TO BE AVOIDED

For most of my life I have used public transport and the one constant is that CIE has never understand the concept of integration and they constantly ignore new opportunities until they are forced to act.

Broombridge station always had a bad reputation, mainly due to anti-social behaviour, and I have avoided it as do many others. Because the new Luas Tram service now terminates at Broombridge I has expected to see see some positive changes but sadly I was wrong.

Despite claims to the contrary CIE has not made any real attempt to integrate with other public transport services which is typical of the way that they operate. The train Broombridge railway station is a bare-bones operation featuring nothing more than two ugly vandal-proof metal shelters and tag-on units. There are no staff, no ticket machines, and no realtime information screens. The lack of realtime screens makes it close to impossible for tram users to switch from tram to train service. Elsewhere in Europe one would expect to arrive by tram and immediately and easily switch over to the train service or at the very least know how long one has to wait for a connection.

There is some ongoing work at the station and it would appear that they are installing a pedestrian bridge to connect the train station with the tram stop but as they had many years to prepare this facility should have been in place well before the new tram service began.