Waiting For God Knows

Greystones Dart station SAT11NOV23

atest press release from Cllr Derek Mitchell, issued on Monday, November 13th 2023…

On Saturday, when there is an hourly Dart service, Irish Rail cancelled one and then the diesel train from Rosslare was delayed 25 minutes.

The electronic signs showed that there would be a train sooner.

There was no announcement only the wrong electronic display. There were no staff in the station.

About 150 passengers were left on the platform for 50 minutes expecting a train soon, many were families with babies and older people.

This is very bad management of the customers:

⦿ The DART controller should send another one down if a train is cancelled, especially if the Saturday interval is 1 hour.

⦿ There should be a service board on the public side of the station showing all departures as in Dun Laoghaire. Passengers need to be told what is happening with announcements.

⦿ We were told to expect a more frequent weekend service when more drivers were trained a year or 2 ago but they never appeared. This is needed now.

⦿ Many people tell me that the DART scheduling has got much worse.

⦿ The plan for a 20 minute interval service to Greystones requires a much better approach to scheduling and management.

Medium Term. The details of the DART+ South were to have been announced many months ago but nothing has appeared. The Greystones improvement is separate from the more contentious closing of four level crossings further North and should proceed now especially as Greystones population increased 22% in the Census period, much more than Dublin’s 6% increase.

I wrote the original report on the partial double tracking in 2018 and the Jacobs report of April 2019 confirmed its feasibility. Implementation needs to be speeded up.

I have written to the Chief Executive of Irish Rail and demand an improvement.

I have also asked Minister Simon Harris and the NTA to assist in pressurising Irish Rail to do better.