Why is public transport in Dublin so bad?

XPS_Zero

devnull wrote: »

The Dublin Bus maps were brought out a month or two after the NTA maps were being handed out and publicized, DB then came out and started having street distributors of their own maps and distributing them after many many years of not producing maps.

The same happened with the App, when the NTA started heavily promoting their app, a few weeks later Dublin Bus started heavily promoting their own, it appears an attempt to shore up their commuters with making sure they go to DB direct and not TFI.

The journey planner, that was supposed to happen originally, however I heard from a good source on the grapevine that DB would only use it if certain conditions were met of which the NTA would not agree to therefore Dublin Bus decided to continue using their own planner. That was some while ago. I would guess that the conditions probably involved stripping out every operator apart from LUAS, Irish Rail and Bus Eireann.

The problem is despite being a public transport company, set up to run for the benefit of the public rather than to be self serving, Dublin Bus and probably Irish Rail and Bus Eireann as well, are very protective of their brands and their own interests and they won't sacrifice what is good for them, even if it's better for the transport system as a whole.

The NTA planned to have a single livery before now introduced on all PSO bus services however because of resistance from both the company and the unions this to date has not happened and it's unlikely to happen at all in the near future for services operated by state companies.

Unfortunately that explains a lot of why transport is bad in Ireland, there are lots of parties who will happily look after their own interests rather than looking at the bigger picture of providing a proper integrated public transport system. These parties don't want to become part of a TFL style organisation where TFI has the power, management, staff and unions want to keep the status quo and how things are organised now where they largely get to call the shots at company level, rather than a system like TFL where the regulator calls the shorts and the companies do what they are told.

This kind of s**t annoys me, it is UNACCEPTABLE for one state owned company and another state owned company to say to a stage agency "we won't cooperate" with the person who's meant to be IN CHARGE OF THE BLOODY STATE, the Transport Minister needs to say "listen, the constitution invests me with the executive power of the state, ergo you do exactly what I say, if you refuse my orders you get the sack"

Oh but the head of Irish Rail won't have that "ok, do it or I'm firing you for insubordination (and if the powers not already there to do it, I can guillotine a law through or sign ministerial order to do it very quickly)
Oh but the union will go on strike?
"for one guy? so you're going to go on strike because you're refusing to follow orders? what happens to people in jobs in the real world when they get instructions from the CEO and say 'no'? They get the sack, go ahead the PR on that kind of fight is all on my side baby, go right ahead, pi** off the public shutting down public transport over some organizational change the public sees no problem with where your wages or conditions are not affected so you can't get any sympathy on that front"

The problem is our political class, despite bizarrely having no problems acting like reactionary right wingers in other areas, are TERRIFIED of upsetting these beardos in the PS unions who have been there 500 years and sat on 10,000 boards collecting so much money they forgot what it was like to be a 'working man' around the time Carter was President (yes, some of them are there that long). They need to have some guts, they are the government they have enormous bloody power if they just exercise it, the courts won't get involved in the executive branch managing it's own internal affairs (they've repeatedly refused to do so in many cases including once where the someone tried to get them to intervene in a foreign policy decision) once what they are doing is legal.

This alongside their inability to think long term (ie past the next election) are the twin keys to why this country is so badly managed in every area, including transport.

...and progressive as I consider myself to be, I'm afraid one of the above posters was right, most of the new spending DID go to PS pay ''restoration'' (restoration to a time of fantasy economics and property bubble revenue thats not coming back) and some of it went to a tiny welfare increase. Almost nothing went to front line services. See, the boom years taught our politicians that the Irish want tax cuts and 10ers and 5ers on welfare more than they want long term investment and front line service increases, but they don't get the critical thing that the 08 crash changed that outlook dramatically now (look at the IT poll recently for evidence) they want front line services and infrastructure investment ahead of ps pay hikes and tax cuts. Restoration my arse, how about you have a job it's nearly impossible to be fired from , be bloody happy with that having shielded you from the worst crash since the great depression when many peoples incomes went from 600 a week to 188 jobseekers.

