Dublin bus capacity issues off peak

LXFlyer

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

So who is managing these services?

I'll repeat myself - The NTA are now responsible for setting the frequency levels on all routes.

Dublin Bus have to roster drivers/buses based on that.

Clearly there will be discussions between the two, but the NTA are now responsible for setting the service levels.

antoinolachtnai

lxflyer wrote: »

I'll repeat myself - The NTA are now responsible for setting the frequency levels on all routes.

Dublin Bus have to roster drivers/buses based on that.

what I am hearing is that Dublin Bus arent taking responsibility for managing the routes.

(Not that they ever really did.)

It is great to have someone to blame for problems.

The only way to solve this that I can see is to render the routes and get new management in.

devnull

The NTA are doing that, they recently had a tender out for a consulting firm to re-design the bus network following the commencement of Cross City LUAS services which will involve a re-design of the network by the NTA.

LXFlyer

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

what I am hearing is that Dublin Bus arent taking responsibility for managing the routes.

(Not that they ever really did.)

It is great to have someone to blame for problems.

The only way to solve this that I can see is to render the routes and get new management in.

I'm really not sure what your problem is with this.

The objective all along was that the NTA take over the management of the PSO network from the operators in the same way as TfL did in London, taking over responsibility for network design, fares and service specification and that the operators just become that - operators.

As I've already mentioned - the NTA have hired consultants to review the Dublin City PSO bus network over the course of the summer, bearing in mind the changes that LUAS Cross-City may require.

It also reduces the power of the unions somewhat in this regard.

antoinolachtnai

lxflyer wrote: »

I'm really not sure what your problem is with this.

The objective all along was that the NTA take over the management of the PSO network from the operators in the same way as TfL did in London, taking over responsibility for network design, fares and service specification and that the operators just become that - operators.

Managing a route is not the same as managing a network.

Blame blame blame. It is crap. Thousands of hours of labour are going to waste every week and we are paying for it.

LXFlyer

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

Managing a route is not the same as managing a network.

Blame blame blame. It is crap. Thousands of hours of labour are going to waste every week and we are paying for it.

Listen - please stop your somewhat sarcastic tone with me - I've nothing to do with Dublin Bus - my only connection is as a customer.

If you have hard evidence of wastage why not go to the Oireachtas Committee on Transport or the NTA with your concerns. But I suspect it will need to be more than a back of the envelope calculation.

As I said before - I'm sure there are certainly more efficiencies to be gained.

antoinolachtnai

It's not a back of the envelope calculation.

It's a plain fact.

2500 drivers. 850 buses.

If you can explain a different way of doing the long division can you please put your idea forward.

There is this mad idea going around that there is a secret religion that knows mystic spells to run a bus company in Dublin and that only the Dublin Bus priesthood has access to them.

This is complete rubbish. Dublin Bus has no idea what it is doing. The people involved are leveraging political power to keep themselves in cushy jobs.

LXFlyer

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

It's not a back of the envelope calculation.

It's a plain fact.

2500 drivers. 850 buses.

If you can explain a different way of doing the long division can you please put your idea forward.

There is this mad idea going around that there is a secret religion that knows mystic spells to run a bus company in Dublin and that only the Dublin Bus priesthood has access to them.

This is complete rubbish. Dublin Bus has no idea what it is doing. The people involved are leveraging political power to keep themselves in cushy jobs.

Well the devil will always in the detail - I don't have access to DB internal rosters but I suspect you would need to go through a lot of them to back up such a claim,
rather than one simple line like that. But I suspect they would view those as commercially sensitive information.

As for other operators we will see what happens in due course when the routes finally get tendered out. Given we've still not even got the first round of tendering completed yet, I'm not going to hold my breath.

No one is suggesting that DB are paragons of virtue, and there are very many things that could (and should) be done better, particularly from my perspective in terms of customer information, but I do think you're going a bit over the top - there seems to some underlying bitterness on your part reading the tone of your posts. Maybe cool down a little?

