Aircoach have route numbers now?

Five Lamps

Just noticed that buses on one of the Aircoach routes are now displaying a route number - 702.

Does this mean that we may see Aircoach services appearing on real time displays some time soon?

bk

Almost every licensed bus service in the country has a route number issued from the NTA.

Aircoach has just decided to display them, probably to try and reduce confusion on which bus to take at Dublin Airport and Westmoreland street. Unfortunately it is no indicator of them coming to RTPI or not.

lil5

Displays route and time info (scheduled ?) for stops on http://rtpi.ie/

Try "Search by Route No/Name" (e.g. 702)

bk

This displays the scheduled time table, rather then the actual real time.

currins_02

Apparently, and I don't know for fact but was told by a service owner himself, it's something linked to the roll out of Leap card use to certain private services. For that system to work, again apparently (I simply don't know but am repeating what I was told), each service needs a number - numbers have been issued to most, but not all private services and can be found at this link: http://www.nationaltransport.ie/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/database-of-holders-of-licences-for-public-bus-passenger-services-011113.pdf - these numbers have only been given out to many in recent in numbers.

devnull

That must have been added recently since I was looking at rtpi.ie for information from Cork City services and the Aircoach stops were not plotted on the map at that point but can now see they are on there, although they do have a very strange stop numbering system.

Aircoach were talking about real time info being trialled in October but it seems there is no progress on that. Aircoach won't be able to take leap without new ticket machines, since they have the TGX150, but don't have the smart card module on it like Dublin Bus do.

Five Lamps

I'm surprised that it has taken this long for them to use route numbers - even their own ones. Would make life a lot easier for passengers getting their services from their (badly organised) stop at the airport.

The RTPI would be very useful - especially if you're getting their service at 4am in the morning!

devnull

Just to clarify - the route numbers have been around for a few months, the RTPI I was saying I hadn't seen before on rtpi.ie

coylemj

Five Lamps wrote: »

I'm surprised that it has taken this long for them to use route numbers - even their own ones. Would make life a lot easier for passengers getting their services from their (badly organised) stop at the airport.

I far prefer to see 'Greystones' on the display and not have to figure out if '702' is going my way or not for a service I only use every few months or so. On the Aircoach website the route number only appears in the downloadable PDF file, it is not shown in the route description or the online timetable in respect of the Greystones route at least.

etchyed

coylemj wrote: »

I far prefer to see 'Greystones' on the display and not have to figure out if '702' is going my way or not for a service I only use every few months or so.

Eh, what? When have you ever seen a bus displaying only a route number?

markpb

etchyed wrote: »

Eh, what? When have you ever seen a bus displaying only a route number?

Singapore?

Five Lamps

coylemj wrote: »

I far prefer to see 'Greystones' on the display and not have to figure out if '702' is going my way or not for a service I only use every few months or so. On the Aircoach website the route number only appears in the downloadable PDF file, it is not shown in the route description or the online timetable in respect of the Greystones route at least.

It has the number and destination like any public bus service.

Victor

Having route numbers is useful across a variety of functions. While getting "Aircoach" or JJ Kavanagh" or whatever might be good for brand recognition, it is less useful for passengers and indeed does a disservice to the operator when they have more than one route.

Telling a foreigner to get the "Aircoach" is a bit useless when there might be 6 such coaches outside they airport terminal, with none of them saying "Dublin".

Five Lamps

Victor wrote: »

Having route numbers is useful across a variety of functions. While getting "Aircoach" or JJ Kavanagh" or whatever might be good for brand recognition, it is less useful for passengers and indeed does a disservice to the operator when they have more than one route.

Telling a foreigner to get the "Aircoach" is a bit useless when there might be 6 such coaches outside they airport terminal, with none of them saying "Dublin".

I would use Aircoach when going to the airport. It's a nonsense when a bunch of them pull up at T2 at the same time and drivers shouting out what route they are serving.

Regular travellers will know their route. Visitors will know it once told by the ticket seller and I'm sure the respective hotels would advise what route number their guests should take.

patrickbrophy18

Five Lamps wrote: »

I would use Aircoach when going to the airport. It's a nonsense when a bunch of them pull up at T2 at the same time and drivers shouting out what route they are serving.

