Deloitte to advise on liquidation or examinership of Dublin Bus

murphaph

AlekSmart wrote: »

Cahir House Garage ?

Hi Alek. I'd rather not name the company on a public forum. I'll send you a PM.

murphaph

Proper reform including privatisation (TfL style, not a free for all) would also be good for the majority of staff who do perform their jobs well. The newly formed private operators would be a cold house however for dossers. Morale should improve as the minority who take the p!ss are weeded out. These private operators can also should louder at the various other agencies that are heavily responsible for providing a quality bus service, namely An Garda Siochana, the various local authorities, the NRA and of course the Dept. of Transport and its minister.

There are definitely too many Sir Humphreys hanging around blocking change. The CIE mandarins aren't about to raise their heads above the parapet and call a spade a spade. Private operators however will have an entirely different agenda.

cdebru

the groutch wrote: »

not if it allows the tackling of the elephant in the room, the free travel passes. at most a few percent of the current passholders should be entitled to free travel, the rest should only be getting discounted travel.

It won't address that problem at all, in fact I doubt it will even address any kind of government funding.
Under the model proposed by the NTA, they will be responsible for funding, they will collect the fares and the PSO and the money from the DSP for the free travel scheme. They will then pay the private operators an agreed amount per kilometre and there will be targets and penalties if those targets are not met. ( btw DB meets and exceeds all the NTAs targets).
The NTA will provide buses and depots, presumably they will also provide maintenance, and they will have to provide a central control and revenue protection.

So all the risk is really on the NTA (taxpayer and passengers) side, any possible advantages of the private sector as regards innovation , in bus types, fare structures, routes, etc etc are not going to happen as all that will remain under the control of the NTA ( a state agency which will suffer the same problems the CIE group currently has). The private operators will have zero interest in the fares, their level or their structure, they get paid no matter who travels or what they pay. Routes they are paid on a kilometre basis, they really won't care what route it takes whether it serves passengers or not remember they get paid either way.

The NTA will have the current headaches DB has, they are the ones that will have to balance the books, actually they will have more headaches than DB as they will not have as much access to potential cost savings as DB has.

When faced with the current situation the NTA will be the ones trying to pay their contracted operators from diminishing fares, as passenger numbers fall through the floor and with a government that is trying to cut costs and the PSO is just another cost.
Where will the money come from ? Well you just have to look at the history of the NTA, fare increases massive ones, there will be no pressure applied to government or to the free travel scheme at the end of the day the NTA are state employees just like CIE, they will just have to bend over and take it just like CIE, and the fare paying public will have to foot the bill.

So what will change very little really, just that some private companies will make money from public transport whether the country is in a crisis or in a boom they will make money either way, and the taxpayer and the paying travelling public will pay for it.

LoonyLovegood

Public transport isn't there for profit. It's always going to make a loss, but just try to minimise it. Varadkar isn't making any sense with this.

cdebru

murphaph wrote: »

Proper reform including privatisation (TfL style, not a free for all) would also be good for the majority of staff who do perform their jobs well. The newly formed private operators would be a cold house however for dossers. Morale should improve as the minority who take the p!ss are weeded out. These private operators can also should louder at the various other agencies that are heavily responsible for providing a quality bus service, namely An Garda Siochana, the various local authorities, the NRA and of course the Dept. of Transport and its minister.

There are definitely too many Sir Humphreys hanging around blocking change. The CIE mandarins aren't about to raise their heads above the parapet and call a spade a spade. Private operators however will have an entirely different agenda.

The problem with that is that, the real management are just going to be NTA mandarins not the private operators, and I haven't seen any evidence that they are more likely to raise their heads than the mandarins in CIE. The private operators are not really going to have a vested interest in change as they get paid irrespective.

The problems faced by the current CIE management, political interference and the Dept of Transport are still going to be there for the NTA.

LXFlyer

cdebru wrote: »

Just more scaremongering been there done that seen it all before.

I think that really is a naïve viewpoint in the extreme.

This company was bailed out last year - the government have made it clear that this will not happen again.

People really need to realise that the time for dragging their heels is over and that every staff member needs to do whatever is necessary for the company to survive.

cdebru

CTYIgirl wrote: »

Public transport isn't there for profit. It's always going to make a loss, but just try to minimise it. Varadkar isn't making any sense with this.

