Oisin's blog
Monday 7 February 2011
Moving to http://www.real-dublin.ie/blog
Thursday 20 January 2011
Build the DART Underground, but for people not developers
The DART Underground project, planned to be built some time before 2018, oral heading is taking place at the moment. This project will link up the 4 railway lines coming in to Dublin, giving us more of a network and making rail travel in the city much better.
This is to be welcomed.
In particular, I welcome the fact that it improves and promotes public transport. If it easier to get around by public transport we might be able to convince less people to use their cars. It will also provide some employment in construction.
Irish Rail have a good name locally on the ground in the area. This is thanks to their investment in the community, which goes back to the 1840s, when they built Inchicore.
However,this goodwill should not be taken for granted. There are some shortcomings in the project, which I would like to highlight. Now that the project is to be delayed because of the financial situation it would be appropriate to consider these. The project needs to be finished properly, and this means leaving behind the poorly executed public consultation, and in short, doing the job right.
Apart from the issue of proper consultation, which is important to me as a green, as it goes to the heart of proper democracy, I want to address three issues:
(1) The lack of stations
(2) The location of those stations
(3) The alignment
This project needs to be built for the community, not for the construction industry. That means consulting properly with residents.
Consultation means actually listening to what people say. Deciding the plan behind closed doors and then presenting it to stakeholders, with characteristic lack of detail, as a fait accompli is not consultation.
Announcing public events, with notices only in selected places, only a short time in advance is not public consultation. The project passes under my building, yet there was no notice in my block or in my local spar about the sessions. I heard about them mostly by chance through Rail Users Ireland.
Asking for submissions on a smal postcard and then replying with a stock answer 6 months later is not consultation. (I read some other peoples reply's - they were all very similar)
Proper consultation would mean holding town hall meetings with local residents, giving options and explaining them properly, and maybe even letting people vote for them. Actually addressing questions, not just refuting them and treating the public as adults, not childre.
Now to some of the shortcomings of the project as currently planned.
LACK OF STATIONS
At present, Parkwest, at 6km from Heuston is the first station on the line. Given that Heuston is currenly a terminus station and you still have to get a bus or luas to many parts of town, that's not really a problem.
However, when the original DART opened in 1984, the affluent areas of Sandymount and Salthill got new station, both less than 2km from their nearest stations.
Later on Grand Canal Dock and Clontarf Road got stations, even though they were close to the old city centre stations. More stations are going to be needed between Heuston and Parkwest. They need to be as close as possible to the centres of Ballyfermot, Inchicore and there should be a plan for a future station near the South Circular Road.
Locations must be chosen to fit in with where people live now, not where developers might like to "add value" to future construction projects.
That means that the proposed station in the Inchicore engineering works is wholely unsuitable. From the point of view of access, there is virtually none without severe disruption to surrounding neighbourhoods. The works is too far from Inchicore village for people to walk.
If access to the proposed station was planned from Kylemore Road, then why not just build that station at Kylemore Road? This would allow efficient interchange with road services, including a cross city bus (the 18) and any future Luas etc., without adding to the journey times of those services.
Alternatively, there are properties owned by NAMA to the south of the railway allignment near le Fanu Road. Ballyfermot people might like this better as it is marginally closer to the centre of Ballyfermot.
Ideally, an Inchicore station should be located under Grattan Crescent Park, or if a sufficient number of local residents opposed an allignment along the Camac, close to the junction of the Con Colbert and Sarsfield Roads (I'll show this diagramatically in a moment) This latter option would allow for interchange with buses on the N4, and, perhaps a park and ride if an underground carpark was built.
Provision should also be made for a further station at the South Circular Road. There is substantial empty development at Clancy Quay, a hotel, a number of schools and facilities around that area.
We should be talking about best practice here, and not just building stations in locations which are convenient to us because of the design of Victorian Infrastructure.
It is common sense that the allignment needs to minimise the number of homes under which it passes, both for operational and construction reasons. The alignment also needs to ensure that the greatest number of homes have access to stations
There are obviously also structural issues, but we need transparency about these. Rocks are not "commercially sensitive"
In this diagram, I present 2 alternative allignments to the current plan that better fit the parameters I have mentioned and that will be more palatable to residents.
Option A, has been put forward by Irish Rail and manages to miss the unnecessary tunnelling under Woodfield etc. With this alignment Inchicore Station could be in the green space directly to the north of the Dan Ryan yard.
