The Dublin Community Blog

I only heard about this yesterday so just posting to make people aware. Demolition of the West Stand in Lansdowne Road is beginning this weekend, and DART/Rail services are disrupted:

DART: During the August weekend, DART services will be suspended between Connolly and Sydney Parade Stations. DART services will operate between:

Howth/Malahide – Connolly
Sydney Parade – Bray/Greystones

A shuttle bus service will operate between Connolly and Booterstown Stations for customers making cross-city journeys, or travelling from southside stations to the city centre.

Further information on Irish Rail website and AA Roadwatch.

Have a great Bank Holiday

People often wonder why Dublin’s traffic is so bad. Usually, and rightly so, it’s blamed on the city’s completely inadequate public transport network. As an illustration of this, Dublin today received it’s first new train station in 116 years!! Yep, you heard that one right, it’s one hundred and sixteen years since Tara Street Station opened its doors. Ok ok, there have been various DART stations opened up through the years, but, we’re talking main line stations here.

But enough history, today saw the opening of the new Docklands Station in the IFSC. The new station serves commuters from Clonsilla, Coolmine, Castleknock, Ashtown and Broombridge, and has allowed for an additional four trains each direction per day already. Amazingly, Iarnród Éireann claim that this gives them a service frequency of about 10 minutes from West Dublin to the city centre between the hours of 07:10 and 09:00. It will be interesting to hear tales of whether or not this becomes reality for people along this route.

Also, to tie in with this, Dublin Bus are offering a range of services to and from Docklands Station. The new 151 route and new feeder bus 93 route will be available for Docklands Station commuters.

More details on all services can be found on the Irish Rail Website and the Dublin Bus Website

This is a bit late, but hopefully it helps someone tomorrow morning. A new rail schedule on all intercity, DART and Commuter services came into effect today.

The new timetables can be found on the Irish Rail website. If you take the DART to work you should check the timetable just in case your usual train has changed. Nothing can mess up a Monday morning like missing the train to work

The first information on the upcoming Luas price increases is making some headlines. From Monday prices will go up with a special increase for those people using the Luas at peak time.

From Monday, all rush-hour commuters using the trams will have to pay 10 cents extra for their ticket.

The higher fare will operate between 7.45am and 9.30am from Monday to Friday.

The LUAS operators say it is designed to alleviate rush hour congestion by encouraging people to use the service at different times.

In other words please don’t use the Luas to get to work. Just what do those people think public transport is for if not to help people go about their daily lives including getting to and from work?

I wonder what Minister for Press Releases Martin Cullen in the Department of Transport will have to say about this? Lots probably, none of it useful. After all the Luas operators have to get approval for price increases from the Department. Don’t forget the Luas actually operates at a surplus so this price increase is not to cover losses or costs. As they admit in their statement it is purely intended to discourage Dublin commuters from using the trams.

Perhaps this is a sign that despite being only a couple of years old the Luas has already reached peak capacity and can no longer fulfill the role for which it was built at much expense and disruption? More bad planning for Dublin.

UPDATE: You can now let us know your thoughts via our latest poll too.

Out with the old in with the new. It’s that time of the year when Irish public transport gets rewarded by the government and are allowed to squeeze a few more cent out of the traveling punters.

Dublin Bus have put most of their fares by 5c, some of the more expensive ones have gone up by 10c.

• 1-3 Stages: 0.95c -> 1.00
• 4-7 Stages: 1.35 -> 1.40
• 8-13 Stages: 1.55 -> 1.60
• 14-23 Stages: 1.80 -> 1.90
• Over 23 Stages: 1.90 -> 1.90
• Outer Suburban 1: 2.10 -> 2.20
• Outer Suburban 2: 3.10 -> 3.20
• Outer Suburban 3: 4.10 -> 4.20

More fares can be found at the Dublin Bus web site.

