Swiftway - Dublin's first bus rapid transit route - detailed plans released

bk wrote: »

- 16, 41 will clearly go away, their routes are almost totally duplicated by BRT and these are the most frequent buses on the route

16 does not just serve city centre and not all of its stops are on the proposed BRT route even north side.

I have severe issues with BRT - their own documentation says it will be over capacity on day one. Really, they should stop pussy footing around and build the metro and have done with it.

Cycle provision is especially underwhelming. I hesitate before using the word "poor" because at the very least there has been some consideration of bike infrastructure. Specifically there are several points on which the NTA could improve:

- Car parking spaces should be between the cycle track and the carriageway. The drawings indicate that parking will be by the footpath, and cyclists will have to weave between parked cars and moving cars. The arrangement on Merrion Sq where parking is perpendicular will lead to an accident.

- Bike tracks go around BRT stops, but not general bus stops. Search me as to why one should be treated any differently to the other.

- No cycle lanes are indicated through junctions. This is usually not an issue on regular cross-roads, but several junctions are going to be extremely complex and certainly unique and unintuitive. Cycle lanes should be indicated through every junction in the city centre.

- I hope to the Lord Almighty that the significant and unintuitive diversion for cyclists down Hardwicke St will be well indicated. Otherwise everybody will continue straight through to a left turn onto Nth Frederick St. Similarly, I'd be very keen to see how the NTA expects cyclists to negotiate the weaving that will have to take place northbound on Nth Frederick St.

- The O'Connell Bridge/Westmoreland/D'Olier junction looks tacked together. This would have been an ideal spot to introduce a Dutch style junction with those special "protection" kerbs for bike lanes. Having an important two-way bike track feed sheepishly into the junction is beyond careless. It's not going to work the way it's been designed. While I'm at it, I note that there is no BRT lane on Westmoreland Street. Unless they got their colouring-in wrong.

- The eastbound contraflow bike track on Pearse St will have to cross three lanes of opposing traffic. The bike track must be clearly indicated on the street.

- The junction of Pearse St and Westland Row will not allow bikes to continute straight through from Westland to Lombard St.

- The junction of Clare St and Merrion Sq is just confusing, and this is from somebody well used to reading these maps. No right turn from Clare St to Merrion Sq W. No right turn from Merrion Sq W onto Merrion Sq N. This is where more Dutch style junctions would have made a huge difference for the cost of a little corner of pavement.

- Merrion St Lwr has a bifurcated bike lane where to go straight ahead you'll have to cut across left-turning cars. Yay. To turn right you'll have to cut across the BRT lane. Argh. Why not bifurcate the lanes ever-so-slightly-differently?

- The corner of St Stephen's Grn and Leeson St hasn't been resolved for bikes. Turning right from Leeson St onto SSG East? Prepare to be cut off by cars driving onto SSG South.

- Beyond the city centre, it looks like we will be treated to the finest examples of shared spaces. Around busy BRT stops no less. Hurray.



I gotta say as a general supporter of BRT, this is embarrassing. And I haven't even commented on the actual BRT elements yet!

Aard wrote: »

I gotta say as a general supporter of BRT, this is embarrassing. And I haven't even commented on the actual BRT elements yet!

Do you get the impression Aard,that this document was rushed into print ?

There is something disquietingly unfinished about it all...or am I being too harsh ?

Alek, I wish I could say that this document was rushed. However I suspect that that would be the "nice" story. What I would imagine is more likely, unfortunately, is that this was never going to be any more than a "QBC-Plus" job. There are some hallmarks of BRT -- off-board ticketing, and many reduced conflict points in the Swords area. And of course, the big attention-grabber of swanky busses. Other than that, this is just QBC done right. It's not BRT.

There are so many things I want to comment on, and I don't have the hours right now to do so. I'd stay up all night poring over the maps if I could. A few things that jump out at me:

- Conflict points have been somewhat reduced, but many have been added. Check out the "Oldtown" map -- there are "future" access points dotted in, sometimes less than 100 metres from each other. This is intolerable.

- Centre-running could easily have been continued until Santry.

- There are a few roundabouts and major junctions where the blue streak has been wiped away. Airport roundabout being one. God almighty, they could have run the BRT lane through the roundabout, as happens in many cities around the world, but instead a nice mound of grass will have to do.

