PRESS RELEASE - 12 May 2021
What good is an expanded DART system if Dubliners cannot use it?
Dublin Commuter Coalition is calling on Iarnród Éireann and the National Transport Authority to build stations at Cabra, Ballyfermot and Heuston West as part of the DART+ South West project and not push it further into the future. Dubliners are crying out for more public transport now, not in the next decade.
The DART+ South West project announced today proposes only technical upgrades with little to any passenger facing improvements. Four tracking and bridge reconfigurations are great in that they enable the DART service, but stations like Adamstown will see no aesthetic or functional improvements, like additional lifts and the addition of stations to the network is barely considered.
Dublin Commuter Coalition PRO, Feljin Jose said:
Trains on this line that take the Phoenix Park Tunnel to the Docklands will experience a gap of over 9km between Park West at the M50 and the future Glasnevin station at Cross Guns. This results in a long stretch of urban rail that does not serve most of the communities it passes through.
Dublin Commuter Coalition Chairperson, Kevin Carter said:
Ballyfermot, Inchicore and Cabra have large working-class populations and this program seems to skip over them in the provision of high-frequency rail transport, something they have grown much too used to.
He also said:
Dublin's rail-based transport has thus far been built to merely meet current demand and then later add things as necessary. We believe that viewpoint belongs in the 90s and 00s and we should be providing more than enough rail as, as is demonstrated by the Luas, when you provide it, people use it.
Dublin Commuter Coalition welcome the progress on the project and the clear proposed timeline of each section of the project but want to reinforce a more passenger-focused culture in the provision of this monumental project.
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