James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael)
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Question 233: To ask the Minister for Transport the measures being taken by his Department to provide increased services in the short to medium term, to commuters on the northern rail and DART line where demand for such services is already at a peak, leading to dangerous overcrowding and more demand is projected as the towns along the rail line grow in line with projections in the Fingal development plan and further north in County Meath and County Louth. [7962/08]

Noel Dempsey (Meath West, Fianna Fail)
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The day-to-day management of DART and suburban rail services is a matter for Iarnród Eireann. Over the period since 2000 a number of major upgrade projects have been completed on the DART services which have increased peak hour capacity on the DART from 14,000 in 2000 to 27,000 now and have also delivered a higher level of service to DART passengers, including accessible stations, air-conditioned DART cars and better reliability of services.

Over the same period, there has also been significant investment in new diesel railcars which have replaced the old intercity type rolling stock and expanded capacity. The Northern line in particular has benefited from this investment.

As regards new developments, the city centre re-signalling project, planning for which has commenced, will support 17 trains per hour instead of the current 12 and this is expected to be completed in 2011.

In addition, by 2015, when the Interconnector project and electrification has been completed, this line will see new high frequency services with trains up to every 5 minutes at peak time.