Irish Times and Bus Lanes

hfallada wrote: »

They are at breaking point because they are extremely poorly run. Irish Rail cant seem to understand they should run within in a budget and constantly believe they need more funding. But they havent improve their quality of service or reduced their costs.

Dublin bus had probably the biggest overhaul ever in the last few years. It got rid of routes they were duplicates of each other eg 46a and 10 were practically the same. Drivers pay was cut and buses are more reliable

OAPs shouldnt have free travel. It happens no where else in Europe. Not even in socialist France. A poor broke student only gets a 25% reduction in an adult fare ticket(usually 50% everywhere else in Europe and even in the US). But a wealthy OAP gets free travel. That isnt equality, but stupidity,

But lets ask ourselves why they got into that state in the first place? Every time any of the CIE Group tried to make service cuts, then local politicians and TDs would raise a rumpus and the companies would be told by their political masters to ditch the plans.


The amount of political interference in running public transport in this country has been unreal - and that frankly is why we have many of the problems that we do. The Network Direct project should have happened 10-15 years ago, but political obstacles stopped that.


The Free Travel Scheme (as originally implemented - off-peak only) was in my view a fairer system - the free-for-all that was introduced during the boom was a serious mistake.

dsix wrote: »

I think is more of an organisation issue than a money issue.

For example in Paris you can enter with one ticket in one side of the city and use the metro changing as many lines as you want till the other side of the city.

Instead we have 2 Luas lines (what I believe is the best service in Dublin) that are even treated differently by the same carrier: you cannot use the Leap card from the red to green (or green to red), they are considered 2 different trips and you need to tag on/off four times with the relative fare...

The result of this kind of organisation is that a trip from Clondalkin to DunDrum/Sandyford, is cheaper by car than by PT.

And off course adding other bus/train/park&ride etc will add to the bill.

That is a funding issue as well, I'm afraid because it goes to the heart of how public transport should be funded. Changing the way ticketing is priced for example would involve cuts to farebox revenue - how do you make that difference up?

Quite a few cities have zonal fare structures, so the LUAS is not alone in that. The LUAS issue that you raise is frankly a red herring as the numbers of red line users that then want to use the green line and are going pay-as-you-go are not significant. Anyone doing it regularly would have a period pass.

Someone going from Clondalkin to Dundrum can do it by bus for €2.75 using a Travel 90 ticket. Not only that, but it would be faster than going via the city. If they do it every day, they would have a monthly ticket.

I'd personally love to see time-based tickets introduced as standard, but in the financial situation that we currently have it is not going to happen.

ardmacha wrote: »

What's the point in a contributory pension if you just all politicians play politics with it? Why not reduce the pensions to which no contribution was made?

Setting the contributory and non-contributory pensions the same would mean that there would be no incentive to make social welfare contributions during your working life.

I apologise in advance.

With respect to the original point of this thread, the writer of the letters in question does not understand that the point of the bus lanes is to keep them free flowing. Buses carry more people at those times when the rest of the roads are full. If we just allowed cars to fill them, the traffic jams would be worse and disproportionately more people would be held up than is currently the case.

iba wrote: »

If more people took the bus it would be better for everyone and teh enviroment.

Personally speaking, I tried. I currently (and temporarily) have a commute of about 10km across the city and specifically for the purposes of environmental considerations, and not adding to the traffic jams, I tried. My commute from A to B involved a route change in the city centre. It never took me anything under 90 minutes each way.

For 10km this is ludicrous. I can leave home 15 minutes earlier driving and arrive at my destination over an hour faster than I would on the bus. And this was reliable. At a given point, I made a decision about whether I wanted to spend 3 hours commuting every day versus about an hour 10 minutes. Driving won.

The commute was D9 to UCD using 14 and either 46A or 145 from the city centre. Typically, the latter 2 were full and on more than one occasion I wound up not making buses because they were full.

iba wrote: »

And before people complain that tehre are not enough buses, bus services would increase as demand increases therefore creating employment.

In my experience, the services as provided at certain times of the day are undersupplied. Simply put, demand far exceeds supply. What exactly is your point?

iba wrote: »

It is IMO about time that a city tax be imposed to stop the amount of cars in Dublin City Center; like in London.

I have a nuanced view of this but in my view, no such thing should happen in general until the public transport system is sorted out. It currently is inadequate to requirements.

iba wrote: »

Is there really a 24/7 bus lane?

Yes. Particularly on streets which carry airport routing buses I have noticed them.

Banjoxed wrote: »

I am sure plenty of vested interests in Dublin would love to see this happening to the BRT project before it gets off the ground:

http://m.ndtv.com/article/assembly-polls/delhi-sheila-dik****-finally-promises-to-scrap-bus-rapid-transit-corridor-451738

I see a number of risks with the implementation of BRT.

