the Enterprise of the TGV family. It runs at 125-150mph for a short stretch of the journey (18 miles!), where the track allows and spends the rest of its time at <125mph and has suffered horrendous damage to its breaking and suspension systems due to poor track quality that took it out of service for months. The US regs also required it to gain serious weight which didn't help much either.

Although, to be fair to it, it does make decent time along the North East Corridor, it's just a shame it's not a proper TGV link

Pardon the deviation (I know that your mention is a side mention), but I wish to comment on this. The new US (Federal Railroad Administration) regulations were instituted in 1999; these were related to "crashworthiness" and could have been met using crash-energy management instead of big slabs of steel...and of course could have been avoided if the trainsets had come out in 1998. (Funny enough, they just tested crash-energy management at the Pueblo, Colorado facility recently using an old Long Island Rail Road "M-1" EMU, one of the few examples of such weighing less than 100,000 lbs; it was a remarkable success, unsurprising to many outside the US of course.)

For the record, the Acela Express is a tilting trainset running on traditional railways, which puts it in the class of the X2000 in Sweden (itself tested on the Northeast Corridor) or the ICE-T in Germany, not the TGV per se. And it weighs just about double the weight of a single-level TGV. And the track quality is in fact quite high, using 140-pound-per-yard rails, except perhaps at points that have not been upgraded due to lack of adequate funding.

There is not much time it spends at just about greater than 125 mph. The blame for maintaining speeds at less than optimum has been fixed on the failure of Congress to fund upgrades of the 70-year-old OHLE on the former Pennsylvania Railroad segment (it is variable-tension and sags during the summer heat; unless it is all upgraded to constant-tension, they won't run the AE at faster than 125 mph, the same speed as the Amfleets with the AEM-7s). And northeast of New York City, the former New Haven Railroad alignment is rife with curves as it hugs the shore line; and on the part of that railway owned by Metro-North and the Connecticut Department of Transportation, they disallow the Acela Express to use its active-tilting system due to close track centres (11 feet, apparently).

Back on topic though: How come there is not a separate "guards" outfit for IE, sort of like the British Transport Police? Having the Garda SÃ*ochána on the trains is OK, but having them on the tracks can be troublesome and lead to possible conflicts with the railway, especially if any trains hit an officer; further, they cannot be dispatched as quickly to the railway as a transport police force could.