Dublin Buses "Not in Service"

oppenheimer1

I'm wondering if anyone here will be able to shed any light on this. Over the past while I've noticed buses displaying not in service notices, whilst carrying passengers. I was waiting for a bus today and one of these buses pulled up 20m away from the stop let off a few passengers and drove off, leaving 10 of us in the cold to wait for the next bus some 10mins later.


The bus wasn't full either, less than half of the seats were occupied. This was not in an area with an antisocial behaviour problem too.


Any ideas?

LXFlyer

Sometimes when a bus is running significantly late, controllers will instruct a driver to operate in set down mode and display "out of service" in an effort to get the bus and driver back on schedule.

This usually only happens where other alternatives exist.

Vahevala

I love how Dublin Bus claim today is a normal service day, it was anything but this morning :mad::(

AlekSmart

lxflyer wrote: »

Sometimes when a bus is running significantly late, controllers will instruct a driver to operate in set down mode and display "out of service" in an effort to get the bus and driver back on schedule.

This usually only happens where other alternatives exist.

One of my pet hates :mad:

It is,IMO,a self damaging carry-on,which eventually rebounds on the structure of those routes where it is being condoned.

Route regulation,is an established feature of all urban-transport bus services,and usually involves either truncating routes or deleting journeys to allow the driver and bus to regain it's scheduled place as soon as practicable.

If a late running service is not regulated as soon as practicable,it can snowball on through the entire rota,until at some point the situation has to be addressed.

The long established practice remains for the late running duty to transfer its passengers to a following or alternative bus,and then proceed OUT-OF-SERVICE to a point where it regains the timetable,then re-enter revenue service.

OUT-OF-SERVICE means just that....It should NOT be used when operating with passengers.
An alternative Destination Display of SET-DOWN-ONLY should be introduced to cover this growing practice.

One of the major issues surrounding the regulation of BAC services is that historically there has not been any desire to short-work or truncate routes to allow the busier sections of the Central City to be served at peak times.

A trip on London Bus services at any peak time,will reveal a significant amount of "Curtailments" including one's which are "On the Fly",ie: the decision is taken to curtail the route while it is operating the original journey and announced over the "I-Bus" P/A system only....something which only occurrs in Dublin if a relief driver does not appear.

Devising and implementing a set of short-working destinations on most X-City routes would significantly improve operational efficiency and offer a better overall service on the busiest stretches of routes.

Some examples could be ......4 & 7 To or From Blackrock to Ballymun/Sallynoggin.

11.Clonskeagh-Drumcondra Station
13 Ballymun-Thomas Street. and so on and so forth ......this sort of routing would,at peak times maintain a level of service which is not currently available under the OOS practice.

Sam Russell

I've got used to OOS busses, lights out, going down O'Connel street at 5pm, presumably the busiest time.

Surely busses should always be 'on revenue' with appropriate routes devised to cover to and from depots. That is the way aircraft run - always looking for passengers.

LeinsterDub

Don't you know buses are now entering service as opposed to out of service. I love the spin of it

LXFlyer

Sam Russell wrote: »

I've got used to OOS busses, lights out, going down O'Connel street at 5pm, presumably the busiest time.

Surely busses should always be 'on revenue' with appropriate routes devised to cover to and from depots. That is the way aircraft run - always looking for passengers.

They are the peak extras coming down from Broadstone/Phibsboro to Merrion Square to enter service on the Lucan QBC routes.

Putting buses in service to/from depots would have serious implications regarding time. You would have to allow extra time to do the journey, and given driver hours are restricted by law, that could mean having to do less trips as a result.

You are always going to have a certain amount of dead running in any transport service - even airlines have it from time to time.

Five Lamps

lxflyer wrote: »

Sometimes when a bus is running significantly late, controllers will instruct a driver to operate in set down mode and display "out of service" in an effort to get the bus and driver back on schedule.

This usually only happens where other alternatives exist.

Is this true?

If it, why then is the following allowed to happen. Recently, I saw two 83s on Wexford St. at the same stop both with only a few people on board each. Would it not make sense to move passengers from one bus to the other and then hold one bus for, say, 10 minutes giving the public a better schedule.

LXFlyer

Five Lamps wrote: »

Is this true?

If it, why then is the following allowed to happen. Recently, I saw two 83s on Wexford St. at the same stop both with only a few people on board each. Would it not make sense to move passengers from one bus to the other and then hold one bus for, say, 10 minutes giving the public a better schedule.

I am hardly going to post it if it's not true!!

I would expect in time that more regulation rather than less will happen so that situations such as the one you cite above don't happen.

Joshycat

Five Lamps wrote: »

Is this true?

