Irish Rail were ‘ill-prepared’ to manage overcrowding during Bray Air Show chaos, report finds

About 2,000 passengers escaped hot, packed Dart carriages onto the tracks during last year’s Bray Air Display following a litany of mistakes by Irish Rail staff, an investigation has found.

With ongoing delays, many passengers heard about others leaving their stationary trains, partially via social media, sparking a chain reaction as conditions onboard become unbearable.

A review of the incident published by the Railway Accident Investigation Unit (RAIU) on Friday also found a lack of information from train drivers and Irish Rail’s emergency phone line contributed to the mass exodus.

While controllers initially thought they could recover the situation, the report described its continued escalation amid ongoing management failures “with up to 2,000 passengers on the railway line”.

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With only half the Dart stations en route to Bray staffed, there was crowding and issues with boarding trains but there was nobody in charge of platforms to manage the situation.

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The chaos unfolded during the Sunday of the Bray Air Display in July, 2022, a day that also held the All-Ireland football final and a train network operating at capacity.

The RAIU investigation set out a detailed sequence of events that deteriorated into an unmanageable situation after a lack of communication with passengers led to a meltdown on the commuter line.

Conditions were sunny and hot. A door fault on an initial Dart during the morning resulted in delays to services and increased “dwell times” for other trains.

Large crowds of passengers built up on station platforms, and many were reluctant to move through carriages away from entrances because of the heat.

Then, investigators found, travellers accumulating at unmanned stations were left frustrated from a lack of information and trains arriving almost full.

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“IÉ [Iarnrod Eireann] had no way of implementing processes and procedures to manage the overcrowding on these trains,” it said.

With services getting busier, a number of trains departed city centre stations late.

Just before 3pm, a Dart approached Bray station but had to stop because the platform was occupied by another train.

Its air conditioning was off, unbeknownst to the driver, and with its windows sealed by design there was no ventilation. Some passengers reported suffering from symptoms of heat exhaustion.

The driver did not make any passenger announcement and after being stopped for over five minutes one of the passengers travelling with young children and an older person opened a carriage door and people began to exit.

As a result, a number of other trains had to stop for safety and experienced similar ventilation issues.

“Passengers on [two] delayed trains became aware that passengers had begun self-detraining from [another] through messaging, calls and social media,” the report noted.

“The drivers of the two trains did make announcements, however, passengers on these trains also began self-detraining.”

Even as other drivers made their announcements, more and more passengers began to exit onto the tracks. “Controlled evacuations” were then carried out by staff. Meanwhile, passengers left platforms at Dalkey, Killiney and Shankill stations and began walking along the line towards Bray.

The probe found that documents relating to customer disruptions and self-detrainments were ineffective on the day, leading to IÉ being “completely ill prepared” to manage the incident.

It also said self-detrainments were a “reasonably foreseeable risk” following a similar such incident at Dun Laoghaire in 2017.

Investigators also noted how Irish Rail’s Twitter account continuously referred to passengers “trespassing”, which greatly annoyed others. Those who phoned its emergency line “were not provided with any reassurances or useful information”.

“IÉ standards and training refer to ‘customer-friendly’ communications; however, this ‘customer-friendly’ approach to dealing with passengers, in particular, passengers in distress (where it is of utmost importance) was not evident on the day,” the report said.

Several recommendations were made, including that drivers fully understand how onboard air conditioning operates and to reassess comfort risk regarding crowded trains, particularly in adverse weather conditions. Communication with passengers should be improved, it said.

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