A Dart that goes straight to the heart

Moody Celtic Tiger cubs, stony suits seated in silence and carriages that wait politely for tardy travellers: it’s all part of the Dart

NEW YORK has its subway, Paris its Metro, London its Underground and Dublin its Dart. It is pointless to compare them, really. All those trains rushing through tunnels underground, the settings for thousands of movies, their cavernous stations in the bowels of the earth, home to armies of the lonely and the outcast . . . and then there’s Dublin, with its little, green trains hugging the coast, chugging along in the sunshine, with hardly a hint of menace.

Being over-ground and for the most part suburban, the Dart was never going to acquire the same cred as its underground or up-in-the-air cousins in more exciting capital cities, but it does have its moments – drawn-out moments, when it waits for a latecomer rushing down steps to reach the doors before they close.

“It’s the way it waits for you,” says one frequent user who alights at Monkstown and whose European in-laws can never get over the idea that the train will idle until the stragglers jump on.

It’s also one of the only urban-transport systems to have its own accent, a kind of rich, snorting sound that turns “Dart” into “Dort”. This accent is the birthright of teenagers living in neighbourhoods blessed with a Dart station. Estate agents, however, have designated virtually every neighbourhood in the greater Dublin area as being “within reach” of the Dart. In the building-boom years, photographs of the zippy trains were used to advertise schemes as far off as Santry and Sandyford, alongside glossy pictures of Trinity College and yachts in Dublin Bay.

Homes close by the track got a genuine boost in the property boom, the Dart-effect adding 10 or 15 per cent extra to the big Victorian villas of Blackrock, Monkstown and Clontarf. The train also brought coastal villages such as Dalkey and Howth into the limelight, and created an easy route for tourists in search of Bono’s or Larry Mullen’s homes.

Early on, the Dart was also hijacked by politicians who wanted to appear forward thinking. Ministers were photographed getting on and off the trains, or standing on the platform under captions that said “Let’s get back on track”, when you knew that they never actually used the thing, what with the Mercedes parked outside.

Frequent users know its good points and its bad. The trains are mostly on time, although sometimes there are delays accompanied by fulsome, crackly apologies, and property lost on the Dart will often be handed in and held safe in the next station.

The “rapid” part of the name is a bit of a joke. The pace is far more sedate, which drives commuters mad on the faster Arrow trains that come in from the further reaches of suburbia and find themselves stuck behind the Dart. Dalkey to the city centre takes 28 minutes, on a good day. In Joyce’s day, it was less than 20 minutes by tram.

Pack your cousins from Canada on to an early morning Dart and tell them to do the complete trip from Howth to Greystones and back, taking in the superb sea views of Killiney (like the Bay of Naples), the gritty graffiti of Kilbarrack (Roddy Doyle country), and Ireland’s brave new architecture (extensions in every possible style out the back of Sandymount semis).

Dart etiquette doesn’t exist much beyond moodily taking your feet off the seat opposite when someone wants to sit down. You get a seat, you hold it. The bearded academic or civil servant who gets on in Greystones tends to turn to stone, sitting tight no matter how elderly or pregnant the woman swaying on her feet before them is. Likewise with the sprawling lads of Blackrock College, St Andrew’s, Belvedere and the rest, who stick together in groups, feet thrust into the aisles. Noisy ring tones and tinny MP3 players are inevitable; bad language flows from young executives released from the office, who say f**k when no better word occurs.

At least the wide-arm wrestling with a broadsheet newspaper has given way to the neater folding of the free tabloid, although those with a book in them still waiting to get out must be heartened by the number of people immersed in novels on the Dart.

There are a couple of unspoken rules. Parents are not supposed to travel in the same carriage as their school-going children. That is very uncool. Then there is the dilemma of spotting a colleague on the platform. It’s not that you don’t like each other. But it’s not done to swoop down on them. Instead, hide behind a tall person, and choose a different carriage. It could be the only chance of a bit of peace all day for both of you.