[Article] Dublin buses are world's slow coaches

Victor

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,2765-1135790,00.html

Dublin buses are world's slow coaches
Richard Oakley and Jan Battles

DUBLIN’s buses are among the slowest in the world, a new survey has revealed. They have slower average speeds than 22 comparable cities, during both peak and off-peak hours.
Buses in the capital are trundling along at only 8½ mph during peak times. The off-peak speed is only slightly faster at 10 mph.

The peak-time performance is 7 mph slower than the best-performing buses in the survey — those of Adelaide, Australia, which averaged a speed of 15½ mph. Dublin’s transport was more than 1 mph slower than the second-worst city, Stockholm.

There were 13 European cities in the survey, all of which performed far better than Dublin. The average speed of peak-times buses in Glasgow was 10½ mph, in Liverpool 12.2 mph, in Brussels 10.7 mph and in Rotterdam buses travel at an average speed of 14½ mph.

Dublin’s off-peak average speeds are also far below those of other cities. In Adelaide, again the best-performing buses achieve an average of 18.6 mph, nearly twice that of Dublin. Buses in Stockholm which average 11 mph are the second slowest in this category but again more than 1 mph faster than Dublin.

In Cologne the average off-peak speed was 15.8 mph, while it was 17.3 mph in Sacramento, California and the same in San Antonio, Texas. In Prague and Rotterdam the average off-peak speed is 17.3 mph.

The 2003 figures were supplied to Dublin Bus by a European association of bus companies. Last year the peak-time average speed of Dublin buses fell from 8.8 mph and the off-peak average fell from 10.7 mph.

All the cities in the survey are considered comparable to Dublin in terms of size, infrastructure and population. London was not included as it has an extensive underground system, and levies congestion charges.

Grainne Mackin of Dublin Bus said the figures prove what a difficult task the company has to operate in the congested city. “(Our buses) are mechanically sound and can obviously travel at much higher speeds than they are averaging now,” she said.

“The problem is Dublin and its traffic. We are competing for space with 12,000 taxis, Luas and cars. Traffic volume in Dublin has already exceeded predictions for 2016. We need more QBCs (Quality Bus Corridors) and continuous ones that don’t stop and start.”

Ciaran de Burca, the project manager of the Quality Bus Network office, said there were currently 10 QBCs in Dublin covering 80 miles, with plans to extend this number by a further 11 and eventually cover 250 miles. He said Dublin Bus aimed for an average speed of 12½ mph to 13.7 mph when driving in QBCs, but that this was not always being achieved. But buses in QBCs were far faster than cars.

“The important thing is that buses in QBCs are beating private cars travelling on the same route,” he said. “There is also less variation in travel times when it comes to QBCs.”

A report released last week found that bus commuters in greater Dublin are reaching their destinations up to 42% faster than those in cars. The Dublin Transportation Office report, based on an audit of QBCs, found that buses were outperforming cars on seven of the city’s nine routes.

Meanwhile a road safety report published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has found Ireland has one of the highest child pedestrian fatality rates in the developed world.

Keeping Children Safe in Traffic, produced by road safety experts, analysed the number of children killed on the roads in 25 OECD countries including America, Australia, Japan and most of Europe.

Overall Ireland was in the second-worst performing group of countries — it came close to the bottom of the table for child pedestrian fatality rates with almost 1.3 children killed per 100,000 compared with a 0.35 rate in Sweden. At 21st on the table, only Switzerland, Poland, Portugal and South Korea had higher rates.

Ireland was 18th out of the 25 countries for bicycle fatalities and 11th for those killed as car passengers. At current rates, one child out of every 2,100 in OECD countries will die before the age of 15 in a road-related incident, according to the report which also recommended measures to reduce child deaths on the roads.

georgia

Grainne Mackin of Dublin Bus said the figures prove what a difficult task the company has to operate in the congested city. “(Our buses) are mechanically sound and can obviously travel at much higher speeds than they are averaging now,” she said.

“The problem is Dublin and its traffic. We are competing for space with 12,000 taxis, Luas and cars. Traffic volume in Dublin has already exceeded predictions for 2016. We need more QBCs (Quality Bus Corridors) and continuous ones that don’t stop and start.”



Grainne Mackin fulfills her remit to "deny deny deny". She denies all cupability on behalf of Dublin Bus in regard to this particular problem.

Can't Dublin Bus apply some creativity and originality to attempt to resolve the problem instead of declaring themselves helpless?