There is a cultural tendency in this country to do as little as we can possibly get away with. I know at least one of the routes proposed for BRT was originally slated for Metro, and I also know that per the documentation, it will be over capacity from day one.

In my view, where the BRT is not going to meet demand from the outset, it should not be built and something which will should be. I've had a look at the documentation for the BRT and it's a while ago now, but I noted that two key factors were that it would be cheaper and delivered faster than the Metro.

If it does not fulfill needs and we ultimately wind up having to build a metro anyway, I think we should build the metro first. Our tendency to do as little in the short term has always cost us money in the long term.

I cannot comment on the other routes as I'm not so directly affected by them viz, I expect to be gone from UCD long before it's built.

iba wrote: »

@Chris Heilong.

There is no way that a car is cheaper than using Dublin Bus and that is not even taking into consideration than Tax Saver tickets.

Maybe that is the problem, people drive through pure ignorance thinking that it is cheaper than the bus.

Most people seem to operate on the idea that money is the sole decision.

Time, however, is a big factor. Unless you live on a direct route, regardless of which mode you have, the requirement for a change mid journey tends to cost time. In my experience, it cost enough to push me back to driving. Ignorance has very little to do with it - often there are multiple factors which lead to the decision.

Red Nissan wrote: »

It's a very simple question, if the millions working and living in Dublin all took public transport, how big a fleet of buses, Taxis and trains would we need.

This assumes that we'd do it all the same way. Public transport in Dublin is hampered by poor planning and poor policy over the years. The truth is most cities of a million people get by on have a lot more people on public transport than Dublin does, and they don't all need an individual carriage in the underground.

Red Nissan wrote: »

We'd have a fleet of vehicles stuck in their very own special lane-ways and blocking up the city center parking five abreast and soon nothing would be moving.

Unless we did it incredibly badly, no we wouldn't. That level of usage would almost certainly mandate a better view of intermodality and better design of the overall public transport network. I have more to say on that later so I'll not go into it in detail here.

Red Nissan wrote: »

Our councils and city managers have been following a policy of disruption of private motor transport and manufacturing traffic jams with inefficient traffic lights.

There is a policy of getting more people to use public transport which in principle I agree with and this would be enhanced if we had a coherent public transport plan which was obvious to end users. I don't think it is.

That being said, my experience is that the bulk of disruption I experience on a day to day basis is not necessarily linked to traffic lights with one or two exceptions. It is linked to poor decisions by other drivers. Parking on double yellow lines is a key example. Breaking red lights is another. Not paying attention to green light changes is another.

All of this is inattention or selfishness on the part of drivers.

Red Nissan wrote: »

One only has to look at Cork city after a lightning strike or two and all the lights go out, the traffic flows smoothly and there are near empty streets.

Whilst accidents do happen, most of the delay you experience each and every day is created by policy.

Well that depends. Obviously someone has a policy of making the zone in front of one of the junctions on the keys a no parking zone, but are my delays caused by it being a no parking zone, or is it caused by the muppet who parked there blocking access to the slip lane to the left?

Red Nissan wrote: »

The new thinking is to facilitate and alleviate, one ends up with less pollution, less fuel consumption and freer movement of service vehicles.

It's also unproven I believe.

AlekSmart wrote: »

Hugely valid secondary point here.

Just that Leapcard as an example...No real appreciation of the capabilities of the ITS System,patchy introduction at levels falling far short of attractive enough to stimulate new business,continuing reluctance to recognize or address ongoing deficiencies in it's operation.

Leapcard in principle is a good idea. Elements of its implementation do not have the enduser in mind. This is regrettable.

lxflyer wrote: »

That's all well and good, but we simply do not have the funds to pay for ticket prices at that level - the subsidy levels have been constantly dropping due to the lack of money at government level, and the transport companies are at breaking point financially.

I think it's fair to say we don't prioritise them. We seem to be able to pay private banking debts quite well, and our politicians do grand. And consultants collect quite a bit of money.

I think we have X money. Our prioritisation of spending it could be called into question.

hfallada wrote: »

They are at breaking point because they are extremely poorly run. Irish Rail cant seem to understand they should run within in a budget and constantly believe they need more funding. But they havent improve their quality of service or reduced their costs.

Irish Rail have improved their service massively over the past 20 years. There are elements of how they function now that I really do like.

They are hampered in some of the spatial strategy or lack of spatial strategy in the country and also, with the best will in the world, certain things that I'd love to see probably aren't economically viable. Highspeed Cork to Dublin and Belfast would be useful. This requires an infrastructure build and even if we hadn't upgraded the motorways in the last 10 years, I'm not sure it would be a good use of funds.

hfallada wrote: »

Dublin bus had probably the biggest overhaul ever in the last few years. It got rid of routes they were duplicates of each other eg 46a and 10 were practically the same. Drivers pay was cut and buses are more reliable

In my experience, that overhaul was not driven by the right priorities. A key factor here should be the end user. The truth is what drove that was a lack of money.