Well chances are that the first round of tenders will save money ( on paper at least) but the international experience is that any savings disappear quickly and it ends up costing more, this country has an abysmal record in regulation and I don't see any signs that will be different under the NTA.

n97 mini

lxflyer wrote: »

the government have made it clear that this will not happen again.

Do you really believe that though? Any move to make any big changes to the status quo and CIE is out on strike, probably followed in sympathy by Aer Lingus, half the public sector unions, the ESB etc.

cdebru

lxflyer wrote: »

I think that really is a naïve viewpoint in the extreme.

This company was bailed out last year - the government have made it clear that this will not happen again.

People really need to realise that the time for dragging their heels is over and that every staff member needs to do whatever is necessary for the company to survive.

Survive for what purpose ?

The government has already announced that the subvention is cut again for next year, this is the exact problem Noel Dowling pointed out, the fares go up the employees give cost savings and the government wipes it out with a subvention cut and we are back to square one again. It is a downwards spiral.

Where does it end ? will the company be in a position to undo some of the cuts in 19 months as promised? Or will as seems likely they be looking for further cuts to make up for the subvention cut next year and the year after ?

LXFlyer

cdebru wrote: »

Survive for what purpose ?

The government has already announced that the subvention is cut again for next year, this is the exact problem Noel Dowling pointed out, the fares go up the employees give cost savings and the government wipes it out with a subvention cut and we are back to square one again. It is a downwards spiral.

Where does it end ? will the company be in a position to undo some of the cuts in 19 months as promised? Or will as seems likely they be looking for further cuts to make up for the subvention cut next year and the year after ?

Where it ends is when the company finally becomes more efficient - there are still an awful lot of poorly designed rosters which do not maximise driver hours.

cdebru

lxflyer wrote: »

Where it ends is when the company finally becomes more efficient - there are still an awful lot of poorly designed rosters which do not maximise driver hours.

Like ?

LXFlyer

cdebru wrote: »

Like ?

I think that much is pretty obvious - why do we still have a situation where every duty on a Sunday morning has be 5 hours 40 minutes workout?

That imposes incredible restrictions on how the service can be designed.

dowlingm

Putting it out to tender wouldn't be the end of the story - if a private sector company won the contract there would doubtless be endless court appeals until the private company decided "feck it" leaving CIE as the only remaining tenderer. Mind you, that would never happen in big grown up countries.

StreetLight

lxflyer wrote: »

I think that much is pretty obvious - why do we still have a situation where every duty on a Sunday morning has be 5 hours 40 minutes workout?

That imposes incredible restrictions on how the service can be designed.

Quite easy for Monday-Friday office workers to pontificate on how others work on a Sunday.
SOME, not all, early Sunday duties are workouts. For those those who don't know, a workout is a duty which comprises approximately 5 hours and 40 minutes of straight working without a break.
The reason is that any early duty should be expected to finish reasonably around the 2pm or 3pm mark. If an early Sunday duty were to be changed to a Monday-Friday one, which may start at 5.30am or 6.30am to give the same finishing time, you would have a whole load of buses carrying fresh air on a Sunday morning, when frankly there is little demand.
You forget to mention the flip-side to an early Sunday duty is a late one which may start around 2pm or 2.30pm and not finish until well after midnight.

Losty Dublin

StreetLight wrote: »

Quite easy for Monday-Friday office workers to pontificate on how others work on a Sunday.
SOME, not all, early Sunday duties are workouts. For those those who don't know, a workout is a duty which comprises approximately 5 hours and 40 minutes of straight working without a break.
The reason is that any early duty should be expected to finish reasonably around the 2pm or 3pm mark. If an early Sunday duty were to be changed to a Monday-Friday one, which may start at 5.30am or 6.30am to give the same finishing time, you would have a whole load of buses carrying fresh air on a Sunday morning, when frankly there is little demand.
You forget to mention the flip-side to an early Sunday duty is a late one which may start around 2pm or 2.30pm and not finish until well after midnight.

Streetlight, for the benefit of us all but how exactly do Sunday rosters work in Dublin Bus?

