Is Taking the Bus Really a Matter of Consumer Choice or the Last Resort?

bk

It is interesting to note that in Prague, buses are banned from the city centre, only Trams and underground Metro are allowed and used.

Needless to say Pragues public transport system is superb. Buses are only used on the outskirts of the city to further out destinations.

That is one of the benefits of dictatorship, they get things done

jd

bk wrote:

That is one of the benefits of dictatorship, they get things done

That is true
My uncle was in Korea in the 60s/70s- essentially if a new road was to be built between two points it was a straight line between those two points.
If your house/village was on that line: tough
jd

markpb

bk wrote:

It is interesting to note that in Prague, buses are banned from the city centre, only Trams and underground Metro are allowed and used.

Post T21 (if its done properly), this would be very possible in Dublin. With a (decent capacity) Luas or Metro covering most of the arterial routes, buses could be better used to provide orbital and local services. It's not going to happen before then with good reason.

Slice

So what - in addition to reducing car use in the city centre buses should be banned as well? I'm sorry but that's a really stupid idea that would make the city centre a very inaccessible place to anyone not lucky enough to be on a Luas/Dart line or within walking/cycling distance. There is no precedent for it.

mickoneill30

I'm a fan of the buses. I'm in Swords and they're fairly regular (about every 15 - 20 mins during the times I get them) and from door - door it takes me exactly the same amount of time to get to work as it used to when I drove but it's a hell of a lot cheaper (and less stressful, I generally read or nod off when I'm coming home, I tried that in the car and it didn't work out
With that said though if they had a metro of course I'd use it. It wouldn't be affected by traffic jams.

But we need Irish people to learn how to queue. It's like a battle to get onto the buses in Abbey St.

markpb

Slice wrote:

So what - in addition to reducing car use in the city centre buses should be banned as well? I'm sorry but that's a really stupid idea that would make the city centre a very inaccessible place to anyone not lucky enough to be on a Luas/Dart line or within walking/cycling distance. There is no precedent for it.

If you read my post again, you'll see I said that buses can provide local connections. So if you don't live within walking distance of a rail connection, there will be a fast and frequent bus service to take you to it.

Overall the journey should be much faster because the train doesn't stop every 50m like the bus and the bus doesn't travel all over the city trying to serve everywhere.

The north of the city will be served by dart to the east, metro to the north, maynooth suburban line to the west, the south of the city has the kildare suburban, luas red, luas green and dart. There will be very few parts of the city that should be more than a few minutes away from a rail station.

I live 3 miles from the Dart line and it takes about the same time to get the bus to the dart and a train into city centre than it does my windy bus to get into town. If the bus and dart were more freqent (which they should be post T21), the bus+dart will be much faster.

shoegirl

Transport21 Fan wrote:

The bus does not do this. It does not capture the public by choice. It does not regenerate cities...it does not have any loyalty - only dependence.

So this brings me to the title of this post. Is bus based public transport really only for people who have no other option in public transport?

If a city really wants to develop public transport, then is the bus only for the non-car users, and therefore Light Rail/Metro and Commuter Rail the only real carrot to woo the car commuter out of their cars? The anecdotal evidence would suggest an overwhemling YES. Bus transport for urban public transport is the transit of last resort from what I can tell. I would be interesting in hearing what others think.

After this research, I am starting to wonder if buses, and the more sexed-up versions such as QBCs and so on - really just a waste of money and over the long-run and would investment in commuter rail and in an urban setting Light Rail/Metro the only real sensible option, in 21st public transport choice?

Bus based public transport seems to be most sucessful in regional and inter-city transport as a rival to the train. But in an urban setting, there seems to be no real loyalty to the bus unless the person cannot drive for some reason and the bus is the only way they can get around.

The problem with buses is that they use the existing road infrastructure, and therefore they inherit the same set of problems. So if there is severe congestion, buses will be doubly hit - first by a lack of choice of route, condemning them to what is usually the most inefficient route and then secondly the effect of the congestion itself.

A good example of this are long range buses in Ireland - at a time when the average train trip from Cork to Dublin has gone down to 2.5 or 2.75 hrs, the bus trip is now around 5 hours! Considering that you can drive the trip in generally 3.5-4 hours, its significantly poorer.

Secondly a lot of routes don't facilitate people's needs. A classic example of this is in Dublin city where so many routes end at the side of the city where they started. At just the time when cross city routes were most needed (i.e. the 1990s) Dublin Bus chose to eliminate most of them. (Classic examples being the 13 and 20 routes).

The reason why bus lanes don't work is because they are not continuous - they have to cut short at every single junction to allow access for other road users to turn corners, and secondly they (with a very tiny number of exceptions where traffic lights are setup this way) do not give priority at junctions. So adding in the factor of the removal of conductors (slowing down the driver) and poor routes (slow progress) the buses are doomed to fail. The only control the provider has at this point is to increase the frequency of the service - which at least gives the user choice as they are not left "waiting for the bus."

