HELL OF THE JUNKIE TRAIN
It should be the pride of our capital city: a sleek, modern urban transport system for Dubliners and tourists alike. But vile abuse, serious assaults and ‘soilage’ have made the Luas a nightmare for ordinary passengers. The reason is simple... and so is t
IT’S 11.30am on the Luas Red Line heading towards The Point. As the tram approaches the busy Abbey Street stop, there is a scramble for the door and hordes of passengers prepare to spill out. In the front carriage, a dark-haired woman in a tracksuit can be heard shouting as she steps off with a group of friends. The door shuts behind her as she rants and roars.
‘Hey, give me my f***ing bag,’ she screams, ‘My bag is inside… give me my f***ing bag.’
As she goes and stands spread-eagled, with her hands across the driver’s windscreen, stopping the tram from moving forward, her friends bang menacingly on the windows.
And while this drama unfolds right in front of Ireland’s national theatre, The Abbey, a fearful looking tourist, map in hand, watches on in horror.
The commotion lasts for five minutes until the driver, who has to move the tram back from the junction to prevent a collision, locates the bag. Harassed and agitated, he watches as a passenger throws it onto the pavement while the woman continues to hurl obscenities.
The woman and her friends then split into two groups, the smaller bunch making their way unsteadily towards Eden Quay, the other along Marlborough Street in a northbound direction. The tram finally moves on toward The Point.
This was the scene on Tuesday morning on one of the capital’s busiest public transport routes. It’s a frightening scenario that has worryingly become the norm on the notorious Red Line service.
Since its launch in 2004, the Luas has become a moving landmark of Dublin. The trams run on two separate lines: the Green and the Red.
But the tracks run through vastly different areas of Dublin: from the leafy affluent suburbs of south Dublin on the Green to the more traditional working- class communities of west Dublin on the Red. The Luas Red Line carries 45,000 passengers daily and has 32 stops; it is this line which will carry families to the planned new children’s hospital. It runs from Saggart through Tallaght, City West, the Red Cow, St James’s Hospital and finishes up in the Docklands.
By contrast the Luas Green Line carries fewer passengers – 35,000 – and has 22 stops. It runs from Brides Glen through Sandyford, Dundrum and Ranelagh, finishing at St Stephen’s Green.
ANTI-SOCIAL behaviour has always been a problem on the Luas. The l atest f i gures show that almost 900 incidents were reported to have taken place on the Red Line in 2013. Transdev, the company that operates the service, has declined to provide figures for last year. However, on Wednesday morning, a few hours spent aboard what has become known as the ‘zombie tram’, illustrates why the situation is unlikely to have improved.
It’s just after 9.30am at the Busáras stop, across the road from Connolly Station, where hundreds of workers start their inner-city commute to work. The stop is busiest at peak times. It’s also located a short distance from the City Clinic on Amiens Street, one of several methadone clinics located across the city.
As the tram pulls in and passengers step aboard, a haggard looking young man in a grey tracksuit takes his last drag of a cigarette and slips on to the last carriage.
He takes a seat beside two German tourists and the tram glides along towards Jervis Street. Along the way, the view outside the window shows a group of Romany gypsies harassing customers having coffee outside Arnotts. On the other side of Middle Abbey Street, on the steps leading to the front door of the Ana Liffey Drug Project, a man and a woman scavenge through a plastic bag.
At the Jervis stop, a crowd of vagrants, their faces clearly ravaged by years of drug addiction, roar obscenities at each other. They seem to be arguing over the final dregs of cider in a large plastic bottle. One of them, a woman who looks like she’s in her 40s but is probably much younger, swings a punch at an especially emaciated man and keels over in the effort.
A ticket inspector, dressed in a bright orange Transdev emblazoned vest, steps onboard and heads straight for the last carriage. There he approaches a young man carrying what seem to be his belongings in a small green shopping bag. He has no ticket and as he is asked for his name and address, he tells the inspector he is staying in a homeless shelter.
Opposite him, another ticketless man is approached. He produces a crumpled up piece of yellow paper and is spared a fine.
As the tram stops at the Four Courts, both men get out.
A well-known drop-off point for addicts and those who are homeless, it is located opposite the Merchant’s Quay clinic, another drop-in centre where addicts can obtain methadone. Some have appearances in court, others are on their way to the clinic.
Up at the next stop, Smithfield, a plaza re-developed at vast public expense, the square is deserted. This week, outside the Old Jameson distillery on the corner, a major tourist attraction in the city, the mood was dominated by a group of drunk men, congregating near the ticket machine, shouting foul language at strangers and themselves.
AS the tram approached the stop for National Museum of Ireland, the two German tourists rose to their feet. As they stepped off and made their way along the platform, empty beer cans and decaying rubbish dotted their path.
The stop is located a stone’s throw away from Judge Darley’s homeless shelter, a hostel that houses addicts and vagrants.
It opens at 10.30pm and guests have to leave by 9am the next morning.
In between times, many spend their mornings going back and forth on the Red Luas line. With the majority battling some form
of addiction, sadly they are easy to spot. People with sunken eyes, hollow cheeks, scarred faces, gammy legs, people who shout, people who stretch out across chairs, dead to the world. The situation is so bad that a stretch roughly following the Luas tramline from Heuston station to Connolly, at the other end of the city, has been nick-named ‘junkie corridor’ by city gardaí.