In my opinion, one significant impediment to speedier progress of dublin buses is that drivers are engaged in fare collection. In Boston and Rotterdam drivers are not engaged in fare collection (or issuing tickets). Somebody in another thread indicated that a flat fare has been introduced on London buses.

embraer170

One solution: An Open Access system.

John R

Originally posted by georgia
Grainne Mackin of Dublin Bus said the figures prove what a difficult task the company has to operate in the congested city. “(Our buses) are mechanically sound and can obviously travel at much higher speeds than they are averaging now,” she said.

“The problem is Dublin and its traffic. We are competing for space with 12,000 taxis, Luas and cars. Traffic volume in Dublin has already exceeded predictions for 2016. We need more QBCs (Quality Bus Corridors) and continuous ones that don’t stop and start.”



Grainne Mackin fulfills her remit to "deny deny deny". She denies all cupability on behalf of Dublin Bus in regard to this particular problem.

Can't Dublin Bus apply some creativity and originality to attempt to resolve the problem instead of declaring themselves helpless?

In my opinion, one significant impediment to speedier progress of dublin buses is that drivers are engaged in fare collection. In Boston and Rotterdam drivers are not engaged in fare collection (or issuing tickets). Somebody in another thread indicated that a flat fare has been introduced on London buses.

You are right that fare collection is a factor, tiny compared to the traffic problem but something that needs to be improved on. The problem is that any solutions require funding and that is something that DB do not have.
Why don't you find out how much funding is given to services in those cities and compare them to Dublin? It is very difficult to be flexible when funding the core services is a struggle.
The NDP was supposed to provide 1500 buses in total for Dublin Bus by 2006 but the government have refused to pay for any increases in the past few years, the current fleet is around 1100.

DB applied to change the 1-3 and 1-7 stage fares into one fare at €1 to simplify and speed up boarding but were refused by the Government.

John R

Originally posted by embraer170
One solution: An Open Access system.

One solution: people realising that solving our transport problems can't be achieved with one simple solution.

antoinolachtnai

Well, there are a number of things that could be done to reduce what they call 'dwell time' at stops.These are well-rehearsed, and include ticketing changes, better spacing of buses (to even out load, thus having fewer overcrowded buses) and use of back doors.

In principle, these seem like straightforward steps. In practice, implementing them seems to get very bureaucratic.

On the ticketing side, it appears that the contactless smart card system is the preferred strategy to resolve this problem.

Of course, if you can resolve or improve the dwell-time problem by even a few minutes per journey, you can really improve profitability of a bus service. Less time at stops means shorter journey times, which means that the same bus and driver can carry out extra journeys and earn more revenue. It also means you can reduce capital expenditure on new buses.

John R

Originally posted by antoinolachtnai
Well, there are a number of things that could be done to reduce what they call 'dwell time' at stops.These are well-rehearsed, and include ticketing changes, better spacing of buses (to even out load, thus having fewer overcrowded buses) and use of back doors.

In London you cannot now pay on board in certain parts of the central area, ticket machines are provided at the bus stops, this could work in some parts of Dublin. In London they also give large discounts for pre-pay tickets through ticket books and smartcards. Dublin Bus do have good deals for some pre-pay tickets but need to promote them more.

Spacing buses to avoid bunching, especially on high frequency routes is almost impossible apart from forcing services to adhere to intermediate timing points which is a terrible system. Buses sitting for several minutes in the middle of a journey to wait for a purposely loose timetable which delays passengers even more. Only one route in Dublin does this; the 84 waits in Bray station en route to Greystones/Newcaste from Dublin.

Using the centre doors is almost a moot point now as all the newer wheelchair accessable buses do not have any center doors but have wider acces at the front.

On the ticketing side, it appears that the contactless smart card system is the preferred strategy to resolve this problem.

A contactless smartcard system has been ordered by Dublin Bus and is due to be installed across the fleet later this year. They will be equipped with readers on both sides of the bus entrance.

zynaps

Originally posted by John R
A contactless smartcard system has been ordered by Dublin Bus and is due to be installed across the fleet later this year. They will be equipped with readers on both sides of the bus entrance.

This is a much better solution than the system in place.

