Urbus ceasing operations

LXFlyer

From the Urbus website I see that the service, which links Castleknock, Blanchardstown, Dublin Airport and Swords, is ceasing with effect from 1 March. It apparently is due to it becoming financially unviable as a result of a major decline in passenger numbers.

jjbrien

Wouldn't surprise me I found it to be a very unreliable service and didnt run on weekends so Castleknock has no connection to the airport at the weekends. I found it faster to take the train from Castleknock into Drumcondra and then take a bus from there to the Airport

ArmaniJeanss

I was a semi-regular user once (maybe a dozen trips a year and recommended it to loads of people who also used it) but it just became a bad service a few years ago.
An overly complicated timetable with buses doing different routes at different times of day (and drivers appearing to make mistakes because of these complications leading to missed buses), and diversions into the likes of IKEA adding to journey lengths.

And then one morning before a holiday I asked myself whether booking a set €20 25-minute taxi trip was better than playing Urbus roulette (figure out timetable, turn up at stop and grow increasingly panicked as to whether bus was going to turn up and if it did would it actually go through my estate as per the set route or use a different road or just brush the top of my estate, and even then the journey would be 50 minutes at best) and decided that the €20 option was better than the €5 option.

thomasj

jjbrien wrote: »

Wouldn't surprise me I found it to be a very unreliable service and didnt run on weekends so Castleknock has no connection to the airport at the weekends. I found it faster to take the train from Castleknock into Drumcondra and then take a bus from there to the Airport

Yep I agree, it was a fairly unreliable service after the cutbacks came about.

If I go to the airport now, its either maynooth train to drumcondra then 16/41 or 17a to swords road then 16/41

Personally though, with this news, I would love to see the 17a extended to the airport via the n32

lockon...

I wonder if Dublin Bus will put on a replacement route.

patrickbrophy18

lockon... wrote: »

I wonder if Dublin Bus will put on a replacement route.

Very doubtful considering the abundance of cutbacks made by Dublin Bus to services out in that direction.

Having said that, if a service such as Urbus is to have a reputation as being reliable, it needs to operate along a fixed route at all times. This is what private operators such as Aircoach and Finnegan's do at the moment. Otherwise, it will be a case of Urbus roulette as ArmaniJeanss pointed out. Route variations lead to confusion among and is off putting to would-be commuters which isn't great for it's viability.

Stheno

Used it a couple of times to get from Swords to Blanch, it was like a magical mystery tour at times!

Polar101

They had quite a few route changes over the last few years. I haven't traveled with them for about two years now, too slow and unreliable. I guess if you live in Tyrrelstown they're handy for airport trips.

Vahevala

Shame that Dublin Bus basically killed them off.. it was very handy having the airport service in Tyrrelstown :mad:

J_Dublin15

Dublin Bus wasn't the only factor that killed the route but for sure it was a part of it at the end of the day.

Dublin Bus said that a weekend bus service linking Tyrrelstown with the Blanchardstown Center was not viable. They also said that it was only viable to run six services a day during the week.

Until Urbus started the route Dublin Bus ran the following services between the area on Monday to Friday with nothing at weekends.

To Tyrrelstown: 10:15, 11:35, 12:25, 14:00, 18:10, 21:55, 22:50
From Tyrrelstown: 09:50 11:15 11:55 13:40 17:40 21:30 22:20

Strangely enough a few months after Urbus launched their service, providing an hourly service during the week and at the weekend, Dublin Bus also extended route 238 to Tyrrelstown, hourly seven days per week despite for months previously stating that such route was 'unviable' to be regular during the week and not viable at all at the weekend.

Since then passengers have switched from Urbus to use their monthly tickets that they may already have or their school child tickets they may have due to the introduction of the Dublin Bus services. This HAS had an impact on Urbus. Not the only reason, but certainly was part of it.

I'd link to the page on DublinBus.ie with the timetables, but they seemed to have blocked the archive via robots.txt.

devnull

They blocked the archive of DublinBus.ie many weeks ago now, it suspiciously happened not long after I made a post using data from there to show that the fleet has gone down quicker than subsidy when there was a discussion about the costs and wages in Dublin Bus a while ago.

Edit:
I note they were too harsh with the way they did it though, since they've also blocked Google from indexing their pages, if you search for Dublin Bus on Google now, you'll see that the only page you will find is the home page since they've blocked search engine indexing on the WHOLE SITE apart from the home page.

Polar101

J_Dublin15 wrote: »

Strangely enough a few months after Urbus launched their service, providing an hourly service during the week and at the weekend, Dublin Bus also extended route 238 to Tyrrelstown, hourly seven days per week despite for months previously stating that such route was 'unviable' to be regular during the week and not viable at all at the weekend.

Urbus have been running for years before Dublin bus changed all the local routes (not just the 238). You can check this and the Dublin 15 forum for info on the planned changes on 238 and 270. I don't think there is a very complicated conspiracy involved.

J_Dublin15

Thanks for not reading my post.

Urbus was indeed running for many years before this, but we are talking about the change of route to Tyrrelstown, which it only started serving a few years after Urbus started up.

Dublin Bus had no interest in running a regular service from Blanchardstown to Tyrrelstown until after Urbus changed their route to include this part of Dublin 15.

triple-M

was this the same bus service whose buses were burned out a few years back?

