Rail stats, bus stats, National Household Travel Survey

monument

NTA released these today under the heading of a new series of Statistical Bulletins:

• Rail stats
  
• Bus stats
• National Household Travel Survey 2012 - summary or full report

patrickc

monument wrote: »

NTA released these today under the heading of a new series of Statistical Bulletins:

• Rail stats
  
• Bus stats
• National Household Travel Survey 2012 - summary or full report

interesting reading, thanks for that

Cookie_Monster

Interesting but not much to them in fairness.

Despite the bus one containing information on fleet size the rail one omits it, strange.

the groutch

this one from the NHTS stood out

Almost 40% of all trips to school / college are
less than 2Km in length and almost half of these
short trips are made by car.

shows just how much of the traffic jams during "school run" times are avoidable if parents didnt wrap their kids in cotton wool.

devnull

the groutch wrote: »

this one from the NHTS stood out


shows just how much of the traffic jams during "school run" times are avoidable if parents didnt wrap their kids in cotton wool.

Round by where I live, there is a school about 750m away, I'd say the majority of the kids are from the same area, and almost all of them get driven to school.,nowhere would be more than a 10-12 minute walk, I could walk it in well under 10 mins from the furhest point out. Almost all of them are driven to school, including my next door neighbour.

If they don't live local, or there are busy roads or in terrible weather I have no problem with kids being driven to school, or if they are young, but it's crazy at the moment. I heard not so long ago a school kid moaning that they had to get the bus for two stops rather than be dropped to school, they didn't even consider the 0.5km walk.,

Losty Dublin

devnull wrote: »

Round by where I live, there is a school about 750m away, I'd say the majority of the kids are from the same area, and almost all of them get driven to school.,nowhere would be more than a 10-12 minute walk, I could walk it in well under 10 mins from the furhest point out. Almost all of them are driven to school, including my next door neighbour.

If they don't live local, or there are busy roads or in terrible weather I have no problem with kids being driven to school, or if they are young, but it's crazy at the moment. I heard not so long ago a school kid moaning that they had to get the bus for two stops rather than be dropped to school, they didn't even consider the 0.5km walk.,

A couple of years ago, I sat in on a meeting of my local schools PTA. At the AOB, they were discussing parking issues around the school and how it was impeding their getting parking outside of the school. Much teeth were gnashed and grinded until one of them suggested they get the school to ring the clampers. All were in favour of this until they realised who's cars would be clamped

devnull

Losty Dublin wrote: »

A couple of years ago, I sat in on a meeting of my local schools PTA. At the AOB, they were discussing parking issues around the school and how it was impeding their getting parking outside of the school. Much teeth were gnashed and grinded until one of them suggested they get the school to ring the clampers. All were in favour of this until they realised who's cars would be clamped

The funny thing is right now actually in that school close to me there is a dispute about providing more car parking facilities, since parents are saying it's getting more and more dangerous for their kids to go to school due to the number of cars parked dangerously and in places which are not designed for parking and turning around in areas which are not suitable for it, the vast majority of which, are driving their kids less than a km every morning and evening.

They are now demanding that further and appropriate parking facilities are provided at this and other schools, since this would stop the danger, of course, the alternative of actualy getting their kids to walk to school, didn't occur to them. I don't meant to turn this into, when I was a lad speeches, but when I was, and was at Seconday school I'd reguarly spend 20-25 minutes walking to and from there, no problem, would never have dreamed of asking for a lift, I'd have been told to feck off anyway!

Losty Dublin

devnull wrote: »

The funny thing is right now actually in that school close to me there is a dispute about providing more car parking facilities, since parents are saying it's getting more and more dangerous for their kids to go to school due to the number of cars parked dangerously and in places which are not designed for parking and turning around in areas which are not suitable for it, the vast majority of which, are driving their kids less than a km every morning and evening.

They are now demanding that further and appropriate parking facilities are provided at this and other schools, since this would stop the danger, of course, the alternative of actualy getting their kids to walk to school, didn't occur to them. I don't meant to turn this into, when I was a lad speeches, but when I was, and was at Seconday school I'd reguarly spend 20-25 minutes walking to and from there, no problem, would never have dreamed of asking for a lift, I'd have been told to feck off anyway!

You have my full agreement here. While there are many holes in our transport system (And let's include inferior cycle lanes etc in this as well) and heaps of problems in some areas with times, service levels, frequencies etc most of the trips are short and inexcusable and causing a lot more long term hassle for the short distances travelled, all told. It's as if there is some narcotic in car seats or the air freshener or something that draws us to the car

Don;t get me started on the ones who drive to the gym only to use the walking machine :pac:

monument

Maybe more interisting than the school stat is that:

"Over half of all daily trips are less than 3Km in length and over half of these short trips are made by car."

