BusConnects Dublin - Bus Network Changes Discussion

Daith

The NTA are pointing to their stats on cancellations there. Are they available? I assume they don't match the Bus Cancellations stats but could be wrong.

LXFlyer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/124023409#Comment_124023409

They don’t normally publish route by route statistics, only the quarterly performance reports and Q4 won’t be published until well into 2026.

Daith

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/124023527#Comment_124023527

It's a bit frustrating that they're using the stats to defend themselves but they're the only people who have access to them.

BlueSkyDreams

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/124023409#Comment_124023409

BC has over 80% of all routes showing more than a 2% cancelllation rate in november.

Spanish Eyes

There is now a brand new shiny CEO at NTA from this month November, one Anne Shaw, director of transport for West Midlands UK.

Maybe this person will sort BC out for once and for all. What do ye think?

https://www.nationaltransport.ie/news/new-nta-chief-executive-officer-announced/

tnegun

I see the residents were calling for the C5/6 to be made 24-hour or the C3/4 diverted through Chapelizod. I can't remember where the C5/6 intended to be permanent or just until another phase of bus connects went live?

A2000

The residents of chapelizod are going to block the bridge on Saturday in protest at the cancellations lateness and route of the 80. They want it rerouted down the north quays to o'connell bridge. I find it amazing that a smaller village has 3 night buses per hour while larger suburbs have 1 bus per hour.

LXFlyer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/124024338#Comment_124024338

The three routes do all serve different places to be fair, rather large ones at that, further out.

The 80 is 24 hours mainly to act as a capacity booster to the 15 which is overloaded southside, and to the C-Spine routes which can be similarly busy.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/124024317#Comment_124024317

I don’t see that change happening - the C3 and C4 are far too busy as it is. The C5 & C6 are permanent as far as I’m aware - that part of Dublin has all of the changes in place under the new network.

The first solution has to be to fix the running times on the 80 so that buses have enough time to get from one end of the route to the other and actually deliver the scheduled services.

I suspect that the other might be for some additional short workings from the L55 terminus into the city centre via the old 26 route - it was always going to be challenging to push these network changes through in Chapelizod, but not delivering a reliable connection really was a case of shooting themselves in the foot.

LXFlyer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/124024179#Comment_124024179

They are not all cancellations though, as I’ve posted before. You need to be very careful about quoting the statistics from https://buscancellationsdublin.eu as gospel.

There is a system glitch whereby after a driver signs on their ticket machine either at the terminus or at a changeover point, buses can vanish from the AVL for varying amounts of time, despite actually operating.

That website can treat this situation as a partial cancellation, despite the bus actually having operated. So it’s not necessarily a reliable statistic.

The new AVL system coming in 2026 should resolve that problem.

To be clear though, I’m not suggesting that there aren’t cancellations, there certainly are but that website may be giving an incorrect picture in some respects.

BlueSkyDreams

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/124024437#Comment_124024437

Yes and all fair comment.

Though the site would need to be significantly wrong for the overall service to have a less than 2% cancellation rate, which is where the NTA are saying the service is at in November.

MJohnston

Very curious how the buses ran this evening with the taxi strike specifically avoiding bus lanes

Polar101

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/124024416#Comment_124024416

Yeah, the C3 in particular can get heavily delayed when it gets stuck going through Leixlip village and Maynooth (the latter can easily take 20-30 minutes around 4-5pm) - making the route go through Chapelizod too would not work very well (and there wouldn't be enough capacity anyway).

OscarMIlde

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/124024317#Comment_124024317

They can ask for their own bus, it's bad enough the C3/C4 still go through Lucan village, going through Chapelizod means an extra 20 mins minimum AND people going to Celbridge/Leixlip/Maynooth from Heuston need to go back to choosing either Heuston station or Park Gate street bus stops in the lottery of which bus will stop. At least now it's the one stop for normal and express routes.

StreetLight

There's no point in considering additional routes to serve Chapelizod. The resources are not there from which to be simply plucked. Things are massively overstretched as they are.

I wonder is there any merit in splitting the 80 into two routes.

Half on the current alignment and the other half travelling via the Quays, D'Olier Street, Nassau Street, Kildare Street, Stephen's Green, Earlsfort Terrace, Adelaide Road and Harcourt Road, re-joining the current route at Richmond Street. This would cover a lot of the former 26 route and shouldn't lead to significant bunching of the two branches at common areas of the combined route if they get the running times sorted to realistic expectations.

dublinman1990

I don't think it would be a good idea to split up the 80 tbh.