JustAddWater

triple-M wrote: »

was this the same bus service whose buses were burned out a few years back?

yup, same company.

KD345

J_Dublin15 wrote: »

Dublin Bus had no interest in running a regular service from Blanchardstown to Tyrrelstown until after Urbus changed their route to include this part of Dublin 15.

Or perhaps Dublin Bus responded to passenger demand and increased its services to Tyrrelstown. Just because something wasn't viable a few years ago doesn't mean that will never change.

Urbus was a completely different service to the 238. It was an orbital service connecting parts of North Dublin.

One thing we do know was that Dublin Bus were prevented from extending route 37 to Blanchardstown Centre because Urbus shared a small part of the route. The Department Of Transport rejected the extension of the service for years.

devnull

KD345 wrote: »

Or perhaps Dublin Bus responded to passenger demand and increased its services to Tyrrelstown.

But the point is if there was demand for a long while for such services to exist, it is suspicious that Dublin Bus only react to that untapped demand after someone else does the same thing. From reading around on the subject it was clear the Urbus service was extended to Tyrrelstown to give the people of such area a link with primarily Blanchardstown and also Dublin Airport.

I can't see there was a huge increase in demand suddenly which meant that two operators were ever going to be sustained on the corridor. As the 238 is a PSO service (correct me if I'm wrong) it is not the job of Dublin Bus to compete commercially with a non PSO service which was what it was essentially doing along stretches of its route. Also it is debatable why a taxpayer should fund a route being extended when the new journey possibilities it offers are already offered by another operator at the same frequency.

I have no problem with the 238 per se as it was before it was extended to Tyrrelstown and the routing change which happened later, but it merely opened up journey possibilities that already existed and has now deprived people of the whole Dublin 15 area of a direct airport link in the process. If the 238 was still serving its original alignment, Urbus still may be existing today.

Whatever the politics at the situation, at the end of the day the biggest winner of the whole situation are going to be taxi drivers who now will pick up much needed business to the airport in Dublin 15.

ThisRegard

KD345 wrote: »

Or perhaps Dublin Bus responded to passenger demand and increased its services to Tyrrelstown. Just because something wasn't viable a few years ago doesn't mean that will never change.

The demand was always in Tyrrelstown, Dublin Bus didn't want to know. They even got rid of the 38 extension to Tyrrelstown so the only bus in and out of Tyrrelstown was via Finglas with no bus access to either Blanchardstown Village or centre, apart from the then sketchy 238 service which I think was only Monday to Friday 4 or 5 times a day at the time, until Urbus came along.

LXFlyer

All those changes took place as part of the first phase of Network Direct and the NTA authorised them. We went through a long period beforehand with no network changes.

It's a bit rich to say that the NTA effectively put Urbus out of business I would suggest.

devnull

I wasn't suggesting they were put out of business by the NTA, that is certainly going too far, as the Urbus route didn't always serve Tyrrelstown, I am saying however that the changes to the 238 route would have impacted their passenger numbers to a decent degree.

There was no need for a PSO service to be extended to an area provide a link that was already well served by another operator.

LXFlyer

Clearly the NTA didn't agree!

misslt

I have to say I'm surprised it took that long.

I used it a few times when I was working in Blanch (living in Swords) and it was a NIGHTMARE. Took over 80mins, took the most awkward route possible and charged me €6 for the privilege.

It was easier and quicker for me to get a 41/c to town and a 38a out to Blanch.

devnull

Obviously the NTA didn't, but I'm merely saying that the outcome has not been a good one for people at the end of the day.

It may have been a long and expensive trip to Swords, but I think the problem is that the people who had a 25-30 minute link to the airport for around 5 euro, now have to pay €25+ for a taxi, or a trip which takes around three times that via the city center.

ArmaniJeanss

devnull wrote: »

Obviously the NTA didn't, but I'm merely saying that the outcome has not been a good one for people at the end of the day.

It may have been a long and expensive trip to Swords, but I think the problem is that the people who had a 25-30 minute link to the airport for around 5 euro, now have to pay €25+ for a taxi, or a trip which takes around three times that via the city center.

You dramatically overestimate the Urbus speed. On their current timetable Castleknock to the airport is timetabled at 67 minutes. Blanch Shopping Centre to the airport is timetabled at 47 minutes. These journeys were even longer at one stage (bus used to go to Ikea as well).

devnull

ArmaniJeanss wrote: »

You dramatically overestimate the Urbus speed. On their current timetable Castleknock to the airport is timetabled at 67 minutes. Blanch Shopping Centre to the airport is timetabled at 47 minutes. These journeys were even longer at one stage (bus used to go to Ikea as well).

Seeing as the discussion was relating to the decision to extend the route to serve Tyrrelstown, I was referring to that particular area since that was the area that was put into the 238 when it was reformed. It was timetabled to take up to 30 minutes between this area.

Polar101

devnull wrote: »

Whatever the politics at the situation, at the end of the day the biggest winner of the whole situation are going to be taxi drivers who now will pick up much needed business to the airport in Dublin 15.

Well, not really. Urbus shuts down because of low passenger numbers, so there's not a whole lot of business to pick up. I'd have used them when I travelled to the airport, if it hadn't been cheaper and faster to go via the city centre.