Kumsheen

monument wrote: »

Maybe more interisting than the school stat is that:

"Over half of all daily trips are less than 3Km in length and over half of these short trips are made by car."

The question is how can the attitude be changed, i see people every day driving from some estates (less than 1km away) and parking in another closer to the train station just to save a few mins walk.

My own view is that as long as transport by private car is facilitated, then there is very little incentive for people not to use it. Maybe a car tax system based on usage rather than the current block rate, but in reality this will probably not make much of a difference as petrol consumption is based on car usage already.

end of the road

how about adding the road tax to fuel rather then the current way? might be something to look at?

ballooba

monument wrote: »

Maybe more interisting than the school stat is that:

"Over half of all daily trips are less than 3Km in length and over half of these short trips are made by car."

I often drive the 3km to work. The bus is pretty much direct and regular but costs more than parking and means waiting around and dealing with people. I walk when I can.

antoinolachtnai

The other thing you can do with these figures is that you can calculate the price (subsidy + fares) per vehicle kilometre and compare it with other countries. It is pretty expensive!

ballooba

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

The other thing you can do with these figures is that you can calculate the price (subsidy + fares) per vehicle kilometre and compare it with other countries. It is pretty expensive!

I'd be interested in seeing that comparison.

antoinolachtnai

Here it is in Excel for Dublin Bus only.

The price per km on Dublin Bus has increased from 4.16 to 4.74/km since 2010. (This is an underestimate, which leaves out several factors.)

For comparison, it costs £1.81/km (€2.13/km) to operate a bus in Scotland. It is a lot more than twice as expensive.

This means that if we had efficient operations, we could as a city have twice the frequency on every service, reduce the fares by 20 percent and still reduce the subsidy.

lil5

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

...
The price per km on Dublin Bus has increased from 4.16 to 4.74/km since 2010. ...

This means that if we had efficient operations, we could as a city have twice the frequency on every service, reduce the fares by 20 percent and still reduce the subsidy.

Thanks for posting those details.

Just given me another reason for not renewing my annual ticket with DB ...

AlekSmart

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

Here it is in Excel for Dublin Bus only.

The price per km on Dublin Bus has increased from 4.16 to 4.74/km since 2010. (This is an underestimate, which leaves out several factors.)

For comparison, it costs £1.81/km (€2.13/km) to operate a bus in Scotland. It is a lot more than twice as expensive.

This means that if we had efficient operations, we could as a city have twice the frequency on every service, reduce the fares by 20 percent and still reduce the subsidy.

Good use of stats Antoin,the conclusions of which call into question the methodology employed by the likes of Deloitte in the most recent (of many) efficiency studies carried out on BAC ?

Indeed even the NTA's own Gerry Murphy offered the NTA's opinion that BAC was far from "grossly inefficient" as had been alleged by some political observers.....

http://oireachtasdebates.oireachtas.ie/debates%20authoring/DebatesWebPack.nsf/committeetakes/ACC2013012400016?opendocument

Mr. Gerry Murphy: What I was trying to say is public transport services at any point in time must be provided. We are contracted with the operators. The operators are reducing their costs year on year and when we look at their fares increases, it is in the context of whether we want to maintain services, the drop in subsidy, the drop in patronage revenues and their cost control. For example, Iarnród Éireann has reduced staff numbers from 6,000 to 4,000 in the past eight years. Bus Éireann has driven down its costs, and Dublin Bus has driven down its costs. We are seeing cost reduction plans in the organisations. We are seeing growing efficiencies. In the Dublin area, where Dublin Bus is the biggest carrier of public transport in the State, we have seen a fundamental reorganisation of its services and its network direct. It is much more efficient. We have reorganised the services for Bus Éireann in the regional cities. In Galway, we are seeing a 20% increase in revenue from that and we are now reviewing all the services in rural areas throughout the State. There are efficiency measures in place. When we get the fares increases and look at the diminishing subsidies, we must also take account of whether we want to keep the network of public transport services operational in the State.

We have separately reported to the Minister on the bus market and it is no secret that we have recommended to the Minister that there should be an opening of the bus market in 2014. It is a matter for the Government to consider that item and it has to come back to us. We have met with the Government's economic committee and we have been told to wait until we get a response. We have identified that savings could be made by some graded opening of the market. We believe that could work well. It could also work well for the existing State operators because they will see benchmarking of a private operator doing a similar business.

