Where have all the trolleys in Dublin’s Heuston Station gone? That was the simple question a reader asked of us last week.
The reader – Kevin – sent us some pictures he took of empty baggage trolley bays in the train station on the last weekend of September. “I could not see a trolley anywhere I looked,” he writes.
He points out that the station was quite crowded but there was “no one with any significant baggage with a trolley”.
As he headed for his train bound for Westport he kept his eye out for a trolley but up and down the platforms there were none to be seen.
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“Do trolleys at Heuston have Sunday as a day of rest? Or perhaps Irish Rail have placed them in hibernation with a few blasts of winter coming on,” he writes. “Are the trolleys on strike? Have the trolleys migrated to another station where their pay and conditions are better? Maybe they have sought warmer climes in the sunny southeast?”
He says all this in jest of course, but becomes serious when asking what is the point in Irish Rail “having empty trolley bays scattered around the station if they are not going to populate or manage them?”
“As a frequent traveller to Mayo, where the departure platforms are often a distance from the main concourse, Irish Rail is failing to provide a means of transporting luggage to trains – this has some impact on elderly or those with limited mobility. I did notice however, some wheelchairs parked in a passenger assistance area, but no trolleys.”
He says Irish Rail should either provide trolley bays and trolleys or they should remove the bays altogether and [lower the] expectations of passengers searching high and low for a trolley.
Kevin has a point, which we raised with Irish Rail. It turns out that it did offer its passengers trolleys to carry their bags but has recently decided to stop offering the service.
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“Due to persistent theft and vandalism we have made a decision to not replace them,” a spokeswoman told The Irish Times.
“The vast majority of our customers have cases with wheels and the trolleys were very lightly used.”
We decided to push back a little and wondered if the answer to theft and vandalism was the removal of the service entirely, or if Irish Rail and its travelling passengers might not be better served by relocating the trolleys to places inside the station where they would not be stolen or damaged.
But Irish Rail was not for turning.
The spokeswoman repeated that “the majority of customers travelling with us have wheelie cases, so demand is extremely low and we haven’t received feedback from people that they are unhappy about the unavailability of trolleys. Due to the number of entrances to the station, it is impossible to police the theft of these trolleys, so I don’t think the location of the bays is the issue”.
She also said it would shortly be getting rid of the trolley bays.
So, for anyone keeping score, it would appear to be: Thieves and vandals 1 – passengers looking for a bit of help with their bags 0.
