Weird thing happening on Dublin Bus during rush hour

Goonerette

Lads,

This morning around 9am I got on the number 7 bus in Blackrock. It was reasonably full upstairs, but downstairs there was only me and one other person standing. When we got to the Rock Road QBC, I suddenly realised that the bus had started skipping every stop along the way unless somebody wanted to get off when he would actually pull in after the stop and not let anyone else on. Even more bizarrely, no one seemed to be hailing him anymore. When the big group of Italian students got off in Booterstown the bus became practically empty, yet it continued to pass by every stop without stopping, leaving dozens of people waiting. I was completely baffled at that stage. Anyway, when I got off in town I realised that the front of the bus had changed to PRIVATE HIRE even though it was a normal 7 heading into O'Connell St when I got on. :eek: :eek:

Does anyone know what the story is? How can the driver get away with this??

Doyler92

I really don't know the answer but my guess would be that there is a certain limit of passengers each bus is allowed to hold so maybe it's full at that stage.

Mental Mickey

Maybe it was a mistake on the driver's part? They are human.

Awesome-O

saved you loads of time, I wouldn't be complaining!! it is strange though

Goonerette

Awesome-O wrote: »

saved you loads of time, I wouldn't be complaining!! it is strange though

Hehe, true. I was savagely late for work anyway! Still though, it made no sense as the bus was nowhere near full.

robbie_998

good for you - you get where you need to go faster

people at bus stop just think private hire... clearly not my bus

everybody happy


i'd say most likely the driver didn't want to allow only half of people at the bus stop on and leave others behind and cause a fuss or something to that extent

Awesome-O

He was probably bursting to go to the toilet and this was the best way to get back to the depot asap!

mikemac

Maybe he was under instructions from the depot.

Simon201

Was it white and parked at a church when you got on?




:D

cursai

....Simple. He was trying to get home. It happens. People who include bus drivers have to go home and do whatever they can to get home when they finish.:D

RayM

When a bus is running late (especially on a busy route, where there is guaranteed to be another one close behind), the driver is often told to switch the display to "Special" or "Private" so he can get to the terminus on schedule. Happens all the time.

foggy_lad

This should never happen! The timetable is there for a reason and there were dozens of people put out by their bus not turning up because it had been switched to private hire or special!

RayM wrote: »

When a bus is running late (especially on a busy route, where there is guaranteed to be another one close behind), the driver is often told to switch the display to "Special" or "Private" so he can get to the terminus on schedule. Happens all the time.

bmaxi

foggy_lad wrote: »

This should never happen! The timetable is there for a reason and there were dozens of people put out by their bus not turning up because it had been switched to private hire or special!

It's for precisely this reason that buses are instructed to run special. A bus that is running seriously late will be instructed to make a partial journey or miss a journey in order to return to schedule.
Granted intending passengers on that particular journey will be inconvenienced but it's seen as the lesser of two evils.

dekbhoy

foggy_lad wrote: »

This should never happen! The timetable is there for a reason and there were dozens of people put out by their bus not turning up because it had been switched to private hire or special!

Hold your whist there pal , bus drivers have finish times also . if a bus is held up in traffic and his finish time is say 10 am he is entitled to skip stops in order to make up for lost time that was no fault of his, if Dublin bus dont want to pay overtime you can hardly expect him to work for free. any more complaints take it up with the management not the drivers

Mimikyu

This post has been deleted.

Goonerette

RayM wrote: »

When a bus is running late (especially on a busy route, where there is guaranteed to be another one close behind), the driver is often told to switch the display to "Special" or "Private" so he can get to the terminus on schedule. Happens all the time.

Thanks for that information! It makes sense to do this to bring the bus back in line with the schedule for the benefit of the majority of the passengers. I'm sure you can appreciate, though, that it's baffling for the majority of people who aren't "in the know". He was running only 10 mins behind schedule as far as I could tell, and that's not at all unusual for Dublin Bus. I hope it doesn't happen "all the time" as you say for such minor delays.