I was in Warsaw, Poland last summer and was surprised to find that there was a very svelte smartcard system on the buses - you buy a plastic card ticket which lasts a certain amount of time (in my case a month), and the first time you get on a bus, you activate it by holding it near a card reader until it clicks (you don't even need to take it out of your wallet/pocket/whatever... people just brushed their bags over it, same in the tube system).
Then, you don't have to do anything with the card. You just get on the bus, and (presumably) have your card on you in case an inspector gets on.
In my month there, getting buses at least twice a day, probably every day, I never saw one ticket inspector. It was just assumed that everyone had valid cards, and if not, it wasn't the driver's problem.
Time spent at bus stops was basically just enough for people to get on and off one of the exits (there were either two or three exits, depending on the bus type).

I might also point out, just to rub salt in the wound, that I paid the equivalent of 9.50 euros for a monthly student travelcard, which worked 24 hours, on buses, trams and the underground train lines.
But of course no one living there felt there was anything exceptionally good about this... they'd just never spent time in Ireland relying on buses

Really, I think CIE and the government need a kick up the arse.

zynaps

antoinolachtnai

Ah, so the Polish system is basically an honour system using smartcards.

There is a reason why this is unfortunately unlikely to be used in Dublin, the way things are going. I think you will have to touch in and touch out of buses.

The reason has to do with accounting. If you have multiple operators (we already have four major operators of commuter transport in the greater dublin area, before we even think of the small private operations) you have to allocate revenue between them.

There are two ways of doing this. You can do it by carrying out surveys of passenger numbers, or you can account for every single passenger using the ticket system.

Doing surveys would work if you only had a very small number of operators, and they were all pretty big. However, it is unlikely to work in the current situation where we have quite a lot of operators some of which are much larger or smaller than the others (and things are going further in this direction at the moment).

So we will most likely need the system which accounts for every single movement. (This is what they do in London, although there is no accounting reason why they really need to account for every movement there, because there is a single farebox for all transport, except some of the heavy rail, where there is almost no accounting done at all).

You are right that a 'timed stop' system wouldn't work in Dublin. Timed stop system might work in a city where there was very low congestion, but they definitely wouldn't work here.

Also, I am confident that Dublin Bus (or any other bus system) can improve the gap between buses without going to a 'timed stop' by using new technology to monitor the gap, and then hold buses off from departure until a sufficient gap has been left. (Disclosure - my firm is involved in developing such a system.)

zynaps

Originally posted by antoinolachtnai
Ah, so the Polish system is basically an honour system using smartcards.

There is a reason why this is unfortunately unlikely to be used in Dublin, the way things are going. I think you will have to touch in and touch out of buses.

The reason has to do with accounting. If you have multiple operators (we already have four major operators of commuter transport in the greater dublin area, before we even think of the small private operations) you have to allocate revenue between them.

That makes sense, I suppose - I don't remember seeing any "competing" mass-transport system in Warsaw; perhaps the government doesn't allow for it, or perhaps the existing system is so heavily subsidised and well-run that there would be no point (and no profit).

Also, I am confident that Dublin Bus (or any other bus system) can improve the gap between buses without going to a 'timed stop' by using new technology to monitor the gap, and then hold buses off from departure until a sufficient gap has been left. (Disclosure - my firm is involved in developing such a system.)

So this would be a means to better spread out the buses, so there would be an even flow in both ways rather than (as I often used to see back in Clondalkin) nothing for 20 minutes then 3 buses together going the same way?
Sounds like a great idea - d'you think traffic reports will be taken into account, or will it be a totally automated system?

zynaps

Hagar

There used to be no "dwell time" when there were conductors collecting fares as the bus made its journey. There was also the added bonus of safety as there were two bus staff who could police the bus much better than the driver locking himself behind a perspex shield and letting the rest of us fend for ourselves.

BrianD

This article really has nothing to do with the efficiency of Dublin Bus so Georgia it's a little unfair you to stay that MAcken's job is to "deny deny deny". A private bus co. would also be achieving the same speeds. In fact my mothers Micra is equipped with a gizmo that tells you your average speed and the figures for the buses come as no surprise.

antoinolachtnai

Well, not completely true. You could run a bus service with a higher speed. I am pretty sure that Aircoach runs a good bit faster than that, for instance (though I am open to correction).

However, it is true that this issue isn't really under Dublin Bus's control. There's a lot of things they can't change without the involvement of a lot of other people. They can't change the routes without permission. The ticketing system is controlled by other people.

The big question for me is who is actually in charge of public transport (and transport generally) in Dublin?