You need still need the 80 to serve Ballinteer when it goes live for the A-Spine routes.

If there a slight possibility that bus was cutback to start in town; where it does the route begin if it goes on to serve residents living in Ballinteer?

StreetLight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/124025615#Comment_124025615

I was suggesting the 80, if it became two routes, would still run between Liffey Valley and Rathmines at present and still be two routes when it comes to extending to Ballinteer. Two routes operating from the same resources, just split in the city centre area and then rejoined.

Spanish Eyes

It appears that the 80 is the ONLY daytime bus that serves Chapelizod. Other suburbs along that new route have other options, Chapelizod does not. It's cut off now, judging by what I'm reading online. I think (notwithstanding capacity issues), that the proposed stop at the N4 bypass and the hill in Chapelizod could have been implemented before the 80 was introduced. It would at least have given some choice to the commuters to use the C spine I reckon.

I took the 80 recently from Aungier Street to Heuston. To say I will walk the next time is an understatement. It took a very frustrating half an hour + (seriously) to get from Georges Street to the quays. There are no bus lanes in either Georges St or Bridge Street, and the journey is just painfully slow.

In addition, looking at the inward route, commuters must alight at Arran Quay to connect with the city centre O'Connell Street/Luas and train connections further down the quays. I'd imagine that any bus connection in rush hour coming from further West suburbs would be jammers. No wonder the Chapelizod residents are going mad!

I don't often feel much sympathy for those blocking progress and moaning about changes to their route (I've had it myself in my own area), but in this case it would seem to be very well justified as it's the only service there.

BusCaptain

The L54 is planned to go in there in the near future

cgcsb

There's just a huge infrastructure gap in what BusConnects attempts to achieve and what is deliverable. The reality is there is no reliable way to cross the city centre by bus because of the volume of cars in the way so all cross city buses are subject to massive delay. Also any buses serving the south west of the city where there is no bus priority are also subject to massive delay. That's part of the reason why the F spine has been such a sh*tshow for Finglas residents. They used to have the 140 and 40 that didn't go too far south so suffered little cross city delay, they also have relative good bus priority from Finglas to the City Centre with the exception of the Whitworth road disaster. Now every hold up at Harolds X means knock on delays and cancellations in Finglas.

The NTA/DCC/Government approached this completely wrong, preferring a multi layered bureaucratic approach with little tangible outputs within a decade of project launch, no focus on customer satisfaction and a flawed public consultation (often implementing a different system to that which was actually proposed). A far better approach would have been

1. enforce the exiting bus priority through camera enforcement both at fixed location and using bus mounted cameras, increase the fine to €200 per event. This could be done for cheap (profitable even with fine revenue) instant time savings for commuters. Zero progress on this in 15 years.
2. implement 'interim' bus corridors that don't require CPO, similar to what was done during covid for pedestrian and bike priority using the councils powers. For example put in the Rathmines, Stoneybatter and Mount Brown bus gates. Instant time savings for commuters.
3. Work with Dublin City Council to implement a 'bus connects city centre' corridors that removes car conflicts from the key city centre bus routes e.g. George's Street to Christchurch should be bus and bike only. All cars on the north quays should be turning left onto Jervis street etc.
4. Then implement orbital bus connects routes, as resources allow
5. Then radial bus connects routes, as resources allow (no bloody rushing and launching with no drivers)
6. In parallel plan and implement the permanent bus corridors (which are already long overdue)

They could still even now carry out steps 1 and 2 above and save BusConnects, which is in danger of being canned, rebranded and watered down, due to the overwhelmingly negative public perception.

DaBluBoi

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/124026073#Comment_124026073

Where, exactly? Chapelizod? Wouldn't make a lot of sense given its current routing

bus_cancellations

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/124024437#Comment_124024437

I developed the Bus Cancellations Dublin website.

I agree you shouldn't take it as gospel. However, that's more to do with inaccuracies or omissions in the GTFS-R feed than any actual issues with how the site itself works.

The system glitch you mentioned about disappearing buses is not relevant for my website. It does not consider these situations as partial cancellations. In fact, any trip without a cancellation status is simply ignored.