- The sheer number of non-BRT bus stops. I really thought that services would be amalgamated such that these stops would only be few and far between, especially in outlying areas. Look at the Green Luas as guidance -- no competing bus service to speak of, and yet residents along the route get by with ~750m spacing between stations. BRT through most of the Northside should be the same. So many pokey little bus stops to add to the confusion.

- Shared pedestrian and bike lanes. Pedestrian provision has actually been worsened in these plans. If I had little kids, I'd be afraid to let them out onto the path lest a commuting cyclist run them over. Ok, perhaps a little OTT on my part.

- Several junctions just don't cater for pedestrian and cyclist movements in a respectful way. Lots of round-the-world button-pressing. I'm talking about the Santry-Swords section mainly.

- There's no bike infrastructure on the Swords Bypass, which is fine. The NTA state that the main trunk cycle route will go down the Main Street, and not the Bypass, again perfectly fine. However, they completely undermine their argument by making it almost impossible to turn from the Main Street (or Seatown West / Balheary Road as the case may be) onto the proposed BRT-adjacent cycle tracks.



Are these examples of carelessness? Rushed work? Pure couldn't-be-arsed-ness? Generally not having a clue about transport design for all modes? I don't know. I expect a lot of further designs, redesigns, then before you know it magic-hey-presto we suddenly have the money for Metro North. Rant over!

hfallada wrote: »

How is off board ticketing revolutionary?

Nobody is claiming it revolutionary. People paying at the driver accounts for around 20-25% of total journey time in Dublin. Purely by switching to off-board ticketing, journey times can be reduced by a commensurate amount. Indeed, it states clearly in the documents above that dwell time will be about 15 seconds at each stop, instead of up to and over one minute. Considering the reduced number of stops along the route, this adds up to significant time savings.

Have you read the documents yet?

In terms of cycling provision it's a real mixed bag - there's some nice lanes and several new contra-flow sections but a huge amount of the same old crummy junctions with forking lanes and busses repeatedly crossing and re-crossing lands. A fair amount of the stuff will be more or less redundant - check out the bus-stop bypasses on O'Connell street. They'll probably be teeming with people and cyclists will just cycle straight ahead through the bus lane.

An awful lot of these conflict points could have been eliminated with a bit of thought and effort.

Regarding cycling I hope they come up with some segregated solution whereby cyclists can continue onwards at junctions and arent downgraded to pedestrian status to get across a junction. There are loads of those cyclelanes around Dublin that are up on the footpath and they pose more of a danger than anything IMO. At this stage I never use footpath mounted cycleways because when you get to a junction all you get is a headache trying to get through.

While the plans all look good in general and the route is satisfactory there is a large part of me thinking that by the time this is built it won't be able to sustain the demand for the service and the powers that be will be scratching their heads in 2025 wondering why we didn't just build the metro. There's a wise mantra I like 'buy cheap, buy twice' and this BRT seems to be a typical case of that in that we'll end up paying out €300m for the route to Swords & the airport only to spend another €2bn on a metro further down the line so it can do the job that the BRT is over capacity for. To me the planning isn't long term whatsoever, the NTA is planning to spend a little now so they can spend a lot later. The govt should be moving heaven and earth to find the funds to begin it, we already needed the Metro 10 years ago and Dublins population is continuing to grow.

The other objection I'd have is the selection of the airport route itself when taken in context of other projects that are equally or more desirable. My thinking would be that a BRT to either Lucan & Maynooth or Blanch would have been preferable to do first over the airport route and focus on the metro there. Metro West isn't going to be built for a long long while yet so it arguably makes more sense to spend a bit of money connecting western suburbs better now and focus on providing a quality underground link from Swords and the airport to the city centre.

some criticisms:

City Centre:

The footpath on the West side of westmoreland street needs to be much wider than it is now. What is proposed is maintaining current width

In some locations there is on street parking on the side of the BRT lane meaning that parkers are going to have to cut accross BRT and lets not forget the large number of people who cannot/will not parallel park and will cause an obstruction.

Rest:

Along the rest of the route, there isn't much change to the existing QBC. There are improved cycling facilities but the brt lane will still disappear to be replaced by a left turning lane at every junction, and of course motorists will take it opon themselves to get into the brt lane long before it turns into a left turning one, to skip the queues. There should be a narrow piece of concrete paving between the brt lane and general traffic as they approach junctions and left turning motorists should wait with the rest of traffic.