Extension of DART line to rapidly growing Enfield

Cathaoirleach Joe Fox raised the need for a bus stop at Garadice, bus shelters for Ballivor, the reopening of the Hill of Down station, the extension of the Dart to Enfield and the dropping of parking charges at Enfield station.

He said there was a very good car park at Enfield station “but nobody uses it”. People didn’t want to pay the charge and the result was that surrounding streets were jammed up with cars. “I’ve been on about this for ages – the parking charge should be taken off. This would encourage more people to use the rail service from Enfield”. It was also important to bring the Dart to Enfield. That made excellent sense in future plans because the population in the area was growing at an amazing rate.

Ballivor was a large commuter town and there was not one bus shelter in it, Cllr Fox said. The M3 Parkway was a wonderful development and you could get the train into Dublin but also you could change at Broombridge and get cross-city routes.

That facility should be advertised and promoted. Cllr Trevor Golden said there should be the possibility of an earlier bus from Trim in the mornings.

The 6.12am service was the earliest but it would be helpful if a service left 15-20 minutes earlier. There should be flexibility on bus tickets. If people got a 10-journey ticket it had to be used within a certain time window. However, because some people were working part-time from home, a 10-journey ticket could do them for two weeks. He said he accepted that there had to be some parking charge at train stations to stop people using them all day but he suggested that a train ticket could be designed that would guarantee that the people who were parking there were rail commuters.

There was also great frustration with a lack of traffic management in Ireland.