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Swiftway BRT: Issues highlighted in public consultation

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Comments

  • Registered Users Posts: 710 ✭✭✭MrMorooka


    That was something that occurred to me as well. If you take the current BXD diversion around the east end of Trinity - you could have the bus lane extend directly from Clare St through to Lincoln Place, and again, from Westland Row through to Pearse St. You would have those orange flashing arrow traffic lights on a segregated lane.

    From what I can see, there is no reason for buses to stop at Westland Row because traffic is proceeding west on Pearse St, or when traffic is coming around from the Merrion Square direction onto Lincoln Place, since they are going from one bus lane to another- just have them turn left and merge with any buses or taxis.

    I think this is called Left Turn on Red, and it could probably be applied in other places around the city.


  • Registered Users Posts: 8,779 ✭✭✭Carawaystick


    Apart from preventing pedestrians crossing the road, seems grand. :rolleyes:


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 5,761 ✭✭✭cdebru


    Apart from preventing pedestrians crossing the road, seems grand. :rolleyes:

    Pedestrians would have a right of way it would only be OK to turn if the way is clear, that would include clear of pedestrians.


  • Moderators, Motoring & Transport Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 22,349 Mod ✭✭✭✭bk


    While certainly not Metro North, I believe BRT could have a significant effect on reducing dwell times and thus reducing journey times significantly. And I got to see a very interesting example of that over the weekend.

    I was in Krakow, Poland over the weekend and currently a local bus service is the only public transport from the airport to the city. However this bus service has many of the features of our proposed BRT, though is actually lighter then that.

    It took, off peak, just 35 minutes for the bus to cover the 16km from airport to city center. I actually timed it.

    Meanwhile, in Dublin, it takes the 16 40 minutes (at least) off peak to cover the 11km from airport to city center.

    Slower for a significantly shorter distance!

    The Krakow bus is a 4 door bendy bus, with zero driver interaction, similar to what is proposed with BRT. And I have to say dwell times were amazing, all 4 doors open at every stop and literally, dozens of people with luggage would enter and leave within seconds. It was shocking to watch how quick stops were in comparison to Dublin.

    This service is actually lighter then our proposed BRT. It had little in the way of bus lanes, just a small few in the city center. Outside the city it was on a just two lane road, not a motorway, it shared bus stops with other buses (no dedicated stops like our proposed BRT) and it didn't seem to have any priority measures at traffic lights, etc.

    So it's much better journey time was based purely on multi-door ticketless operations. Thus I can see BRT bringing the same journey time benefits to Dublin.

    BTW the bus services and infrastructure in Poland put Dublin and Dublin Bus to shame!

    This particular route isn't actually a special route, all of Krakows city bus services and other places I've used in Poland (Gydnia/Gydnask) operate the same way. Even their smallest single deckers (same size as the old 123 DB buses) have 3 doors, all of which open at every stop and with zero driver interaction.

    Ticketing works by you buying paper tickets from shops or machines at busy bus stops (multilingual machines that take credit card, cash, etc). Which you then validate on the bus by pushing the ticket under a validation machine that prints the date and time on the ticket. There are many of these validators throughout the bus and these machines are touch screen with multilingual instructions on how to use them. They also have a single machine on the bus from which you can buy a ticket either with coins or contactless debit card, and again these machines are touch screen and mulitlingual. You can buy many different types of single, multitrip, multiday tickets from these machines.

    Add to all of that, on board LCD screens and announcements of the next stop and oh the bus services run 24 hours!

    The bus to and from the airport also had a nice trick. The LCD display at the front of the bus displays a symbol of an aeroplane, making it obvious it is heading to the airport. And going in the other direction it has a symbol of a train as it is heading to the train station. It also says on the LCD sign (in both English and Polish) that the bus will leave in 5 minutes and counts down from there to it's leaving time.

    Now let me tell you about the awesome Krakow train station! Not only is it in the city center of Krakow, but they have totally rebuilt the entire station, burying it underground below the original station building. It is incredibly modern and airy looking now, with lots of shops, etc. and easy access to each platform by a long, wide underground walk way.

