How to De-Skangerise Public Transport?

Transport21 Fan

I think one of the main stumbling blocks to many Irish people using public transport in this country, particulary Dublin Bus, is the hordes of human waste who seem to have free reign on buses and trains.

There are some bus routes in West Dublin which are travelling Smoking Rooms on the upper decks. We have a ban on smoking in public palces in Ireland and yet hundreds of skangers, young and old, male and female feel that upper decks on Dublin Bus is for their smoking pleasure. Never once have I seen this dealth with.

I was on a Tallaght bus last summer and a load of sub-humans were going mental upstairs. The driver stopped and told them to get off. There were not that young, one of them was a girl with a baby. They all got off calling the driver names and then, quite naturally one of the little quasi-humanoids picked up a rock and threw it into the back window of the bus where a young couple was sitting with a new baby. The glass shattered and the bits landed on the baby thankfully none hit the infant in the eye or mouth, but jesus it was shocking to watch.

It is bad enough having to deal with this as a passenger, I can only imagine what it is like for the drivers having to deal with this **** day in and out.

And it is not just buses in Dublin. The Sligo train is often filled with **** usually drunk off their tits and roaring and shouting on the trains. I have seen these mobile rowdy boozers on other routes as well

Many times I have asked people who drive to work when they can take the bus easy enough why they don't and the answer is always the same. "There are always skangers on the bus".

So considering the vast investment coming into public transport and the Government's desire to get as many of us using public transport, has the time finally come from a transport police in Ireland? This is fairly common in American cities on public transport and the sense of security it provides is fantastic.

There are simply no skangers on the New York subway. Even in the arse end of Brooklyn or the Bronx at 3AM you are fairly safe on the subway. Transit Cops everywhere. Walking the trains with radios to summon them to incidents if they are needed. They even dress in plain clothes and pretend they are asleep and drunk so if some pickpocket tries to take their wallet the jump up and arrest them.

We have to do something about this chronic anti-social behaviour on public transport in Ireland. To make life bareable for PT workers and users.

I would like to hear any ideas on how to remove this human waste for once and for all from public transport in Ireland.

tintinr35

in fairness if you were a dublin bus driver would you actually risk gettin your head bet (or worse) for tellin someone to put out a cig, scumbags have the same right as normal people to use PUBLIC transport!!

Transport21 Fan

tintinr35 wrote:

in fairness if you were a dublin bus driver would you actually risk gettin your head bet (or worse) for tellin someone to put out a cig, scumbags have the same right as normal people to use PUBLIC transport!!

Scumbags have the right to use public transport as long as they behave themselves. Same for non-sumbags.

Coming from the Ballymun Flats myself, I can tell you that you only need a tiny number of savages to destroy the heart and soul of an entire community of tens of thousands. Likewise one on two animals on a Dublin Bus route can turn hundreds of people off using the bus.

and no, If I was a Dublin Bus driver i would not risk getting my head kicked in. But this does not mean we have to tolerate the ****.

tintinr35

nothing is or will be done about it tho, i mean at this stage how long has it been going on!!

Karoma

Smoke detector rigged up to cause electric shocks from under the seats would be better (Have to make the seats tamper proof..damn.. well worth the money though.)

I get the 39 frequently and unfortunately. For the vast majority of trips, there's at least one smoker. I've seen bus drivers kick them off when it's reported. Other times,they play a recording which is usually enough. Have you tried notifying the driver?

BendiBus

A transport police is definitely required.

Backed up with CCTV recordings, a strong policy of prosecuting offenders needs to be adopted by all PT providers.

Banning orders, preventing offenders from using public transport are required in addition to financial penalties as there is a hardcore of junkies and real low-lifes that aren't frightened by the threat of a fine (which they'd only rob a pensioner to pay anyway). Don't ask me how that might be implemented across a national/city system!

And without wanting to sound like a liberal or anything, education is vital. Dublin Bus has a program of school visits showing the importance of public transport which I believe is successful in reducing vandalism on buses and hopefully other anti-social behaviour as young kids grow up. I know nothing of the detail of this program.

Simple measures like the recorded "no smoking" message on the newer buses actually work to some extent in my experience (sitting upstairs on the 79 on a regular basis).

But ultimately, the regular sight of a large number of plain-clothes coppers apperaing out of nowhere and dragging people off the bus and into court will make people think carefully.

Transport21 Fan

Karoma wrote:

Smoke detector rigged up to cause electric shocks from under the seats would be better (Have to make the seats tamper proof..damn.. well worth the money though.)

