Aircoach Dublin-Cork express

I agree there are two markets and some people will be disappointed by the change. However at the end of the day it's never going to be economical to run seven services a day between the Town's, when the end to end passengers are going to move to the express service, the yields are just not there, the 5-10 people per coach between the town''s are not enough to sustain eight services a day in each direction with the price of fuel today. There are alternative services available and whoever was running direct, Bus Eireann, GoBus or Aircoach would see consumer shift from indirect to direct routes, which would make the previous services less viable. However he still has a right to air his views.

However the reaction is somewhat over the top. The attempt to spread mis-information to the press, some of the tweets of which he seems to have removed now, particularly relating to a vast exaggeration of the number of passengers traveling between the town's and also a totally false suggestion that Aircoach is using tax payers money to fund the Cork services but then not doing their bit in return and then trying to pass that idea to the press is someone who is taking the situation too far and either has an axe to grind or there is more to it than meets the eye.

If he stuck to the facts rather than wild exaggerations I'd be more likely to have more sympathy.

dowlingm wrote: »

While we can argue about how an individual expresses his/her frustrations, the reality is that many jurisdictions do oblige recipients of public transportation licences to take on duties which aren't necessarily profitable as a quid pro quo, such as route bundling where you get two profitable routes but you have to also operate an unprofitable one to the same level to ensure geographic coverage.

Unfortunately this is Ireland and the system here is different to vast amounts of other countries. There are positives and negatives to the current licensing regime but like it or lump it that is the system we currently have. I do agree that bundling of routes would perhaps be a good idea, but the same would have to be put in place for ALL operators not just one rule for the private's and one rule for the state owned companies.

For instance you can't expect JJ Kavanagh, Dublin Coach, Aircoach etc to have to take on such service bundles, if the same does not apply to Bus Eireann and Dublin Bus, it needs to be applied evenly across the board, especially when pretty much the whole city bus network is funded by the tax payer, apart from the small number of commercial routes that are operated by the CIE companies such as tours, airlink, some coach services etc. The privates would rightly claim that iw would not be a level playing field.

The NTA should have obliged Aircoach to run at least one mid-morning service (one or more of the 0900/1000/1100) to the regional towns to bring down passengers from transatlantic flights whereas there are now to be only three regional services southbound and the first of those is 1430.

The NTA cannot influence any private operator to do anything, at the end of the day it's not for the NTA to tell private companies they must continue to run such services as there is nothing with this in regards to the licensing regulations. It is private companies money and where they want to invest it is entirely up to them. If there is a gap in the market, Bus Eireann or others are perfectly entitled to apply to run extra services to fill in the gaps.

Believe me running such services with 5-10 people on only which is what Aircoach would need to o would be quite heavily loss making - have you seen the price of fuel? And contrary to what some may think, there are not huge profits in the private bus/coach industry, pretty much all of the big operators in Ireland are struggling to break even and in a number of cases are posting losses thanks to the remove of the fuel rebate scheme, fuel prices, and rising insurance costs.

dowlingm wrote: »

Think you meant underserved there. Cork is undeserved, but that's why we want to set up the People's Republic.

Is it possible that Galway is overserved, by the way? What are loads/yields like?

There's a huge difference between Cork and Galway, traditionally because of the lower distances, and better motorway infrastructure bus passenger numbers between Dublin and Galway have always been higher, especially because of the fact the train speeds between the two cities have been very slow, despite the fact that they are not as far apart as Dublin and Cork.

Until the improvements to motorways, and the recent addition of express services, the train has been much faster than the bus so the percentage of people taking the train for transport between Cork and Dublin has always been higher simply due to the fact it was much faster, which was reflected in less bus services. That may begin to change now.

bk wrote: »

That is a good idea, however it wouldn't be fair to on the one hand subsidise BE, while expecting a private company to do this.

It is one approach or the other.

That is pretty much the problem with it. It's one rule for one, and one for another and you can't do that, A level playing field like London would be a better model, but there is no chance of such a system coming in, because for one the unions wouldn't allow it as it would ultimately lead to the break up of both Dublin Bus and Bus Eireann.

Another approach is to offer a license for each route, with specifics of minimum number of journeys served per day. schedule, etc.

The trouble with your idea is that it would stifle innovation to a degree, instead of companies being able to propose their own route, the routes would be decided by the NTA

That is not necessarily a bad idea, but again to be a level playing field you're also going to have to do something with existing services as well, as it gives existing operators a closed shop where they cannot be challenged and much of the improvements to public transport down the year are down to brave thinking and innovation from private companies which have kept the state ones on their toes.

bk wrote: »

To be honest, we seem to be assuming that a private company can't run a stopping service profitably.