    And both the city and regional bus stations are both directly integrated into all this at the side of the train station. Each city bus has it's own easy to find straight in, straight out bus bay.

    As for the regional buses, they are in a two level, completely covered car park like strucuture with proper pull in bays, LCD screens, etc. All very impressive.

    Even going outside Krakow and deep into the Polish countryside on the regional bus services, I continued to be impressed. They seem to build bus stations, with proper pull in bays, etc. at the back of new shopping centers in little towns throughout Poland.

    The point of all this, is to show how terrible a city bus service is operated by Dublin Bus and to show how even Poland can run a vastly superior city bus services.

    This is what a good European style bus service looks like. Fast journey times with low dwell times. Multidoor operation, zero driver interaction. 24 hour operation.


  • Registered Users Posts: 430 ✭✭lil5


    bk wrote: »
    ...The point of all this, is to show how terrible a city bus service is operated by Dublin Bus ...

    We know, we have it every day ... ;)

    bk wrote: »
    The point of all this, ... to show how even Poland can run a vastly superior city bus services.

    And Dublin never will ...

    bk wrote: »
    This is what a good European style bus service looks like. Fast journey times with low dwell times. Multidoor operation, zero driver interaction. 24 hour operation.

    We give you a bit of this (Journey times are fast, especially when regulated / added doors to buses, but don't use them), and a bit of that (you don't have to interact with the driver, if you pay the maximum) and lots of that (24h operation is no problem as long as you fulfill ALL our other demands).
    In addition we put a new name on it (let's call it BRT this time even if it isn't a real one) and you can have a new colour scheme.


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,492 ✭✭✭KCAccidental


    Have they stopped the train service between the airport and Krakow?


  • Moderators, Motoring & Transport Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 22,349 Mod ✭✭✭✭bk


    Have they stopped the train service between the airport and Krakow?

    Yes, it is currently been renovated and updated. I think until at least April.

    Also massive building work of the terminals at the airport. The whole place is a building site and not very attractive, but they have managed to keep everything flowing well.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,492 ✭✭✭KCAccidental


    bk wrote: »
    Yes, it is currently been renovated and updated. I think until at least April.

    Also massive building work of the terminals at the airport. The whole place is a building site and not very attractive, but they have managed to keep everything flowing well.

    ah ok, hopefully replacing the old station, which looked like something out of the film 'Hostel' :eek:


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 172 ✭✭dublindiehard


    Krakow Balice station has been totally decomissioned, it does not even exist anymore, there is no platform or anything.

    There is a new train station supposed to be opening in September adjacent to the multi level car park at the airport.

    On the subject of the airport, the airport was running at capacity even two years ago and traffic has grew a lot since then.

    More recently they have opened the domestic terminal to international flights to alievate severe over-crowding and errected temporary tents to expand the domestic terminal.

    The over-crowding is not connected ot the terminal works, the full main international terminal is open, simply it reached it's capacity so the domestic terminal had to be used to assist with this.

    When the new International terminal opens the domestic terminal will revert back to being that only, the tents will be decomissioned nd the flights will be split between the old international terminal and the new one.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 172 ✭✭dublindiehard


    bk wrote: »
    While certainly not Metro North, I believe BRT could have a significant effect on reducing dwell times and thus reducing journey times significantly. And I got to see a very interesting example of that over the weekend.

    I was in Krakow, Poland over the weekend and currently a local bus service is the only public transport from the airport to the city. However this bus service has many of the features of our proposed BRT, though is actually lighter then that.

    It took, off peak, just 35 minutes for the bus to cover the 16km from airport to city center. I actually timed it.

    Meanwhile, in Dublin, it takes the 16 40 minutes (at least) off peak to cover the 11km from airport to city center.

    Slower for a significantly shorter distance!

    The Krakow bus is a 4 door bendy bus, with zero driver interaction, similar to what is proposed with BRT. And I have to say dwell times were amazing, all 4 doors open at every stop and literally, dozens of people with luggage would enter and leave within seconds. It was shocking to watch how quick stops were in comparison to Dublin.