How it works is

- Trips with (fully) cancelled status are added to the database if that trip has status "CANCELED" in the GTFS-R. These trips will also be fully cancelled in the TFI Live app.

- Trips with partially cancelled status are added to the database if there are at least 7 skipped stops in the GTFS-R trip. In the TFI Live app you will see some cancelled stops for these trips. This is one of the rare cases where I am making some adjustments and not just taking the information from the API as is. I didn't want to inflate the cancellation statistics with trips with only a small number of skipped stops. I decided 7 would be a suitable minimum. This is not a perfect solution but I think it's reasonable.

- Any trip with "CANCELED" status which later becomes "SCHEDULED" with skipped stops is updated in the database to partially cancelled.

- The first and last cancelled stop information is not always completely accurate. It's common for a bus to be cancelled only after it was supposed to depart the first stop. The API does not usually show stops in the past. Therefore often the first cancelled stop shown is not the actual first cancelled stop. It's usually the first stop on the route.

- A trip which with status "CANCELED" which later becomes scheduled with no skipped stops is removed from the database. Often these trips actually start mid way through the route but it's too complicated to determine this and would require guessing which could lead to inaccuracies.

- The case you mentioned about buses not appearing on the real time have status "SCHEDULED" and likewise appears as scheduled in the TFI Live app. They do not appear in the cancellation statistics as they are not (officially) cancelled. These are therefore not artificially inflating the numbers.

If anything, the numbers on the site are actually less than the real numbers. The so called ghost buses that are never marked as cancelled will not appear. There is also the case where a bus is uncancelled that I mentioned previously. That can happen a few times every day.

I don't know how the NTA are coming up with that 2% figure but there's no chance that can be true. You don't even need my site to know that. From my own experience of the new routes, you can tell it's far more than 2%.

This is the reason I made this site. It's much better to pull cancellation statistics directly from the API then have to rely on vague figures from the NTA.

BusCaptain

Sorry my mistake I was talking about the new apartments in Dunawely.

LXFlyer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/124026409#Comment_124026409

Thanks for the explanation about the site, but you’re wrong about how those buses that I referred to, where there is a driver change mid-route appear on apps or on street.

The bus in this scenario can completely vanish from RTPI and they certainly do not appear as “scheduled” in these cases.

They then magically reappear further down the route, sometimes significantly further, so that it looks like they skipped stops which could be contributing to your "partially cancelled" statistics.

Well done on developing the resource though - if nothing else the full cancellation information is very useful.

OscarMIlde

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/124026323#Comment_124026323

The scheduled thing is an absolute joke if you are trying to plan a journey. There are so many buses on the C route with tracking issues you never know if the bus is actually running or not unless you stand waiting for it to show up (or not). Makes the real time system pointless. It must be a maintenance issue with the buses and surely it should be fixed.

Buffman

I do sympathise with the Chapelizod residents, it's totally reliant on the 80 during the day and any alternatives are a good trek away back up one of the hills to get to the C's, G's or 60. I drove through last Friday evening and there were about 30 odd waiting at the inbound stop at the school.

Sending already full C's down there isn't going to help anyone though IMO, possibly the only one with a bit of spare capacity/time might be the 52 which would be an extra 2 buses per hour.

I can't see a bus stop anywhere on the Chapelizod bypass being doable given the location and lack of access, it would be a very significant and costly engineering challenge to do so safely. Edit: Already in the pipeline, thanks @LXFlyer

A big problem for the 80 is it's getting stuck in traffic at both ends of it's route.

The traffic on Coldcut Road/Kennelsforth Road on one end and basically everywhere South of the Quays it serves on the other is gridlock at busy times.

As simple short-term quick fix might be to reinstate the 26 as was and leave the 80 serving Rathmines-Heuston.

LXFlyer

The bus stop on the Chapelizod bypass is part of the Lucan CBC scheme which has been fully approved by ACP.

You can see the plans on the scheme website www.lucanscheme.ie under “General Alignment Drawings”.

The NTA have announced that they are now going to implement this stop separately from the scheme and re-route the 80.

https://www.transportforireland.ie/news/nta-to-amend-bus-route-80-alignment-in-response-to-customer-feedback/

NTA to amend bus route 80 alignment in response to customer feedback

28th November 2025

Plan to fast-track planned walkway to Chapelizod Bypass also announced

NTA has announced today that it is to amend the alignment of route 80 that runs from Chapelizod to the city centre, in response to feedback from customers. The amended route will now run all the way along the north quays to O’Connell Bridge and Custom House Quay, before heading north.