I would argue, however, that the improvements achieved by simply increasing the frequency of services could be done much more cheaply without using QBCs at all. As the classic example of the Lucan QBC has shown, many of them end up slowing down services as the overall impact chokes roads. 24hr bus lanes where there are no 24hr services are the ultimate joke and waste of tax payers money.

I also argue however, that a lot of success of light rail is due to the fact that it requires more planning because of the cost, and cannot be built without justification of ongoing demand, so these services are almost guaranteed to succeed as long as they are built in areas that are either reasonably built up or ripe for development. So you'll inevitably have a reasonable fequency of service which will server the needs of most commuters. If not then you'll end up with the equivalent of the sad little local service in Cork - underused, substandard and expensive.

On the other hand a bus "service" can consist of as little as 4 or 5 buses each way per day! This would only meet the needs of people who simply have no alternative!

shoegirl

mickoneill30 wrote:

I'm a fan of the buses. I'm in Swords and they're fairly regular (about every 15 - 20 mins during the times I get them) and from door - door it takes me exactly the same amount of time to get to work as it used to when I drove but it's a hell of a lot cheaper (and less stressful, I generally read or nod off when I'm coming home, I tried that in the car and it didn't work out
With that said though if they had a metro of course I'd use it. It wouldn't be affected by traffic jams.

They are regular since about 2003. But until then Swords had one of the worst services in Dublin and heavy car dependency. One interesting effect of the building of the Pavillions was the number of people walking to it (though obviously it still attracts a lot of cars). Until around 1991 about 50% of Swords buses did not serve the airport and those buses got into/out of town in about 40 minutes.

Then in their "wisdom" DB abolished the 41A airport services and rerouted almost all of the Swords buses through the airport, increasing journey time by 10-15 minutes in the winter and by 20-30 minutes in summer as tourists started getting on/off at the airport en masses, of course most of them with no change (which was around the time of exact change required policies) and heavy luggage.

The rerouting of the the services has been helped by the completion of the M1 and restrictions on cars at the flyover over the end of the M50 at Whitehall. But the service provided back when I was commuting from Swords to the southside in the late 90s was pretty awful and compounded by other poor services on connecting routes which I used. I think its improved a lot.

Maybe too late for lots of people who ended up buying cars to get to work on the southside or west of Dublin, though.

bryanw

Hope I'm not saying things already said ... didn't see the second page 'til after I typed my post

BrianD wrote:

For me, public transport will always be multi-modal and the key is placing it under the one brand name and that every aspect of it is integrated. There is certainly no grasp of this in the RPA who see themselves in competition with all other providers.

I agree completely and I hope that the Dublin Transport Authority can make some progress. Also, can't remember, are they supposed taking control of Dublin Bus?

I think that rail, compared to bus, is a much more attractive option. If they built a new super QBC, it would definitely not open to such fanfare as a LUAS or rail line would. The simple fact is that buses run on roads and with the other traffic. They use bus stops which are very frequent, travel on windy routes through housing estates and of course you can't build bus lanes everywhere. There also seems to be a problem with scumbags on buses which (for the most part) doesn't materialise on rail. Rail on the otherhand is (or is perceived as being) cleaner, more reliable on journey times, has a dedicated route so no hold ups and of course no station every 100m.

I live quite close to the DART line and the bus runs right by my house so there is not much use in taking a car into town, and besides, its too difficult to drive in anyway. I have noticed a real improvement in the quality of some bus routes. Practically all the buses on some routes are now brand new low-floor buses (with the Transport21 logo on the side!). The DART is also, I find a very reliable and frequent service. I would probably, given the choice, choose the DART because the bus is almost as expensive as it and for some reason I don't feel the bus is worth the price. Plus, even with improved frequency on fleet, I don't think journey times have improved.

I must say though, not a route I use often, but the N11 QBC is second to none on journey times and quality. The 46A always has the newest fleet operating.

layke

Busses need undercover cops on them to keep the skum from throwing their cans at people and let not forget the smoking. It really pisses me off when you have "AW JAYSUS, WILL YE EVR FOOWK OFF JUNGFELLA" being screamed from the back of the bus. Or the 2 gullys of sick that slide from the back to the front of the bus when it stops and starts (usually found on Saturday/Sunday mornings).

At least the Luas has inspectors that get on every so often.

Oh disregarding the 46A, who here wants to wait 20 minutes in the pissing rain while their fingers go blue from the cold because the bus wasn't on time or you missed it by two minutes. Which I find is a regualr thing.

I'll take the car thanks.

shoegirl

bk wrote:

Yes, but with one caveat, many car drivers take the bus due to the high cost of city parking.

BTW About Cork, a relatively minor investment in buses in Cork would vastly improve the service. This would only cost a fraction of a Luas line and be far more beneficial.