LXFlyer

StreetLight wrote: »

Quite easy for Monday-Friday office workers to pontificate on how others work on a Sunday.
SOME, not all, early Sunday duties are workouts. For those those who don't know, a workout is a duty which comprises approximately 5 hours and 40 minutes of straight working without a break.
The reason is that any early duty should be expected to finish reasonably around the 2pm or 3pm mark. If an early Sunday duty were to be changed to a Monday-Friday one, which may start at 5.30am or 6.30am to give the same finishing time, you would have a whole load of buses carrying fresh air on a Sunday morning, when frankly there is little demand.
You forget to mention the flip-side to an early Sunday duty is a late one which may start around 2pm or 2.30pm and not finish until well after midnight.

Firstly, I would suggest that your use of the word "some" is rather generous, I would suggest, in this context. It is the vast majority of early duties on Sundays that have that constraint.

The fact that duties have that fixed time constraint means that it can become very difficult to use staff and buses efficiently - in certain cases (depending on the length of the route) there has to be empty running to/from the depot to get drivers back on time, while another driver goes empty to the outer terminus to start where the other bus had to finish.

I'm not in any way referring to having services on all routes at 05:30 - I'm merely pointing out that this sort of practice puts a serious constraint on operational efficiency within the company.

StreetLight

Losty Dublin wrote: »

Streetlight, for the benefit of us all but how exactly do Sunday rosters work in Dublin Bus?

It's swings and roundabouts like any other day, but because Sunday is a shorter working day for Dublin Bus, then some early duties are also shortened into 'workouts' as outlined above. However, this is not an exact science, as one duty rarely finished the same time as another.
So, to balance, some late Sunday duties start earlier to cover the shortfall caused by the finish of an earlier workout.
A driver will get, in theory, a fair crack of the whip within his/her roster. So, within a typical spare driver's five-week roster, s/he will get a late Sunday followed a couple of weeks later by an early Sunday.
It's all a balancing act to comply with the Company's requirements in tandem with the EU Working Time Directive. It should be noted that quite a lot of rosters have been changed over the last few years to meet these needs.

cdebru

lxflyer wrote: »

I think that much is pretty obvious - why do we still have a situation where every duty on a Sunday morning has be 5 hours 40 minutes workout?

That imposes incredible restrictions on how the service can be designed.

Why indeed? There is an answer though.

Because it suits the company. It is a breach of the EU driving work time directive. But it means that 5.40 then becomes the maximum time without a break rather then the 4.5 hours in the directive. This is used then for the other 6 days a week.
If you think the Sunday morning work out is restrictive to rostering imagine if they had to abide by the letter of the EU directive.

LoonyLovegood

cdebru wrote: »

Well chances are that the first round of tenders will save money ( on paper at least) but the international experience is that any savings disappear quickly and it ends up costing more, this country has an abysmal record in regulation and I don't see any signs that will be different under the NTA.

It probably will. I remember being told - whether this is true or not, I don't know - that DB had only six profitable routes for the last year information is available. They'll be the only ones sold off, and even then we'll end up with even worse service on them.

I want to have faith that it can be done well, but the difficulty is that this is Ireland, and any acts have to be overseen by the NTA. I don't trust them as far as I can throw them.

Losty Dublin

StreetLight wrote: »

It's swings and roundabouts like any other day, but because Sunday is a shorter working day for Dublin Bus, then some early duties are also shortened into 'workouts' as outlined above. However, this is not an exact science, as one duty rarely finished the same time as another.
So, to balance, some late Sunday duties start earlier to cover the shortfall caused by the finish of an earlier workout.
A driver will get, in theory, a fair crack of the whip within his/her roster. So, within a typical spare driver's five-week roster, s/he will get a late Sunday followed a couple of weeks later by an early Sunday.
It's all a balancing act to comply with the Company's requirements in tandem with the EU Working Time Directive. It should be noted that quite a lot of rosters have been changed over the last few years to meet these needs.

So effectively a Sunday "workout" is a Sunday shift where you have a later start than weekdays and a normal sign off time but you don't get a lunch/meal break, yes?

StreetLight

Losty Dublin wrote: »

So effectively a Sunday "workout" is a Sunday shift where you have a later start than weekdays and a normal sign off time but you don't get a lunch/meal break, yes?

