Sir, - I am the owner of a great work of fiction, which cost me only 50p: the 1999-2000 DART timetable. This fantastic publication listed a regular DART service to Greystones, with an asterisk noting: "Due to open late 1999." A couple of months into 2000 there was still no sign of these ghost trains, proudly included in the (then) current timetable.
DART drivers demanded £8,000 each for them to permit their company to hire six new staff to operate the extended service to Greystones and Malahide. Earlier this year they got the money, but they still will not permit Irish Rail to run the full DART service to Greystones and Malahide.
Currently an extremely limited service operates to Greystones, and if you miss the 7.39 a.m. from Greystones into Dublin, you'll be waiting almost 11 hours for the next one! I also note with dismay a sign in Bray station advising of the Sunday DART service to Greystones - approximately one every hour throughout the day - a vastly superior service to that operating on weekdays. Whoever formulated this demented scheme is evidently of the opinion that the purpose of extending the DART was to facilitate those based in the city who would like to take their family to the seaside on a Sunday. Who would ever need to get a train during the week?
I don't know whether to laugh or cry when I see the posters plastered around the DART network proudly advising of the new service to Malahide. There is no peak-hour service, the first train leaves at 11.10 a.m. and there is a lack of services between 3.45 p.m. and 8.10 p.m. And this limited service was made possible only by cancelling the equivalent DARTS from Howth.
I wanted to buy the new DART timetable this week, having not read a good piece of fiction in a while. I gave up, disappointed, when I read the tattered piece of paper stuck up in the ticket office in Pearse Station. On it was scribbled in marker: "No DART timetables available until further notice."
And they won't give me my 50p back. - Is mise,
Tadgh O'Brien, Hawkins Lane, Greystones, Co Wicklow.