I'll say it again - you may well have a point re inefficiencies, but it is a lot easier to sort that kind of thing out in a single operator route with a small number of vehicles than in a large organisation like DB which are heavily unionised with agreed negotiated work practices. Just look at the UK private train operating companies virtually weekly battles with the RMT.

But all of this is going somewhat off into a wider debate.

Back to the OP and the problem with the 39a - the bottom line is that the 39A clearly needs a new evening schedule with increased frequency to every 12-15 minutes - that may or may not be deliverable using the existing resources - I don't know. But the current frequency is not fit for purpose.

antoinolachtnai

Everyone is running scared of thinking analytically about the problem.

You can look at rosters all you want, but 2500 drivers to run 850 buses leaves loads of slack off-peak.

I'll say it again - you may well have a point re inefficiencies, but it is a lot easier to sort that kind of thing out in a single operator route with a small number of vehicles than in a large organisation like DB which are heavily unionised with agreed negotiated work practices.

That's the 'witch doctor' line of argument again. It's a bus company, not a rocket factory.

Just look at the UK private train operating companies virtually weekly battles with the RMT.

Trains are quite a different thing from buses. And there are very few people working less than 30 hours a week on UK trains.

For sure, these routes need more frequency. But they're not going to get it. I am just explaining why.

n97 mini

I can't say I know much about these things but I am more inclined to believe a lad who runs a successful private bus company in Dublin of all places over a lad who names himself after a Ford Mondeo trim level. Sorry if I offended anyone!

LXFlyer

n97 mini wrote: »

I can't say I know much about these things but I am more inclined to believe a lad who runs a successful private bus company in Dublin of all places over a lad who names himself after a Ford Mondeo trim level. Sorry if I offended anyone!

I don't think he runs Swords Express any more having sold it to Eirebus sometime back.

And yes you are being rather offensive being honest about it. You don't know anything about me, other than I'm a customer of Dublin Bus. So please don't patronise me like that.

As for my user name - it's LXFlyer - quite simply LX is the airline code for SWISS Airlines with whom I did quite a lot of flying.

I took a five month break from posting here simply because the level of debate was reaching rock bottom, and I ended up being personally insulted and maligned. Frankly I don't know why I bothered coming back when people such as yourself resort to personal insults.

Well thank you for enlightening me - I had no problem discussing this subject with the other poster, but your patronising post just confirms to me that frankly this forum has had its day as far as I'm concerned.

dfx-

The size and complexity of the DB network has been explained in this thread more than adequately. It goes to the heart of the OPs issues. It is not resolved by long division, reliefs or similar ideas put forward, no matter how many times it is tried.

jahalpin

Bambi wrote: »

No matey they're not. I'm a taxpayer who is subsidizing public transport and also shelling out four figures on a yearly card. They are companies who've figured out that its cheaper to buy leap cards en masse and game the system than to pay for private hire coaches for their groups.

So you have a problem with paying customers using a service but not with the hundreds of thousands of people using free travel passes

As a lot of the buses were paid for with money from the European Union, the EU are actually subsiding us to use the buses and trains so it is only fair that other EU citizens are allowed use the same services as citizens of Ireland

By your logic, tourists here shouldn't be allowed use the buses and trains as they are not paying taxes here and they have obviously worked out that public transport is cheaper than hiring a car ;-)

lawred2

Bambi wrote: »

Problem is that the cheap skate language schools are using public transport as private hire and causing chaos in the summer. Dublin bus are happy enough as they're making coin off it

Only public transport system that can handle those numbers is a metro

How exactly are they using DB as private hire?

antoinolachtnai

dfx- wrote: »

The size and complexity of the DB network has been explained in this thread more than adequately. It goes to the heart of the OPs issues. It is not resolved by long division, reliefs or similar ideas put forward, no matter how many times it is tried.