Priorities and attitudes are all wrong

Muahahaha

Agree with your points it shouldnt happen but it does. I think the problem is that of the permanent government, aka senior civil servants/union leaders in decision making roles. These people see the politicians as only temporary pieces on their mantlepieces as they know Ministers change at least once every 5 years and frequently more often with mid-term cabinet reshuffles.

So even if a Minister does get tough with transport bosses they all know that the Minister wont be around for more than a few years while they will still be in their job for decades to come. So if they want to stifle and resist change then they certainly can, and very often do. Ministers know all this so rather than rock the boat in their Department they know it is more prudent to have the senior civil servants co-operative and to try to get at least a few good news stories out of their brief tenure that they can sell to the public as a success to help get re-elected.

When you think about it being a Minister must be one of the few jobs around where all the employees who work for you know full well you wont be around for too long anyway. When you have that type of working structure the authority of the Minister is vastly diminished and it shouldnt be surprising that things are slow to change/improve for the public when the Minister running the department is not actually running it, the senior civil servants are.

XPS_Zero

Muahahaha wrote: »

Agree with your points it shouldnt happen but it does. I think the problem is that of the permanent government, aka senior civil servants/union leaders in decision making roles. These people see the politicians as only temporary pieces on their mantlepieces as they know Ministers change at least once every 5 years and frequently more often with mid-term cabinet reshuffles.

So even if a Minister does get tough with transport bosses they all know that the Minister wont be around for more than a few years while they will still be in their job for decades to come. So if they want to stifle and resist change then they certainly can, and very often do. Ministers know all this so rather than rock the boat in their Department they know it is more prudent to have the senior civil servants co-operative and to try to get at least a few good news stories out of their brief tenure that they can sell to the public as a success to help get re-elected.

When you think about it being a Minister must be one of the few jobs around where all the employees who work for you know full well you wont be around for too long anyway. When you have that type of working structure the authority of the Minister is vastly diminished and it shouldnt be surprising that things are slow to change/improve for the public when the Minister running the department is not actually running it, the senior civil servants are.

Having been involved in politics since I was a kid I can tell you that you're partly right, but not 100%.

The civil servants will follow the ministers orders and will only actively try to obstruct something if they honestly think it's dangerous or insane (except the department of finance who still think you run a countries budget the way you run a persons and think spending increases of any kind are heresy). The process for major policy change is intentionally filled with checks and balances to prevent rash decisions.

If you are a Minister and want policy change x implemented, first you have to draft a memorandum which is circulated to other ministers and departments, basically a thesis on why the policy change is necessary: your argument and data to back it up, it might then have to be changed in light of their comments. If it involves new spending and the finance minister says no (as opposed to his department, which ALWAYS want to say no) unless you convince the Taoiseach to override his decision, the ideas dead. If it gets through, then you present it to cabinet and the govt makes a decision, usually by consensus, it's rare that anyone will force something to a vote or a coalition partner will veto something (though they might if it was not in the programme for govt and they are totally opposed to it)
So now it has govt approval so it goes to the Oireachtas, which means thanks to the whip system which I actually quite like (as opposed to the anarchy alternative in the states where they can't even get budgets passed) it WILL go through, but it will also be examined line by line at committee stage to weed out problems (and provide a forum for special interests to moan about the idea)
Then unless it's blocked in the Senate or referred to referendum by the President (laugh along with me, these theoretical powers have never been used despite several glaring occasions where they should have been)...it passes.

Now thats what you have to do with a major policy shift. Everyone knows ministers don't run departments day to day, their overall job is meant to be the big strategic picture, and that would include things like the issue mentioned above. In that issue they have total power, they can issue a ministerial order to pretty much do whatever they want within the boundaries of their department, unless a law specifically says they can't.

Ministers often moan that they can't change as much as they wanted to but if a civil servant is slowing things down and the minister says "listen, I told you i want that done, you have until the end of the week, get on it" he will do what he's told. Sure he knows the guy he's dealing with will be there 5 years max but he needs to have a good relationship with him.