    This service is actually lighter then our proposed BRT. It had little in the way of bus lanes, just a small few in the city center. Outside the city it was on a just two lane road, not a motorway, it shared bus stops with other buses (no dedicated stops like our proposed BRT) and it didn't seem to have any priority measures at traffic lights, etc.

    So it's much better journey time was based purely on multi-door ticketless operations. Thus I can see BRT bringing the same journey time benefits to Dublin.

    BTW the bus services and infrastructure in Poland put Dublin and Dublin Bus to shame!

    This particular route isn't actually a special route, all of Krakows city bus services and other places I've used in Poland (Gydnia/Gydnask) operate the same way. Even their smallest single deckers (same size as the old 123 DB buses) have 3 doors, all of which open at every stop and with zero driver interaction.

    Ticketing works by you buying paper tickets from shops or machines at busy bus stops (multilingual machines that take credit card, cash, etc). Which you then validate on the bus by pushing the ticket under a validation machine that prints the date and time on the ticket. There are many of these validators throughout the bus and these machines are touch screen with multilingual instructions on how to use them. They also have a single machine on the bus from which you can buy a ticket either with coins or contactless debit card, and again these machines are touch screen and mulitlingual. You can buy many different types of single, multitrip, multiday tickets from these machines.

    Add to all of that, on board LCD screens and announcements of the next stop and oh the bus services run 24 hours!

    The bus to and from the airport also had a nice trick. The LCD display at the front of the bus displays a symbol of an aeroplane, making it obvious it is heading to the airport. And going in the other direction it has a symbol of a train as it is heading to the train station. It also says on the LCD sign (in both English and Polish) that the bus will leave in 5 minutes and counts down from there to it's leaving time.

    Now let me tell you about the awesome Krakow train station! Not only is it in the city center of Krakow, but they have totally rebuilt the entire station, burying it underground below the original station building. It is incredibly modern and airy looking now, with lots of shops, etc. and easy access to each platform by a long, wide underground walk way.

    And both the city and regional bus stations are both directly integrated into all this at the side of the train station. Each city bus has it's own easy to find straight in, straight out bus bay.

    As for the regional buses, they are in a two level, completely covered car park like strucuture with proper pull in bays, LCD screens, etc. All very impressive.

    Even going outside Krakow and deep into the Polish countryside on the regional bus services, I continued to be impressed. They seem to build bus stations, with proper pull in bays, etc. at the back of new shopping centers in little towns throughout Poland.

    The point of all this, is to show how terrible a city bus service is operated by Dublin Bus and to show how even Poland can run a vastly superior city bus services.

    This is what a good European style bus service looks like. Fast journey times with low dwell times. Multidoor operation, zero driver interaction. 24 hour operation.

    Generally in the larger cities, the city bus services are very good and very modern like you say. However the implementation and execution in Krakow, like in other Polish cities is not as good as that in Warsaw, even though it is still pretty good overall.

    Warsaw has interactive route maps on the side window of each bus, or one in each part in the bus in articulated vehicles. It shows a map of each stop, and the estimated minutes between each stop, and for the next stop it shows all of the connecting tram lines and buses and the stop names are more visible and the ads are smaller on the LCD screens. The ZTM Warsaw Public transport operator website is also vastly better and easier to use than the MPK Krakow website and Warsaw also offers a full smart card whereas Krakow does not.

    Generally we should not be aiming to copy the Railway system in Poland however, whilst the regional operators and the smaller ones do a good job, high track access charges, poor infrastructure for the most part and poor service from the Nationalised intercity operator that runs 90% of services in the country create a very dysfuctional, passenger unfriendly environment.

    The Krakow Railway station was rebuilt between 2010 and 2012, by a new state company split out of PKP called Dworzec Polski. Their clocks are still in Krakow stations but apart from this no trace of them is left. The work at Krakow Glowny was vastly superior to that which had been undertaken at any other major Polish station, although in their time Dworzec Polski vastly improved other stations as well (Wroclaw Glowny Station, Warszawa Centralna underground passages) Sadly the company was forced into bankruptcy in 2012 and has since had their work transfered back to PKP.

