BusConnects Dublin - Big changes to Bus Network

bk

"One slight caveat though is that the residents of Captain’s Hill probably wouldn’t be happy to lose the direct service they currently enjoy with the 66n."

I think the assumption is that once the 24/7 routes are rolled out, that the Nitelink service will be stopped. The 15N, 39N and 41N are all gone now that the 24/7 versions are rolled out.

L1011

How do you serve Captains Hill via Celbridge in any sane manner? Presumably up and down for a via Leixlip service (the back roads are hideous and would skip a lot of useful stops)

Citrus_8

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118038979#Comment_118038979

Everything is possible, just need the initiative. One of the options could be: once entered Leixlip, Captain's Hill, turn around, Green Lane, Intel up to BusConnects 52 terminus, turn around, R449 as per BC L59, possibly around Celbridge (circle), or similar, then to Maynooth via R405. Terminus for this modified night time bus route could be W6. Another option could be via Leixlip via Maynooth to Celbridge. There's also an option to diversify and do one bus as the option one and the second as the second, but I'm not a fan of it for a night time route (splitting frequency, less clarity etc).

I am not very optimistic that C5 & C6 or whatever being one route for Maynooth and one for Celbridge is going to be financially ok for a night time. It's not a cross city bus, so there will be half empty buses most of the night to one direction. That's my reasoning for a one long, not so attractive, but financially more stable night time route (cover larger area, bigger chances to collect more people).

I am still thinking that one C night time route for Lucan village, Leixlip, Celbridge and Maynooth and another C for Chapelizod, Penny Hill, Adamstown would be better.

But I also agree that Adamstown possibly will get G (more likely) or D (less likely) for a night time. Unfortunately, G and D go through poor areas, and are known for repetitive and unresolved untisocial behaviour incidents. While C has a much better reputation, while Adamstown, I think, deserves C more. PennyHill pub is probably that dividing cut off point (between a sad Neilstown and ok or good Griffeen). Adamstown is huge now - lots of new apartment buildings, new Lidl etc slightly West from Tandy's Lane.

TranslatorPS

While this would explain why there were C5 and C6 on Dublin Bus' website for the longest while over summer, I'm honestly not in the least bit a fan of having night-time only services numbered so close to the daytime service, and firmly believe that they should follow some night-related designation if their routes are to be so different from the daytime services.

Even as superficial as route numbers are, let us adhere to at least this much.

Citrus_8

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118041151#Comment_118041151

I completely agree. A letter for nigh time routes would blend well into the BC numbering where orbitals (O, N and S), locals, express, peak time and spines have their own letter.

Don't know what would be the best option, but N is already taken by North orbitals. A to H taken, L, O, X, P, S taken. Possibly, T will be for temporary routes to number the old (existing) routes until the new ones implemented for a short time period.

N would have been a great option. NX is used for Naas express. E for evening, if that's not too much confusing as in express, especially, could have been mixed in the early morning hours Mon-Fri. Hard to think of anything reasonable.

Maybe leave the spine letter, then a free (untaken) number and then N in the end? A bit too complicated (C5N). I know, C5 should be sufficient, but that N is very needed to stand out it's a night time bus route to understand there's no such service during a day time, and it might be not us direct and frequent as normal.

L1011

The University is going to create some inbound overnight demand so these won't be totally one directional flow. An all-around-the-world routing is a blessing and a curse, more potential customers but will keep some people in taxis.

(NX is Navan not Naas, not that that's important)

LXFlyer

The C5 / C6 should be operating to/from Ringsend so there will be a short cross-city element too.

Citrus_8

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118041307#Comment_118041307

Are you sure university is going to attract people at night on Sun-Wed? I could guess, maybe Th-Sat yes indeed. But we'll see. I honestly don't know what is going to be people's behaviour towards commuting for the next few years. Currently I'm extremely disappointed that the government didn't use a chance to implement BusConnects quicker during last year. It's dragging slow while people are stuck in buses or their own cars in traffic. It's unpleasant. I unfortunately spend 25mins to go 6km to work. There's no direct bus and won't be after the BusConnects. And I'm talking about Lucan to Park West. Lots of people driving, would be nice to have more options. Sorry, I'm way off here.

