Irish Rail boss tells cllrs weekend work is set to continue

THE Chief Executive of Irish Rail, Jim Meade, has written to councillors in Bray telling them that bank holiday weekends are used “to undertake projects of significant scale” and that disruption to services is “unavoidable”.

In a further blow to residents, businesses and visitors, he pointed to further disruption in the coming months.

The correspondence followed a letter sent to Irish Rail from the elected members of Bray Municipal District and comes in the wake of public outcry, in both Bray and Greystones, over the constant disruptions to Dart and rail services on bank holidays, which effectively leave the towns isolated and businesses, which rely on the influx of day trippers, badly hit.

“While the vast majority of works on our network take place overnight, or in a way that sees little or no disruption to services, in some instances disruption is unavoidable. In particular, this will happen if we’re replacing or improving essential infrastructure like tracks, signalling, overhead lines, or helping third parties with major plans,” Mr Meade wrote.

“We need to plan these works to deliver improvements to our costumers,” he continued, “but there can be unavoidable disruption too. We work to ensure that any such disruption is minimised, and that the number of customers affected is minimised too. We do this in a number of ways. We try to ensure that our busiest lines are unaffected at the busiest time, so weekday works, and particularly at peak, are avoided.”

He explained that “other transport modes” are utilised at weekends that “can better accommodate any customers affected by works”, namely, Dublin Bus and GoAhead and that major sports, cultural and other entertainment “is always considered”.

“This poses challenges – we’re busier with works than ever before, but there are more events than ever before too. To that end, with such a range of events throughout the summer, more works will generally happen in spring, autumn and winter.

“In addition,” he went on, “we also choose selected Bank Holiday weekends to undertake projects of significant scale – the extra weekend day allows us to achieve more progress more efficiently, while avoiding impacting those crucial weekday customers.

“We don’t schedule works at St Patrick’s weekend, which is particularly important for tourism. However, the new February (St Brigid’s bank holiday), Easter, and the May, June and October bank holidays, and occasionally the August bank holiday, are often used for works.

Mr Meade added that “specifically affecting Bray and the southside Dart line”, there are a number of programmes which will result in more disruption this year. As a result, more closures can be expected, as follows:

On Sunday, June 9, stations will be closed from Grand Canal Dock to Bray.

On Saturday, September 14 and Sunday, September 15, stations will be closed from Dun Laoghaire to Bray.

On Saturday, September 28 and Sunday, September 29, stations will be closed from Bray to Sandymount.

He added that Irish Rail’s Head of Commercial recently met with Bray Chamber of Commerce “to liaise on such issues, and to ensure greater public awareness on weekends when works are taking place, and to help promote local business too”.