Pilgrims urged to book Pope transport in time

IRISH Rail will have extra trains on all routes, and capacity for 250,000 journeys across Dart, commuter and InterCity routes for those attending the Papal Mass in Phoenix Park.

All InterCity journeys must be booked in advance online.

This includes journeys being made by those who have existing tickets, including Department of Social Protection passes, who must choose reservation-only for Sunday, August 26. If you do not have a reservation then you will not be permitted to travel.

For the greater Dublin area, there will be extra trains on all routes. Customers are advised to arrive in plenty of time for their journey and have been advised that commuter services will be extremely busy.

Travel in the short hop zone (Dart, Kilcock, M3 Parkway, Sallins, Balbriggan and Kilcoole) will be free with a Papal Mass ticket. Crowd control procedures will be in place at Connolly, Heuston, Navan Road Parkway and Ashtown stations, and all stations will be manned to help handle the crowds. Bus Éireann will have a significantly enhanced service on Sunday, 26 August, for the Papal Mass, which will see overall capacity increasing by over 100%.

Over 800 trips on both commuter and Expressway services will provide for over 30,000 passenger journeys to and from Dublin on the day. Bus Éireann will also be operating an enhanced Bus Éireann PSO and Expressway service for the Papal’s visit to Knock. Due to the scale of events taking place, a number of its routes will be diverted and stops may operate from different stops and termini.

For full details of specific route information and timetables, Bus Éireann has advised consulting its website nearer the time. LOCAL Link, which provides public bus services in local and rural areas around the country, will be providing transport to events from some of its offices using its fleet of accessible vehicles.

Pre-booking is essential. LUAS will provide capacity for 73,700 passenger journeys on August 26. It will operate services from 7am until 11pm at a six to 10-minute frequency on the Red Line and every eight to 10 minutes on the Green Line.

For crowd safety reasons, Luas Red Line services will operate to Blackhorse and from Smithfield to the Point. Therefore, there will be no Luas service between Blackhorse and Smithfield. Mass entry tickets must be shown to customer service staff on request.

The Luas Red Line service from the Point to Smithfield will cater for the coach park located in the Docklands area. For the first time, Luas is using the Green Line stop at Leopardstown Racecourse and will operate a parkand-ride facility at the stop. GO-AHEAD Ireland will be running shuttle services on the day and expects to transport around 6,000 people on August 26 on 10 single-deck Go Ahead buses and 40 single-deck Transport For Ireland buses. For those coming from Northern Ireland, Translink is providing dedicated train and bus services to the Mass at Phoenix Park.

These must pre-booked. Translink will also provide up to 100 double deck buses to provide shuttle services on the day.