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Full Luas Green Line services resume after fault

The fault had resulted in a loss of power to the Green Line (Pics: RollingNews.ie)
The fault had resulted in a loss of power to the Green Line (Pics: RollingNews.ie)

Dublin's Luas Green Line is operating as normal are after a fault caused a disruption to services for over 24 hours.

A gradual return to normal services began at 6pm this evening.

The issue identified yesterday morning had resulted in a loss of power to the Green Line and a temporary loss of power to a section of the Red Line, which has since been fully restored.

However, services on the Green Line on the full Bridesglen to Broombridge route will resume at 6pm and will intially operate at a frequency of 15 minutes.

The Luas Red Line continues to operate normally.

Engineers had earlier identified that the fault lied within a critical low-voltage safety system known as the 48-volt system and not the overhead power system that powers the trams, operator Transdev said..

It said that engineers, operations, management and executive teams have been working "around the clock" to trace the fault and safely reinstate power.

Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, Transdev Director of Communications Dervla Brophy said technicians were on site overnight and had inspected 12 sub-stations.

Ms Brophy said the issue has been identified as a fault with a safety circuit that controls the power from the sub-stations to the control room.

Ms Brophy apologised to commuters and said Luas would continue to provide updates on the Luas app, website and social media channels.

Luas tickets are being accepted on Dublin Bus, DART and Irish Rail services from Broombridge and Go-Ahead services.

a sign reads power outage on a Luas information board
Engineers are working to restore power

'Major concern' for businesses

Around 72% of customers who shop in Dublin city come in via public transport, according to CEO of Dublin Town and member of the Dublin City Taskforce Richard Guiney.

Earlier, he said that 15% of the customer base for the city travel by Luas and that the Green Line being down is definitely an issue.

"It is a major concern for city businesses," Mr Guiney said.

He said that Thursday is an important day for late night and the coming weekend is when things really start ramping up shopping wise, and so there is a need for resolution.

He said that people need to be facilitated to travel into the city by sustainable transport and that car parks are holding steady in the city, while outside the city, shopping centres are much more car dependent and they then see more issues there in terms of traffic and parking.

He said that he agreed with the idea of allocating space to cycle lanes away from general traffic and that businesses want to see more sustainable transport.

"We are not going to get where we need to be without the infrastructure, the likes of the Metro, and addressing issues like judicial reviews delaying things that we absolutely need," he said.