However with Citylink running 13 stopping services a day to Galway, in addition to their 18 direct services and JJ Kavanagh running a bunch of stopping services to Limerick, Waterford and Clonmel/Kilkenny, it certainly seems like private companies can profitably run stopping services too.

Those services have a lot higher passenger numbers, and in addition the Galway stopping services are somewhat cut back to what they were before, some of the former Bus Eireann route 20 services are now semi-express, whilst GoBus, started out life as NestorLink/Veolia, which dropped all of it's stopping services to concentrate on the non stop services. Citylink also are not operating as many services as they were before the non stop services came on the scene.

Obviously a launch of a competing direct service will make the stopping service less viable, but it is still viable, certainly seems to be in Galway anyway.

There is nowhere near the market for 15 stopping services in each direction as there was before the launch of the express services, The previous frequency of stopping services could not be sustained in any shape or form after the launch of express services, there just isn't the demand to satisfy two operators, and with Aircoach carrying much less intermediate traffic than Bus Eireann. Those 5-10 remaining passengers on the indirect services at max are not enough to sustain services on their own, and I don't think there is a market to attract the passengers needed to be viable. Bus Eireann start from a higher loads points of such customers and most of their customers tend to be loyal so will not switch.

Aircoach virtually pick up no passengers to/from Dublin from Kildare or because that market is sewn up by Dublin Coach who offer a more regular service with cheaper fares. Portlaoise is in a hotel not even in the Town, Urlingford was just made a stop because they stopped there anyway for a break. So generally for the Town's you're looking at traffic from Kildare to Cork and return, plus Abbeyleix (2,500 population), Durrow (900), Cashel (2,500), Mitchelstown (3,000), Fermoy (5,000). They're hardly huge places and are not going to generate such demand to fill 15 coaches a day.

Galway to Dublin Buses have about three times the stops and such large places as Athlone (7,000), Oranmore (4,000), Loughrea (4,500), Ballinasloe (7,000). Generally they are much bigger town's and more of them, which means you are always going to get more takers for indirect services as quite simply there is much higher population along the route between the two cities meaning more potential customers so you need to take the above into account before comparing Galway and Cork routes because quite frankly there is a huge difference between the places served on each route and their size.

It seems to me that it is more of a case of Aircoach moving around buses to cover the most profitable routes. They also recently cut the number of buses on the Ballinteer, Dalkey and Greystones. I guess it is these buses and buses from the Cork stopping route that have ended up on the new express service.

There was small cuts yes, but they were only about 2-3 services a day in each direction and there still is 24 services a day in each direction anyway. From my experience especially on the Dalkey route, the half hours services were sometimes completely empty. You can't go around running services like that, they ran services every half an hour in the morning but if you have one bus at 5:00 50% full and the one half hour later with 1 or two people on it then the 6:00 again around 50% full it's obvious what to do. An hourly frequency is sufficient for those routes - the previous timetables were losing money plain and simple. They're still 24 hour services so nobody is put out.

So really they probably didn't buy any new buses, just repositioned them. I wonder if in time they will buy some new buses and will increase the stopping timetable again..

First of all you will find barely any private operator purchases any vehicles. The vast majority of vehicles are leased, even large operators such as JJ Kavanagh, Aircoach and GoBus have an almost fully leased fleet as it allows them to pay for the cost spread over several years. Despite suggestions otherwise, there is not a huge amount of profit being made in the coach business. A decent spec coach costs approx 250,000 euro with some of the better vehicles costing more. There is no operator who has enough of the market and is making enough profit to be able to justify buying so many coaches outright for a price like that. The companies would go bust very quickly and the banks are hardly lending money at the moment and will certainly not allow a company to trade in the red with huge debts for long.

I still believe that Aircoach have handled the situation with this route badly though and that their lack of marketing is going to cost them in the long run when they will get thrashed by GoBus who will have toilets as there is no chance that Aircoach will have vehicles with toilets now or in the future, plus with the fact that I would say GoBus will not exactly be shy in marketing the fact they have toilets it could be a watershed moment for them, they have made big mistakes with launching this Cork route, with the launch itself and the lack of marketing could prove to be a very expensive mistake. The Belfast news surely cannot be correct, because they'll be on a hiding to nothing there, and with very few spare vehicles and no prospect of more coming in, I would say the timetable will be limited also. Hope they prove me wrong but I doubt it, I think they really need to buck their ideas up to survive.

There appears to have been some small marketing done, it has been mentioned on NewsTalk today, and is on the newstalk website and a quick Google search shows that it is also on one business website, and a couple of small radio stations.

Good they did something, but they really need to attract the bigger radio stations, the bigger websites and the major newspapers as well as the local ones in Cork to get this to work as I doubt the titles the PR is in are going to be read by many possible customers. Still think their marketing is poor but at least they have done some even if it's not really much.