Next time I see Special or Private Hire on a rainy and windy morning I'll have my suspicions.

cson

I'd love to live in Out Of Service wherever it is; every bus that passes me seems to go there.

xper

dekbhoy wrote: »

Hold your whist there pal , bus drivers have finish times also . if a bus is held up in traffic and his finish time is say 10 am he is entitled to skip stops in order to make up for lost time that was no fault of his, if Dublin bus dont want to pay overtime you can hardly expect him to work for free. any more complaints take it up with the management not the drivers

Actually, yes, I would expect him to work the ten or twenty minutes extra for free on the odd occasion. There is such a thing as dedication to the job and service to your customers. In a previous (public sector) job, I dealt with members of the public on a front desk. Individual queries normaly took 2-3 minutes but the odd one could be much longer. People were allowed in right up to a couple of minutes before knocking off time. If you got stuck with a long one right at closing, you simply got on with it, you didn't tell the customer to feck off. No overtime, no time in lieu, just doing the job.

There may be genuine, even good, reasons for this occasional phenomenon of scheduled buses switching to "Private Hire" or "Special" but "ah jaysus, I'm not going to be paid for the last two miles if I don't skip a few punters" is not one of them.

Not that we know this was the thinking in the OP's case.

corktina

its called Regulation I think. To maintain the service headways in a busy city sometimes you have to do this sort of thing especially if the buses are late and bunching up. Id say the OP is lucky the service wasnt terminated and him made to transfer to the following service.

As for working 10 to 20 minutes extra free, you have to realise that sometimes (due to the regualtions that govern PSV Drivers etc) this just isnt possible without breaking the law.

woysworld

cson wrote: »

I'd love to live in Out Of Service wherever it is; every bus that passes me seems to go there.

Brilliant!!! LOL!!!...

Bazzer2

woysworld wrote: »

Brilliant!!! LOL!!!...

But what about on the way back?!

RayM

xper wrote: »

There may be genuine, even good, reasons for this occasional phenomenon of scheduled buses switching to "Private Hire" or "Special" but "ah jaysus, I'm not going to be paid for the last two miles if I don't skip a few punters" is not one of them.

As far as I know, the main reasons for switching the display to "Private Hire" are that it allows a bus to catch up with its timetable, and helps avoid the extremely irritating phenomenon, whereby you wait for ages, only for two buses to eventually arrive together.

Vic_08

foggy_lad wrote: »

This should never happen! The timetable is there for a reason and there were dozens of people put out by their bus not turning up because it had been switched to private hire or special!

It is done to get the bus back on schedule, the people waiting in the city for it's return journey would be put out by it not being there in time to operate that trip.

In reality chances are nobody was put out by this, that section is well served by other shorter routes. If that bus had stopped at every stop I would bet that it would have been caught up by an empty 4 or 4A before it got to the city centre, instead it caught up some of it's lost time and the bus following it took the passengers.

IMO this is how routes like the 7 should operate all the time, as semi-expresses on the inner sections already served by frequent shorter routes. Make the journey times to/from the city faster and better serve the people in the areas only served by the longer route.

As for the predictable anti-driver moans over going OOS to suit themselves, this is crap. If they are late due to traffic they will get overtime and only in a case of a driver going over his legal driving hours would a bus be sent OOS or special to suit the driver. Any driver that did this without authorisation would be a fool and if caught would be soon getting a p45.

AlekSmart

As another poster replied,this process is called "Regulation",or rather one of a couple of elements available to a controller to... erm.....regulate the service.

However there`s nothing exotic or uniquely Dublin Bus about it and you`ll find it practiced on most,if not all public transport services.

I have experienced it quite regularly on London Buses,which unless one had taken note of the lower front "Final Destination" display on Routemaster type buses could result in one feeling quite piqued when the conductor would give the "All Change Please,All Change thanguberrymuch"as one sat alone upstairs.

Additionally one will sometimes find London Bus services "loitering" at Busstops along the route as the TfL CentreComm controllers put order on the headway of a particular route.

