Night bus services in Dublin.

Flukey

The Nitelink: Dublin Bus's greatest success yet biggest missed opportunity?

When are we going to ever get a decent late night public transport service in Dublin? Originally we had nothing from Dublin Bus. Then we got the Nitelink and it has improved a bit. It is still a very poor service. There should be proper night services in Dublin. It is ridiculous that scheduled services stop at 11:30pm and even if there are Nitelinks on that night, that they don't start for another hour. Even midweek, there are still thousands of people in town wanting to get to places long after 11:30pm. There is no shortage of taxis, as we were often told. The only reason there are long queues at taxi ranks late at night is because the buses that brought thousands of people into the city all evening have nearly all gone back to their garages.

Then they only carry passengers outbound and not in towards the city, so you can't get one into town or across the city if you want. For some people, going home means going into town. You may also want to cross the city. I have on occasions had to get a taxi into town to catch a Nitelink out of town, in order to cross the city.

They only let people on at certain stops, not all, like the regular services do. So you often have half-empty buses, getting emptier as they go out, passing willing and paying customers without letting them on and then coming back into the city not taking any passengers. Then they wonder why they don't make a profit? They could have a simple fares system to accommodate different journey lengths if that is their problem. The flat rate is obviously convenient, but something better could be arrived at, which would still be simpler than daytime services.

Ok, it does make it quicker if not all stops are pick-up, but given the amount of traffic on the roads at that time, even if you stopped at a lot of stops, you'd still be home a lot quicker than you would at rush hour and even outside of that. Not picking people up means that they are excluding a huge range of potential customers. If you are in the centre of the city, it is great because you are near the start of the Nitelink. Of course many people aren't, so the Nitelink is totally useless to them. So they are not really providing a service to all of their customers, just a few.

There is the security risk of having a lot of potentially very drunk people on board a late bus, but there are lots of solutions that could be found to that even if it did mean an extra person on the bus with added cost and manpower. Maybe being able to get a lot of these people home very quickly would take a lot of potential troublemakers off the streets, instead of them having to wait ages for taxis. This could well make the streets that bit safer with less people congregating on them for long periods. It could help reduce a lot of the incidents on our streets at night that we hear about.

Dublin Bus proclaims to be changing with the city. Having a proper late night bus service is a change that should have happened years ago and one we are still waiting for. Go to any other major city and you will find a good late night public transport system of some kind. I've often seen tourists standing at bus stops in Dublin late at night consulting the timetable and they are shocked when they see or are told that there are no more buses until morning. Even the Luas goes later than Dublin Bus scheduled services and it stops too early. Only taxis give a 24 hour service and many of them have told me when I asked them about it that they would be glad of a good late night bus service to help them. They should either improve the Nitelink or just extend the regular service well beyond 11:30pm. In a modern capital city, in the 21st century we should have a 24 hour bus service, with sufficient capacity to meet the demands at the different times. The Luas, the DART but most especially Dublin Bus, should be providing us with a proper late night service. So why aren't they and when will they?

Flukey

No takers on this one or has it been done before sometime?

Agent Smith

i'd deff vote for it, too many times have i been stuck in town v late @ night....

rather then pay for a cab home, i'd go to a net cafe and waith for the early morning service

Flukey

If it is a nice night you could even walk home, depending on where you live of course. If I am in town and there is no Nitelink available I'd start walking and try and flag down a taxi on the way. Standing at a taxi rank is a mugs game. You'd be waiting for ages and in that time you'd probably have walked half way home, and if you had done and got a taxi then, you'd be home quicker and for half the fare. Unless there is a Nitelink, I never wait at a taxi rank. I always start walking and sometimes you get to the point where it is hardly worth getting a taxi. I live about 6 miles from town. After a few pints it is a great way of sobering you up too!

John R

Dublin Bus cut back the Monday - Thursday nitelink services because they weren't heavily used.

Flukey

It shouldn't be a Nitelink, just the regular services extended. Stopping at normal services at 11:30pm is ridiculous, on any night of the week.

BrianD

In fairness to Dublin Bus, the night link service is as good as anywhere else in the world (for a city with the population of Dublin). I've been in larger cities that have no night time service. HAving said that, it would be good if the extended scheduled "daytime" services by say another hour.

Flukey

It should be for much more than an hour of an extension. As I have pointed out above, there are a lot of flaws in the Nitelink. It is great if you are in the centre of the city. Most people aren't. I live in Kilmacud. I have been over in places like Killester or Phibsboro etc. on a night out. If I want to get home the best I can do is get a taxi into town and take the Nitelink from there. This might only be around 11:30 or 12 or shortly after. There are a lot of people wanting to head towards the city late at night yet the Nitelink does nothing for them even though they make up a large proportion of potential customers.