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118042744#Comment_118042744

Monday night is a huge student night in Maynooth and students not living in Maynooth will want to go out to the Roost (this years student bar - it changes!) and head home after. There'll be decent traffic maybe five days a week.

Intel has awkward shift changes that will generate week-round odd hours traffic.

Citrus_8

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118042771#Comment_118042771

This is interesting. Intel I new, that's well known for shifts, but Maynooth student's pub is interesting.

AngryLips

I wonder, with the shift to 24 hour bus services, will NTA implement leap capping and rambler tickets to be valid for a 24 hour window rather than a cutoff at midnight

TranslatorPS

Technically the cut-off point for daily caps was 4:30am, so that the meager Nitelink cap contribution would still work but none of the new day's services would commence yet. I have no idea if that is still the case since the 15/39A/41 were made 24-hour services, as much as I think a trip I'd made before 1am once still added to it.

Amusingly enough Bus Eireann's city 24-hour tickets are indeed that, 24-hour tickets validated and commencing upon first on-board activation. They evolved into that from the day tickets (up to midnight) either once the city networks were fully converted from Wayfarer MkIII to TGX150 machines, or once the ticket was fully shifted onto the Leap card only. While irrelevant to BC directly, the precedent is there.

Going back to the night-time-only service designation, C5N/C6N was one of the ideas I had, and although obnoxiously bulky it's probably the safest. The opposite - NC5/NC6 - is out of question with the N2/N4/N6/N8 orbitals in place. The N suffix works with the Nitelink precedent as well.

AngryLips

I suppose the difference is between capping and tickets. 24 hour rolling capping would be almost impossible to account for because there's the risk of overlapping capped periods or the need to be able to differentiate between them. 24 hour tickets on the other hand should be just that: 24 hours from the time of first journey.

Heartbreak Hank

Will Go Ahead be operating any of the routes on the C spine?

TranslatorPS

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118048616#Comment_118048616

L51 and L52, which more or less replace the 239.

Peregrine

New fares will be announced on November 15.

Stevek101

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118051144#Comment_118051144

Any idea what they will be like price wise? My wonder if the Xpresso fare be combined into standard fares.

Citrus_8

I would expect 2 fares instead of the existing 3. Hard to say what the strategy is, but if a proper funding is there and if there's a focus to make only 1 fare eventually, then lowest Leap could be somewhere around 1.70 while the second one could be Leap around 2.40. If only one universal price, I'd expect between 1.50 and 2 Euro, realistically 2 Euro.

Again, I'm just guessing here. Depends on funding and strategy.

I agree that express should no longer be commercial and be a PSO for same price or 2.50 Euro Leap or so.

Cash? We still have cash and I'm very against it on buses. I'd easily do 1 Euro more for cash tickets.

LXFlyer

Just to clarify that Xpresso routes are PSO services, but are priced at a premium as they are express routes.

Citrus_8

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118052573#Comment_118052573

I was always under the impression that they're commercial DB routes. If PSO already, happy days. Don't see the reason keep people away from express buses during peak time by making their ticket price higher.

Hotblack Desiato

No reason to have cash on buses in this day and age. End of.

JPup

Correct. Need to move to a system where you tap your leap card or debit/credit card and ditch cash.

LXFlyer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118052807#Comment_118052807

They were never commercial services, and always PSO.

As for the fare, most regular peak-time commuters would be using a monthly or annual pass, let's be honest.

LXFlyer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118052840#Comment_118052840

The Next Generation Ticketing Equipment is an element of the wider BusConnects project, but it will require funding for completely new ticketing equipment.

ongarboy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118052840#Comment_118052840

You'll always have a minority cohort complaining about such an initiative as it discriminates against the fact they don't (or refuse to) use cards. Interestingly, councillors and politicians will always lobby for such minority vested interests rather than support the majority who want reduced dwell time. You'd think such populist seeking public representatives would try and appease the majority instead!

Hotblack Desiato

Our political system is always about appeasing the cranks, the silent majority of voters never get a look in.

Citrus_8

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118058695#Comment_118058695

These populists just creating an illusion that they're the experts in something. While actually they just talk to oppose. Oppose anything. It's the easiest way to get noticed by the media. And the more often you get seen and spoken about, the better chance to be popular during elections. Poor society is too stupid and too lazy to think. They just give up for this cheap type of political marketing. I wouldn't give a vote right for people without a higher education.

