Madam, - A quick look at another DART system, Dallas Area Rapid Transport, illuminates the core failure of Dublin's public transport infrastructure. Dallas Area Rapid Transport incorporates trams and heavy rail, bus, park-and ride and even high-occupancy car corridors. By contrast, our own DART is clearly a misnomer in that it is, in fact, the Dublin Coastal Area Rapid Transport.
So what else do we get in the disconnected mishmash which passes for a public transport system in Dublin? As well as our beloved five-day DART, we have the Arrow trains, Luas and Dublin Bus.
Here's a pretty obvious suggestion. Scrap the Luas, Arrow and Dublin Bus and DART brands and recast the lot as DART. At least this might permit the planners and politicians to conceptualise public transport in Dublin as an integrated system and to start joining up the dots. Then we might not have to wait, as the Rail Procurement Agency tells us, until 2006 for an integrated ticketing system. - Yours, etc.,
EAMONN ROSSI, Park Lawn, Clontarf, Dublin 3.
Madam, - Some time ago Dublin Bus discontinued the No.8 service from Dalkey to the city centre on the spurious grounds that the service was under-used. It maintained that the denizens of the town were adequately catered for by the DART system.
Now, if you wish to travel to Dublin from Dalkey by bus, you must board either a No.59 or a 59A to Dun Laoghaire, alight and then get a 7 or a 7A to complete the journey.
This trip is made all the more prohibitive by the fact that you have to buy two tickets (€1.20, €1.60).
In light of the fact that for the next eight months or so there will be no weekend DART service from Dalkey to Dublin, would it be too much to ask Dublin Bus to reintroduce the number 8 bus service at weekends until the DART service is back to normal? - Yours, etc.,
PAUL DELANEY, Beacon Hill, Dalkey, Co Dublin.