If it, why then is the following allowed to happen. Recently, I saw two 83s on Wexford St. at the same stop both with only a few people on board each. Would it not make sense to move passengers from one bus to the other and then hold one bus for, say, 10 minutes giving the public a better schedule.

This does happen sometimes if one bus catches up with another and there are only a few people on board each bus then the passengers from one bus will be moved to the other and sometimes if one bus is only a few minutes behind another the other bus will be instructed to wait so the other bus can catch up and transfer passengers.However,the bus which gets rid of it's passengers doesn't wait as you suggested it instead normally then goes out of service

GTE

It sounds like a mountain out of a molehill more than anything. It should be easy for them to implement a set down only display text setting but it is by no means something they have to do.

If the out of service action is a last resort, chances are that any waiting passengers would have been serviced by a following bus (timetable speaking) so feck all point in asking that late bus to transfer passengers and belt up the road with out of service signs on to meet up with its timetable again as it only delays the current passengers. At least the way they do it now, the passengers on the bus get back on time, hopefully.

AlekSmart

bbk wrote: »

It sounds like a mountain out of a molehill more than anything. It should be easy for them to implement a set down only display text setting but it is by no means something they have to do.

If the out of service action is a last resort, chances are that any waiting passengers would have been serviced by a following bus (timetable speaking) so feck all point in asking that late bus to transfer passengers and belt up the road with out of service signs on to meet up with its timetable again as it only delays the current passengers. At least the way they do it now, the passengers on the bus get back on time, hopefully.

The problem with all of this OOS'ing whilst sorta,kinda half in service is that the effected journey is recorded as operating normally.

Somewhat later,in some remote darkened office suite,when the coneheads sit around the table to decide which routes to improve and which to dump,they will look at the stats,and one important one will be revenue and/or passenger numbers.

So,on the one hand they will see a route which has had all it's scheduled journeys operate "Normally" but with these journeys carrying only a fraction of their capacity....result....the cone-heads assume,from the stats, that there is little or no demand for the level of service on the route.

In reality,as the OP outlines,there are significant numbers of people left to wait (or walk,or cycle,or drive).

Schedules which have regular late running have problems,and these will NOT be addressed by twittery such as OOS running in half-service..it is classic Admiral Nelson stuff...telescope held firmly to the blind eye...nothing to be seen....:rolleyes:

bk

It seems to me that people seem to be ignoring the root cause of this problem. DB's awful dwell times.

If DB had more double or even better triple door buses and actually used them and if they had European/Luas style onboard ticketing and a non broken leap card implementation, then dwell times wouldn't suck so badly and they wouldn't need such set down only buses.

After all think, of it, if the bus stops at every stop to leave people off anyway, if you had a bus service more like what you see in Poland, then it would be just as quick to board passengers at the same time.

cdebru

bk wrote: »

It seems to me that people seem to be ignoring the root cause of this problem. DB's awful dwell times.

If DB had more double or even better triple door buses and actually used them and if they had European/Luas style onboard ticketing and a non broken leap card implementation, then dwell times wouldn't suck so badly and they wouldn't need such set down only buses.

After all think, of it, if the bus stops at every stop to leave people off anyway, if you had a bus service more like what you see in Poland, then it would be just as quick to board passengers at the same time.

Partially true but it presumes the bus would be stopping at every stop to set down passengers which is not the case.
However improved dwell times may mean the the bus wasn't late in the first place.

cdebru

AlekSmart wrote: »

The problem with all of this OOS'ing whilst sorta,kinda half in service is that the effected journey is recorded as operating normally.

Somewhat later,in some remote darkened office suite,when the coneheads sit around the table to decide which routes to improve and which to dump,they will look at the stats,and one important one will be revenue and/or passenger numbers.

So,on the one hand they will see a route which has had all it's scheduled journeys operate "Normally" but with these journeys carrying only a fraction of their capacity....result....the cone-heads assume,from the stats, that there is little or no demand for the level of service on the route.

In reality,as the OP outlines,there are significant numbers of people left to wait (or walk,or cycle,or drive).

Schedules which have regular late running have problems,and these will NOT be addressed by twittery such as OOS running in half-service..it is classic Admiral Nelson stuff...telescope held firmly to the blind eye...nothing to be seen....:rolleyes:

Completely true however the problem is the slowness to address timetabling issues, unfortunately people are trying to help by not leaving people stuck waiting for buses that won't operate but in the process they also facilitate management in not addressing the problem and ultimately may make the problem worse by creating a situation where cuts to services can be justified on paper.

corktina

Five Lamps wrote: »

Is this true?

