Changes to city bus routes

highlydebased wrote: »

I see changes to city buses are coming: http://www.buseireann.ie/pdf/1347005558-Limerick-city-network.pdf

Many routes seem to now be merged i.e the 304 and 308 are now one (raheen to UL). Raheen seems to be down to every 15 min now which is madness!

redron74 wrote: »

The situation is still a bit messy this morning, but not as many angry commuters as yesterday. Bus Eireann is very lucky the weather has been ok (nice and sunny this morning, only patchy light drizzle at times yesterday).

The fact that one of the 304s went into Raheen Industrial Estate yesterday morning shows how much pressure they were under. They knew people didn't know their routes had been changed.
On the City Centre-Raheen routes, those who get on at The Crescent (O'Connell Monument), O'Connell Avenue and Punch's Cross no longer have a bus that serves the Industrial Estate.
The 301 only serves the Industrial Estate between 7:00 and 9:00 in the morning and between 4:00 and 6:00 in the evening. While that will probably accommodate the majority of users, I wonder if they did a quick survey of businesses there to find out when they had their shift changes? If you start an evening shift at 4:00, then you're going to be late for work from now on! Also, trainees at FAS get a half day on fridays, and the dedicated FAS bus no longer runs (think it was cut last year).
The journey time for the 301 is longer than the old 304. I was a few minutes late this morning as a result, and traffic wasn't a noticeable issue.

You can no longer get from Clare Street/Dublin Road directly to UL. This now requires two journeys. There may be other similar changes that haven't affected me yet.

Anyway, the new routes obviously have potential to bring a better service to people in many parts of the city previously not served very well, if at all. We'll find out over the next week or two how much benefit is there. But big losers in these changes are those who want to get to Raheen Industrial Estate.
Let's hope the driver remembers that he's supposed to come into the estate at 4:00. He only has to do this once or maybe twice in his shift - every other time he gets to the South Court Hotel he turns to go into town.

In fairness to the drivers, they all do their best to keep the timetable. But the timetable takes no account of delays due to traffic congestion. Unlike in Dublin, there are no bus lanes in Limerick City (there are a few semi-useful stretches in the suburbs, which were put in by Limerick CoCo). Therefore, when a bus falls behind time there is no way it can catch up until the traffic congestion eases. This can also impinge on the drivers entitlement to a tea break and a lunch break (unless you are self employed, no one works through their break times).
There are no extra services scheduled at peak times either, which might alleviate some of the deterioration in service due to the combination of traffic congestion and the lack of dedicated bus lanes.

I hope we don't find ourselves back in the bad old days when you could easily walk (stroll) from UL to O'Connell Street quicker than getting the bus. When I was a student in the 90s, you would often wait for up to an hour in the afternoons for a bus to come. Then sometimes the driver wouldn't let you on because the bus was too overcrowded. If you got on the bus, it would then take 30-40 minutes to travel into town.