    Overall stations in Poland outside the big cities are poor, and it would be hard to say that they are any better than we have here in Ireland and many are worse, even if Krakow Glowny is easily better than anything we have here that is an exception. Warszawa Centralna whilst the underground passages are very good, the main ticket hall is still a dark and depressing place even if it is better than it used to be.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 8,219 ✭✭✭Calina


    bk wrote: »
    While certainly not Metro North, I believe BRT could have a significant effect on reducing dwell times and thus reducing journey times significantly. And I got to see a very interesting example of that over the weekend.

    The issue is capacity. BRT will not serve the number of people who need to use it from the get go. Before it is even implemented, it is inadequate to needs. For this reason it is beyond crazy to implement it as a stop gap measure.
    bk wrote: »
    I was in Krakow, Poland over the weekend and currently a local bus service is the only public transport from the airport to the city. However this bus service has many of the features of our proposed BRT, though is actually lighter then that.

    It took, off peak, just 35 minutes for the bus to cover the 16km from airport to city center. I actually timed it.

    35 minutes to cover 16km is still quite a lot for off peak imo.

    bk wrote: »
    Meanwhile, in Dublin, it takes the 16 40 minutes (at least) off peak to cover the 11km from airport to city center.

    Did you count the number of stops by any chance?

    bk wrote: »
    Slower for a significantly shorter distance!

    Not sure you're comparing like with like. Also, anyone sensible would get either the Aircoach or the Airbus.
    bk wrote: »
    The Krakow bus is a 4 door bendy bus, with zero driver interaction, similar to what is proposed with BRT. And I have to say dwell times were amazing, all 4 doors open at every stop and literally, dozens of people with luggage would enter and leave within seconds. It was shocking to watch how quick stops were in comparison to Dublin.

    How frequently were there stops? I lived in Brussels for 2 years. Bus stops were on average 800m apart. IMO, you don't need bendy buses to fix that problem.
    bk wrote: »
    This service is actually lighter then our proposed BRT. It had little in the way of bus lanes, just a small few in the city center. Outside the city it was on a just two lane road, not a motorway, it shared bus stops with other buses (no dedicated stops like our proposed BRT) and it didn't seem to have any priority measures at traffic lights, etc.

    What are the private traffic volumes on those roads?
    bk wrote: »
    So it's much better journey time was based purely on multi-door ticketless operations. Thus I can see BRT bringing the same journey time benefits to Dublin.

    You cannot possibly make that assertion - it is not a logical conclusion.
    bk wrote: »
    BTW the bus services and infrastructure in Poland put Dublin and Dublin Bus to shame!

    Dublin has very particular problems the key one of which is that no one wants to actually pay to upgrade the system and when any money is suggested, there is an ideological battle over private operator access to the market, the complete mess made of interoperability on the ticket front courtesy of a large number of players on the market.
    bk wrote: »
    This particular route isn't actually a special route, all of Krakows city bus services and other places I've used in Poland (Gydnia/Gydnask) operate the same way. Even their smallest single deckers (same size as the old 123 DB buses) have 3 doors, all of which open at every stop and with zero driver interaction.

    Dublin actually used to have middle doors on the double deckers. People didn't used them then, and they aren't learning too fast now
    bk wrote: »
    Ticketing works by you buying paper tickets from shops or machines at busy bus stops (multilingual machines that take credit card, cash, etc). Which you then validate on the bus by pushing the ticket under a validation machine that prints the date and time on the ticket. There are many of these validators throughout the bus and these machines are touch screen with multilingual instructions on how to use them. They also have a single machine on the bus from which you can buy a ticket either with coins or contactless debit card, and again these machines are touch screen and mulitlingual. You can buy many different types of single, multitrip, multiday tickets from these machines.

    This is not unique to Poland and most city systems in Europe have worked this way for years. One of the key issues in Dublin is that the price differential between prepay/subscription tickets and one off on-bus tickets has been far too little to attract people to prepay.
    bk wrote: »
    Add to all of that, on board LCD screens and announcements of the next stop and oh the bus services run 24 hours!