On one occasion I came into town from the northside, but the last bus had just gone and the Nitelink wasn't for another hour. I didn't really want to get a taxi home, so I went off for a drink. As I was passing the Nitelink stops I saw a young woman in a vulnerable state waiting there. When I came back an hour later, she was still there. Anything could have happened to her during the time she was there. There should not be an hour of a gap between the last bus and the first Nitelink. It does not make sense. The Nitelink is great for the limited amount of customers it serves, but doesn't Dublin Bus have some sort of an obligation to serve the rest of the people requiring transport at that time? Why should they be disenfranchised? They need the service and are willing to pay for it.

John R

Dublin Bus have an obligation to operate within budget, putting on lightly used services with large overheads would not be good for their costs. The low use of the Mon-Thurs nitelinks would seem to indicate that there is not a huge market for an extensive night bus service.
As BrianD said most cities the size of Dublin do not have 24 hour bus services.
Comparing Dublin to large European capitals like London is just not correct, there is no comparing the amount of nighttime activity between them.

Flukey wrote:

It is great if you are in the centre of the city. Most people aren't.

Most people who are looking for transport after midnight ARE in the city centre and most of them are looking to go to the suburbs.

BTW Dublin Bus had plans to operate the 746 route as a normal stopping service 24 hours (at 1/2 hourly intervals afaik) but were refused permission by the DoT.

seamus

John R wrote:

Dublin Bus have an obligation to operate within budget, putting on lightly used services with large overheads would not be good for their costs. The low use of the Mon-Thurs nitelinks would seem to indicate that there is not a huge market for an extensive night bus service.
As BrianD said most cities the size of Dublin do not have 24 hour bus services.
Comparing Dublin to large European capitals like London is just not correct, there is no comparing the amount of nighttime activity between them.

That's pretty much it. Why would they run a service that would very rarely be used? It would be "convenient", but we can't expect them to run a loss for those rare times we find ourselves in town at 5am midweek, or for the miniscule amount of people who would finish work at that time.

The Nitelink is a great service. Always leaves on time, and covers the city very very well. Why are there so many queues? Well, you can bring a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. About three-quarters of women that I know refuse to get the nitelink. "Ugh" or "It's too dangerous". The former being a matter of how prude you are, the latter being a sympton of pure paranoia and misinformation. If I'm out with one of these women, I'm not getting the nitelink either, because the guy has to be the last one in the taxi...

The service is there, and it's great. I never see any trouble on the nitelink (25N), and it gets you home quicker than you can find a taxi. Take a look around at the taxi ranks the next time you're in town late at night - it'll mostly groups of women, or couples. You'll see very few men on their own, or groups of men. Similarly, look around the nitelink - it'll be mostly men.

Let's face it - no-one would like to spend their Saturday nights ferrying drunken revellers in and out of town. I wouldn't make anyone work a night shift doing normal bus services in Dublin.

Victor

seamus wrote:

It would be "convenient", but we can't expect them to run a loss for those rare times we find ourselves in town at 5am midweek

On some routes it might be worth you time to wait for first bus / DART / tram at that stage.

drane2

BrianD wrote:

In fairness to Dublin Bus, the night link service is as good as anywhere else in the world (for a city with the population of Dublin). I've been in larger cities that have no night time service. HAving said that, it would be good if the extended scheduled "daytime" services by say another hour.

That's a good point. In Paris there is a very very limited bus service from the city centre to the suburbs after the normal public transport finishes up. And in Lyon, there is no public transport after midnight.

Flukey

Of course there are more people going out of Dublin than going in, but most of them are not in the College st., D'Olier St. Westmoreland St. area. The city centre extends well beyond that, but the first pickup point for most routes is usually beyond the canals. So there are an awful lot of people who are passed by the Nitelink well inside the canals for which it is of no use. If it had more regular stops at least it could service some of those people. That would not slow it down considerably given that it is stopping to let people off at many stops along the way. I use the Nitelink when I can and it is great. But I have often seen people looking at it in vain as it passed them without stopping and worse still being told that they can't get on it when it has stopped at a stop to let people off. It doesn't happen as much now, because people are used to it, but it doesn't make it any less ridiculous.

Some sort of scheduled service should run beyond 11:30pm. How often have you heard or said "I've got to go to catch the last bus" and we are not just talking about people in pubs. It happens in all sorts of places. While they might like to people can't stay any later because they don't want to wait another hour for a Nitelink or even if they did stay for another hour the place that they are in isn't served by a Nitelink, even though it might pass exactly where they are. Of course if they are heading towards the city, it is of no value whatsoever. The Nitelink is great, but only for a very small amount of the commuting public that it serves.

