The Transport Minister has confirmed that seven Luas trams have been taken from the Red line to help cope with demand on the Green line.
Officials are working to fix continuing overcrowding and delays, however new longer trams designed to ease the problems have been taken out of action because of an electrical fault.
The longer trams are not expected to be back in action until May, and passengers have been told not to expect an improvement in congestion until then.
Passenger numbers on the Luas Green Line have increased by over 28% since the Cross
City line opened in December, meaning peak-time trams are almost always over-crowded.
The Transoprt Minister, Shane Ross, said that until the seven new 55m trams are put back into service, "seven trams have now been transferred from the Red Line to the Green Line to provide additional capacity".
Extra maintenance crews have also been transferred from the Red to the Green line and the new Broombridge depot is now in use to assist with maintenance activities.
The Green Party said today that the National Transport Authority was ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul’, as it was revealed that 7 Luas trams have been transferred from servicing the Red Line to the Green Line.
Green Party Representative in Dublin South Central, Ed Davitt, said it is "completely unacceptable that Red Line commuters should suffer lower capacity, and a less reliable service due to the poor planning for the rollout of the Cross City service."#
"The solution to alleviating problems on the Green Line, is to create problems on the Red Line? That’s not a solution – that’s robbing Peter to pay Paul", he said.
98FM has asked Transdev, the company which runs Luas, for a comment but has not yet received one.