    We have announcements and LED displays on an increasing number of buses. The 24 hour running thing is a balance of supply and demand and willingness to fund the service when it is subject to less demand. Again, this is a question of money and the simple truth is no one wants to fund proper public transport in Dublin.
    bk wrote: »
    The bus to and from the airport also had a nice trick. The LCD display at the front of the bus displays a symbol of an aeroplane, making it obvious it is heading to the airport. And going in the other direction it has a symbol of a train as it is heading to the train station. It also says on the LCD sign (in both English and Polish) that the bus will leave in 5 minutes and counts down from there to it's leaving time.

    This is useful. I don't think it would be impossible to do it here.
    bk wrote: »
    Now let me tell you about the awesome Krakow train station! Not only is it in the city center of Krakow, but they have totally rebuilt the entire station, burying it underground below the original station building. It is incredibly modern and airy looking now, with lots of shops, etc. and easy access to each platform by a long, wide underground walk way.

    Nothing about this is unique. Most of the central rail stations in large German cities and a lot of the French ones have decent shopping areas attached and reasonable access to the platforms.
    bk wrote: »
    And both the city and regional bus stations are both directly integrated into all this at the side of the train station. Each city bus has it's own easy to find straight in, straight out bus bay.

    IMO, the central bus station for Dublin city should be city operated and open to all operators and no long haul bus services should be picking up on, for example,. Westmoreland St.
    bk wrote: »
    As for the regional buses, they are in a two level, completely covered car park like strucuture with proper pull in bays, LCD screens, etc. All very impressive.

    Again, commonplace in most bus stations in any European country.
    bk wrote: »
    Even going outside Krakow and deep into the Polish countryside on the regional bus services, I continued to be impressed. They seem to build bus stations, with proper pull in bays, etc. at the back of new shopping centers in little towns throughout Poland.

    Seriously, Poland is nothing special in this respect
    bk wrote: »
    The point of all this, is to show how terrible a city bus service is operated by Dublin Bus and to show how even Poland can run a vastly superior city bus services.

    TBH, there are a couple of things you really need to understand. "even Poland" is patronising. Poland has probably been running a decent bus service for years because a core focus of the system is utility and making it better and not the "ah sure it'll be grand" style of resource management which is prevalent across Irish society for everything.
    bk wrote: »
    This is what a good European style bus service looks like. Fast journey times with low dwell times. Multidoor operation, zero driver interaction. 24 hour operation.

    There is an issue with bus routing in Dublin in that the city service had some articulated buses but they were not suitable for all or even many routes owing to some particularly narrow or sharp access to some streets particularly in the city centre. Berlin has or at least had double decker buses for similar reasons I think. Dublin also has a stupid idiot set up where people pop up and talk about how Dublin Bus and Luas should be in competition and Luas was winning (seriously, this was part of the narrative in the early Luas years).

    The view of a coherent and well structured public transport system in Dublin is stymied by people who work against the idea of bringing it under an umbrella organisation. Most of Europe does this, although the UK has a franchise system on the buses which some people would like to implement here. Not only that, in most European countries, people recognise that this costs money. If you suggest for a moment that more money needs to go into public transport in this country, the responses range from "yes" to "Dublin Bus, Unions, Overpaid Staff, Waste of money".

    At no point does anyone even sit down and identify some of the other problems that we have which is the sprawl of the city, the nature of how we built (bad and all as the semiDs and terraces are, at least they aren't walled compounds like a lot of the new apartment blocks are), the fact that if we want a reasonable light rail and bus integrated system, we will have to knock parts of the city to put down those rails.

    Looking at how Krakow does it only picks at those details. The BRT is not a solution to the problems the city as a whole faces because it only picks at some of the problems and as designed is already inadequate to traffic needs.


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,394 ✭✭✭Sheldons Brain


    Poland, and Eastern Europe generally, had this punch your ticket on board system on city services even in communist days, whereas Dublin had conductors. A real mistake was made in not changing to some sort of prepaid system when conductors were abolished, as stop times were greatly increased.