Both points good, but there are several problems in Cork:
1. availability of limited cheap parking in some parts of city (eg 7 euros per day at 2 city car parks and 5 euros per day in Railway St)
2. a lot of long distance commuting and most of it to industrial estates outside the city - some of who are not served by any bus service (eg. ALL of the estates in Little Island)
3. division of city/county services - city services are very cheap and efficient but limited to city boundaries whereas most of traffic is coming from Ballincollig, Midleton, Mallow. Fermoy, most of which have mediocre to poor services which are also relatively expensive
4. even the city services are poorly timed, for example, very few start before 7.30am, making them unusuable for anybody starting work before 9am - which is as much as 70% of all workers!

To give you a good example, driving a small car will cost you about 1 euro per 10 miles driving for petrol, and for me, an additional 700 euros a year to tax and insure the car. Lets add another 300 euros for maintenance costs. My commute is just under 20 miles 5 days a week. Thats €8.17 euros per day for every day I work (not taking into account other travel).

However the bus fare is €8.30 per return trip so it is actually cheaper to drive to work if parking is free! You can get a 10 journey ticket for €35.10 but its still a saving of less than €1.15 per day - and the car is then available for other use. That doesnt take account of time saved which is around 1-2 hrs per day of waiting for the bus or traffic delays.

If I factor in basic "other use" - say 1 long distance trip every 2 months, and 2 local trips a month the total annual bus ticket comes to €2208.
However if I add the total cost of petrol, tax, insurance and maintenance for the same trips by car it comes to €2206. So not only do you NOT save by taking the bus, it actually costs you an extra 2 euros per year! Not to mention time saved - which is around 240 hrs per year or 20 12-hr working days!

popebenny16

Whats interesting on this thread is that BE's commuter and expressway services, which are relativly cheap, come out very well, and so they should, they use top of the line coaches and they seem to have their timetables sorted out.

It is in the Local Services that the problems arise, and they are down to frequency, anti-social behaviour and finally coverage.

I dont know about Cork, but the poster above me here has covered it well, but in Dublin many of the routes still slavishly follow the old Tram lines. When they city went through major expansion in the 70/80s most of these routes were simply extended rather than new routes being added, eg the 50 to Tallaght when it used to go to Crumlin. Dublin needs extra routes, full stop and they need the routes to change.

Frequency problems will mostly be blamed by BAC of the traffic. How can BAC get more people out of cars and into buses? The old image of buses being dirty and clapped out surely cannot hold up anymore, have a look at how many buses are post 2000 reg. There are hundreds of low floor accessable buses, they are the same buses in fact that are delpoyed in London and elsewhere, so is it an old stereotype that car users will not give up?

There is a great attraction about feeling able to leave your house when you want as opposed to being tied to a bus timetable. The way to counter that is to increase frenquencies. Is the only way to achieve that the QBC route? Probably. But it dosnt help that when you get onto a bus on a cold wet day that the windows are condensed up, there is a musty smell and the heater dosnt work. Bad PR, encourages people to get back into their car.

Then there is the anti-social behavior. The logical way to comkbat it is to bring back conductors, and refusing to let such people on in the first place. Most of this stuff happens because they know the driver in undewr company instruction not to come out of the cab and they can always leg it before the Guards arrive, if they ever do.

When I saw this thread the old Fatima Mansions song came back to me "only losers get the bus" and untill that stigma is dropped we'll continue to see half empty buses stuck in gridlock.

Archeron

Interesting post popebenny. I wouldnt say there is any stigma in getting the local bus in the city at all any more, as owning a car is no big thing.In fact most people who dont own cars dont own them because its not logical to have one if you live in a central location. The anti social behaviour is the single biggest reason I drove everywhere in Dublin. I lived on the 27 bus route (which used to be the old 42C). Occasionally, if I was at the Plex in Coolock, I'd get the bus outside there into town, and I would regularly see people put their hand out for the bus, and when they realized it was a 27, lower their hand and step back in and wait for a 42 from Malahide instead.

popebenny16

Sorry, what I ment by Local bus, is BAC, Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford services, as opposed to the inter-town services.

In relation to the experiance at the leisure plex, I used the old 36 and 13 buses and can remember the exact same happening as people decided to get 19's and 11's instead.

monument

Transport21 Fan wrote:

I make no bones about the fact I often feel aroused by the sight of model trains running around in a ciricle.

Now I know we cant trust a word you say about buses.

Transport21 Fan wrote:

Just please realise it is Transport21 not Transport69.

And there was silly old me thinking it was TPWD&RP, as in Transport Plans Watered Down and Repackaged.

Transport21 Fan wrote:

Even though buses were provided by the local transit authorities and quiet often with comprehensive and reliable services, they ran empty most of the day.

What transit authorities for example?