Is it the RPA (no, because they only cost and build infrastructure to order)?

Is it the DTO? (no, because their role is coordination, they don't have authority.)

Is it the Director of Traffic? (no, because he has no authority over what public transport should go where. His job is to deal with the symptoms, not the root causes).

Is it CIE? (no, they only operate some of the buses and trains, and don't have control over what licenses are given out).

The only person who is really responsible for the whole thing is the national Minister for Transport. He obviously has other things to do, so the overall strategy ends up being at worst half-baked (if you take a pessimistic view) and at best poorly communicated.

I personally think there would be value in having someone in charge, who would have the capability to monitor and plan, and authority to give out licences and award route subsidies where appropriate.

luckat

If I were running things (hah! If my genius were only recognised), I'd put the buses on the taxes and abolish fares, and give buses priority on all roads.

That way there would be no incentive to drive, cars would get off the roads and everyone would take buses - and so the buses would run freely and quickly.

Oh, and I'd have school buses for primary schools, for all children: pick up the kids, drop them into a *supervised* playground at 8.30am; *supervised* study-club after school for homework, then drop the kids home for 5.30pm.

The Real B-man

winding conjested streets cant blame them if there werent as many cars maybe there would be faster times but you cant expect a double decker to be going 50moh threw the city

blobert

Maybe we need faster busses?

Victor

Originally posted by antoinolachtnai
I am pretty sure that Aircoach runs a good bit faster than that, for instance (though I am open to correction).

They do, but this is because they only serve a limited number of stops, in a semi-express service.

Dub13

Thats right the Aircoach does not stop on the way into the city just picks up at the airport and straght in,I think its a bit pricey at 7/8 euro.Were the Dublin bus rambler at 3.20 euro works on there 747/748 which is the same as Aircoach but the rambler also works on any other Dublin Bus for the rest of the day...not bad

Victor

Originally posted by Dub13
Were the Dublin bus rambler at 3.20 euro

They are only €3.20 when you buy a 5-pack, otherwise they are €5 (but still a good deal).

Dub13

Victor,I no but I would say most Dubs would buy them in the pack.its a great deal and I wounder why some people get the aircoach for 7/8...I here the tourists get stung with them on the plane by Ryanair.

MrPudding

Originally posted by Dub13
Victor,I no but I would say most Dubs would buy them in the pack.its a great deal and I wounder why some people get the aircoach for 7/8...I here the tourists get stung with them on the plane by Ryanair.

I am on the 46a/747 route. If I am going to the airport I get the Aircoach.

I really don't think you can say the 746/748 is the same as the aircoach. The only thing the same is that they go to the airport. The comfort, frequency and speed of journey is incomparible.

MrP

Victor

Originally posted by MrPudding
I am on the 46a/747 route. If I am going to the airport I get the Aircoach.

Some of the 46a buses operate as route 746 and are essentially locals that stop at all stops, although I hear the 746 doesn't stop much on the northside. The 747/748 routes are semi-express (very few stops) routes in dedicated buses (extra luggage storage space) from train/bus stations to the airport.

John R

Originally posted by MrPudding
I am on the 46a/747 route. If I am going to the airport I get the Aircoach.

I really don't think you can say the 746/748 is the same as the aircoach. The only thing the same is that they go to the airport. The comfort, frequency and speed of journey is incomparible.

MrP

From Stillorgan to the city Aircoach is marginally quicker than the 46a/746 but from the city centre to the airport aircoach and the 747 express are equally fast or slow depending on the traffic as both run non-stop from O'Connell street to the airport.

Aircoach also take longer to load/offload as passengers have to stow luggage in the underfloor compartments while the 747 has storage in the passenger area.

If anything the Dublin Bus service is more frequent than aircoach but there is little difference, it is rare that there is not at least one of each waiting at the airport.

antoinolachtnai

the point i am making is that not all public transport necessarily goes at the same speed.

Obviously the aircoach service is not all that comparable to the other bus services in Dublin.

If you ask me, there is great potential for an express, aircoach-style service from the city centre to Swords every 20 minutes or so, going through the port tunnel when it opens.

It would take four buses to make up this rota comfortably, so I suppose you would need about 15 drivers and six or so buses. By my quick reckoning that would be a running cost of around half or three-quarters of a million and an initial capital cost of maybe 1.5m. A lot cheaper than building a metro, and almost as scalable, if the demand materialised.

a.