Background on Route 80

The 80 was introduced in October as part of Phase 7 of the BusConnects Network Redesign for Dublin, running from Liffey Valley through Chapelizod, to the south city via High St and South Great Georges St.

The proposal announced today involves merging the 80 with the existing 130 that already runs from the city centre to Clontarf. The newly-aligned service will run along the current 80 route as far as Bridge St, but will continue along the north quays to Eden Quay and then northward through the city centre to Clontarf. It will continue to have a 10-minute peak-time frequency in line with the current 80 and 130.

Connectivity and Timeline

The route also offers new connectivity to the Luas Green Line at O’Connell St, and DART at Connolly.

The new route will come into operation in Q2 2026.

In advance of that, from early 2026 and as a temporary measure, route 80 will operate from Liffey Valley to Chapelizod on a revised alignment along the quays to the south city. The revised alignment will cross the Liffey at O’Connell Bridge, rather than at Bridge St, and will run through College Green to South Great Georges Street. This will take effect early in the new year.

Customer Feedback and NTA Response

NTA Director of Public Transport Services Jeremy Ryan said: “We acknowledge that for a variety of reasons including city centre congestion, the 80 got off to a rocky start and didn’t meet expectations. When rolling out phases of the BusConnects network, we always give a commitment to monitor the new services, identify any issues that arise, and to put in a fix where appropriate. That’s what we are doing today.

“In planning the redesigned bus network, the NTA considered the planned transformation of College Green and Dame Street by Dublin City Council into a pedestrian-friendly plaza. The creation of this new public space means east-west bus movements through College Green will no longer be possible. That was why we had routed route 80 by Bridge Street rather than O’Connell Bridge to get to the south city.

Why the Change Makes Sense

“The customer feedback we got was that rather than turning right off the quays to cross the Liffey at Bridge St, route 80 would be more useful if it went further along the quays so that people could benefit from the bus priority measures in place along the quays, and the greater connectivity to the O’Connell St area and onward transport services in that area.

“We’ve taken a look at that and we believe it makes sense.  NTA is happy to take that feedback on board and we have asked Dublin Bus to amend the service accordingly.”

NTA will put in place a full customer communications plan well in advance of the changes taking effect.

Fast-Tracking Chapelizod Walkway

NTA has also announced that it is to fast-track the delivery of a planned walkway and steps from Chapelizod Bypass back to Chapelizod Hill Road. This will make it easier for people in Chapelizod village to avail of bus services including the C-Spine services, that run along the by-pass. The walkway is part of the BusConnects Dublin Lucan to city centre scheme that has received planning consent from An Comisiún Pleanála. The walkway is now to be constructed in advance of the rest of that scheme, with work now scheduled to commence next year.

ITV2

one of the big problems with the 80 is the useless bus lane into Chapelizod, on Tuesday evening six 80 buses in a row stuck in an endless line of cars, same again this morning and nobody seems to cares. as for Kennelsforth road that was the same for the 26.

bus_cancellations

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/124026467#Comment_124026467

I think you are misunderstanding exactly how cancellations are represented in the GTFS-R API. I assure you the scenario you are describing is not contributing to partial cancellations on my site.

If a trip is fully cancelled, it has status "CANCELED" and no stops are shown.

If a trip is curtailed then it has status "SCHEDULED" and a number of stops with status "SKIPPED".

Both of these scenarios require manual intervention from a controller. Stops will not have status skipped unless a controller has inputted that into the system.

In terms of my website, it doesn't matter whether a trip has real time information, is scheduled or disappears altogether. It is ignored unless it has a cancelled or skipped status. A driver signing out of their ticket machine does not result in a number of stops being cancelled in the TFI Live app or having skipped status in the API. From a passenger perspective, from looking at Bus Times or the TFI app the bus may have disappeared, but it has not been cancelled.

I have experienced this many times myself and the TFI app definitely does not show cancelled stops in this case.

There is the rare case where a cancelled bus actually does show up as the controller never uncancelled it but that's obviously outside my control.

john boye

The 80 (and the 23/24 to a lesser extent) was kind of the first big test for a cross-city route not using College Green. Having to change it to run via College Green so quickly doesn't really bode well for the pedestrianisation of it and future alternative routings.