Incidentally this "Loitering" practice will shortly be appearing on the Dublin Bus radar as the AVLS system is rolled out.
All routes will have designated locations where an individual driver may be instructed to wait up to 2 minutes in order to regulate the headway.

The net effect will be to give a more reliable and definitely spaced service although,as other recent Bus related threads on C&T demonstrate,that 2 minute wait can mean the difference between satisfaction and utter vehement anger to many folks.

In Paris the RATP vehicles carry a "Service Partiel" destination display or occasionally a wooden window board with diagonal line drawn through it to indicate a truncated or otherwise regulated service.

Perhaps the most surprising example I have experienced was in Berlin ( :eek: ) where a journey on the S Bahn back to Schoenefeld suddenly became non-stop only for it then to be truncated at an outlying station where we were roared at to transfer to buses,schnell as you like there please....Incredibly several of the connecting Buses drove away empty from the Bus Stop whilse significant numbers of passengers were quite clearly walking towards them...with luggage etc...

Mind you,there were notices posted in the Train,rather typically, long detailed and in VERY small font on dirty grey recycled paper...
A German fellow traveller translated it for me and it did indeed advise that Bus connections would operate at set-departure times which would be adhered to in order to...wait- for-it...."Regulate" the service efficiently !

My (By now fuming) German fellow traveller told me that because of Track works this sort of nonsense was becoming quite commonplace at week-ends,adding that all the fcuxkking Busdrivers are all absolute baxterds whop never lost an opportunity to leave passengers behind.......Discertion took the place of valour on my part and I remained discreetly silent as to my own chosen path of employment

Thankfully the OP,Goonerette,appears "cool" with the clarifications offered...

Thanks for that information! It makes sense to do this to bring the bus back in line with the schedule for the benefit of the majority of the passengers. I'm sure you can appreciate, though, that it's baffling for the majority of people who aren't "in the know". He was running only 10 mins behind schedule as far as I could tell, and that's not at all unusual for Dublin Bus. I hope it doesn't happen "all the time" as you say for such minor delays.

Its worth noting that if the 7 was running 10 mins late in Blackrock it`s highly likely that the situation would have deteriorated by the time the journey finished in An Lár...so in this case "Blank her out in Blackrock" would have been probably the only realistic option open to the controller.

Another element worthy of note is the fact that the actual Bus and Driver are seperate entities which do not actually spend their working day wedded together.

A particular driver running late,will hand over the Bus to the relief driver who is then immediately running late as a result...the original Driver then has a statutory minimum break which in certain circumstances can be voluntarily truncated if it still remains within the legal limit.

So,if the original Driver has to take the statutory period he/she then resumes their shift still late,even though the peak may be well past...this is the domesday scenario which Service Controllers universally dread and therefore they try to regulate as early as possible in the late-running scenario.

Actually, yes, I would expect him to work the ten or twenty minutes extra for free on the odd occasion.

I suppose that,with the recession,the expectation that "unpaid labour" arrangements will allow "Ireland Teo" once again take it`s place among the nations of the world is bound to sound attractive,in a vague "we have to do something" kinda way.

Human Nature being as it is however,we can immediately see the problems over the definition of "expect" and/or "the odd occasion".
Perhaps different cultures,North Korea,China or the more mercenary elements of the USA may well operate such elements to the benefit of their systems but it`s not a lasting solution to our own "Irish" problem.


Exper can,however,rest assured that this "free work" situation has been catered for on the Bus Atha Cliath network for several years now ( up to 15 minutes) as part of several alterations to working agreements,therefore the suspicion he/she has that.....

"ah jaysus, I'm not going to be paid for the last two miles if I don't skip a few punters"

is quite unfounded.

It`s also worth highlighting Vic_08`s factual post....

Any driver that did this without authorisation would be a fool and if caught would be soon getting a p45.

Hopefully Goonerette won`t feel as "Weird" should she encounter a bit of Regulation in the future.

GTE

It doesnt seem unreasonable.

From what Ive read and understand if the driver has been instructed to do this then chances are there is another bus very close behind him/her.