Agree. I think it is quite ridiculous that some buses still have no LED destination signs. The Scania Century coaches that are deployed to the Dalkey/Killiney service have flip-disc displays which still haven't been programmed to display Dalkey/Killiney as the destination. They have Dublin Airport as the destination both-ways with a very subtle window mounted poster with the outbound terminus written on them. This goes for the Setra buses that are also deployed to the Dalkey/Killiney route and partially to the Leopardstown and Belfast routes. In fact, the Setra coaches don't have digital signage at all. Having said all of that, this is just a minor criticism as they still are an excellent service.

coylemj

Five Lamps wrote: »

I would use Aircoach when going to the airport. It's a nonsense when a bunch of them pull up at T2 at the same time and drivers shouting out what route they are serving.

I'd prefer to hear the driver calling it out than rely on the display. Different service I know but I was getting off a northbound Dart in Sandymount the other day and noticed that the display above the door to the next carriage said the next stop was Bray and it was the last stop!

coylemj

Victor wrote: »

Telling a foreigner to get the "Aircoach" is a bit useless when there might be 6 such coaches outside they airport terminal, with none of them saying "Dublin".

But when the foreigner buys a ticket from the Aircoach guy outside the terminal, he will be politely told from where and when his bus will be leaving. All a visitor needs to be told is to go to the Aircoach stand outside their arrival terminal and the guy on duty will sort them out.

Stheno

Swords express also have this now, very useful if you want to avoid certain routes.

Victor

coylemj wrote: »

But when the foreigner buys a ticket from the Aircoach guy outside the terminal, he will be politely told from where and when his bus will be leaving. All a visitor needs to be told is to go to the Aircoach stand outside their arrival terminal and the guy on duty will sort them out.

And the foreign visitor will know to look for a random person waiting outside the airport terminal?

coylemj

Victor wrote: »

And the foreign visitor will know to look for a random person waiting outside the airport terminal?

Aircoach have a very visible outdoor unit outside T1 and T2, you just need to follow the 'coaches' sign from inside the terminal and you'll find it.

LXFlyer

coylemj wrote: »

But when the foreigner buys a ticket from the Aircoach guy outside the terminal, he will be politely told from where and when his bus will be leaving. All a visitor needs to be told is to go to the Aircoach stand outside their arrival terminal and the guy on duty will sort them out.

We are talking about something that is standard the world over here - it isn't rocket science.

Buses should be displaying a route number and destination as standard.

End of story.

macroman

Dublin Coach now rolling out route numbers on all routes too.

300 - Dublin City/Ennis via Limerick (M7 Express)
726 - Dublin Airport/Portlaoise
816 - Portarlington/Kildare

Victor

coylemj wrote: »

Aircoach have a very visible outdoor unit outside T1 and T2, you just need to follow the 'coaches' sign from inside the terminal and you'll find it.

And the foreign visitor will know to look for a random person waiting outdoor unit outside the airport terminal?

Or perhaps he should look for some grey stones or a cork? Because the bus with the "Grey Stones" will get him to Dublin.

coylemj

lxflyer wrote: »

We are talking about something that is standard the world over here - it isn't rocket science.

Buses should be displaying a route number and destination as standard.

End of story.

I agree with the principle but if you arrive at the airport and there is a line of Aircoach buses sitting there and an Aircoach employee on duty, I will rely on what he tells me rather than what's on the display. Outside T1 you often can't see which bus is which because all you can see is the back of several buses, that's why I always ask.

coylemj

Victor wrote: »

And the foreign visitor will know to look for a random person waiting outdoor unit outside the airport terminal?

You mean the random person who just happens to be wearing a jacket with 'Aircoach' clearly visible and standing beside an outdoor unit with a prominent 'Aircoach' sign?

Victor wrote: »

Or perhaps he should look for some grey stones or a cork? Because the bus with the "Grey Stones" will get him to Dublin.

or maybe he can do what tourists the world over do - ask the guy standing there with the coach operator's name on his jacket.

And if he checks the Dublin airport website for transport options under 'buses and coaches', he will read the following...

Aircoach offers services from Dublin Airport to the city centre, South Dublin and Greystones on a 24-hour basis. Its city centre service stops at most of the major hotels in Dublin City and its Greystones service stops at key locations in the Dublin South/North Wicklow area.

http://www.dublinairport.com/gns/to-from-the-airport/by-bus-or-coach.aspx

Victor

coylemj wrote: »

You mean the random person who just happens to be wearing a jacket with 'Aircoach' clearly visible and standing beside an outdoor unit with a prominent 'Aircoach' sign?

But I don't know or want to talk to him. I'm looking for a bus with an icon of grey stones on the side.

or maybe he can do what tourists the world over do - ask the guy standing there with the coach operator's name on his jacket.