I get the 39 frequently and unfortunately. For the vast majority of trips, there's at least one smoker. I've seen bus drivers kick them off when it's reported. Other times,they play a recording which is usually enough. Have you tried notifying the driver?

Christ no, I wouldn't be caught dead on public transport.

Transport21 Fan

BendiBus wrote:

But ultimately, the regular sight of a large number of plain-clothes coppers apperaing out of nowhere and dragging people off the bus and into court will make people think carefully.

Works for me.

Karoma

Transport21 Fan wrote:

Christ no, I wouldn't be caught dead on public transport.

That may well explain why you've never seen it dealt with.

Dublin Bus must be more willing to pursue fining them. Kicking them off is a very short term solution and a mild irritation at best.
Properly positioned CCTV is a must.
Possibly smoke detector & speakers focused on the back of the upper saloon would pester them (Again: CCTV is essential to prevent destruction of the systems)... electric chairs optional but desirable.

Laguna

Do you think this is just a Dublin bus issue?, it's the same on every public transport in the world.. New York, London, Los Angeles, Paris... all public transport attracts the.. public?, hence people from all walks of life get on these trains and buses. If you figured out how to clean up public transport, you'd be a rich man..

edanto

It doesn't matter if this problem is international (and my experience would be that it is acute in Dublin); we need to find a solution.

Karoma wrote:

Properly positioned CCTV is a must.

Indeed; I was struck at the stupidity of Dublin Bus not to put a camera facing the back seats upstairs when they kitted out their new buses with 6 or 8 cameras.

I think that two big things that put people off going down to tell the driver are nerves and the likelihood that nothing will happen. Also, if you regularly use a route, you don't want to have your face known to scum that clearly don't respect anyone else in the first place.

One solution would be to have a well advertised number that people could text to report problems like knackers (or suits) smoking and causing aggro. Ideally, Dublin Bus HQ would call the boys in blue (or plainclothes) when the text came in and get them to meet the bus. Whadda ya reckon?

murphaph

That text idea is a stroke of genius. It should be free to text to and we should have a transport police to deal with it. The scumbag element is a major turnoff for decent people, that is not in question. I don't care if the bus is full of skangers in trachsuits so long as they keep their voices to a reasonable level and don't smoke. The ideal situation would be for these new digital CCTV buses to be equipped with facial recognition software on the bus, constantly checking faces of boarding passengers. The data points (not the whole imag file) could possibly be sent (using the new wireless network they'll use for the smartcard) to a database for checking against and any banned users get flagged and the driver just tells them to get off. If they resist (and aren't bundled off by decent people as has happened before) the transport police are called and a higher punishment is dealt out. You'd be surprised at the number of 'normalish' scumbags who aren't junkies with nothing to lose. Strict policies, rigidly adhered to woul make PT much much more popular without denying transit to people-they'd just have to behave.

corktina

didnt they find dog patrols very sucessful onthe durt a few years ago?

murphaph

corktina wrote:

didnt they find dog patrols very sucessful onthe durt a few years ago?

In fairness to IE, i have seen their security staff patrol the maynooth line a couple of times recently. It's a lot easier to police a fixed infrastructure system like the railway than to police the buses. It'll require some imagination, but most of all, it'll require decent people to gang up on the skanger minority and show them we won't have it.

corktina

have to agree about the texting idea....a report could be made incognito....the number might get abused by the scum though........and would the Gards respond i wonder?

edanto

First time thinking about it, yeah it does seem like scum would just send loads of texts and get the cops on wild goose chases, right? Break the system kindof crap.

That could be sorted out by communication with the driver to spot false alarms.

HQ; Eh, number 67, Johnny, we've just had a text that four young fellas are smoking joints upstairs, could you check cameras 5 and 6 six please?

J; eeh, HQ, that's a roger, looks like they're smoking some sweet bud. Bud.

HQ; 10-4, nuumber 67, we'll have the trenchcoats meet you at the next stop.

Transport21 Fan

edanto wrote:

One solution would be to have a well advertised number that people could text to report problems like knackers (or suits) smoking and causing aggro. Ideally, Dublin Bus HQ would call the boys in blue (or plainclothes) when the text came in and get them to meet the bus. Whadda ya reckon?

That is a brilliant idea.