There are an estimated 61 locations in the city centre where drug addicts are catered for, with services ranging f rom needle exchange to Aids centres, methadone clinics, medical centres specialising in drug addict health issues, emergency social services, accommodation services and even psychiatric and counselling services. It is estimated that about 1,500 heroin addicts descend on Dublin every day to use methadone clinics in the inner city.
The services that cater for Dublin’s heroin addicts have, by apparent government planning default, managed to locate themselves in the tourist and retail heart of the capital. The Luas Red Line from Tallaght in the west of the city is itself one of the main routes into the city centre for addicts, who make life unpleasant, and often worse, for people coming to work and shop in the city.
Commuters tell harrowing stories of strung- out junkies making the journey intolerable, as they flock into the city centre every morning, attracted by the main methadone clinics at Merchant’s Quay on the southside of the river, the City Clinic on Amiens Street and the National Drug Treatment centre on Pearse Street, the largest of the methadone suppliers in the State.
At these clinics the addicts collect their daily dose of methadone, which they take back on to the streets with them to consume orally or trade for other drugs. At times when heroin is in short supply, the Luas Red Line becomes a gathering place for homeless people who are shuttled from one agency to another, from B&B to shelter, from one clinic to another.
Jessy Conroy, 35, has been using the Luas Red Line for over seven years now. He travels from Heuston Station to Jervis Street and back every day – and the emaciated, ashen-faced zombies have become an all-too-familiar part of the his daily commuter journey.
‘They call them the walking dead,’ he says.
‘It’s pretty bad, especially early in the mornings and in the evenings. I don’t think things have got any better on the Red Line. It’s just something you put up with. None of them have tickets and the ticket inspectors don’t check them because they are intimidated.
‘They have no authority and the abuse they take isn’t worth it. One day I saw a man inhaling lighter fuel from a canister – in broad daylight.’
Figures show a shocking level of threats, thefts and harassment cases on the Luas Red Line.
Of the 900 incidents of anti-social behaviour and threats to passengers and staff that happened on the Luas in 2013, the majority were on the Red Line. There were 677 public order offences and staff and passengers were subjected to abusive behaviour on 199 occasions.
IN 2012, more than 1,300 acts of vandalism were recorded on the Red Line. There were a staggering 264 incidents of soilage on the trams and almost 250 cases in which staff and passengers were threatened.
The figures included 157 cases in which Luas staff were threatened and a further 88 incidents of threats made against passengers.
These incidents included ‘ serious verbal threats’ and inspectors being ‘spat on’. There were 1,050 incidents of vandalism involving ticket vending machines and 90 individuals were deemed to be drunk on trams.
Statistics showed that 103 tram windows were broken and there were 29 incidents where shelter glass was smashed. Luas operators were forced to place seven two-man security teams on the Red Line from 10am until the last tram at night in a bid to combat the anti-social behaviour.
In February 2009, in response to the increase in anti-social behaviour on the Luas, Transdev appointed STT Risk Management Limited to provide dedicated security personnel to supplement the existing Revenue Protection Officers. Since then, Transdev has increased the STT security presence from 48 man-hours a day to 144 hours per day.
STT staff now provide security on the Luas from 10am to the last tram 364 days per year. There are nine two-man guard teams to patrol the Red Line during business hours.
On Tuesday, Jessy Conroy witnessed them in action.
‘I was getting off at Jervis Street and they had a man pinned to the ground,’ he said.
‘I don’t know what had happened before but there was a lot of shouting and screaming. The man’s girlfriend was there, too. To be fair, the security guys do what they can, but you can’t stop addicts getting on the Luas.
‘People like myself who use it just try and get from A to B without any trouble,’ he said.
It’s not just commuters who are exposed to the issues associated with travel on the Red Line.
On Wednesday, as the tram made i ts way from the Museum stop towards the city centre, Thomas McCoy and his wife Amelia, a couple in their 50s from Boston, noticed three young men with sleeping bags sitting opposite them. ‘The guy sitting closest the window was out of it,’ said Mr McCoy.
‘His face was pressed up against the window and his eyes were closed. He was as white as a sheet. The other two were holding sleeping bags and clothes. One had his leg up over the seat in front. They were talking but it was total rubbish. To me they were out of it on drugs.’
They were also shocked at the extent of public drinking, a criminal offence in the US.
‘I saw an old man step off one of the trams drinking a can of cider,’ said Mr McCoy.
‘No problem. It’s like it’s the norm around here.’
On Wednesday, as a teacher from France guided his students off the Red Line at Jervis Street, he watched as two men tried to prise open the Luas door before it took off again.
As he did a quick headcount next to the ticket machine, the smell of urine rose up from the pavement and it was impossible not to notice the sheer numbers of drug addicts congregating close to the nearby Spar store.
Suddenly, a bystander shoved a polystyrene cup under his nose. ‘Spare 80 cent? he was asked. ‘No,’ he replied politely. And as he scurried along the platform with a gaggle of teens following behind, the reply left him visibly stunned – ‘F*** off then.’