Option B takes the service nearer to the people by going through the heart of Inchicore. The downside of this is that it would have to pass under 2-3 houses in Inchicore Square, the Metropolitan Apartment Block on Inchicore Road and 2-3 houses on SCR and Kilmainham Lane,
The village of Inchicore would very much benefit from such a station. Cost/Benefit as always has to be taken into consideration, but is meaningless if it doesn't take into account cost/benefit in the wider community, as opposed to in the narrower scope of the project.
In closing, this is a fantastic project, but it should be built for the people that will use it, where they need it.
Friday 7 January 2011
Democracy and electoral reform
Monday 6 December 2010
The National Excuse
Thursday 25 November 2010
Man with a Pram
Friday 5 November 2010
Listen to the little people
Thursday 17 June 2010
High Speed Information Railroad Needed
This was a slow process with mothers and babies, elderly nuns in wheelchairs and tourists. There also didn't seem to be anyone in charge, but later on a lady without an id badge seemed to be in control. The ticket checker was chatting to some people.
There was a virtually inaudible announcement with the standard "we apologise for the late departure of this.. mumble mumble mumble" but the platform display was still showing a nice big "on time."
From taking the train every day, and noticing the fact that we only had half a train (a 3 carriage set) I assumed that they were waiting for a second 3 carriages, and this was in fact what happened. I confirmed this when I managed to. but in on the ticket checkers conversation, and then finally at 7:35 or so, they backed up a second 3 carriage train and stuck it on.
Then, there was mayhem as they tried to get the elderly people going to Knock, the tourists and the foreign nationals with children back on the train.
Now for those that take this train every day, we know that the 3 carriages nearest the gate go to Westport and the 3 furthest away go to Galway. The announcement said, "board the top 3 carriages for Galway and the rear 3 for Westport" which makes sense if you are a train driver, but perhaps not for anyone else. (this happens every day)
What generally happens every day is thats passengers ask each other, and get on a carriage, sometimes the right one and sometimes the wrong. On a good day there are announcements from the automatic voice on board, repeating the "top 3 carriages" lark. This has been going on for months and every day the stress levels of infrequent travellers are piqued, as they worry whether they are in the correct carriage. Most days, the scrolling electronic display on the train is just set for Galway, causing the Westport patients to have hernias.
Then there is the booked seating. Sometimes it is turned on. Sometimes it isn't. Lately someone has started putting "this seat is booked" cards on seats, but there is no name on the electronic display, no date or time on the piece of paper and no information about which portion of the journey the seat is reserved. Lately, they have started putting big stickers on the windows, but again, no indication of for when they are valid.
I went on twitter to give out to @irishrail. When I was there, I decided to see what people were saying in general to @irishrail. A common theme seemed to be lack of information. www.railusers.ie also have a few sections of their forums set aside for information breakdowns by Irish rail, particularly destination displays that go wrong.
It is all very simple. Irish people know that everything is not going to go to plan every day, but why not give us information, so that we don't have to guess!
Today's fiasco could be easily remedied.
Firstly, the platform should not have even been announced to passengers until the train was completely ready for all passengers to board.
A message should have been displayed on the main board in Heuston, announcing that the train would be delayed, and giving an estimated boarding time and departure time.
Next, Irish rail should at this point have fixed their train information displays to deal with joint running trains. Coaches A, B and C should always go to Galway, and should say "Galway - Gailimh" on the side. Inside the scrolling display and automated announcement should list all stations to Galway. The display and announcement should then tell people that the Westport service was in Coaches D, E and F and that passengers would need to get out and go to the left or right (as appropriate) Similar information should be displayed in the westport bound coaches.
The display the station should also make it clear which coaches passengers needed to be in for each station.
Next, the booking system just has to be used. When there is a group, the name of the group could appear instead of the name of the passenger, but it should still be there. Where large groups of school children, or tours going to knock are expected, extra coaches should be used, even if they are only starting from Athlone, but all of this should be announced, on platform displays and by announcements on the train. No more making it up as they go along. No more bits of paper. The train staff should also enforce the reservation system, and have a way of turning off individual seat bookings, perhaps using their mobile phones, if the named passenger is not in their seat as the train is due to depart.
All in all, they just need to get their communication with the customer right. If that happened, travelling by train would be less stressful, and more people might travel! As it is, the system seems to be geared towards keeping people in the dark. The timetables are given padding so that trains are scheduled to take 10-20 minutes longer to get to Dublin from Portarlington, than Portarlington from Dublin. This is, in the style of Ryanair, so that they can claim to be on time, even when the train is late.
So if you are listening Irish Rail, just get the information right, and that will be a start!