Worst public transport you've used

end of the road

ClovenHoof wrote: »

Dublin Bus is the worst system I have ever used. It is just a mash up of old services - one on top of the other - and trade union work to rule legacy of nothingness.

It is a completly hopeless and unfixaxble network.

while dublin bus has problems, your description is rather over the top in my view.

ClovenHoof wrote: »

Dublin is screaming out for full privatisation of all bus services.

no, no it really isn't.

Stephen15

end of the road wrote: »

while dublin bus has problems, your description is rather over the top in my view.

It was terrible in the pre real time days but it has improved with real time. I don't understand all the db bashing either maybe it's because I live on a qbc and find the buses to be just as reliable as the luas or the dart.

Zebra3

Israel.

Shambles.

Public transport for five and a half days a week.

That's the effect of letting religious extremists run the show.

n97 mini

It's been a while, but Malta. Rude bus drivers aplenty, crap buses and worse roads.

Wanderer78

Public buses loas, some laugh though, benches for seats and chickens as passengers. I'm not sure they really cared about bird flu

Stephen15

Palermo nice city but awful buses stayed in a seaside town called Mondello about 6 or 7km outside the city centre and it took two buses to get into the cc as the direct bus only ran in summer also all the buses finished at about 9pm at night for some stupid reason and taxis were a ripoff. I liked the fact that the buses had three doors though.

VG31

Stephen15 wrote: »

I liked the fact that the buses had three doors though.

That's fairly common in Europe. Articulated buses can have four doors and even regional buses and coaches have two doors.

Nomis21

Overnight bus from Istanbul to Erzurum in Turkey. Couldn't sleep due to loud Turkish music playing all night that sounded like a never - ending female orgasm...

Nomis21

Overnight bus from Istanbul to Erzurum in Turkey. Couldn't sleep due to loud Turkish music playing all night that sounded like a never - ending female orgasm...

Nomis21

Overnight bus from Istanbul to Erzurum in Turkey. Couldn't sleep due to loud Turkish music playing all night that sounded like a never - ending female orgasm...

Nodster

....least you had music

thesandeman

Looks like it was a multiple orgasm.

BonnieSituation

Dublin's, on the first day back for schools after a holiday.

I'm looking at you Monday 24th April 2017.

magicbastarder

scariest certainly was the bus from granada up into las alpujarras in the sierra nevada. not helped by my choice of seat, first row on the right, so i was looking down over drops of hundreds of metres as the driver did his mad dash up into the mountains - he didn't slow down on blind bends, just gave a few flashes of the headlights to warn oncoming cars.

schemingbohemia

BonnieSituation wrote: »

Dublin's, on the first day back for schools after a holiday.

I'm looking at you Monday 24th April 2017.

Was this on public transport? Was your bus delayed today?

BonnieSituation

schemingbohemia wrote: »

Was this on public transport? Was your bus delayed today?

Yes. Like it is every morning, except those days when there's no schools. Is there a problem with my tongue-in-cheek reference?

Chivito550

Going from Chile to Peru. I had done a cross border trip from Argentina to Chile and we just had to get off our bus, go through immigration etc and then hop back on same bus. That was far too convenient for Chile to Peru however. Instead you had to get a bus in Chile which stopped at a town near the border. From there you paired up with 3-4 complete randommers and jumped into a "collectivo" which essentially is a taxi, which drives you to the border crossing. Then after you cross the border you then board a completely different bus on the Peruvian side. 3 modes of transport instead of one. Utterly dreadful and exhausting but a bit of craic I suppose.

In terms of big first world cities, Dublin and Auckland are as bad as it gets outside the USA.

mikemac2

+1 for Rome.

Ripped seats, graffiti and filthy trains. The express train from the airport is 14 euro and if you skip the fare two stops up the line and get the slow local train it's only 2.60 , they know how to gouge. But similar happens at Gatwick too and probably worldwide

Almost tripping over beggars in the stations, the Roma in Roma are everywhere.

I do consider Dublin Bus to be good, I've no real complaints. DB is a dream to the Bus Eireann service that Galwegians have

Stephen15

mikemac2 wrote: »

+1 for Rome.

Ripped seats, graffiti and filthy trains. The express train from the airport is 14 euro and if you skip the fare two stops up the line and get the slow local train it's only 2.60 , they know how to gouge. But similar happens at Gatwick too and probably worldwide

Almost.

I disagree about Rome it has a shabby but good metro the trains very frequently about every 1 or 2 minutes which something Dublin dosent have. It has a good trams network aswell and the buses are decent enough with three doors for efficent boarding and disembarking. It has cheap subsidised fares 1.50 for any bus, tram, metro or suburban train over a 90 minute period. It might not be on the same level as Berlin, Copenhagen or Amsterdam but its certainly a better network to what we have here in Dublin.

