BusConnects Dublin - Bus Network Changes Discussion

punisher5112

What could be could would be routes linking up and late buses to the airport and back.

As above select core busy areas.

No point having likes of 184 or 63 for example as 24 hour but plenty of others which could even change slightly after 12 to 6 let's say.

lucernarian

Victor wrote: »

Note that Nitelinks are now PSO services. I wonder if even a select few routes would get some late service during the week, e.g. 145, 16, 27, 13.

That's interesting. Source anyone?

monument

Bambi wrote: »

Appparently nearly all of dublin has a bus frequency of 9 minutes or better at midday on weekdays

Sure why do we need a review at all if thats the case :rolleyes:

Which begs the question was this report based on stats provided by dublin bus rather than old fashioned field work

They're goosed from the get go if it was

If you're looking at the map, I think you're looking at the wrong line thickness

dublinman1990

I liked the idea of broader resources being put out on the orbital routes in the redesign to make them more frequent. The amount of orbital routes right now operated by Dublin Bus is at a severely small limit. The average departure times for each orbital route is quite erratic going by the graph on page 35 of the report.

There are 4 routes there which have a waiting time of between 26 and 40 minutes. 2 of them, the 17a & the 18, would probably fit the remit of the suitable waiting times for orbital routes. The orbital routes in the Blanchardstown area & routes like the 70d & 31d need to be reorganized in a serious way from their current frequency. Their presence in those areas makes them look almost non existent & makes them like a damp squib in comparison to other orbital routes.

There are also a lot of noticeable gaps in the amount of bus lanes on page 32 of the report which makes some of the current network very fragmented. If they were plans to build higher quality because of widening roads in Dublin. The overall results of would be a lot of broader than it what it looks right now.

monument

murphaph wrote: »

If this all comes to fruition then it slots nicely into any future underground lines we might build (yeah yeah, I know). You could "simply" replace a bus spine with an underground line.

Within built up areas, high frequency bus and trams stops should generally be set around 400-500 metres apart while Metro or Dart stations should be set round 1 to 1.5 km apart.

One doesn't mean the other isn't needed.

Stephen15

punisher5112 wrote: »

No point having likes of 184 or 63 for example as 24 hour but plenty of others which could even change slightly after 12 to 6 let's say.

TBH I dont even see the point on running the routes that you've mentioned past 10 at night. The only people out in suburbs that might use a bus late at night are drunk oul fellas coming home from the pub or teenagers coming home from drinking in the field. Neither of which make up huge numbers.

markpb

Stephen15 wrote: »

TBH I dont even see the point on running the routes that you've mentioned past 10 at night. The only people out in suburbs that might use a bus late at night are drunk oul fellas coming home from the pub or teenagers coming home from drinking in the field. Neither of which make up huge numbers.

What about people finishing work or college late, visiting their friends, coming home from sports training or any of the vast array of perfectly normal reasons why you might be out after 10?

Luas carries a decent number of people on both routes late in the evenings, at weekends and on bank holidays and yet DB doesn't attract any demand at those times. I wonder if there's a link there? There's a section in the document which discusses suppressed demand due to poor service.

brokenarms

Stephen15 wrote: »

TBH I dont even see the point on running the routes that you've mentioned past 10 at night. The only people out in suburbs that might use a bus late at night are drunk oul fellas coming home from the pub or teenagers coming home from drinking in the field. Neither of which make up huge numbers.

In my experience, thats exactly the passengers I get. Local oul boys going home from the pub with a FTP mostly.

Tarabuses

The reference to routes as lines is tedious. Could they not have been asked to use terminoligy in use in Dublin?

LeinsterDub

Tarabuses wrote: »

The reference to routes as lines is tedious. Could they not have been asked to use terminoligy in use in Dublin?

I think the shift to line is to signal a change in mindset. Core lines being feed by feeder routes

murphaph

monument wrote: »

Within built up areas, high frequency bus and trams stops should generally be set around 400-500 metres apart while Metro or Dart stations should be set round 1 to 1.5 metres apart.

One doesn't mean the other isn't needed.