90% of what's wrong with public transport in Ireland, is not just billions for new engineering, kit and gear...it is simple things like this, or producing a decent public transport map for Dublin.

wyldchild

the problem is trying to get dublin bus or dart or irish rail to fix something that society needs to address first,
kids and teenagers and young adults are coming from the "dont expect much from them cos their only kids attitude" this cinda crap didnt go on as much 20years ago because people were thankful for the bus journey rather than walk and they were afraid of their"da"
half these feckers arent afraid of the law cos its there to protect them and when they get really out of hand to the point of extreme assault on other humans they are treated with kindness and given places to hang out all day with pool tables and councelling and they just keep on digging at the core of our society. this is true my brother in law works in one of these said places and it sickens me.

there my daily rant over

Red Alert

there's a lot of data points for the radio system to transmit - it was designed just for the new ticket system to allow driver modules to be done away with, but it could work!

The bus drivers are told to use the PA to kick passengers off if they're mis behaving but the scangers would probably just laugh at it (if indeed it works at all). I think we should have conductors / security guards on the most troublesome routes or else have cops plain clothes just catching different buses on these routes.

monument

Transport21 Fan wrote:

Christ no, I wouldn't be caught dead on public transport.

Is that some kind of joke?

cil_aine

Transport21 Fan wrote:

I think one of the main stumbling blocks to many Irish people using public transport in this country, particulary Dublin Bus, is the hordes of human waste who seem to have free reign on buses and trains.

There are some bus routes in West Dublin which are travelling Smoking Rooms on the upper decks. We have a ban on smoking in public palces in Ireland and yet hundreds of skangers, young and old, male and female feel that upper decks on Dublin Bus is for their smoking pleasure. Never once have I seen this dealth with.

I was on a Tallaght bus last summer and a load of sub-humans were going mental upstairs. The driver stopped and told them to get off. There were not that young, one of them was a girl with a baby. They all got off calling the driver names and then, quite naturally one of the little quasi-humanoids picked up a rock and threw it into the back window of the bus where a young couple was sitting with a new baby. The glass shattered and the bits landed on the baby thankfully none hit the infant in the eye or mouth, but jesus it was shocking to watch.

It is bad enough having to deal with this as a passenger, I can only imagine what it is like for the drivers having to deal with this **** day in and out.

And it is not just buses in Dublin. The Sligo train is often filled with **** usually drunk off their tits and roaring and shouting on the trains. I have seen these mobile rowdy boozers on other routes as well

Many times I have asked people who drive to work when they can take the bus easy enough why they don't and the answer is always the same. "There are always skangers on the bus".

So considering the vast investment coming into public transport and the Government's desire to get as many of us using public transport, has the time finally come from a transport police in Ireland? This is fairly common in American cities on public transport and the sense of security it provides is fantastic.

There are simply no skangers on the New York subway. Even in the arse end of Brooklyn or the Bronx at 3AM you are fairly safe on the subway. Transit Cops everywhere. Walking the trains with radios to summon them to incidents if they are needed. They even dress in plain clothes and pretend they are asleep and drunk so if some pickpocket tries to take their wallet the jump up and arrest them.

We have to do something about this chronic anti-social behaviour on public transport in Ireland. To make life bareable for PT workers and users.

I would like to hear any ideas on how to remove this human waste for once and for all from public transport in Ireland.

Even if they smoke, drink are violent etc, they're not sub-human.
Agreed you need proper policing on transport, and if such measures were implemented, violence and anti-social behavoir would decrease. However, there's one point in your post i'm not entirely sure about. You talk of drunks on the sligo trains, but to be honest, would you rather see them driving home? Public transport is the only way to go if you're pissed out of your skull. I't happens everywhere i go, and you just have to learn to ignore them. If they're properly causing hassle then just move.
Anyhow, something must be done as anti-social behaviour on public transport isn't nice, and as people say puts a lot of people off taking it.

murphaph

cil_aine wrote:

Even if they smoke, drink are violent etc, they're not sub-human.
Agreed you need proper policing on transport, and if such measures were implemented, violence and anti-social behavoir would decrease. However, there's one point in your post i'm not entirely sure about. You talk of drunks on the sligo trains, but to be honest, would you rather see them driving home? Public transport is the only way to go if you're pissed out of your skull. I't happens everywhere i go, and you just have to learn to ignore them. If they're properly causing hassle then just move.
Anyhow, something must be done as anti-social behaviour on public transport isn't nice, and as people say puts a lot of people off taking it.