It is not just the drunks and other revellers that want better services. Many people are working at night and need to go to or from work. After the pubs have closed and the last of the customers have left, there are still staff there that have to get home. Some employers may pay their taxi fare home, but with a proper bus service that would not be necessary. We don't need a full scheduled service at the likes of 5am in the morning, but there should be something.

Look through a bus timetable and see the amount of routes with "No Sunday Service." For those that do have one the first bus is often, is often 2, 3 or 4 hours later than the rest of the week, including Saturday. "No Saturday Service" is not uncommon either A lot more people want to travel on a Sunday now that used to be the case. I've had occasion to want to go somewhere on a Sunday morning at what would not be described as an early hour only to find that there were no services. Some services don't start until nearly 11am. The demand may not be great on a Sunday morning but there are certainly people on the move a lot earlier than that and we are not talking about Saturday-night revellers on their way home. Sunday is not like it used to be when some of these services were initially started. Some of the areas where there is no Sunday service may well be served by another bus, but there is still a deficit of services there.

I don't drive and I am dependent on buses for much of my commuting. Over the years I have seen major improvements in the service provided by Dublin Bus for which they must be commended, but there are plenty of obvious deficits there still to be addressed. We don't need full scale bus services 24 hours a day 7 days a week, but there is certainly scope to extend services beyond what we have, if Dublin Bus is truly living up to its motto of "Changing with the city".

sliabh

seamus wrote:

About three-quarters of women that I know refuse to get the nitelink. "Ugh" or "It's too dangerous". The former being a matter of how prude you are, the latter being a sympton of pure paranoia and misinformation.

A friend of mine won't get Taxi's at night preferring the night link. Her view is that there is a crowd on the night link. She would be on her own in a taxi. And there have been real stories (i.e. convictions) with taxi drivers late at night. Off the top of my head I can't remember hearing of any major incidents on the nite link.

Flukey

The basic rule with the Nitelink is to sit downstairs. The earlier ones, which I have most often got, tend to be quieter and with passengers that are fairly sober, given the hour. So get an earlier one and you can sit safely upstairs or downstairs or if getting the later one sit downstairs. It may differ from route to route in the way some daytime routes are more prone to trouble or people vandalising buses or smoking - and not always just regular tobacco.

CokaColumbo

Flukey wrote: »

The basic rule with the Nitelink is to sit downstairs. The earlier ones, which I have most often got, tend to be quieter and with passengers that are fairly sober, given the hour. So get an earlier one and you can sit safely upstairs or downstairs or if getting the later one sit downstairs. It may differ from route to route in the way some daytime routes are more prone to trouble or people vandalising buses or smoking - and not always just regular tobacco.

I find that the one leaving college green is generally grand no matter what the time of the night...

shofukan

Was in Bonn over the summer.. Stayed out late a few times..
The way the Germans look at it, Bonn is comparable to the likes of Bray (but bigger obviously)
There was more than 5 different night routes operating hourly.. My mate described one of them as 'The 145 of the night' in that it literally went everywhere.
The service was clean, used by a lot of people but not overcrowded and quite quick aswell..
They also ran hourly trams...
Also everything was out of the central hub of the main station.
It's like that everywhere in Germany.

John R

John R wrote: »

Dublin Bus cut back the Monday - Thursday nitelink services because they weren't heavily used.

Because they were crap. Expensive, at weird times and didn't serve anywhere I wanted to go. I would have used them loads otherwise. I used to spend a fortune on taxis because I worked late.

John R wrote: »

Dublin Bus have an obligation to operate within budget, putting on lightly used services with large overheads would not be good for their costs. The low use of the Mon-Thurs nitelinks would seem to indicate that there is not a huge market for an extensive night bus service.
As BrianD said most cities the size of Dublin do not have 24 hour bus services.
Comparing Dublin to large European capitals like London is just not correct, there is no comparing the amount of nighttime activity between them.

Most cities the size of Dublin don't have 24 hour services, but they have better services. The worst thing about Nitelink is that it costs about 5 euro - that's a ridiculous price for a city bus fare. Anywhere else I've ever lived, your normal bus card would work on the special night buses, or you'd pay a fare of about 1.70, and in most places the 'normal' service extends to around 1am. 11.30 is just way too early. Extending the normal service by an hour or two would be brilliant for most people. I'd be more than happy with that, and then if I needed to stay out until 3 or 4, I'd pay for a taxi.

Jehuty42

This thread is 6 years old..

honru

Jehuty42 wrote: »

This thread is 6 years old..

And the talk about the cutbacks earlier in the thread is in response to the change of Monday-Thursday services from half-hourly to two departures a night (00:30 and 02:00). Now we have no Nitelinks running at all during the week.