Shouldn't have to. Public transport should be as self-explanatory as possible.

city centre

Dublin City

South Dublin

Dublin South

Are these four places the same?

LXFlyer

coylemj wrote: »

I agree with the principle but if you arrive at the airport and there is a line of Aircoach buses sitting there and an Aircoach employee on duty, I will rely on what he tells me rather than what's on the display. Outside T1 you often can't see which bus is which because all you can see is the back of several buses, that's why I always ask.

Well what you do or don't do at the airport frankly is up to you, but it does not mean that the buses should not be displaying a number and destination.

It is a basic requirement that should be implemented by all operators.

This really has to one of the daftest discussions that I've seen here.

devnull

You'll all be pleased to know then, that the Aircoach website has (finally!) been redesigned and refreshed, and now talks about routes by their destination and route number everywhere!

bk

At last, but the site is only ok, certainly not great, could have been much better.

First of all it seems you can still only make bookings before 5pm the day before!!!

Come one Aircoach, GoBE allows you to make bookings an hour in advance, get with the programme.

I wish they went with an overall different site structure. I'd prefer if they had one page per route, with all the details for that route on the one page (timetable, fares, stop locations, etc.) like GoBE. I think such a design makes much more sense from a customers perspective.

A customer will normally only care about one particular route, to get from a to b and will want to find all the information about that route as quickly as possible. It makes no sense to make them click around different sections (Timetables Page, Fare Page, etc.).

On the GoBE site, all the relevant information can be found on one page with one click, on the Aircoach site, is takes 8 clicks to find the same information!!!

Total UIX fail.

And they don't even have maps of the stop locations!!!

The GoBE approach, makes the site act as a good brochure/advertisement for the route, the new Aircoach site is still very bad at actually selling each route and instead is rather pedestrian.

The Quick Booking drop down is also rather poor.

First of all the Leaving From and Going To Drop Downs have far too many options that would be very confusing for tourists. It should instead be designed with the most important options at the top of the list, e.g.:

Dublin Airport
Dublin City Centre
Cork
Belfast

---

all the other dozens of bity stops...........

Look at how badly it is designed at the moment, lets say you want to take Aircoachs now busiest route, Dublin to Cork, you would think that would be pretty easy, but no, take a look.

First of all, which stop should you select from the list of:
Dublin City Centre - Dawson St
Dublin City Centre - O'Connell St
Dublin City Centre - Suffolk St
Dublin City Centre - Westmoreland St

Secondly the Book Ticket box should be more like the one on www.nationalexpress.com which allows you to put in all the details on the first page, without needing to go to a second page and with sensible defaults selected (e.g. todays date and time, Single ticket, etc.). There is plenty of unused space there for it.

Thirdly, when I use the booking box, I'm getting an error message which says:
"There was a problem while using XMLHTTP" though it then disappears and continues to work.

Also on the Timetables page, they weirdly duplicate the 700 and 702 route timetables.

The strange thing is, their brochures tend to be very well designed, pity they can't apply that design to the website too.

So better then what was there before, but still loads to do.

bk

Also some very good news confirmed on the new website:

Aircoach has committed to a further investment of in excess of €3.5m for the delivery of 10 high quality coaches for our Cork – Dublin – Dublin Airport, non-stop express service, with delivery expected towards the end of 2013. These coaches will offer the highest levels of passenger comfort including on-board toilets.

Should make them much more competitive with GoBE and Irish Rail. If they just allowed for same day online bookings, I'd never have a reason to take GoBE again.

devnull

Its by no means perfect, but it's 100x better than what was there before.

The old site had broken links, duplicated pages, out of date information, conflicting information and was a downright mess.

bk

devnull wrote: »

Its by no means perfect, but it's 100x better than what was there before.

It is better, certainly cleaner, but definitely not 100 times better. It really is just the exact same structure of the old site, with the broken links and out of date information cleaned up and a new bit of paint splashed on it.

The UIX design of it is truly awful, actually worse then the old site!!

It is a pity, as with the redesign of the site, they had an opportunity to really do a good job of it and make a proper, high quality advertisement for their services that was easy to use.

I really hope this is just the starting point for the improvement of their website. I fear they now consider it fixed!!!

devnull

The ticket booking interface is not too dis-similar from the old one, with the benefit that you can now can access the booking form (partially) on the side of each page, the old site was painful in that you can only book from the front page, as I said I agree it's not perfect, and it seems to run a little slow which causes the XML error, but I still think it's a vast improvement.

