Dublin City Council has warned of potential traffic disruption at junctions along the Sandyford to St Stephen's Green Luas line from today as the frequency of trams increases from once every 10 minutes to once every five minutes.
While originally planned to run once every five minutes, it has been running less frequently since the service was launched last month.
A row flared up between Dublin Bus and Luas during tests when the bus firm claimed that the five-minute frequency of the tram service, along with traffic signalling issues, led to traffic chaos in the city centre.
Dublin City Council yesterday said issues regarding signalling priority available to the Luas had since been resolved, but cautioned that there may still be some traffic delays.
"We would expect to have some impact on junctions. But hopefully the Luas will be carrying twice the number of people as before, so on balance, it should be fine," a spokeswoman for Dublin City Council said.
The Railway Procurement Agency (RPA), which is responsible for Luas, said it was confident there would be no traffic disruption as the trams could work within existing traffic light cycles.
A spokesman said the traffic problems caused in the St Stephen's Green area shortly before the launch of Luas was a "glitch" which had occurred under test conditions and this had since been fine-tuned.
Meanwhile, the RPA has also confirmed that it has had to adjust ticket machines at many Luas stations following complaints over queues and delays in the processing of tickets.
The machines have been "speeded-up" while the operators of Luas, Connex, have started a marketing drive to encourage commuters to purchase tickets at shops and other approved agents.
A new smart card, which may be topped up at ATM machines, is due to be launched before the end of the year. The RPA hopes this will also help alleviate queues at stations.
Discussions are also under way with Iarnród Éireann and Dublin Bus over the introduction of a fully integrated ticket system in Dublin. "It means that customers will be able to get on and off of public transport without having to mess around with lots of tickets," an RPA spokesman said.
"It also opens the way for rewarding people who use different modes of public transport."