We are conscious of all these matters but I come back to the fundamental point that the organisations are not grossly inefficient. Deloitte was commissioned by the Department of Transport in 2007. It did a review of the operations of Dublin Bus and Bus Éireann and said that in general they were comparable with international standards. That is not to say that we cannot achieve cost savings. They are not grossly inefficient, therefore, and there are opportunities for efficiencies but they are under-subsidised. They also have the perfect storm as the subsidy is dropping, passenger numbers have been dropping across all operators and because they are reliant on the revenue as well as on the passenger numbers they have been hit by that double whammy and the triple whammy of fuel duty rebate being gone. All those factors have come about to create the cash flow problems for the CIE Group, the need for €36 million to come in and our fares increases but we have reserved our position. We have said we will only consider a fares increase annually on the basis of projections of cost savings, revenues, the services they will provide and the quality of what they have delivered in the past year.

For certain,Antoin and Gerry do differ somewhat in their interpretation of the Statistics,but then again,that tends to be the way with such proceses ?

I wonder do we have similar comparably simple,stats available for other European operators ?

antoinolachtnai

I really don't see what other way there is to interpret the statistics other than to consider that there might be a problem with operational efficiency at Dublin Bus. Dublin's cost/km is, amazingly as high as, or higher than London. (2.2 billion euros, 490m km although that includes amortisation of capital costs, which the NTA figures largely exclude) Trade unionists will tell you (rightly) that London's structure makes it extremely expensive to operate.

The Deloitte report never came to any conclusion about the efficiency of Dublin bus. It was never in their terms of reference to consider that.

If it keeps some people happy I suppose Gerry Murphy is right to say those things. But it doesn't make them true.

AlekSmart wrote: »

Good use of stats Antoin,the conclusions of which call into question the methodology employed by the likes of Deloitte in the most recent (of many) efficiency studies carried out on BAC ?

Indeed even the NTA's own Gerry Murphy offered the NTA's opinion that BAC was far from "grossly inefficient" as had been alleged by some political observers.....

http://oireachtasdebates.oireachtas.ie/debates%20authoring/DebatesWebPack.nsf/committeetakes/ACC2013012400016?opendocument



For certain,Antoin and Gerry do differ somewhat in their interpretation of the Statistics,but then again,that tends to be the way with such proceses ?

I wonder do we have similar comparably simple,stats available for other European operators ?

AlekSmart

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

I really don't see what other way there is to interpret the statistics other than to consider that there might be a problem with operational efficiency at Dublin Bus. Dublin's cost/km is, amazingly as high as, or higher than London. (2.2 billion euros, 490m km although that includes amortisation of capital costs, which the NTA figures largely exclude) Trade unionists will tell you (rightly) that London's structure makes it extremely expensive to operate.

The Deloitte report never came to any conclusion about the efficiency of Dublin bus. It was never in their terms of reference to consider that.

If it keeps some people happy I suppose Gerry Murphy is right to say those things. But it doesn't make them true.

A statement in relation to Antoin's opinion,which Gerry Murphy could equally be expected to make in response I suppose .....?

Not being of an accountancy bent,I won't offer any arguement,however my interpretation of Deloitte's introduction is that Efficiency was one of their core issues

http://www.transport.ie/upload/general/final%20report%20bus%20review%20220109.pdf

Terms of Reference.

.Assess the operational efficiency of Dublin Bus and Bus Éireann with particular reference to
resource utilisation (including bus scheduling and staff scheduling and rostering) and operational costs. This should include an examination of the utilisation of buses to determine whether the fleet is deployed in the most efficient and effective manner.
The assessment should also examine the management of direct costs and overheads and of the issues (e.g. human resource, organisational etc), which might impact on the delivery of services to public transport users

antoinolachtnai

So what conclusion did Deloitte come to? I don't remember them laying out any criteria for measuring operational efficiency.

From what I remember Deloitte looked mainly at the network. They had rather a different interpretation of operational efficiency which I suppose is fair enough.

They didn't compare DB to any other operator in terms of costs per km or anything else.

In any case DB's unit costs have increased 15 or 20 percent since the Deloitte report was carried out.

AlekSmart wrote: »

A statement in relation to Antoin's opinion,which Gerry Murphy could equally be expected to make in response I suppose .....?

If you mean that I would like buses to run at a higher frequency, have greater coverage and for fares to be lower then sure.

Is there any other views on what the numbers mean other than that the ordinary passenger is getting a very bad deal?