Since the people waiting have been waiting a while for the late bus then a couple of minutes more isn't the end of the world. At least the start of the next service will be on or close to on time and then ready to get delayed all over again.

It seems to me its taking the snowball effect out of the equation.

I agree with the point and sincerely hope that it does only happen on the routes that are very frequent.

Something that essentially the same thing would be some 78a's skipping the first part of the route at Liffey Valley.

I know BE skip parts of their routes when no one is on the bus wanting to get off. An example would be the hoards of buses from Sligo, Ballina and Galway (ok 3 ) that seem to converge on the old N4 at the same time every hour or two. It can happen more when the commuter bus is close to them also. Some drivers let you off at Liffey Valley but others, when a commuter is close by, say no. They do zip past stops knowing there is another one just behind. It doesnt bother me much because they is usually just minutes between them.

Terrontress

Good post Alek. You should read The Maintenance of Headway by Magnus Mills which I mention in another post. It covers several of your points.

AlekSmart

Thanks Teronteress,I am indeed aware of Mill`s book.

Did you get yours in Dublin ?

I understand it`s quite widely discussed in Transport Enthusiast circles over a nice steamy cup of horlicks or two and has even led to splits in camps by all accounts ...

xper

AlekSmart wrote: »

Exper can,however,rest assured that this "free work" situation has been catered for on the Bus Atha Cliath network for several years now ( up to 15 minutes) as part of several alterations to working agreements,therefore the suspicion he/she has that.....

"ah jaysus, I'm not going to be paid for the last two miles if I don't skip a few punters"

is quite unfounded.

The suspicion or suggested reasoning was that of another poster. I was actually disagreeing, by way of example, with the presumption that such an attitude was justified and would prevail. Thankfully, that attitude is not my experience with most individuals providing services to the public.


I am aware that active 'regulation' takes place and it makes perfect sense on frequent routes. On the practice of 'loitering' - I first came across it many years ago in that bastion of public transport, the US of A (ever see the Bill Murray movie Quick Change, some of the bus drivers over there are really like that!). I don't envy the task of DB drivers explaining the practice to confused passengers (who've just had to change bus :P ) as AVSL plays a more prominent role in the coming months. I note that Aircoach do it.

Terrontress

AlekSmart wrote: »

Thanks Teronteress,I am indeed aware of Mill`s book.

Did you get yours in Dublin ?

I understand it`s quite widely discussed in Transport Enthusiast circles over a nice steamy cup of horlicks or two and has even led to splits in camps by all accounts ...

I've read and enjoyed all of his books so far. I got it off amazon but have bought other titles of his up the Rathmines Road.

Gist of the book is that passengers don't like buses being late, the transport company doesn't like buses being early and it is nearly impossible for a bus to always be on time.

corktina

Terrontress wrote: »

I've read and enjoyed all of his books so far. I got it off amazon but have bought other titles of his up the Rathmines Road.

Gist of the book is that passengers don't like buses being late, the transport company doesn't like buses being early and it is nearly impossible for a bus to always be on time.

ah well that will save me buying it...does it touch on Passengers not liking Drivers and noone liking passengers?

AlekSmart

I don't envy the task of DB drivers explaining the practice to confused passengers (who've just had to change bus )

Xpers,I`m not sure envy would be enough to describe the feelings a DB driver will need to wallow in if the first experiences are anything to go by.

The first shots have already been discharged and by all accounts it is a somewhat messy business,particularly when the same group of passengers has to change buses twice within a single journey :eek:

Perhaps the most important thing to come out of it is the rather pressing need for DB to offer some form of Sales Technique training to it`s drivers.

This would allow them to sell stuff to people who don`t want it,did`nt order it an, in fact,want something else completely.

Im suggesting that each bus have a live feed directly to the appropriate controller,who can then,just like the Pope for Urbi et Orbi,come on the screeen and anounce to the faithful that he is delaying their bus by xx minutes to ensure averything is kept tickety-boo...

This would at least allow the driver quality-time to peruse his/her copy of the Guardian for job vacancies in the Financial Services Sector......:)