Up to three more years of overcrowded trains, warns Irish Rail boss
IRISH Rail’s chief executive has admitted it will take ‘two to three years’ before customers will no longer have to stand on overcrowded routes.
CEO Jim Meade said the rail service is working to address overcrowding on its services, including the purchasing of more carriages, but said that it would be some time before the issue is resolved.
He was responding to questions from Fianna Fáil TD Cathal Crowe at yesterday’s Oireachtas Committee on Transport.
The Clare TD, who regularly uses the train to commute from his constituency to the Dáil in Dublin, said that his train gets ‘chaotic every morning’ during peak commuting hours, with people having to stand for an ‘hour’ or more before the train reaches Dublin.
He said: ‘There were people standing not just between the carriages, at the end of carriages, but holding on to chairs and tables for an hour, an hour and a half.
‘I’m asking, would you please look at putting additional carriages on those really early morning services?’
Mr Meade responded: ‘Yes, is the short answer. I mentioned earlier we have 41 intercity railcar (ICR) carriages that we would expect in the approval from the Commission for Railway Regulation actually, mid-next month. We do have that issue with commuters using those services. I regularly use them myself. So I fully appreciate what you’re saying.
‘But as we roll out the 41 ICR, we will add capacity.’
However, he added that the addition of those carriages alone would not resolve the issue.
He said: ‘I think we will still have the issue. Maybe we still have people standing from Portlaoise and Portarlington.
‘It’s just the nature of it, it’s a good commute and it’s a fast commute, so people will do it.
‘It will be two to three years before we really get to the point where people won’t be standing.’
Green TD Brian Leddin said that overcrowding was as a result of people ‘flocking’ to public transport and that it was causing ‘capacity challenges’.
‘Unfortunately increasing capacity can take some years because it often necessitates major investment in infrastructure and rolling stock. That is happening steadily, and as fast as possible.’
Mr Meade also confirmed that it hopes to restore dining services on all intercity train services by ‘early summer’.
They disappeared after they were suspended during the pandemic, returning only on the Cork-to-Dublin route last year.
Mr Meade said a tender process is expected to be complete in the coming months and warned customers that costs will be ‘more expensive’ but said that was ‘the nature of things’.
‘It’s part of the offering people want,’ he said. ‘We would then start looking at the longer haul routes. The ideal scenario for us is if we could carry [dining service] on all the regional routes together, that is our ambition.’
Mr Meade also said that it would take around five years to build a Dart line out to Dublin Airport.
There are already plans to have the Metro go through the airport, but this is not expected to be in place for another decade at least.
It comes as Mr Meade insisted that the National Train Control Centre’s budget was ‘within broad parameters’. The NTCC will manage and regulate over 250,000 train movements annually on the Iarnród Éireann network.
Mr Meade was responding to this paper’s report that the NTCC was running over budget and would be delivered two years later than planned.
He said when it would be completed, it would be the most modern train control centre in Europe. He also claimed that it was ‘misleading’ to report that the project was two years behind schedule. However, a summary of a discussion of the Major Projects Governance Oversight Group (MPGOG) – which sits within the Department of Transport – from October noted that the NTCC was ‘expected to be fully operational’ by end 2024. However it added: ‘Full commissioning is now expected in 2026.’ On its budget, the MPGOG minutes from October said: ‘The credibility of the timeline and cost of the project was questioned by the MPGOG.
‘It is highly unlikely that this project can be delivered on budget.’
Green Party TD Steven Matthews said that the 2:1 spend on public transport infrastructure (as against new roads) as set out in the Programme for Government had to be protected.
‘That 2:1 spend must be a priority...you can’t have stop-start change of policy,’ he said.
‘I think we will still have the issue’ ‘Cost of the project was questioned’