It's not that big. It's not very complex. The OP's problem is simple and has simple, cheap solutions.

n97 mini

lxflyer wrote: »

I don't think he runs Swords Express any more having sold it to Eirebus sometime back.

And yes you are being rather offensive being honest about it. You don't know anything about me, other than I'm a customer of Dublin Bus. So please don't patronise me like that.

As for my user name - it's LXFlyer - quite simply LX is the airline code for SWISS Airlines with whom I did quite a lot of flying.

I took a five month break from posting here simply because the level of debate was reaching rock bottom, and I ended up being personally insulted and maligned. Frankly I don't know why I bothered coming back when people such as yourself resort to personal insults.

Well thank you for enlightening me - I had no problem discussing this subject with the other poster, but your patronising post just confirms to me that frankly this forum has had its day as far as I'm concerned.

Apologies I genuinely thought you loved flying around in your Ford Mondeo LX. I stand corrected.

However the rest remains the same. I'll believe someone who runs (ran) a successful company over someone who has never made such claim. If you want to get into a strop over that, that's up to you.

Dyr

jahalpin wrote: »

So you have a problem with paying customers using a service but not with the hundreds of thousands of people using free travel passes

As a lot of the buses were paid for with money from the European Union, the EU are actually subsiding us to use the buses and trains so it is only fair that other EU citizens are allowed use the same services as citizens of Ireland

By your logic, tourists here shouldn't be allowed use the buses and trains as they are not paying taxes here and they have obviously worked out that public transport is cheaper than hiring a car ;-)

That's my logic is it? The only logic you seem to have an aptitude for is logical fallacy

Who mentioned tourists who mentioned eu citizens? It's actually weird the level of kneejerking people go through once you touch on certain topics that seems to preclude them from actually reading a post.

A dublin bus employee has already stated in this thread that there is a head count limit on large groups using their buses. It's there for a reason. The same reason that the clown next door can't run a car park or garage in the neighborhood square. There's always someone who's going to try monopolize a public amenity for themselves

What we have is not tourists or eu citizens hopping on buses, we have companies monopolizing a public transport service to cut costs.

If you had the same cheapskate companies rocking up to public spaces like libraries and parks with hundreds of people the council would put the kibosh on it quick time, note how quickly all those boot camps were run out of public spaces.

bk

Bambi, you are dead wrong.

There is a limit to the number of tickets that can be sold on one single leap card and of course their is a capacity limit on the bus. However if each passenger has their own ticket and their is enough space left on the bus then they are 100% entitled to be there. Just like any paying passenger is.

Again both Dublin Bus and the NTA fully support this given that they have dedicated Leap cards for exactly these students.

It is also pretty bizarre to claim that there is something wrong with a private company benefits from public transport, when pretty much every single private company in Dublin benefits from their employees being transported to work every day on Dublin Bus. It is pretty much the whole pint of public transport!!!

antoinolachtnai

It isn't as simple as you think to private-hire buses. Apart from the expense, you have to find somewhere for them to load and unload. That is not an easy thing to do in many parts of Dublin.

You also have the issue of parking a bus. There is very little space allocated for private hire buses at the moment because of the overall pressure for space. In practice this means that a private hire bus occupies a traffic lane while it is waiting to pick up and so causes problems for all transport users.

Unless this extra bloc of passengers are travelling at peak time in the prevailing direction then the bus system overall has plenty spare capacity. The bus is purchased and running anyway and the driver has to be come to work and be paid anyway so it costs very little extra to carry these extra passengers. They are paying a significant fare and this extra revenue contribution makes a positive contribution for all passengers by driving down ticket prices overall.

It isn't as simple as collecting the money though. You have to be able to respond to demand. but that's what you have management, supervision and a control room for.

monument

n97 mini wrote: »

Apologies I genuinely thought you loved flying around in your Ford Mondeo LX. I stand corrected.

