24/08/2024
Dear Luas,
The way you have treated me is shameless, and the culture of Luas is sociopathic and dangerous, so I thought I'd write, I thought I'd tell the world. Maybe see if you can feel some shame or at least my letter can allow the world to shame you.
I endured the Luas for years, before thankfully ending my use of the Luas for good in June 2024, and things have been better, I no longer find public transport an ordeal, no longer go through the stress and fear I used to go through in anticipation of using the Luas or in waiting on a crowded platform with antisocial behaviour around me, and no longer endure the antisocial behaviour, overcrowding, vape smoke and fear that I associate travelling on the Luas with.
With regards being assaulted and abused on the Luas as a vulnerable and disabled passenger, you never at any point responded appropriately or followed up on concerns raised with you, even though assault is a crime and you should not be leaving me vulnerable to crime on your services. One Christmas I was assaulted twice in one week by drunk people, and another time three times within three days, while I have witnessed persistent harassment of other vulnerable passengers and antisocial behaviour.
You have a rather pathetic non-functional 'text service' for antisocial behaviour, and have never responded to complaints that it doesn't work, you also do PR surveys and fictional 'meet the manager events' instead of making any effort to improve your appalling service. The text service is for PR, like everything else to do with Luas, shallow, ineffectual and irresponsible. You rely on the fact that Ireland's transport regulator is a chocolate teapot who allows appalling transport services to continue unchecked. You should have been fined for every assault and incident and you haven't been, instead you vindictively subjected me to further harm at a time of crisis in June.
One of the things about the Luas and the antisocial behaviour is that the Luas staff themselves are badly behaved and obnoxious, and this makes it impossible for Luas to actually run a safe and vulnerable-friendly service. The Luas itself is constantly well over capacity, packed to the doors even outside of peak times, and with vulnerable and disabled people driven out of designated areas by young able antisocial people who not only hog the seats but take up seat space with bikes, scooters and feet, these tend to wear their headphones and ignore requests by others for seats that they need. Your staff get on and off the Luas and ignore this, your staff themselves stand in the way of people, gossiping loudly about their personal lives with no interest in professionalism or their work, and they have a bad attitude to passengers.
The other year on the southern Green Line, somewhere such as the Gallops or thereabouts, I witnessed a member of Luas security staff chasing after someone and punching them. The person in question may have done something wrong, but the member of Luas Staff was being actively aggressive to someone who was trying to get away from them. It doesn't inspire confidence in a vulnerable passenger. I am glad my days of being afraid and stressed on the Luas are over, no more filthy trams, vape smoke giving me asthma attacks, out of control gangs swinging from the straps, drunk and drugged people walking around threatening, propositioning or begging, no more dreading travel. The bus and Dart services are safer and better controlled and more reliable, Luas has also cost me so much by not running at all whenever they get the opportunity, especially at weekends. Weekend Luas is just a no, it won't run, it will be full of drunk people and it is easier to just make other arrangements.
In June this year, I was homeless and went down with pneumonia, it was the early days of the pneumonia when I made my way to my storage unit in Sillorgan, feeling unwell and struggling to concentrate, afraid of the Luas as always and wishing there was a better alternative between Dublin and Stillorgan. I endured the journey there, did what I had to at my storage unit, and headed back, which was where the problems occured.
As you know, my records would show I have never had a penalty fare with you in my years of using Luas. I have never and never would, cheat public transport out of a fare.
That day in June, I was unwell and struggling to concentrate, and the Luas platform was packed, as usual Luas were running a service which didn't cater for the numbers using it, and because I was unwell, I went to sit on the benches behind the Luas platform, to allow the crowds to board the first Luas while I waited for the next one which was only coming from Sandyford and would be less crowded. I am mobility impaired and can't stand for long, and the crowded Luas would not have a seat free.
Another difference between Luas and the other transport services is that you can't forget to tag on with your leap card on the bus or train, the design of the Luas is that it can be easy to forget to tag on or off, and Luas obviously milks that to the hilt for extra revenue. I forgot to tag on because I was feeling so unwell and when I saw the crowded platform I felt dizzy and went to sit down and wait for the next tram instead of going to the machine.
I forgot to tag on, after years of always tagging on and never having a penalty. I didn't know anything about penalties either, so when your staff demanded to see my ID - which I believe is illegal by the way - I gave them my driving licence, which had my last address on, because obviously a homeless person cannot register a driving licence at an address point, I didn't know he took the address from my licence and that I would be in danger of court, because you rigidly, and apparently illegally, take a person's address, refuse to correspond with them except through that address, and leave them under threat of court and a criminal record if they are unable to respond. What a horrible thing to do to a homeless person in crisis. And I am communication impaired and had no way of contacting you directly by phone to explain, while you ignored online correspondence.
Already in crisis, homeless and increasingly ill, your actions put me under intolerable stress, not least because you failed to register and respond to an appeal and an email about the situation. I have to believe, fully seeing the toxic Luas culture for what it is now that I am a departed Luas customer who will never use the service again, that this is vindictictive and deliberate, you are milking people.
I am autistic spectrum and not able to be dishonest, so while my illness worsened, possibly from the stress of your actions, I sought the help of a friend who has communication ability, and we wrote to the Luas management, who apparently never saw the letter because it was intercepted.
The letter explained that I am communication impaired and was homeless and unwell, that your staff had said that my failure to tag on looked like a mistake - and had I tagged on, I would have seen that my balance was low and topped up and I would have been on a 90 minute fare anyway, it wouldn't have cost anything if I'd tagged on to return to Dublin. I explained all of this, explained the circumstance and how your staff had told me to appeal as it looked like a genuine mistake and how I urgently needed to discuss my address and contact details, and again I received no response, which is bad considering that the letter was addressed to the management, confidential, addressee only.