Dear oh dear-you're part of the problem too! You think the quiet law abiding person bothering nobody should move so drunks can carry on unimpeded? You are incredibly wrong. Last time I was on Amtrak I took a train from Washington DC to Chicago. Deep deep in the Apalachians a guy started getting drunk and annoying others. The Amtrak staff tried to seat him and gave him fair warning not to get up again but he did. They had the local (Hazard style) sherriff and deputy and entire town waiting for him at the next redneck town we passed through (we weren't even stopping there). I'd say that guy is still there and rightly so. As for "ah sure they have to get home and can't drive"-I mean, wtf? They should either sit quietly or get a hotel room for he night or just plain don't get hammered when you have to travel such distances. :rolleyes:

cil_aine

I'm not saying that the "quiet law abiding person bothering nobody should move", all i'm saying is if they're just a bit "merry" and they're not hurting anyone whats the issue. Sure if they're screaming, roaring, making life difficult for other passengers do something about it, get staff, whatever. If they're not doing anything wrong, who cares?

MT

cil_aine wrote:

If they're properly causing hassle then just move.

Not always possible. I remember on the Luas once there was this group of oldish guys who'd been out on the town - one was pretty far gone. Anyway, the carriage seemed full and near where they were standing there was a mother with a child and push chair. At one stop these junior skangers (looked to all be around 10) got on and for the rest of the journey proceded to stoke an almighty row with one of the drunks. Resulted in him threatening to get into a fight with a child. The poor women couldn't move with the pushchair - no other space - and was clearly shaken by the whole thing. It was just the sort of situation transport police would have been ideal for.

No, ordinary people should never have to accomodate the anti-social behaviour of the scum on PT. :mad:

Oh, and the text message is a great idea. Provided drivers do a camera check to confirm with the police. It's a bit like the confidential tel. no. up here.

MT

Was posting that while you made your last post, cil_aine. Yeah, merryness is OK. But one persons merry behaviour can be anothers physical discomfort, what with falling about, learing etc. So there are limits.

Remember once travelling home from Belfast on the bus when this wee drunk managed to get onboard at the Europa bus station not knowing where he was going. Bluffed the driver into thinking he was fine/just had to sobre up. Anyway, turns out he lived in Belfast and we were heading for... Enniskillen!

During the entire journey he decided to stand and dance and sing in the isle of the bus. Then he proceded to tell anyone within earshot his life story. All this took place while he was constantly flung up and down the bus - sometimes to the point of near injury - as the bus either spead up or slowed down. I found the whole thing hilarious I must admit but some women looked fairly concerned. Yes, he was only merry but a line had been crossed.

By the way the bus driver tried to seat him on several occasions but felt he couldn't throw him off as the guy should have been in Belfast and would've probably wondered out infront of a car. And because this is such a divided place the police can't be called as some would see that as brutality/violation of rights, etc.

MarkoP11

There already exists a free phone number 1800 344 544 for anti social behavior on rail services. Its in the timetable and on posters on trains. That resulted from a rough patch 6 or so years ago which led to the introduction of security staff. A train got set on fire which cost s 6 figure sum to repair

I've had a brick smash a window in front of me on a train at 11:30 am YES AM fat lot of good a security presence does there. Sure the driver reports in, the window is knocked out staff babysit the now missing window. Thats a continuing problem and several passengers and drivers have been lucky to escape when bricks have come through. Some groups of sick people have attempted to derail trains

The trouble makers are well aware that unless its a garda security staff mean very little. Luas staff have been known to avoid confronting trouble makers in certain areas. You need more gardai and a court service which rounds up trouble maker and locks them up. I'm sick of delays waiting for gardai to show up

I've seen the CCTV from the latest Dublin Bus system and from IE's system and the back row can clearly be seen

dowlingm

Toronto has a separate transport police employed by the Transit Commission but unlike regular cops they are unarmed. Vancouver on the other hand has just decided to arm their transit cops. I think it should be part of local guards "beat" to occasionally ride one station (say Lansdowne Rd-Sydney Parade) and back again to just to impress on the skangers that you never know when de shades could get on the train.

As to how get tough other places are - probably the toughest is Washington where a 12 year old was arrested for eating a chip on the Metro - and the case attracted attention because the appeal of the conviction was handled by among others John G. Roberts, now Chief Justice of the United States.

Mimikyu

This post has been deleted.

edanto

Seems to be a lot of support for the texting idea. Does anyone know how Dublin Bus works on the inside? Is an idea like this likely to fly?

If so, would it be worth sending a letter to them or would that just be waste of my time?

mike65

I favour pastoral clasical music as a non-leathal weapon. It calms those who hear it or drives them out pretty quickly.

Mike.

murphaph

mike65 wrote:

I favour pastoral clasical music as a non-leathal weapon. It calms those who hear it or drives them out pretty quickly.

Mike.

I favour it in it's lethal form whereby skangers or skangerettes have Beethoven's 9th blasted into their ear drums at 150dB until the squishy stuff (not much of it) runs out