The Luas web site doesn’t currently have any details of price changes, but they did get approval from the Department of Transport to put up prices so I presume they have or will do so shortly.

Some of you may have noticed I’ve been a bit quiet for the last 3 months, thats because I was traveling around Australia. If anyone wants to see how public transport should be done they should travel to Sydney or Melbourne. Quick, easy, and reliable when compared to Dublin. How come they managed to take a penal colony and in 200 years turn it into a state of the art world capital while we managed to take the second city in the British Empire and turn it into a small outback town?

Update: Luas fares go up next week.

I’m a bit late but you may find this useful if you have to heave heavy shopping across the city like I did today, fair play to Clearwire for the Christmas shuttle:

The free Clearwire Christmas shuttle will be running between O’Connell Street and Grafton street on Thursday, Friday and Saturday this week to save the weary shopping feet of the people of Dublin.

The shuttle will be running tomorrow from 10am till 4pm and you can hop on outside Topshop at the top of Grafton Street or outside Cleary’s. You can hop off outside Penny’s on O’Connell Street, at the bottom of Grafton Street outside Trinity or outside Topshop. So if you are in town be sure to check it out!

 

EDIT: November 15 @11.08am -  An official opening date has been announced, December 20. (Spotted on TCAL)
Daragh wrote back in September that the Dublin Port Tunnel was to open in mid-November. It now appears that it will open before Christmas with an official date being made before the end of the month. (You would have thought getting it open in time for the Christmas rush would have been important particularly considering the crazy traffic on the quays yesterday evening which was made up of WWW wrestling fans (apparently there was a do in the Point Depot) and trucks and lorries making their way to the port for the evening sailing.
Before then there will be a 10km charity race through the tunnel on December 10. More information on that here and here. Sounds like a cool thing to do.
And back to tunnel news did you know 5,000 people worked 7.5million people hours constructing the €752m project. At 4.5km long it is the longest urban tunnel in Europe and should transport traffic from the M50 to Dublin Port in six minutes. (The site actually contradicts itself on this fact, on one page it says six minutes while on the map at the front it says 10.)
Check out the Dublin Port Tunnel website which has lots of really cool photographs, some of which I am reproducing here. Who knew Star Wars was going on underneath our feet…

Above pic by Mark Marshall

No accreditation for the above pic.

Above pic by Jason Clarke

According to Breaking News.ie, since the Luas was launched in June 2004 some 50 million journeys have been made with 80,000 people travelling on it everyweek. The website has a handy list of attractions which are located close to the Luas, handy for tourists.

Taken from the Red line Luas in May 2005.

The Minister for Transport, Martin Cullen, has just announced the route for the new Metro North line from Dublin City Centre, to Dublin Airport.

Metro North will run for 17 kilometres will take in both Ballymun and Drumcondra along the way.

There will be 15 stops starting at St Stephen’s Green, O’Connell Bridge, Parnell Square (possible stop), Mater Hospital, Drumcondra, Griffith Avenue, Dublin City University, Ballymun, Santry Demense, Metropark (!?), Dublin Airport, Nevinstown, Swords, Seatown and Lissenhall. A journey from the city centre to the airport is expected to take 17 minutes.

The full route map is available here

The project is expected to be finished in 2012 and will use underground, surface and elevated tracks. It is estimated 34 million passengers a year will travel on the service, with trains running every four minutes in each direction, increasing to every 90 seconds during peak periods.

If it happens as is being proposed, and happens on time and on budget (two very, very difficult targets to achieve in major Irish infrastructure projects) it will be a hugely benificial service.

Let us know your thoughts on the Metro in our latest poll over there >>>>

The M50 southbound at the Firhouse junction is currently closed, apparently due to a person threathning to jump from the bridge. This will further add to the traffic woes around Dublin during this evenings commute, with the area around Dawson St also being closed due to a security incident. More on this as it happens also.

UPDATE: 16:35

According to this update the M50 has now re-opened also.