2nd time in 3 days commuters late to work on overcrowded trains – Harris

Fine Gael TD for Wicklow, Simon Harris, has today (Wednesday) described the second disruption in just three days to rush hour commuters as unacceptable and has called on Irish Rail to immediately review how it deals with a crisis on the DART line, to start communicating with its customers, and to put a halt to its new policy of four carriage trains during rush hour.

“For the second time in just three days, commuters woke up to disruption on the DART line this morning with trains running up to 20 minutes late, leaving passengers waiting in the pouring rain. To top it all off, passengers were arriving at train stations with no prior knowledge of the delays and, once again, were made to travel on overcrowded DARTs of just four carriages during rush hour.

“I understand that leaves on the line can cause problems for train adhesion on the DART line. But this does not excuse the fact that customers arriving for the 8.30am DART in Greystones this morning were told on arrival that the train was initially 14 minutes late. A four carriage train subsequently arrived and departed 18 minutes later than scheduled. This train was standing room only on departure from Greystones for an 18 stop trip into the city centre, which costs €9.60 return.

“Irish Rail promised that it would not reduce carriages during rush hour when it introduced its new policy to save on cost last month. Any time I, or any other North Wicklow commuters, have raised the fact that four carriage trains are running on the Greystones route during rush hour, we have been advised that it is under review.

“I am calling on Irish Rail to immediately scrap its new policy of four carriage trains on Greystones DARTs during rush hour. This morning’s example of standing room only on a four carriage train departing Gryestones is proof that this policy is not working. For anyone wishing to share their commuting experience, please log on to http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/2S3WK8Q and complete a survey I am conducting which I hope to present the results to the CEO of Irish Rail.

“I am also encouraging Irish Rail to use the many methods available of communicating with its customers to advise them that there is a delay. I heard of no radio announcements this morning and the first Twitter acknowledgement of any problem was in response to my alerting them to what was going on, which is simply not good enough”