If it, why then is the following allowed to happen. Recently, I saw two 83s on Wexford St. at the same stop both with only a few people on board each. Would it not make sense to move passengers from one bus to the other and then hold one bus for, say, 10 minutes giving the public a better schedule.

transferring passengers takes time.
The driver of the bus held for 10 minutes may as a result have to be replaced later on when his hours run out,
there are loads of reasons why this doesn't happen.

AlekSmart

bk wrote: »

It seems to me that people seem to be ignoring the root cause of this problem. DB's awful dwell times.

If DB had more double or even better triple door buses and actually used them and if they had European/Luas style onboard ticketing and a non broken leap card implementation, then dwell times wouldn't suck so badly and they wouldn't need such set down only buses.

After all think, of it, if the bus stops at every stop to leave people off anyway, if you had a bus service more like what you see in Poland, then it would be just as quick to board passengers at the same time.

Added to this is the significant over-provision of Bus Stops,which while not an issue in a properly supervised and regulated system,IS a major one in what passes for a regulated system in Ireland.

Our Agencies of State see fit to devote considerable administrative energies into Jesuitical solutions to a non-existant problem,eg: The Art-Nouveau Bus Stop Poles on St Stephens Green,whilst these same Agencies totally ignore the warlike situations further along the routes....Nassau St,Suffolk Street,Westmoreland Street etc.

I wonder would it take a Freedom of Information request to elicit just how much Administrative Resources were expended on St Stephens Green,whilst the same jinnet's gaze with detachment at the other locations,unable to fathom whats wrong,much less do anything about it.

FFS,the combined resources of Dublin City Council,the RSA,NTA Gardai et al,cannot even manage to have functional Public Lighting at the VERY busy Westmoreland Express Coach stops,which sees the customer base left in stygian blackness trying to keep their baggage safe from circling predators....:rolleyes:

Carlos Orange

lxflyer wrote: »

You are always going to have a certain amount of dead running in any transport service - even airlines have it from time to time.

A certain amount but you probably don't often see 3 or 4 out of service airplanes fly past while you are waiting at the side of the road during peak hours.

LXFlyer

psinno wrote: »

A certain amount but you probably don't often see 3 or 4 out of service airplanes fly past while you are waiting at the side of the road during peak hours.

Aircraft are generally based at airports.

Buses are based at depots not termini.

In order to operate a bus service efficiently and maintain driver hours within legal limits as per the EU Working Time Directive you are going to have to have dead running.

Rostering a bus service is now an exceptionally convoluted process - far more difficult than people seem to think.

Five Lamps

corktina wrote: »

transferring passengers takes time.
The driver of the bus held for 10 minutes may as a result have to be replaced later on when his hours run out,
there are loads of reasons why this doesn't happen.

Bus with 20 passengers wouldn't take 10 min to transfer a bus parked in front of them. It's less of an inconvenience to the travelling public than busses arriving bunched together or going "express" to make up time.

cdebru

psinno wrote: »

A certain amount but you probably don't often see 3 or 4 out of service airplanes fly past while you are waiting at the side of the road during peak hours.

Well you would need incredibly good eyesight to know whether the planes were in service or not.

It has already been explained those buses are making their way to various termini to cater for evening peak travel. The alternative would be to park them in town for 4 or 5 hours and block up congested streets just so you wouldn't be upset by seeing them move from depot to start point.

cdebru

Five Lamps wrote: »

Is this true?

If it, why then is the following allowed to happen. Recently, I saw two 83s on Wexford St. at the same stop both with only a few people on board each. Would it not make sense to move passengers from one bus to the other and then hold one bus for, say, 10 minutes giving the public a better schedule.

In an ideal world yes it would make perfect sense presuming that both buses are not actually running late, and holding one back will just increase its lateness.
2 depending on the time of day ( school finishing) that both buses won't be needed when they get further up the road.
3 that holding one of the buses will not mean it ends up running late and possibly both of them have to be regulated on the return journey.

It is easy to make suggestions and presume what you consider the sensible option is not done because the people making the decisions arent as sensible as you but the reality is you need an awful lot more information than 2 buses are together to figure out what if anything should be the sensible thing to do.

LXFlyer

psinno wrote: »

When is evening peak travel? I used to see this fairly regularly around 6. 4-5 hours would put peak evening travel at about 10:30pm.

You will start seeing buses go back to the depot after 6. Those drivers would have started work from 06:30 onwards in the morning, drive out of service to the outer termini to commence service, then after several hours driving they will break, and then return around 15:30/16:00 and then have to finish within 12 hours of starting to be within the legal maximum driving hours, hence you will see them out of service to the depot.

These sort of duties supplement the basic service that is out on the road all day - without them the bus service would not work. They are designed to maximise capacity in the direction of peak travel flow - inbound in the morning and outbound in the evening.