The problem is that being a cabinet minister in a modern country is a far heavier job than being on the board of directors of a major multinational (and despite us moaning about their pay it pays pittance for the stress and responsibility involved), letters go out in your name with "The minister has directed me to write...." because of a legal set up in how the Ministers and Secretaries Act was established (something I really want to change when my day comes) ...and you have no idea what that letter says, and didn't have anything to do with it. Someone lower level has decided something, because they have to do it that way, you can't LITERALLY decide everything as I said your job is big picture, but it's still your responsibility. If something happens it's not your FAULT per say but it's your responsibility and you have to fix it.
I'll give you an example. In 2006 the Supreme Court rightly struck down our ridiculous age of consent law because it did not allow for a defense of ''honest mistake'' where you genuinely thought someone was over 17. The entire act was struck down and Ireland had no age of consent law in place for a few weeks. The govt of the day in it's new draft wanted to put the new age at 16 which everyone except some FG old timers thought was a decent balance between the countries who have it set too low (12,14) and too high (17/18), so they were bickering over that slowing things down MEANWHILE actual pedos who had raped 12 year olds were applying for release from prison. A major major crises was created, it turned out the courts had sent subtle warnings to the DOJ in the past that this law might be struck down and maybe should be amended, but these officials never bothered telling the justice minister of the day this. Suddenly you have child rapists applying for release, and no current law making sleeping with a 13 year old illegal, the pressure on the govt was so grave they were nearly writing off the 2007 election if these guys got out under their watch.

Now whats my point in saying all this? Say you're a Taoiseach who has a big policy change agenda, you want to pick a team of the best possible people for each dept. The constitution even allows you to pick two people from any walk of life you want and stick them in the cabinet, so you could pick two experts bursting with great ideas. But you're limited by political considerations to also factor in not just how good they might be but:

• Regional Balance

• Each faction in the party so like if you're Bertie you gotta pick some of the conservative pack and some of the pack that would be in a labour party if Ireland was like the rest of Europe in an easy left right split.
• "It's x's turn"
• "y is a good media performer" (ie he's great speaking the FF or FG line but may not be a good minister)

Up to half the time, many a civil servant has told me the guy they appoint gets the complete shock of his life just with the DAY TO DAY stuff never mind a major crises like that ^ and they just can't handle it, the pressure is too much, and to quote one "some of them got elected because they are great at telling people what they want to hear, but they've no brains for strategic or tactical thinking, they can't solve problems or manage anything" so their civil servants become baby sitters. Civil servants by nature are conservative creatures who just want moderation, everything ticking over.
So if you get a minister who is not up to it they tell him to take the moderate tack, if you get one who is an aggressive reformer like a Mary Harney, Donnagh O'Malley, Noel Browne etc they'll tell them "oh be careful now such and such might happen" they'll try to scare them into putting off what they were gonna do, now the good ones say "let me worry about the political consequences you just do what I ask" but now you see most will either be too incompetent and their civil servant has to basically spoon feed them OR they'll be aggressive then back down when the civil servant paints a picture of doom and gloom.


Look at Thatcher, Reagan, LBJ and FDR, they showed that aggressive political leadership with a clear vision of what it wants and the guts to really push it can get through all the red tape, we've just never really had a leader like that. Most of our ministers have no ideology whatsoever they just love having the perks and the title and everyone sycophanticly groveling at them (it's sad to watch, even people you have respect for go to bits over any famous face a pop star or minister they get this goofy smile and say silly things you know they'll facepalm thinking about later) they love that. Having ideas and whatnot might annoy some interest group who might cost you your job in reshuffle (Bertie stabbed one of his own ministers in the back to stop a strike once) So we don't have many leaders with either right or left wing ideology we've a few but mostly chancers who are ex lawyers or GAA players or teachers, nobody really remarkable or visionary often people who just fell into it.

We've never had an LBJ or FDR or Reagan, Lemass was closest we came, I think it's one of the reasons were behind the rest of Europe in nearly every metric.

dublinman1990

^^^^^^

That was very well said. Great post.

A civil servant would always have the role of sucking up or persuading a minister if they were acting like lapdogs to them when in government.

