Dublin buses canceled?

Not sure how quickly it's updated, but even accessing the site today was tricky.
How's everyone else coping?

What about the people who cannot get home tonight? Fare enough the buses cannot go on the icey roads, but imagine some people stuck in the city, especially those from commuter towns, and they cant get home, no money, nowhere to stay? Will people be sleeping in the bus shelters or what?

Dublin Bus driver hubby has been waiting on the quays for a bus to drive since 6.00. Basically any buses that are out are struggling and since they are finishing at 8 a lot of people will be waiting on buses that won't come. The journeys are taking 10 times longer than usual to complete.

Just rang DB on an internal line.

Drivers have been told to pull in if they think its unsafe......

Interesting afternoon indeed Superscouse.....almost total collapse of communication system following a lightning strike on the Three Rock Mountain radio mast.

This was compounded by the overall situation in the City Centre which essentially was a collapse of whatever Roads and Traffic systems were there.

Parnell Square was effectively blocked from 1400 to 1800 by a succession of buses unable to get traction on the uphill gradient.
One driver got stranded broadside at the Granby Row end and set in motion a chain reaction which fed back as far as Christchurch.

It was a carbon copy of the events of earlier this year in the exact same location which if nothing proves our rather spectacular reluctance to learn from past mistakes.

Provision of a plastic container of salt at this and other strategic locations would have allowed the initial problem to be dealt with speedily,but twas not to be.

What is of greater importance is the complete collapse in communication between Head Office and the Front Line.

Controllers advising drivers that they had to exercise their discretion as to whether to operate or not is most assuredly NOT a sign of a Company which has confidence in it`s own systems.

The absolute worst element is the non-availibility of definite information.
Putting a large sign in the Head Office window advising the public of a Suspension of Service would at least have allowed people to make alternative arrangements.

Instead,people were fed ambiguous and even quite obviously incorrect information in some misbegotten attempt to prove to the National Transport Authority that everything is great,boss,just great ...no problems at all...well there surely were problems today and great BIG ones too,but very few of them within Dublin Bus`s remit to solve.

It should also be noted that in those four hours only two Gardai arrived towards the end of the situation to cast a withering gaze over the chaos and ask a private coach driver why he had "Parked" his coach skewways ....that was one mighty lucky Garda that did`nt find himself flat on his ass with his cap in his gob!!!!! :mad:

At 1720,the City Council put in an appearance with a Gritter which did much to get the place untangled,but by then it was far too little,far too late.

I did hear however that the Government Emergency Committee managed to get themselves into gear this evening to discuss how well the emergency response plan was going.....I suspect we will see a expert review group set up to expertly review stuff.

Something is wrong here,very wrong.

I fully accept that these weather conditions are harsh,although well and accurately predicted for over a week now.

I am sick of hearing of the 55,000 tonnes of treatment stockpiled,but yet I have the very strong suspicion that Local authorities are reluctant to pay the overtime rates to get staff out early and late and as a result the gritting is being carried out in the thick of traffic by only a few good men !

Dublin Bus`s and Dublin City`s situation rather reflected the state of the country in general...Nobody Willing to Take a Decision....plenty of executives,but all very busy at other stuff.

I`m happy enough that I did my best,as did most of my colleagues today,however there has to be a cut-off point at which the risk outweighs the benefit of continued operation without the support systems in place and that point arrived this afternoon.

Situations like today need proactive planning, not reactive action.

+1 Kensington.

However I`m convinced that we are not being given the full story behind this scenario.

The absence of support services throughout the Dublin Region is blatantly obvious.

There are issues surrounding the area of Working Time Directives (Anti-Productive Nonsense in the main) and Health & Safety laws (again of dubious benefit) but for a Capital City to comprehensively collapse for the second time in 12 months is entering Oscar Wilde territory.

When will any of the senior administrators have the decency to tell the full truth and be done with it.

Ah well..back up at 0500 to see what it like then

KC61 wrote: »

but you'd have to say that either a Facebook page or Twitter account should be activated asap to get accurate information out in the event of the problems of yesterday recurring.

It's a pity that http://twitter.com/dublintransport which is linked of the Transport for Dublin page belonging to the City Council couldn't be better utilised to provide information...

H

TheChrisD wrote: »

http://twitter.com/IrishRail not good enough?

I really meant Dublin Bus in that regard! No one had any notion for some time as to what was happening yesterday.

I put the Irish Rail link up several times here yesterday in response to queries.

Playing the popular guessing game on www.dublinbus.ie. At the moment it says:

"236 Unable to serve Ballycoolin"

That bus only really goes to Ballycoolin, so cutting that part of the route wouldn't make it a very useful service. I'm hoping it means tomorrow the buses won't go to Ballycoolin Industrial Estate, but will use Ballycoolin Road instead. Does anyone know what's the situation there?

This website is a bit hit and miss.
The 7 is out of Loughlinstown, but the 111 is still in there?
The 84 is removed from the Sea road but the 84X is ok in there?