RTE 47 Highs and Lows

The_Wrecker wrote: »

From the days of only dropping a few bewildered people at Donnybrook church to a badly timed Network direct city service.
To a service that delivered the goods at peak time and carried the numbers between terminus and the Mount st area ~ now lost to the Luas and a long walk down the canal. Thats what the regulars are doing now!
The insanity of giving your established customers a two fingered salute and removing a full bus from the inbound bus lane at Merrion to go sit at a rail crossing. The slow process of re-filling the bus through Sandymount while the regular customers (whats left) who have already endured 50mins on an elderly AV just want to get to the city.

Ah......forgot about that.....:rolleyes:

On a serious note however,the 47 was indeed beginning to assert itself as a stand-alone route after it's already ropey conception......It appears now that Network Direct,as a concept,has become the work of a Kommittee,in the same manner as a Camel.

Tragi-Comedy really....:(

BenShermin wrote: »

Suffered the same fate as route 26 imo. A route with potential that Dublin Bus couldn't be bothered advertising and then realigning it to "benifit" the customer under Network Direct. Much better to market failed routes like the 40 for example:rolleyes:.

In relation to the 47 and the Merrion Road corridor in particular, after the destruction of frequency on the 4 and now the withdrawal of the 47 and soon to be withdrawal of the 45 (if rumours are to be believed) I wonder how many people are now sitting in high horsepowered purple cars on that corridor and not "getting the bus"? Do DB "get it yet", I doubt they ever will tbh!

Ben Shermin,that is a VERY valid point.

In the light of the latest PR puffery,you may well point to the somewhat obvious conflict between what is preached and what is practiced.

There appears little obvious concern within the company at the developing situation,but perhaps there is a game-plan as yet unrevealed ..?

In the interim,one could contact the NTA in order to seek their opinions on the stuttering nature of the 47...et al.. ?

BenShermin wrote: »

Suffered the same fate as route 26 imo. A route with potential that Dublin Bus couldn't be bothered advertising and then realigning it to "benifit" the customer under Network Direct. Much better to market failed routes like the 40 for example:rolleyes:.

In relation to the 47 and the Merrion Road corridor in particular, after the destruction of frequency on the 4 and now the withdrawal of the 47 and soon to be withdrawal of the 45 (if rumours are to be believed) I wonder how many people are now sitting in high horsepowered purple cars on that corridor and not "getting the bus"? Do DB "get it yet", I doubt they ever will tbh!

You don't think that the uturn by DB wrt the 76/76a that moreorless cancelled the blanchardstown-tallaght link was to appease those who lost the 26 and 210 legs.

This route was done to appease those affected by the sandymount -belfield leg of the 2-3 with the result being the merrion qbc losing another bus with another to go in the coming weeks.

The reduction in frequency of the 4 and the tragically stupid level of service on a Sunday, a day which can attract massive numbers of patrons for the RDS and also Landsdowne Road at the weekend, are possibly the single biggest problem stemming from the Network Direct and allied changes/cutbacks.

Even if it means cutting back on other high-frequency routes (e.g. the 140 or 46a - transfer buses from Donnybrook if necessary), the 4 simply has to be improved to a bus every 10 minutes at peak times. And every half hour on a Sunday (from 12 to 7pm), similar to what the Saturday timetable is.

He/she is referring to the original timetable change when the 4 frequency was cut back with no warning which frankly was unforgiveable.

I use the 47 daily between UCD and Sandyford myself. Since the routing change time keeping seems to have suffered, with delays of 10-15 minutes on outbound buses in the morning when they are presumably running 'against the flow'.

Niles wrote: »

I use the 47 daily between UCD and Sandyford myself. Since the routing change time keeping seems to have suffered, with delays of 10-15 minutes on outbound buses in the morning when they are presumably running 'against the flow'.

That's because the inbound and outbound 47 now has to go through the level crossing beside Sydney Parade Dart station which has a very long cycle time for the simple reason that there is a Dart station right beside it and Sandymount Dart station is only a stone's throw away up the line so that level crossing is probably closed for longer than any other in the city. I regularly sat on the No. 3 for several minutes at a time at that stop. The problem is that once the wait goes over 2 minutes you are almost guaranteed a wait for a train in the opposite direction because they won't open the gates for just a minute or so.

Even though the bus that picks you up is outbound and theoretically going against the traffic, when it goes up Sydney Parade to get to the Merrion Road, it's traveling with inbound traffic so gets snarled up with everyone else. At rush hour there is a tailback for traffic turning right into the Merrion Road heading to town which severly restricts the flow for people turning left for St. Vincents Hospital and this would impact the outbound 47.

How extensive are DB's on-the-ground inspectors, or are they relying on RTPI data which can show that a bus is late but not why?

There was a comment made about "if you brought in private operators" but it seems to me that it doesn't matter who runs the buses, it's route planning and performance monitoring that should be fingered here.

It's one of the things I regretted about how NTA worked out - a city the size of Dublin deserves to have its own transport agency which is accountable to local people. A DTA like Vancouver Translink or some other municipally governed agency could haul in DB or a local route licenced operator and say "ridership and OTP on this route is crashing, complaints are rocketing, WTF is going on so we can get on with solving the problem" because if they didn't the local councillors would be feeling it from constituents.

dowlingm wrote: »

How extensive are DB's on-the-ground inspectors, or are they relying on RTPI data which can show that a bus is late but not why?

There was a comment made about "if you brought in private operators" but it seems to me that it doesn't matter who runs the buses, it's route planning and performance monitoring that should be fingered here.

It's one of the things I regretted about how NTA worked out - a city the size of Dublin deserves to have its own transport agency which is accountable to local people. A DTA like Vancouver Translink or some other municipally governed agency could haul in DB or a local route licenced operator and say "ridership and OTP on this route is crashing, complaints are rocketing, WTF is going on so we can get on with solving the problem" because if they didn't the local councillors would be feeling it from constituents.

The service is controlled from a central control centre at Broadstone, where the controllers can see exactly where any bus is using the AVLC system.

However, if the underlying rosters and running time are not sufficient for a bus to complete its journey, with the best will in the world there is not much a controller can do other than either:

1) Instructing the driver to switch the display to out of service and run in set-down mode only;

2) Cancelling a journey and sending the bus "special" (i.e. out of service) to the other terminus to make up its time.

Ultimately the only way problems such as these are resolved is by recasting the schedule - and that unfortunately is something that is not done overnight, as it means revised driver and bus rosters, which take some time to draw up.

If the service is not working that's exactly what they will have to do in due course, and that's what has happened with many of the other changed routes where the original scheduling was too ambitious in terms of running time.