These civil servants have five years in total to make an opportunity to make living in this country that little bit better for everybody. But if they don't do their job properly; the present ministers don't get re-elected in the next election those same civil servants are probably already out of their own ability in achieving what is asked by their own minister or by the electorate. I'm saying this because almost every result you will get in this country from people's own expectations will end up with some element of disappointment in their lives. This disappointment of not getting what you asked for by making a huge difference to your own country then gets thrown out the window or gets compromises because of reasons unknown to the majority while being served under ones own rules. It happens in Ireland all the time because you will get a small cohort of people here who are going to politicians, whether they are local or national ones, to make a small gain to improve their lives just for themselves at the expense of everybody else's own ideals.

Other people's ideas get either rejected completely by the CS or it will get implemented but it will be a long & crippling time to make the work complete to become reality in the real world.

The job of transport projects in Dublin should ideally be devolved to the publicly elected Dublin Mayor if & when that will ever get implemented in time.

But; will there be an appetite in government to get this priority sorted. Central government probably wouldn't have the answers to that. The individual ministers wouldn't be the ones to answer that question either. Those types of answers will always lie the with the word of their own advisors or civil servants in their government departments. They are the ones that have the notion of the be all & end all to how meaningful projects get made in this country.

Stephen15

I was reading there about Darts being delayed because of swans on the line surely it wouldnta cause too much damage if they were to be hit.

salmocab

Stephen15 wrote: »

I was reading there about Darts being delayed because of swans on the line surely it wouldnta cause too much damage if they were to be hit.

swans are massive no driver wants to risk that coming in his windscreen.

Bray Head

There have been four parties in or supporting government since 2008, and quite a few independents.

They have all de-prioritised investment in public transport. Both through the bust in favour of maintaining welfare payments, and now that things are improving, in favour of cutting income taxes.

The composition of public infrastructure spending has been questionable too. There has been a preference for a large number of relatively small projects too (Luas Cross City, Gort/Tuam) that makes it look like spending is being spread evenly across modes and constituencies.

Please stop blaming civil servants for what is quite clearly a political consensus to under-invest in public transport.

markpb

XPS_Zero wrote:

Having been involved in politics since I was a kid I can tell you that you're partly right, but not 100%.

I can't thank your post enough. It's a great insight.

end of the road

XPS_Zero wrote: »

This kind of s**t annoys me, it is UNACCEPTABLE for one state owned company and another state owned company to say to a stage agency "we won't cooperate" with the person who's meant to be IN CHARGE OF THE BLOODY STATE, the Transport Minister needs to say "listen, the constitution invests me with the executive power of the state, ergo you do exactly what I say, if you refuse my orders you get the sack"

Oh but the head of Irish Rail won't have that "ok, do it or I'm firing you for insubordination (and if the powers not already there to do it, I can guillotine a law through or sign ministerial order to do it very quickly)
Oh but the union will go on strike?
"for one guy? so you're going to go on strike because you're refusing to follow orders? what happens to people in jobs in the real world when they get instructions from the CEO and say 'no'? They get the sack, go ahead the PR on that kind of fight is all on my side baby, go right ahead, pi** off the public shutting down public transport over some organizational change the public sees no problem with where your wages or conditions are not affected so you can't get any sympathy on that front"

The problem is our political class, despite bizarrely having no problems acting like reactionary right wingers in other areas, are TERRIFIED of upsetting these beardos in the PS unions who have been there 500 years and sat on 10,000 boards collecting so much money they forgot what it was like to be a 'working man' around the time Carter was President (yes, some of them are there that long). They need to have some guts, they are the government they have enormous bloody power if they just exercise it, the courts won't get involved in the executive branch managing it's own internal affairs (they've repeatedly refused to do so in many cases including once where the someone tried to get them to intervene in a foreign policy decision) once what they are doing is legal.

This alongside their inability to think long term (ie past the next election) are the twin keys to why this country is so badly managed in every area, including transport.