I don't know of any examples where buses run parallel to the underground in Berlin. If you want to go somewhere equidistant to two underground stations you're walking the 500m.

monument

murphaph wrote: »

I don't know of any examples where buses run parallel to the underground in Berlin. If you want to go somewhere equidistant to two underground stations you're walking the 500m.

So, then Dublin should not build underground lines fully parallel to road routes.

Dublin is more of the scale of Amsterdam -- there's both tram lines and (partly underground) metro routes. Both have somewhat different functions.

LXFlyer

Victor wrote: »

Note that Nitelinks are now PSO services. I wonder if even a select few routes would get some late service during the week, e.g. 145, 16, 27, 13.

lucernarian wrote: »

That's interesting. Source anyone?

Nitelink services have been PSO for some time - since the last PSO contract - they were included in the list of contracted services.

murphaph

monument wrote: »

So, then Dublin should not build underground lines fully parallel to road routes.

Dublin is more of the scale of Amsterdam -- there's both tram lines and (partly underground) metro routes. Both have somewhat different functions.

To be honest this is academic and a problem I dearly wish we had. Let's get back to the reality that the bus network is going to be the mainstay of public transport in Dublin for the foreseeable future.

LXFlyer

brokenarms wrote: »

Looks like the 24 hour thing is in the bin. Little demand for a bus after 11pm by their charts.

Let's wait and see. Ultimately whether it happens would be down to funding.

If it did happen it would be on core QBC routes (or potentially merged routes in outlying areas) I'd imagine.

L1011

The weeknight nitelink mergers of old are still sensible really, and where some underlying routes are completely gone

murphaph

I think they could implement hourly night buses that offer guaranteed connections at interchanges. The buses arrive in waves every hour and allow 10 mins or so for people to transfer, before departing again. That's how midweek night buses operate here. At the weekend they are much more frequent however and the trains run all night at weekends too, so no need for the guaranteed connections.

These interchanges also attract plenty of taxis, so you can make your way most of the way home on your normal monthly pass and then just pay for a short taxi ride home.

Stephen15

markpb wrote: »

What about people finishing work or college late, visiting their friends, coming home from sports training or any of the vast array of perfectly normal reasons why you might be out after 10?

Luas carries a decent number of people on both routes late in the evenings, at weekends and on bank holidays and yet DB doesn't attract any demand at those times. I wonder if there's a link there? There's a section in the document which discusses suppressed demand due to poor service.

Im talking about the routes the OP mentioned such as the 63 and 184. I would be pro 24h service on the main routes such as the 145, 46a, the lucan routes etc. but as the 63 is my local route which I use regularly I know for fact it gets very little use after 10 at night.

LXFlyer

Stephen15 wrote: »

Im talking about the routes the OP mentioned such as the 63 and 184. I would be pro 24h service on the main routes such as the 145, 46a, the lucan routes etc. but as the 63 is my local route which I use regularly I know for fact it gets very little use after 10 at night.

You leave those local routes with the normal operating hours - cutting operating hours is not an acceptable solution.

Stephen15

If 24 hour services get the go ahead. It might be an idea to deploy security similar to whats on the luas on buses.

Dyr

monument wrote: »

If you're looking at the map, I think you're looking at the wrong line thickness

I was but even at 10-15 minutes those stats aren't based on reality

Any sort of high frequency service like they're proposing is going to have to neutralise a few things:

A)Dublin bus and their predilection for playing silly buggers via their controllers

RTPI should actually be RTPI. The customer can see where any bus on the network is at that point in time and how full it is. The NTA should be overseeing the operation closely in real time rather than relying on stats.