Another thing I like about Italian public transport is the amount of info they give you at a bus stop with a list of all the routes and where they stop like this. Why cant they be like that here is it that DB care more about showing off theyre branding

devnull

The problem with a lot of the public transport info in Rome is it is often wrong, something which was ultra-common in Dublin around the time of Network Direct, for example I was on Metro trains which had maps with stations in the wrong order and the line underneath saying the attractions were at different stops to what they actually were, bus timetables that were replaced months ago and many of the signs that you show were covered in stickers and graffiti so you couldn't read them and the buses are old, with poor maintenance both mechanically and cosmetically

The metro is prone to frequent strikes, lots of dirt, work to rule and long gaps in service which can have you waiting for up to 15-20 minutes then you have about 2 trains in 5 minutes all packed and a similar big gap, clearly you experienced this because you claim there is a train every 1-2 minutes but the timetable says every 7-10 minutes so I can only imagine that you experienced the famed Rome bunching which a colleague who works in the Rome office sees at least two or three times every week and people frequently get irritated by the fact no ticket machines accept cards or notes and no cash machines are nearby so people have to take a huge detour to find an ATM and then back to the station.

The upkeep of infrastructure and cleanliness of the vehicles and on-board information and accuracy at stop information in Ireland is streets ahead of Rome, the age of the vehicles is streets ahead, the comfort of vehicles is streets ahead and there are even less strikes and work to rules in Ireland.

A Rogue Hobo

mikemac2 wrote:

I do consider Dublin Bus to be good, I've no real complaints. DB is a dream to the Bus Eireann service that Galwegians have

+1, having grew up in Dublin and now living in Cork I have a whole new level of appreciation for Dublin Bus. Bus Eireann is woeful. Shocking routes and you pay an arm and a leg for the privilege.

VG31

A Rogue Hobo wrote: »

+1, having grew up in Dublin and now living in Cork I have a whole new level of appreciation for Dublin Bus. Bus Eireann is woeful. Shocking routes and you pay an arm and a leg for the privilege.

It's all relative. Compared to the rest of Ireland Dublin's public transport is good. However compared to London, Berlin, Amsterdam, Munich and most Western European cities Dublin's transport is woeful.

Buses should not be the primary method of transportation in cities like Dublin. I know that in big German cities the main transportation links are the U/S-Bahn and trams. There are buses of course but in most cases they are short routes which connect U-Bahn stations to nearby areas which are not served by trains or trams, or provide links for train stations.

Salzburg only has buses but as it is a small city this is perfectly adequate. Dublin is far too big to rely so heavily on buses. The only other big cities with poor bus reliant transportation in Western Europe I can think of are UK cities like Edinburgh and Manchester.

devnull

VG31 wrote: »

It's all relative. Compared to the rest of Ireland Dublin's public transport is good. However compared to London, Berlin, Amsterdam, Munich and most Western European cities Dublin's transport is woeful.

Buses should not be the primary method of transportation in cities like Dublin. I know that in big German cities the main transportation links are the U/S-Bahn and trams. There are buses of course but in most cases they are short routes which connect U-Bahn stations to nearby areas which are not served by trains or trams, or provide links for train stations.

Exactly.

A former colleague of mine had never used Public Transport outside Ireland and always thought it was great here and was always singing the praises of having such a system, he had to go to the offices in Berlin for a few weeks and he soon saw what a good transport system looks like.

If you consider the fact half the city had a wall through it for many years and was very divided and the system that they now have it's quite an achievement. Also Berlin hbf is an excellent example of a great public transport interchange which is best in class in so many areas in my view.

VG31

mikemac2 wrote: »

I do consider Dublin Bus to be good, I've no real complaints. DB is a dream to the Bus Eireann service that Galwegians have

I really can't understand how anyone can think Dublin Bus is good. Compared to most UK or US cities perhaps, but by European standards Dublin Bus is awful. I can think of a long list of problems.

• Driver interaction with Leap cards - the Leap card was a good step forward but the need to go to the driver to pay completely negates its advantages as it's barely quicker than paying with cash.
• Confusing fare system - it's very difficult to know where exactly the boundaries of the fare zones are. There should be a flat fare.
• Drivers not using centre doors - probably the most ridiculous and easily fixable problem.
• Long cross-city routes which are often unpredictable in their timings.
• Very little orbital routes - the focus on cross-city routes means that it requires a long journey of going in to and out of the city for trips such as Finglas to Clontarf or Drimnagh to Blackrock.
• Very long journey times through the City Centre at peak times.
• Very limited night bus service.
• Bus routes near train stations not timed with train departures.
• No clear maps for bus routes.

devnull wrote: »

A former colleague of mine had never used Public Transport outside Ireland and always thought it was great here and was always singing the praises of having such a system, he had to go to the offices in Berlin for a few weeks and he soon saw what a good transport system looks like.