...and progressive as I consider myself to be, I'm afraid one of the above posters was right, most of the new spending DID go to PS pay ''restoration'' (restoration to a time of fantasy economics and property bubble revenue thats not coming back) and some of it went to a tiny welfare increase. Almost nothing went to front line services. See, the boom years taught our politicians that the Irish want tax cuts and 10ers and 5ers on welfare more than they want long term investment and front line service increases, but they don't get the critical thing that the 08 crash changed that outlook dramatically now (look at the IT poll recently for evidence) they want front line services and infrastructure investment ahead of ps pay hikes and tax cuts. Restoration my arse, how about you have a job it's nearly impossible to be fired from , be bloody happy with that having shielded you from the worst crash since the great depression when many peoples incomes went from 600 a week to 188 jobseekers.

Priorities and attitudes are all wrong

okay, lets get a fact or 2 in here. the government aren't going to do anything that would lead to a long term shut down of public transport because they aren't that thick. even if they're was support for it, as a user i don't see why i should be disrupted so a minister or the NTA or company managers can look to be tough just because. i don't mind for a strike as i know they're is a genuine issue and the strike would only be happening as a last resort.
unless people are living for 500 years now then they're is nobody in the public service who are there that long.

Stephen15

end of the road wrote: »

okay, lets get a fact or 2 in here. the government aren't going to do anything that would lead to a long term shut down of public transport because they aren't that thick. even if they're was support for it, as a user i don't see why i should be disrupted so a minister or the NTA or company managers can look to be tough just because. i don't mind for a strike as i know they're is a genuine issue and the strike would only be happening as a last resort.
unless people are living for 500 years now then they're is nobody in the public service who are there that long.

I could argue with you about strikes but I won't go down that road today but changing operator wouldn't nessecarily lead to a long term shutdown of public transport for example when London Transport became TFL there was no shutdown or even when CIE became IE/BE/DB.

Bray Head

Strikes are highly disruptive when you have a small group of homogenous workers in a concentrated industry.

It makes no difference as to whether the industry is publically or privately owned.

A co-ordinated strike in privately-owned power stations would be very disruptive for example.

thomasj

This might help the folks in Tallaght and South Dublin
http://www.thejournal.ie/hellfire-cable-car-3133884-Dec2016/?utm_source=shortlink

Thinkingaboutit

thomasj wrote: »

This might help the folks in Tallaght and South Dublin
http://www.thejournal.ie/hellfire-cable-car-3133884-Dec2016/?utm_source=shortlink

Not too keen seeing people in their pyjamases at four o'clock, Sunday afternoon in the Dublin mountains. :pac:

Stephen15

Thinkingaboutit wrote: »

Not too keen seeing people in their pyjamases at four o'clock, Sunday afternoon in the Dublin mountains. :pac:

Tbh I'd love to see a hyperloop between Finglas and The Mun

magicbastarder

i know it's not a normal day, but i had to swing into the city centre in the car earlier on an errand. i'd say at least 75% of the vehicles in the bus lanes should not have been there, and you could see it was slowing down the buses.
to be fair, there were a couple of examples of bad lane design too - a bus lane ending, which meant people were returning to the left lane, but then the bus lane reappearing again after about 100m, which left them trying to merge back into heavy traffic or just going for broke down the bus lane.

Sam Russell

Perhaps Dublin Bus could fit cameras into their buses to aid prosecution of car drivers in the bus lane when they should not be.

CramCycle

Sam Russell wrote: »

Perhaps Dublin Bus could fit cameras into their buses to aid prosecution of car drivers in the bus lane when they should not be.

They have but are only used when requested by the Gardai. Also tend to go missing quite a bit from evlxperience when a complaint is made about a driver. Complete coincidence. It is not the job of DB drivers to police the streets although I am sure there could be a workaround as part of the tender for certain routes.

magicbastarder

touches a little on public transport in dublin:

https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/a-tale-of-new-cities-1.3162783

brokenarms

CramCycle wrote: »

They have but are only used when requested by the Gardai. Also tend to go missing quite a bit from evlxperience when a complaint is made about a driver. Complete coincidence. It is not the job of DB drivers to police the streets although I am sure there could be a workaround as part of the tender for certain routes.

The control centre has literally 100s of cameras all around Dublin. The Garda have access to even more.

