For anyone who has ever been a regular commuter on the Luas in Dublin, you will have seen some weird stuff. As with any other public transport there will always been the freaks and creeps which we can do nothing about. However anti-social behaviour is something we have all seen more than we care to admit.
Regular Luas users will be very aware of the anti-social acts i’m talking about. Now while you or I have probably not actively got involved in stopping any of this bollixoligy the guys at Transdev (the Luas operator) want to make everyone’s journey safer. Hence they have launched a new service in an effort to crack down on anti-social behavior on the Luas.
Check this out:
Now these types of complaints are fairly light in comparison to some of things I’ve seen but you get the point. Any of us can now send a text to the number 5144 with the word LUAS and details of the incident, location and tram number.
According to operators they will be able to utilise existing security units more effectively and respond to a text 90 seconds. A team will then investigate the reported incident asap and having seen the tanks who work security on Luas trams, quicker response times is all they need.
Simon Dobbin, the revenue protection officer with Transdev was speaking at the launch of the new service at the Luas stop by St Stephen’s Green
“It’s more common at night,” he said. “You can have younger people drinking alcohol and making nuisances of themselves. That can get very loud on the trams.
CEO of the National Transport Authority, Anne Graham has said about the new service:
“This new service means that Luas staff can be made aware of these incidents and can respond to them quicker than ever, so that journeys can be even safer and more pleasant for everybody.” she said.
At this moment in time around 90,000 passengers use the Luas every day across both the red and green line. This new simple service hopes to help reduce the amounts of incidents on the Luas. Especially when you think the new blue line is set to get up and running any day now we think this system is a long time coming.
What do you think? would you use this service? or are you a sceptic that thinks youngfellas are just going to use this as another way to wind up security? Only time will tell. One thing is for certain it’ll be interesting to see if this new service does indeed reduce anti-social behaviour on the Luas in the coming months.