Long term the NTA will just become another CIE over time and we're back to square one but such is Ireland

The amount of closely grouped stops in certain areas (and looking at the heat maps, the worst area's for this are also the ones with the least amount of passengers (but most vocal amount of petitioners to the local TD/councillor )

C) Enforcement of traffic laws. Good luck with that. The day you see the polish bread delivery dude being routinely pulled by the traffic corpse for parking in the bus lane is the day we need to introduce legislation for elephants intruding on dublin airports air space


D) The bottle necks at various points of the core routes. In fact they'd have to scrap the epic network direct cross city routes because you'll just wind up with six of the same buses in convoy every 20 minutes due to all of the above.
Thats before you even address the city center being shutdown a few weekends a month and banjaxing radial routes

At first glance its saying all the right things at long last (orbital routes no less!! you can almost hear dublin bus hissing at the very mention) I just cant see it surviving first contact with the various vested interests, sorry.. stakeholders

Stephen15

Ok I was reading some of the comments on Facebook and on The Journal.ie and people were saying that DB drivers should undergo customer service training. I don't get it I personally find DB drivers to generally friendly and helpful. The less driver interaction the better surely.

n97 mini

Stephen15 wrote: »

Ok I was reading some of the comments on Facebook and on The Journal.ie and people were saying that DB drivers should undergo customer service training. I don't get it I personally find DB drivers to generally friendly and helpful. The less driver interaction the better surely.

What route(s) do you use? I find south east Dublin drivers very friendly, west Dublin drivers barely passable, and some northside route drivers have a siege mentality. As a customer I'm always friendly but can understand the position the drivers are in.

Victor

Stephen15 wrote: »

Ok I was reading some of the comments on Facebook and on The Journal.ie and people were saying that DB drivers should undergo customer service training. I don't get it I personally find DB drivers to generally friendly and helpful. The less driver interaction the better surely.

While most drivers are sound, there are proportions that (a) don't realise things (trying to talk to people on the kerb with the screen up) and (b) are not motivated to help the passenger (driving on when 4 people have their hands out on a half full bus).

Stephen15

n97 mini wrote: »

What route(s) do you use? I find south east Dublin drivers very friendly, west Dublin drivers barely passable, and some northside route drivers have a siege mentality. As a customer I'm always friendly but can understand the position the drivers are in.

Maybe thats down to the fact that drivers on routes going to south east Dublin I assume talking about 46a, 145 etc. have little to no anti social behavior as those routes for the most go through mostly affluent areas.

Stephen15

Ok I was thinking of this today. I'm going to stick to talking about buses in my local area. Here so the 145 and the 46a pretty much overlap between Foxrock church and Town on the N11. I was thinking would it be a better idea if the 145 only went as far as Foxrock Church and you increase frequency on the 46a to maybe every 4 minutes turning it into a BRT style operation you could also increase frequency on the 145 to maybe every 6 minutes.

One thing I think needs to be looked at is peak only services such the 46e, 116, 118 etc. how can you rely on such a service if it only comes once or twice a day. I know the argument in favour is but it provides extra capacity on the corridor but would it not make more sense to provide that extra capacity by increasing frequency on existing all day routes?

dfx-

Stephen15 wrote: »

Maybe thats down to the fact that drivers on routes going to south east Dublin I assume talking about 46a, 145 etc. have little to no anti social behavior as those routes for the most go through mostly affluent areas.

There are a lot more routes in south east Dublin than those two though. The 45A and 7/A notably..

Conyngham Road drivers are excellent in almost all cases (one or two exceptions) in my experience a very friendly garage in all respects. Regular drivers on my Ringsend route are also very good. I find the big garages, Phibsboro, Harristown and Donnybrook, to be least customer friendly unsurprisingly.

murphaph

Stephen15 wrote: »

If 24 hour services get the go ahead. It might be an idea to deploy security similar to whats on the luas on buses.

To be honest it's gone beyond that. We need dedicated transport police deployed in mobile units around the city to respond quickly to incidents on public transport.

Stephen15

dfx- wrote: »

There are a lot more routes in south east Dublin than those two though. The 45A and 7/A notably.

Yeah I forgot about them they get a bit of anti social behaviour but its nothing compared to routes like the 40.

Bray Head

I read all of Bus Connects from start to finish. It is really excellent. Identifies all of the problems with the network's design and has some really good ideas on how to fix them.

The only place where it is slightly lacking is a discussion of depot locations. More orbital routes and better connectivity probably mean moving one or two city centre depots to the M50.