If they wanted to dispatch traffic Garda to offenders, all it would take is one person in front of a screen.

Check out the video.

http://www.dublinbus.ie/CentralControl/

AndrewJRenko

brokenarms wrote: »

If they wanted to dispatch traffic Garda to offenders, all it would take is one person in front of a screen.

One person at the screen, and a couple of thousand more traffic garda to go after the offenders. 82% of motorists break speed limits. Every Garda in the country could spend their full shift writing speeding tickets, and it would still only be a drop in the ocean on the amount of speeding going on. That's before you even think about red light jumpers or phone use or whatever.

brokenarms

AndrewJRenko wrote: »

One person at the screen, and a couple of thousand more traffic garda to go after the offenders. 82% of motorists break speed limits. Every Garda in the country could spend their full shift writing speeding tickets, and it would still only be a drop in the ocean on the amount of speeding going on. That's before you even think about red light jumpers or phone use or whatever.

It was in reference to "why should drivers do it".

My point was, they dont need drivers or cams on buses to find out real time offenders.

They have it all recorded anyway.

For instance. The link posted here about cars using the right turn onto eden quey from the bridge.

liamog

AndrewJRenko wrote: »

One person at the screen, and a couple of thousand more traffic garda to go after the offenders. 82% of motorists break speed limits. Every Garda in the country could spend their full shift writing speeding tickets, and it would still only be a drop in the ocean on the amount of speeding going on. That's before you even think about red light jumpers or phone use or whatever.

If 82% of drivers are speeding and we don't have mass carnage on the road, maybe it's time to update some of the limits.

I can really feel the difference in South Dublin County Council where distributor roads with a design speed of 60 are limited to 50. I pay more attention to my speed than on safe driving.

Speed limits are necessary, but road design should naturally enforce a limit by making the driver feel unsafe to drive at higher speeds.

AndrewJRenko

liamog wrote: »

If 82% of drivers are speeding and we don't have mass carnage on the road, maybe it's time to update some of the limits.

3 or 4 people killed each week on our roads, and the same again seriously injured. That's pretty serious carnage for me.

But I do agree with you about road design to enforce speed limits. SDCC were very influential in developing the DMURS manual which sets out this approach, so it's good to hear that they are putting it into action effectively.

liamog

I often wonder if the bus lane design we use makes distributor roads worse.

There's a good example in Scotland where they changed a dual carriageway to have dedicated bus lanes on one side and a two way road on the other.

https://www.google.ie/maps/@55.8620473,-4.3127002,3a,75y,318.8h,97.27t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1stuf8SeAKJQweIyC678CCQA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?hl=en

People naturally go slower on single carriageway roads, and it reduces bus lane encroachment.

L1011

AndrewJRenko wrote: »

3 or 4 people killed each week on our roads, and the same again seriously injured. That's pretty serious carnage for me.

How many due to speeding? Not a lot.

The motorway speed limit here is below average for Europe - we need to stop looking at the UK for everything. Backward insular bunch.

Stephen15

L1011 wrote: »

How many due to speeding? Not a lot.

The motorway speed limit here is below average for Europe - we need to stop looking at the UK for everything. Backward insular bunch.

That is true. While I do think the bus lane idea is good for other reasons than speed limit. Motorway limits here and in the UK are far too low. On most the continent the motorway speed limit is 130 or 140kmph. Accidents should not happen on motorways anyway. The majority of accidents which do happen on motorways are fender benders which if you pay attention to the road will not happen and due to Ireland's compo culture they require people to be cut out of the wreck wearing neck braces.

Bray Head

Very few motorways on the continent where you can drive 140kph.

The 70mph speed limit in the UK probably makes sense given how so many of their motorways are congested. Higher average speeds when you are close to capacity are more likely to need to snarl-ups.

Most of the Irish motorway network is vastly under capacity.

AndrewJRenko

L1011 wrote: »

How many due to speeding? Not a lot.

Speed is one of the top three causes of road deaths. Check the reports on the RSA website.

In fairness, motorways are generally fairly safe places, and don't get large numbers of collisions. But when they do happen, the impacts can be pretty serious given the speeds involved.