My experience is that the buses are not necessarily more reliable. They are more crowded at peak hours. I don't agree that they got it right enough.

hfallada wrote: »

OAPs shouldnt have free travel. It happens no where else in Europe. Not even in socialist France. A poor broke student only gets a 25% reduction in an adult fare ticket(usually 50% everywhere else in Europe and even in the US). But a wealthy OAP gets free travel. That isnt equality, but stupidity,

I disagree with abandoning it. There's no reason why we can't choose to do something ourselves rather than wait for, for example, socialist France to do it.

---

The biggest issue I have with public transport in Dublin is that the drivers for running it tend not to be transport users but ideology. There is zero user experience design. It's really only functional if you don't have to change route, either inter- or intramodally. There's no coherent central brand for transport in Dublin if you like, it's not like London Transport, STIB in Brussels or the RATP. Either you are on Dublin Bus or you are on the Dart or you are on the Arrow, or you are on any one of the half dozen private operators... or you are on the Luas. We set up all the different parts of the system to compete with each other and we focus on their needs. Delays with intermodal smart card tickets were not because of user problems but because of the different constituent companies to provide the patchwork of services.

Dublin Bus's ticketing system has been complex for years - at least now they are doing something about it but it has taken too long. The leapcard, such as it is - and I have one - is not a user friendly experience and its operation is focussed more on the needs of the suppliers than the needs of the users.

We have too many bus stops, and the city centre is completely messed up because we don't appear to have coherent joined up thinking about moving people around. It is ludicrous that there should be a bus stop on O'Connell Bridge. In my view, we should look around for some derelict piece of ground and build a decent city bus interchange there and then make sure no route has bus stops within 400m of each other. We also need to recognise that if we build a decent light rail system, this will result in major changes to the bus system, including reduced numbers, and this should not be used as a stick to beat Dublin Bus with, that AN Other Light Rail System is gaining customers, therefore DB is clearly useless.

There is far too confrontational a way of operating the different components of public transport in this city. Never mind this country, in the city of Dublin.

When this is sorted out, we can look at road pricing. In the meantime, it's not a solution to the problems.

[on the other hand, every event which affects transport, such as the accident last night which brought the city centre to a standstill, needs to be investigated, cause identified, and data made available in an open format so that we understand what contributes to unusual problems like that]

People in Dublin take little ownership of their civic affairs.

AlekSmart wrote: »

BTW,It's perhaps worth noting that the Luas BXD extension may well have a stand-alone Fare Structure also....:rolleyes:

No it won't. Red and Green line fares are already being aligned.

bambergbike wrote: »

Yet another of these bizarre letters:
http://www.irishtimes.com/debate/letters/cycling-safety-and-bus-lanes-1.1760667
So, now we know:
+ Motorists break red lights, but usually only when it is safe to do so
+ Motorists pay insurance, "road" tax and maintenance costs and have more to lose than cyclists*
+ Cycle lanes are not always available - there is a financial crisis on
+Traffic other than buses and taxis are forced into 10-15 min diversions at rush hour by bus lanes that increase pollution
I can only hope against hope that the Irish Times published this in order to give somebody else a springboard to write in and debunk it.
*This is the weirdest bit, although the rest is weird, too. The writer points out that motorists have more to lose than cyclists and then goes on to observe that cyclists are more vulnerable to accident and injury than motorists.

That's hilarious!!

I didn't realise the letters section of the Times was now given over to "Comedy Corner"... This person lives in his own little bubble! :rolleyes:

iba wrote: »

IMO the problem is too many motorists driving to work, doing the school run etc.

If more people took the bus it would be better for everyone and teh enviroment.

And before people complain that tehre are not enough buses, bus services would increase as demand increases therefore creating employment.

The quays are jam packed all the time and I notice the return of many HGV's on them too.

It is IMO about time that a city tax be imposed to stop the amount of cars in Dublin City Center; like in London.

Is there really a 24/7 bus lane?

Whatever about the farcical claims in the quoted letters I have to call out this opinion. The bus service has significantly declined in recent years and I feel this has led to peoples poor opinion of bus-based public transport in Ireland. During early rush hour, there seems to be a 50/50 chance of buses passing by my stop full, and I generally obtain a seat about 10% of the time (not that standing particularly bothers me, but it is notable to highlight the lack of capacity). With the constant increases in fares it makes things even more frustrating. With these delays and increases in cost it is now both faster and cheaper (at least in terms of marginal cost, as I require a car at the weekends, so tax/insurance are givens no matter whether I use the car during the week) for me to commute by car. I feel slightly sheepish driving into the centre of a European capital every day but the realities of the bus service leaves me little choice.