Berlin certainly isn't unique either, all German cities I've been to have excellent public transport. One thing that really impressed me though in Austria and Germany is that how much better the rural buses are. I visited Berchtesgaden in Germany last year and there was a wide range of bus routes linking the town to all the tourist sites and nearby villages. Some routes weren't that frequent (every hour) but there is a clear timetable and the buses run to it.

A comparable rural area with high-tourists in Ireland is the Killarney region (which is bigger). However there is almost zero public transport and a car is almost vital for travelling around. In contrast, there was no need to have a car in Berchtesgaden.

murphaph

devnull wrote: »

Exactly.

A former colleague of mine had never used Public Transport outside Ireland and always thought it was great here and was always singing the praises of having such a system, he had to go to the offices in Berlin for a few weeks and he soon saw what a good transport system looks like.

If you consider the fact half the city had a wall through it for many years and was very divided and the system that they now have it's quite an achievement. Also Berlin hbf is an excellent example of a great public transport interchange which is best in class in so many areas in my view.

And Hbf is getting better connected all the time. The trams were extended to meet it last year (I use the tram from Hbf daily), the U5 is under construction and will relieve the U55, connecting Hbf with a "proper" U-Bahn. The S21 project is also well advanced with large flyovers being finished off to the north of the station at present. With VDE-8 finished this year it'll also be possible to do central Berlin to central Munich in 3.75 hrs. This competes with air travel as MUC is a 45 minute train ride to MUC Hbf.

mfceiling

Cape Town many years ago. Hi ace vans with bench seats and a lad hanging out the always open sliding side door hawking for fares.

Remember being on one and being amazed that there was about 12 of us crammed into it...until he pulled in and collected another 6 people and basically told us to "budge up". Absolutely rammed in to it!!

4Ad

mfceiling wrote: »

Cape Town many years ago. Hi ace vans with bench seats and a lad hanging out the always open sliding side door hawking for fares.

Remember being on one and being amazed that there was about 12 of us crammed into it...until he pulled in and collected another 6 people and basically told us to "budge up". Absolutely rammed in to it!!

At least the lads touting at the side of the Hi ace would tell you were it was going !
Were you one of the few white faces on board ??

murphaph

mfceiling wrote: »

Cape Town many years ago. Hi ace vans with bench seats and a lad hanging out the always open sliding side door hawking for fares.

Remember being on one and being amazed that there was about 12 of us crammed into it...until he pulled in and collected another 6 people and basically told us to "budge up". Absolutely rammed in to it!!

I've never been to SA but I was told by some former SA colleagues that some of those Hiace owners go so far as to remove the steering wheel and attach a vice grips to the shaft and steer with that, to cram in another passenger. I don't know how true this is!

Polar101

Not sure which would be the worst but I'll list two experiences of "bad" public transport in non-3rd world cities

1) Central trains in East Midlands - spent a week in the area in around 2004, found this train service to be particularly bad. Terrible trains, slow travel and very unreliable timetables. I understand that company isn't around any more, so I hope things have improved over there since?

2) Lisbon - they have a decent metro system and commuter trains, but I found trams to be always overcrowded to the point of not actually getting on one, and the bus service was extremely slow. This probably has something to do with the geography of the city, as it is quite hilly and there are a lot of narrow streets. But still, didn't really feel it was up to scratch with any other European capital I've visited.

Chivito550

Polar101 wrote: »

Not sure which would be the worst but I'll list two experiences of "bad" public transport in non-3rd world cities

1) Central trains in East Midlands - spent a week in the area in around 2004, found this train service to be particularly bad. Terrible trains, slow travel and very unreliable timetables. I understand that company isn't around any more, so I hope things have improved over there since?

2) Lisbon - they have a decent metro system and commuter trains, but I found trams to be always overcrowded to the point of not actually getting on one, and the bus service was extremely slow. This probably has something to do with the geography of the city, as it is quite hilly and there are a lot of narrow streets. But still, didn't really feel it was up to scratch with any other European capital I've visited.

Was in Lisbon recently. Thought it was decent. Streets ahead of Dublin anyway. 4 metro lines which all interconnect with each other. The train to Cascais was quick and reliable. The commuter trains terminate in different stations though which would be annoying if you were living on the Cascais line and wanted to get to somewhere on the Sintra line. Didn't take the trams other than the tourist one. Just walked if it wasn't Metro or train. Definitely nowhere near Central Europe but far from being the worst you'll get.