However the rest remains the same. I'll believe someone who runs (ran) a successful company over someone who has never made such claim. If you want to get into a strop over that, that's up to you.

Just to note: n97 mini was given a two-day ban.

-- moderator

Dyr

bk wrote: »

Bambi, you are dead wrong
There is a limit to the number of tickets that can be sold on one single leap card and of course their is a capacity limit on the bus. However if each passenger has their own ticket and their is enough space left on the bus then they are 100% entitled to be there. Just like any paying passenger is.

Eh, not if they're a company with a group of 50-500 masquerading as single punters they're not. Just as if you're a joe soap you're fully entitled to work out in a public park but if you think that means you can start using the same park as the venue for your boot camp business you get told where you can go.

again both Dublin Bus and the NTA fully support this given that they have dedicated Leap cards for exactly these students.

It doesn't really matter what the NTA and Dublin Bus are supporting. They're quite happy to be making money at the expense of the people who underwrite their monopoly.

It is also pretty bizarre to claim that there is something wrong with a private company benefits from public transport, when pretty much every single private company in Dublin benefits from their employees being transported to work every day on Dublin Bus. It is pretty much the whole pint of public transport!!!

Aaand the logical fallacy of false equivalence. If you'd like to point out any large company thats using a dublin bus stop as a staging area to transport hundreds of their employees right throughout the day you'd have a point. Of course you don't. In fact the only example of a company trying that was everyones favourite shysters, the Web Summit. Dublin Bus screwed their regular commuters over to facilitate them too

I work for a membership body who had a lot of the language schools rocking up and using our public facing facilities in huge numbers. Initially our attitude was that it was all jam for us but we quickly realized we were screwing over our bread and butter for the jam. Our raison d'etre is to provide services to our members who pay the annual subscriptions that keep us going. They were being elbowed out by the hordes and we couldn't ethically allow that to continue so the language schools were told to go and do one. Well they were actually told they could hire the non-public facilities if they wanted. To these new agile, disruptive, enterpeneurs/chancers asking them to pay for something is the equivalent telling them to f**k off

Of course Dublin Bus is a monopoly so they can take their bread and butter for granted just to chase the jam.

punisher5112

Db is no monopoly and they are starting to lose stop space to a lot of privates and also coaches taking over Nassau st. And others.

antoinolachtnai

Section 52 of the DTA Act grants Dublin Bus an official monopoly with extremely narrow exceptions.

Stephen15

Dublin bus should have a monopoly as no other city in Europe with a decent public transport system has various different private operators competing with one another. Intergration is key, the only place there should be competion is on the intercity express bus market or if privates are willing operate serices which the PSO market isin't.

We should not be in a position where there is about five different operators operating the 46a lets say.

antoinolachtnai

London isn't a monopoly. Neither is Munich or Frankfurt. Rotterdam and the Hague also tender. There are many examples.

devnull

No monopoly provides a perfect service for the customer, neither does de-regulation, that is why tendering is a good system, it prevents the downsides of both whilst still delivering better value for money to the taxpayer and putting the customer first.

Tendering is common across Germany, and also other countries such as Poland and also London and Rotterdam among others. I agree integration is key but CIE have been historically useless at this.

Stephen15

devnull wrote: »

No monopoly provides a perfect service for the customer, neither does de-regulation, that is why tendering is a good system, it prevents the downsides of both whilst still delivering better value for money to the taxpayer and putting the customer first.

Tendering is common across Germany, and also other countries such as Poland and also London and Rotterdam among others. I agree integration is key but CIE have been historically useless at this.

I do agree with tendering but until it comes into play then Dublin Buses monopoly should continue

VG31

Tendering is definitely the way to go. In London there are lots of different operators but you really can't tell the difference as they are all branded the same way and have the same ticketing system. DB having a monopoly isn't ideal but it's still much better than in cities like Edinburgh and Manchester where there are multiple operators all with different tickets.