  • Registered Users Posts: 9,764 ✭✭✭antoinolachtnai


    Calina wrote: »
    The issue is capacity. BRT will not serve the number of people who need to use it from the get go. Before it is even implemented, it is inadequate to needs. For this reason it is beyond crazy to implement it as a stop gap measure.

    Surely anything is better than nothing, especially if it is accepted as a stop-gap measure?
    35 minutes to cover 16km is still quite a lot for off peak imo.

    I think it is as fast as the red line Luas.
    Dublin has very particular problems the key one of which is that no one wants to actually pay to upgrade the system and when any money is suggested, there is an ideological battle over private operator access to the market, the complete mess made of interoperability on the ticket front courtesy of a large number of players on the market.

    There is no ideological battle in Dublin. There is a European Directive. Public Service Contracts have to be put out to tender.

    The underlying problem in Dublin seems to me to be that we pay more per vehicle-km of public transport than anywhere else but we don't get better quality as a result. It is very hard to make things viable in this situation.

    Dublin actually used to have middle doors on the double deckers. People didn't used them then, and they aren't learning too fast now

    I don't think this is a full statement of the situation with middle doors. There were a bunch of industrial relations and insurance issues. There is no evidence that I know of that Irish public transport patrons are any stupider or less cooperateive than those in other cities.
    This is not unique to Poland and most city systems in Europe have worked this way for years. One of the key issues in Dublin is that the price differential between prepay/subscription tickets and one off on-bus tickets has been far too little to attract people to prepay.

    I think the broader issue underlying this is that there are political plays by operators to force decisions about fares.
    We have announcements and LED displays on an increasing number of buses.

    Was it really wise to invest in this stuff rather than investing in increasing frequency and breadth of service?
    The 24 hour running thing is a balance of supply and demand and willingness to fund the service when it is subject to less demand.

    It also has to do with the cost base. Frequency begets demand.

    You really don't need that much demand to keep an hourly bus service going and get it to cover its marginal costs. You need to pay for the driver and the diesel basically.
    Again, this is a question of money and the simple truth is no one wants to fund proper public transport in Dublin.

    It is not simply a question of funding. It is a question of efficiency. By any objective measure, the bus transport is not very efficient in Dublin.
    The view of a coherent and well structured public transport system in Dublin is stymied by people who work against the idea of bringing it under an umbrella organisation. Most of Europe does this, although the UK has a franchise system on the buses which some people would like to implement here.

    By franchising do you mean public service contracts, or something else?

    As it stands, there is franchising in Ireland. For buses, Bus Atha Cliath has the franchise for Dublin, and BE has the franchise for everywhere else.

    Who exactly is against bringing public transport under an umbrella organization? Surely it is a bit late for them? This has been done in principle, although in practice, the umbrella does not have very direct control.


  • Registered Users Posts: 8,779 ✭✭✭Carawaystick



    As it stands, there is franchising in Ireland. For buses, Bus Atha Cliath has the franchise for Dublin, and BE has the franchise for everywhere else.

    Except in Balbriggan, where Bus Eireann run one town bus service, and Dublin bus run another...


  • Moderators, Motoring & Transport Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 22,349 Mod ✭✭✭✭bk


    I agree that BRT is not a replacement for Metro North, I already said that.

    But my point was to show that BRT can deliver a vastly superior bus service to what we are use to here in Dublin and that BRT will certainly be vastly superior, with greater capacity and lower journey times then the existing 16 and 41 services.

    I honestly believe BRT could be a revolution for bus services here in Dublin. It will finally show the people of Dublin what a modern, european style bus service looks like and will hopefully in turn put pressure on Dublin Bus to improve the services on the rest of their network to match this.

    This would be beneficial to all involved imo:
    - Passengers get substantially faster journey times.
    - Drivers benefit from greatly reduced passenger interaction, allowing them to focus more on safely driving the bus.
    - The company benefits from getting more frequency out of it's existing buses and drivers due to the reduced dwell time.