In the end I asked my friend if she could phone Luas and ask if I could come to Sandyford to discuss the matter in person as Luas remained stonewalling me and time was running out regarding the fine. She got the opening hours and arranged to meet me there to act as a voice for me, but she doesn't use the Green Line normally and got lost. So I arrived at Sandyford alone. When I spoke to the intercom, which is difficult for me, I was nearly turned away but explained that I couldn't resolve this any other way, and I was let in.
It turned out that the receptionist at Luas had intercepted my letter to the management despite it being marked 'confidential, addressee only', opened it, and sent it to another Luas depot and while they'd utterly failed to register my appeal and other correspondence, they had bypassed the management and treated my letter as an appeal, and it was 'being considered'. The only good thing was that she updated my details to use my address point and email rather than my old address and phone. But I'd had to fight for this action, terrified of prosecution and a huge fine when I was destitute and in crisis, for a mistake after years of no mistakes and no fines, nothing to indicate I was a wrongdoer. What the previous holder of the leap card, which had been given to me may have done is unknown to me, but Luas would be aware they'd never had my details on record with regards penalty fares, they only had me on record as reporting assaults and antisocial behaviour for years, and if they are vindictive about that, shame on them. The Luas is truly terrible in what they do to people.
And they continued terrible, decided to ignore the circumstances and charge me a penalty fare 'because I didn't tag on', as if I hadn't been told to appeal because it was a mistake, as if 'forgetting to tag on' and the reasons, were not one of their grounds for appeal, which it is, and as if their staff hadn't told me to appeal because it looked like a mistake. They autocratically told me I had no right to further correspondence. Homeless and not being provided for by the councils, who do not provide safe emergency shelter for vulnerable people who don't have addiction and alcohol problems, I was funding my own beds at the time, backpack hostels and bed and breakfasts, and I had pneumonia and was very unwell. I told Luas that their unjust penalty and mercenary behaviour would leave me hungry and sleeping rough with pneumonia, they didn't care.
I contacted the transport regulator, who are a famous chocolate teapot in Ireland as most Irish regulators are, and they failed to act. I paid the Luas fine and explained to Luas that they were now going to lose that money many times over as I would never use the Luas again nor top up my leap at their machines as I had been doing for so long. I have certainly made good on that promise so far and intend to keep to it, this means that the Luas may have vindictively and cruelly 'punished' me, and that's certainly their culture and attitude, but myself and my friends stopped using the Luas and their leap card top ups. Hundreds of pounds recouped against a 45 Euro penalty fare, and further to that, someone put 100 Euros on my leap card at a Dart station, so there has been some redress, just not from Luas.
Reality is, the Luas is absolutely unacceptable, dangerous, overcrowded, dirty, dangerous platforms, dangerous driving - I have nearly been injured and saw someone else flung across a carriage at speed by a fast Luas in a built up area braking at speed, the Luas is toxic, the staff are unprofessional and vindictive, and they get away with this because of need, reliance, especially by commuters, and because there is no effective regulation, the transport regulator appears to be effectively bought off, and Luas do as they please. I have felt much better for my Luas boycott, having previously cut down my use of the Luas as much as I could because it was so bad. The new buses between Dun Laoghaire and Sandyford/Stillorgan have really helped and I use the bus and the Dart and get around just fine.
I became increasingly and seriously ill during the Luas crisis, and my lungs shut down because I was asthmatic, I will never forget what Luas did to me at that time with their inaccessibility leading to stress, failures of competence in deleting my appeal and email, breaches of confidentiality in intercepting my letter to their management, and mercenary vindictiveness. I will never forget it and it was a sharp lesson not to subscribe to or support abusive organisations. After my lungs shut down and I was treated effectively, I started to recover, and it has been a long recovery, and I have been housed. If it hadn't been for the stress of the Luas situation, I may not have become so ill.
I will never use the Luas again, nor will my friends. Luas is barbaric and fosters abuse on their trams. If I was to take Luas to court over their abject and appalling failures to me over the assaults I have suffered on their services, for which I have all the correspondence, I would recoup the penalty fare many times over, however I consider the 100 Euros on my leap card and withdrawing my custom from Luas to be justice of sorts.
Passengers should counter the disgusting toxic Luas culture by fining Luas for every breach of contract allowing antisocial behaviour, failure to run trams, vape and cigarette use on the trams causing health problems, dangerous driving, filthy trams, failure to provide access to disabled and older people by allowing able people to obstruct seats, and so on. Luas will start to see the other side of things then, because they will stop milking people and getting huge revenue from dangerously, illegally, overcrowded trams, the amount of fines for Luas failures will see them running at a loss. It would be nice to see their burly brutish security thugs presented with penalty notices for every misconduct when they stand there gossiping while an elderly person is pushed out of the priority seats by junkies; Invert things and the toxic trams with their unpleasant staff stop being intimidating and become a laughing stock. Try running a proper service before being officious and autocratic. Shame on you! Thought you could punish me for a mistake while in crisis after years of good record? Shame on you! Never before or since have I had a public transport penalty, because I normally pay my fare, Luas, having criminally failed their duty of care to me for years, leading to assaults and harm to me, showed not an ounce of compassion or willingness to accept circumstances, and that will go on costing them indefinitely as my friends and I boycott them and encourage others to do the same.
If there was an effective transport regulator in Ireland, the situation which saw Luas illegally using my driving licence, being inaccessible to a communication impaired person and failing to respond to correspondence or update my contact details, failing to register my appeal and so on, would not be happening, and Luas would be forced to be accessible and provide a safe and reliable service. Sadly there's no sign of a regulation body being put in place, and so this letter is necessary.
Regards,
A.