There is a special offer of 24% off all fares to celebrate the launch of the site, see twitter here: https://twitter.com/Aircoach/status/410414772262166529.

I'd be worried if the site would cope with such a load, since it's been slow all morning and this may push it over the edge.

SandyfordGuy

The site is down now

devnull

I'm amazed they launched such an offer when there clearly was performance issues with the site even before the offer was announced. This is very much a rushed launch and the only thing that could make it worse would be to now send an email newsletter out to all their customers as they do from time to time which will put it under even more strain.

The problem now is that site is most likely going to get hammered over and over again by people retrying because of the offer, so it may be struggling for a while now, all of this could have been avoided, if they resolved the performance issues, and had an official launch later in the week rather the same day the site went live.

Honestly, I thought with the new website it would be the start of turning the corner from the horrible mess the last one was, but at least the last one was stable!

SandyfordGuy

I just got a mail advertising it

devnull

Priceless, the response from Aircoach on their Facebook page to two users is also priceless saying that the site is undergoing "Maintenance" rather than admitting the failure.

paddyh117

Oh dear - what a disaster on launch day! can't get on the site - actually tried to book a couple of hours ago before i saw this discount - couldn't book then, can't get near the site now - much fiasco.

SandyfordGuy

the whole thing is an emabarassment for them. They really need to read boards more and to not rush things.

They should get a customer panel like other first companies to work with and offer feedback to avoid things like this.

They are not hard things to catch but clearly some external eyes and views will help spot things and feedback what others may not.

a lot of aircoach issues havw been flagged on here as being likely to happen and proven to be correct and Aircoach should use.such input.from the.well informed people

devnull

Clearly the problem is simple as the server simply cannot cope with the load or the hosting is not adequate for the type of site it is being asked to run. It seems to be Drupal based by the look of it, which shouldn't be a problem itself, but the site would be much more sophisticated technology wise than the old one.

But as I said earlier, this is not something that just happened, the site has been struggling ever since I first clapped eyes on it this morning and the extra load pushed it over the edge and whoever made the decision to push ahead with the promo made a bad call if you ask me, they tried to run before they could walk and paid the price.

SandyfordGuy

they will have to roll back the performance will pick up as people stop using it but it won't fix the problem.

They should save face and admit that an honour the discounts for longer as a gesture of goodwill

devnull

May I apologise on behalf of Aircoach for any inconvenience experienced as a result of our website being temporarily unavailable.

The issues you are experiencing are due to an unprecedented amount of customers attempting to avail of the promotional offer.

We are working towards a resolution of all of these intermittent issues and we hope for the website to be fully operational as soon as possible.

Please be aware that the 24% discount offer will be available for bookings made before 23:59 tomorrow (Wednesday 11th December).

If you are unable to book online you may purchase tickets from the driver when boarding the coach; this applies to all services at all times but please note that fares may be different than those available online..

Just telling people that we're sorry the site is down, not extending the offer, and saying don't worry, you can buy your tickets on-board and pay more, really would make me just want to use the competition.

joegriffinjnr

http://wallys-wanderings.smugmug.com/PlaxtonCoachbuilders/Coaches-and-Single-Deckers/22335812_VPXhCT#!i=2955630851&k=XRRQGVf

One of the new coaches nearly complete.

devnull

I believe that one is actually complete, just needs shipping, registering and decals applied by the looks of it, you may see it before the end of the year, but I guess it will be tight considering they'll be type training etc.

The Aircoach website is still down meanwhile. Even the maintenance message takes a few seconds to load.

SandyfordGuy

getting 503 Server too busy errors now

the cuerentt server is clearly inadequate rather than papering over the cracks for it to break again they should get it changed and to a better host

J_Dublin15

Being someone who works in IT and also Marketing in the past I find the whole shambles of the way it has tuned out as being laughable. It is a classic case of how not to launch a website and why you should never launch a big promotion on day one of launching a new website, but if you are going to launch the promotion (Which I would never advise a client to do unless they are 100% sure the site can cope on the live platform) best give people a few days to book tickets rather than actually encouraging them to all go onto the site to prevent any problems.

It seems clear that nobody properly tested the site on the live environment, they may have done all of the testing in the world on a test environment or a development server, but that counts for nothing if the platform your are about to run the site on is configured differently and the platform is provided by a third party. What should be happening now is that Aircoach should be working with the developers, as I assume they are external, the hosts and anyone else who had a development involvement on getting this resolved.