That's correct.

ballooba

CTYIgirl wrote: »

It probably will. I remember being told - whether this is true or not, I don't know - that DB had only six profitable routes for the last year information is available. They'll be the only ones sold off, and even then we'll end up with even worse service on them.

There's profitable, and then there is Dublin Bus profitable. Just because Dublin Bus can't turn a profit on them doesn't mean another operator can't. Costs can change, revenues can change.

murphaph

ballooba wrote: »

There's profitable, and then there is Dublin Bus profitable. Just because Dublin Bus can't turn a profit on them doesn't mean another operator can't. Costs can change, revenues can change.

There should be no flogging off of "profitable" routes to private operators to profit directly from the farebox. I'd rather keep Dublin Bus the way it is than that sort of free for all.

The entire network should be privatised in the same way as TfL. The fares are returned to the NTA for distribution to the contracted operators in form of their payment for meeting their QoS terms. Failing to meet them means a reduction in the payment.

end of the road

CTYIgirl wrote: »

the NTA. I don't trust them as far as I can throw them.

couldn't have said that better myself

Grandeeod

end of the road wrote: »

couldn't have said that better myself

For years we called for a DTA and got a NTA. Now we dont trust them. Well I don't trust the CIE group and before we berate the NTA, we should start by overhauling and rebranding the CIE group. Included in this rebrand is a serious need for legislation that prohibits political interference. It suits the Minister to state that he/she cant get involved in certain aspects, but then you have wild west behaviour from TDs looking for the promised pound of flesh.

Replace/rebrand. Either one or both. This 70 plus years of absolute madness must end. CIE has outlived most of the original railway companies it inherited and has really done nothing constructive in terms of road based transport.

end of the road

Grandeeod wrote: »

For years we called for a DTA and got a NTA. Now we dont trust them. Well I don't trust the CIE group and before we berate the NTA, we should start by overhauling and rebranding the CIE group. Included in this rebrand is a serious need for legislation that prohibits political interference. It suits the Minister to state that he/she cant get involved in certain aspects, but then you have wild west behaviour from TDs looking for the promised pound of flesh.

Replace/rebrand. Either one or both. This 70 plus years of absolute madness must end. CIE has outlived most of the original railway companies it inherited and has really done nothing constructive in terms of road based transport.

lets be honest nobody really trusts CIE either, they have done more for road transport then railways though, remember when closing railways they ripped up a couple that actually had potential, they replaced trains that were carrying good amounts of freight with their road haulage company "CIE lories" (think that was what it was called) of course everyone went to private hauliers. along the old railways most went to their cars instead of the bus replacements. some of it was necessary but i can't say i trust much of the circumstances and reasons for why it all happened, had it been the companies before CIE i probably would have trusted them.

MGWR

monument wrote: »

Sunday Times editor tweeted this in a preview of tomorrow's paper:

The ultimate bluff?

Here comes Veolia Transdev Bus?

dfx-

CTYIgirl wrote: »

Public transport isn't there for profit. It's always going to make a loss, but just try to minimise it. Varadkar isn't making any sense with this.

This is ultimately the truth, unless companies can operate empty buses for free. Which they can't.

cdebru

Grandeeod wrote: »

For years we called for a DTA and got a NTA. Now we dont trust them. Well I don't trust the CIE group and before we berate the NTA, we should start by overhauling and rebranding the CIE group. Included in this rebrand is a serious need for legislation that prohibits political interference. It suits the Minister to state that he/she cant get involved in certain aspects, but then you have wild west behaviour from TDs looking for the promised pound of flesh.

Replace/rebrand. Either one or both. This 70 plus years of absolute madness must end. CIE has outlived most of the original railway companies it inherited and has really done nothing constructive in terms of road based transport.

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/extra-trains-costing-20000-per-day-put-on-ministers-lossmaking-route-26825930.html

That is just the most blatant example most never make headlines or have being going on so long people don't even count them any more like the free travel scheme.

LXFlyer

CTYIgirl wrote: »

It probably will. I remember being told - whether this is true or not, I don't know - that DB had only six profitable routes for the last year information is available. They'll be the only ones sold off, and even then we'll end up with even worse service on them.

I want to have faith that it can be done well, but the difficulty is that this is Ireland, and any acts have to be overseen by the NTA. I don't trust them as far as I can throw them.

Exactly what has the NTA done that has produced this distrust?