I’m an infrequent user of the dart (Dublin Area Rapid Transit) for two reasons, as a motorcyclist I can do the journey door(Bayside) to door(Dame street) in an average of 20 minutes. The dart would take about 40 minutes which is probably one of the fastest 10Km commutes in the city of Dublin.

The second reason is that by the time the DART gets to Bayside the train is already getting quite full, others would say that there’s no seats left and that would be true, but thats not my complaint. I don’t think that on a 20 minute city commute that a healthy adult should need a seat, most of the passengers are going to spend the next eight hours sitting in their office chairs. Seats are needed for the elderly the very young the sick and pregnant women. But the current amount of seats and their arrangement is causing this over crowding.

By the time the DART gets to Raheny or Harmo or Killester the situation starts getting very uncomfortable, with sometimes passengers not being able to get on. Before the DART there was a diesel service this had the seats arranged in two long rows under the windows facing each other, and this is the model that the DART should adopt as it can accommodate the most passengers comfortably.

It’s not as if the experts in Irish Rail don’t know this, back in 1984 when the DART came into being the backs of the seats at the door entrances had pull down seats that caused terrible problems with getting on and off the DART so they put stickers on the widows beside these seats asking passengers not to use them at peak times. So when the stickers didn’t work they removed these seats altogether. Then about ten years ago they removed the seats that used to have the folding seats attached.

So what we need to do is to return to the way it was pre 1984 with two rows either side of the carriage and the rest standing room, this will increase capacity by 150% with the loss of only 50% of the seats and here’s a few illustrations (the white circles are heads the black oval is the body) to prove it.

 
This is the way it is now.

this is the way it could be, where ten people use the same space as four that’s a 150% increase in capacity at very little extra cost, all we’d need is a few poles to aid passenger stability, and sure you could get rid of the spare seats on Dublin freecycle.