    It really is win, win all around.

    I specifically wanted to highlight my experiences in Poland, because DB staff often dismiss people giving examples of far superior bus services in the likes of London, Amsterdam and Germany, that sure they are such rich places. My point is to highlight that just about every other country in Europe, including some of the supposedly "poorest" eastern European countries, have vastly superior city bus services compared to Dublin and frankly that should embarrass us all and make us want to do better and improve services.


  • Registered Users Posts: 6,644 ✭✭✭Pete_Cavan


    bk wrote: »
    I honestly believe BRT could be a revolution for bus services here in Dublin. It will finally show the people of Dublin what a modern, european style bus service looks like and will hopefully in turn put pressure on Dublin Bus to improve the services on the rest of their network to match this.
    Most posters here recognise the benefits of BRT and know what it could do for Dublin.
    The issue with this proposed BRT is that they want to spend €250m on one solitary line. Comments about Dublin Bus improving services to match this are a bit premature seeing as we don't know yet if BRT will be operated by BD. The vast majority of commuters will still be left with long and unpredictable journey timesand they won't care what a modern European style bus service looks like, they will still be on the outdated Irish version. Why not start by improving DB services by bringing in off board ticketing, buses with more doors and cameras to catch other vehicles obstructing bus lanes? Do we really need to introduce another public transport service into the mix to bring about some basic improvements?

    This BRT will always be seen as a cheap replacement for MN because after €250m is spent on the BRT, I don't expect to see the government cough up a couple of billion for a metro along the same route in my life time (and I am only in my twenties). If we are going to be introducing New services they should be well superior than what we have, not a basic step up.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,492 ✭✭✭KCAccidental


    while it may not be suitable for the MN corridor in capacity terms, I do hope the success of the measures implemented will breed development of this kind of BRT in the smaller cities where they are more suited. Cork could definitely use something like that on the 220 or 215


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 4,676 ✭✭✭strandroad


    bk wrote: »
    I specifically wanted to highlight my experiences in Poland, because DB staff often dismiss people giving examples of far superior bus services in the likes of London, Amsterdam and Germany, that sure they are such rich places. My point is to highlight that just about every other country in Europe, including some of the supposedly "poorest" eastern European countries, have vastly superior city bus services compared to Dublin and frankly that should embarrass us all and make us want to do better and improve services.

    I agree with you, but you don't even need BRT to achieve that. European solutions of the type you describe are regular city routes, not special corridors, and they have been run this way for such a long time it's simply a standard way of doing things now.

    I was trying to get a similar point across in another thread not that long ago but the response was pretty much "can't be done" - apparently wobbly double deckers, forced driver interaction and one door operation (and resulting abysmal dwell times) is the way it has to be.

    Or it can cost quarter of a billion to fix one route... But it gets a fancy new name!


  • Moderators, Motoring & Transport Moderators Posts: 14,071 Mod ✭✭✭✭monument


    mhge wrote: »
    I agree with you, but you don't even need BRT to achieve that. European solutions of the type you describe are regular city routes, not special corridors, and they have been run this way for such a long time it's simply a standard way of doing things now.

    I was trying to get a similar point across in another thread not that long ago but the response was pretty much "can't be done" - apparently wobbly double deckers, forced driver interaction and one door operation (and resulting abysmal dwell times) is the way it has to be.

    Or it can cost quarter of a billion to fix one route... But it gets a fancy new name!

    Swiftway is in the spectrum of European-level BRT, aka Bus of High Level of Service. So, it is following is a very European solution.

    The problem isn't the name or spend, but that around the same spend should be able to give you busway level of service and we should end up with something like Nantes' line 4 -- Dublin's QBC's are known as the "First stage of BHLS" and the planned "BRT" isn't as segregated as it should be if it was put in the centre of its larger roads etc. The central problems with the details seems to stem from trying to run a two-tier bus system on the Swords Road / Drumcondra route and trying too keep too high of a level of car priority.

    The route is due to be redone as a cycle route anyway and many junctions are far below the latest standards for pedestrians.


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