If the site is really getting a 503 error this means the sever is overloaded, so it's either down to a badly developed website that is not resource efficient, a server which cannot cope with the load, or a hosting package that has some kind of resource throttling on it which needs upgrading. If the problem is with the hosting and it's 24 hours later and the problem is still not resolved, then its time to say goodbye to the host, or if it's the coding it's time to look at why such code is inefficient.

Finally the decision to actually run the promotion when they did, if the site was already struggling was a foolish one and has made what was already a problem a much bigger one. I cannot fathom why someone would make that kind of call in such situation, of course a launch offer may sound good on paper since the company clearly badly needed a new website, but the way it was handled was one of the worst website launches I have ever seen.

And the fact that customers are now being told that because of all the above, they have to pay more for their tickets from the driver because of something that was no fault of their own, is a big own goal from a PR point of view. That kind of thing will drive customers to the competition. The company should offer a gesture of goodwill to customers when this is finally resolves and extend the offer, if the downtime goes on for much longer, they should compensate customers who had to pay higher prices because of the outage.

This is incredibly bad PR for the company, and they should be doing what they can to turn this around. It's even worse from an IT viewpoint. If they don't get this resolved today, I would expect BE/Irish Rail, if they are savvy enough, to take advantage of this and lower their online fares for a few days to woo customers who are forced to pay the much higher on coach rates.

devnull

So having not looked at what was happening all day, I now take a look at the site and find that it either doesn't load or it's slow as can be, and wonder has there really been no progress from the same time yesterday? Clearly so, and the above poster makes some very valid points.

It seems that they've been flooded with complaints on Twitter and on Facebook all day from customers who are getting increasingly more and more angry as the website seems to have gone up and down many times today with many different problems, and they still seem no nearer to fixing the actual problem.

It seems from reading from what must be almost 100 tweets and Facebook messages they moved the site to a new server this afternoon which made an improvement, but when people went to book tickets and paid, they got an error message saying that the reference number could not be emailed to them, which has caused the highest number of complaints, with people obviously being angry that they paid but did not get a ticket.

Then someone made a fateful tweet about the fact that offer was extended until 2pm tomorrow, and wisely (sarcasm) used the line "Subject to availability" which seemed to cause another rush on the site a couple of hours ago below, with the site spewing out errors about "too many connections" and has been down again ever since as even the new server can't cope with the load.

Their competitors must be laughing their heads off.

TheBandicoot

And people want to see shambolic private companies like this getting a foothold in Dublin's city bus service? Lol.

bk

TheBandicoot wrote: »

And people want to see shambolic private companies like this getting a foothold in Dublin's city bus service? Lol.

Right, a shambolic company who has brought a 3 hour service to Cork that runs hourly almost 24 hours a day, almost 4 times as many departures per day as Bus Eireann!!!

Sure, they badly messed up this website rollout, but their service on the whole is excellent and they are now investing 3.5million in the route, introducing 10 brand new coaches to the route over the next month.

I'm often very critical of Aircoach, but they have done far more good then bad. And we also have many other private companies who do almost everything right, Citylink, GoBus, Dublin Coach, etc. All with great websites, that work well, great booking systems, modern, up to date coaches, etc.

Five Lamps

bk wrote: »

Right, a shambolic company who has brought a 3 hour service to Cork that runs hourly almost 24 hours a day, almost 4 times as many departures per day as Bus Eireann!!!

Sure, they badly messed up this website rollout, but their service on the whole is excellent and they are now investing 3.5million in the route, introducing 10 brand new coaches to the route over the next month.

I'm often very critical of Aircoach, but they have done far more good then bad. And we also have many other private companies who do almost everything right, Citylink, GoBus, Dublin Coach, etc. All with great websites, that work well, great booking systems, modern, up to date coaches, etc.

I would always use Aircoach going to the airport over taxis. However, I do think that the service has gone down since launch. The organisation at the airport is a mess and I often see buses going around with no destination display (as I did today).

going back to the route number, the cost of having a route number and destination displayed is zero and makes the service at least look more professional and organised.

devnull

The reason that the Setras do not have a route number or display is because that model was designed exclusively for tours, rather than service work and there was no option to fit destination equipment to it from the manufacturer. I do agree that the Scania centuries that have displays should be set properly and with route numbers though.

The website seems much more stable now, though it seems some people are still not getting tickets all of the time sent to them and GoBe have had a dig at their expense with a post on their Facebook page

"Need a reliable bus service from Cork to Dublin? Book with GoBé Cork where you are guaranteed a website that works offering our best value rates. www.gobe.ie"

I'm not surprised they exploited it.