Even now, temporary covid payment extension, when most businesses are back to work, in my eyes look like a politicians bribe to the voters. Retail and restaurants are suffering how hard is to get people to work.

TranslatorPS

The simple problem is that when buses went OPO on the 70s and 80s it never occured to anybody to remove the sales of tickets off the buses. If that had happened properly since day one, we wouldn't be stuck thinking about appeasing a minority that refuses to move to electronic payments. While I had been informed that the possible network of off-board sales points would have been nearly non-existant in the 80s, the point remains - this should have been gone off-board for years like most self-respecting networks on the Continent did it. </rant>

LXFlyer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118059303#Comment_118059303

To say that "it never occurred to anyone" is a bit of a gross simplification to be fair.

I think that you really would have to have been around here in Ireland back in the 1970s and 1980s then to understand the regulation and politics of it all. I get what you're saying, but you have to understand that it was a time of significant industrial unrest, and that the regulation and funding was a disjointed mess with the Department of Transport making the key decisions. That civil servants were responsible meant that innovation was always going to be hard to push through. Several major recesssions also didn't help in that regard.

Ireland had a very different attitude towards public transport than the continent back then, and trying to implement any change generally resulted in strikes, the worst lasting 9 weeks in 1974 (over the implementation of a new rostering approach). It took until the late 1980s to push OPO through and that was a very hard industrial battle.

To be fair you could get weekly, monthly and annual tickets from the 1970s, and daily tickets followed in the 1980s. Then in the late 1980s 10-Journey tickets were introduced. The latter tickets were however widely abused and had to be ultimately withdrawn due to the fare evasion that was taking place, but Dublin Bus then eventually replaced them with 2 Journey tickets and Travel 90 tickets, which were followed by the introduction of rambler tickets.

Ticket agents in shops didn't exist until the very late 1980s if not the early 1990s either. Dublin Bus HQ was the only place that you could buy tickets.

We really only have started to see real progress in the move away from cash since the NTA was formed and LEAP was finally forced through. That in itself was a major political battle as each of the transport companies tried to protect their own revenue streams (with good reason as they were being expected to take a major hit).

Irish banks also took much longer than most European countries to implement contactless cards, which has at last facilitated the move away from cash, but it still amazes me how many people on the buses still make cash payments, rather than LEAP, despite the fare penalty.

You also have to remember that we have always had policing by consent in Ireland - not the same situation by any means as prevails on the Continent, which would certainly have had a bearing on how fare evasion was tackled. A lot more softly-softly!

Sadly you can't divorce the politics of life in Ireland back then from the lack of innovation.

TranslatorPS

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118059535#Comment_118059535

A nine-week strike affecting the public over an internal issue is frankly an insult to all concerned. Then again, I should take care of my words lest I be cried out a hypocrite - my homecity was witness to a long strike by the current semi-state Operator in 1996 over the market opening via tendering, and ever since have been guaranteed an approx. 70% of the network by count of mileage: something that has held up ever since, as in 2015 some 68.6% of the total mileage was operated by the Internal Operator. Mind you, it is the only strike in my homecity I recall in the 32 years of post-communist Poland.

I did allude to the lack of ticket agents in shops in my previous post. It is something that would have had to be developed ahead of removing the sales off-board. I do think that drivers would have been happy to get rid of cash if they could help it - it would've certainly helped matters in the 1980s and 1990s assaults, and would have probably never led to Autofare and the exact change system.

I'm making a number of references to the Continent, but in a good number of cases known to me, any and all local smart cards don't really serve as e-purse carriers like the Leap Card does. They are most often limited to only storing long-term tickets on them (instead of paper slips, or even better, an ID-and-stamp system). A number of them were introduced after the Leap card even. No, most of those systems still rely on paper tickets, although they have expanded to include special apps for mobile phones and smartphones as well, many of those operating nationwide despite the plethora of different tariffs in each and every city.

Alas, most of it is hopeful wishing, although justified I believe - it's disappointing and somewhat demotivating to know that up to a third of a Dublin Bus journey time can be dwell time at stops.