Dublin has the second highest cost of public transport for users in the world

Thingymebob

A friend posted an article on her Facebook which complained that Auckland NZ had the third most expensive public transport in the world... but then Dublin was listed at number two!

I’ve lived in all three places in the top spots. Yes London’s crowded but it’s public transport is epic compared to Dublin (and Auckland!). I live on the Northside inside the M50, but have just one bus route within five minutes walk. It’s unreliable on weekends, and in peak times, you can’t get on the bus. It’s also expensive. All this and the odds of being stuck standing in the rain means I rarely use public transport in Dublin. In London I lived on the Zone 2/3 border (depending on if I was catching national rail or tube), and had four bus routes immediately outside my door, with another ten on the High Street five minutes walk. I used a car sharing club rarely. Public transport in Dublin needs to be more appealing, and not by putting more taxes on car users, but by making public transport so convenient and cheap that you’d be stupid to use anything else.

www. nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12067987&ref=NZH_fb

The 12 most expensive cities in the world for commuting by public transport

1. London - NZ$247 // €147.58
2. Dublin - $187.11 // €111.80
3. Auckland - $174.74 // €104.41
4. New York - $167.35 // €99.99
5. Tokyo - $157.39 // €94.04
6. Amsterdam - $154.41 // €92.26
7. Sydney - $154.12 // €92.09
8. Zurich - $154.12 // €92.09
9. Melbourne - $150 // €89.63
10. Toronto - $146.02 // €87.25
11. Chicago - $145.17 // €86.74
12. Wellington - $143.89 // €85.98

Source: Deutsche Bank, using prices from Expatistan, a site that tracks cost-of-living expenses in more than 200 countries. **converted from NZD to Euros using XE currency app, so rounding etc might mean small differences

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

Thingymebob wrote: »

A friend posted an article on her Facebook which complained that Auckland NZ had the third most expensive public transport in the world... but then Dublin was listed at number two!

I’ve lived in all three places in the top spots. Yes London’s crowded but it’s public transport is epic compared to Dublin (and Auckland!). I live on the Northside inside the M50, but have just one bus route within five minutes walk. It’s unreliable on weekends, and in peak times, you can’t get on the bus. It’s also expensive. All this and the odds of being stuck standing in the rain means I rarely use public transport in Dublin. In London I lived on the Zone 2/3 border (depending on if I was catching national rail or tube), and had four bus routes immediately outside my door, with another ten on the High Street five minutes walk. I used a car sharing club rarely. Public transport in Dublin needs to be more appealing, and not by putting more taxes on car users, but by making public transport so convenient and cheap that you’d be stupid to use anything else.

www. nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12067987&ref=NZH_fb

The 12 most expensive cities in the world for commuting by public transport

1. London - NZ$247 // €147.58
2. Dublin - $187.11 // €111.80
3. Auckland - $174.74 // €104.41
4. New York - $167.35 // €99.99
5. Tokyo - $157.39 // €94.04
6. Amsterdam - $154.41 // €92.26
7. Sydney - $154.12 // €92.09
8. Zurich - $154.12 // €92.09
9. Melbourne - $150 // €89.63
10. Toronto - $146.02 // €87.25
11. Chicago - $145.17 // €86.74
12. Wellington - $143.89 // €85.98

Source: Deutsche Bank, using prices from Expatistan, a site that tracks cost-of-living expenses in more than 200 countries. **converted from NZD to Euros using XE currency app, so rounding etc might mean small differences

I'll assume that's the cost of an unlimited monthly pass. Out of interest, in which cities does it include night travel?

Thingymebob

In the top three, yes monthly passes. In London that would include night buses and also the weekend tube. In Auckland the last buses and trains are just after midnight. In Amsterdam monthly ticket covers night services. Dublin and the rest not sure.

Still horrified

Canard

Eh, no idea where that number for Dublin came from, not even a student pass is that 'cheap'. An adult monthly pass is a whopping €160.50. It's absolutely disgusting and I have no idea why we put up with the constantly rising prices and appalling service. I've taken to walking anywhere I need to go unless it's pouring rain, and it sometimes doesn't even take much longer given how infrequent the buses are and the constant delays / lack of actual connections like you would find in one central tube station. AND that huge price only includes buses. The helpful daily 'cap' on leapcards kicks in at €7 (and that's only if you haven't used the Dart / Luas as well, which pushes it up even further)... who even takes enough buses for that to become in any way useful?

I just got back from living in Paris where you pay €75 and have access to the entire transport network in Paris *and* the surrounding areas. Your employer generally pays you half of it back (which means, looking at the above DB link, a month of Paris transport essentially equals a WEEK of Dublin Bus transport), and a student pays €300 per year, which is actually affordable. In Paris you might roll your eyes at a 3-4 minute wait for a metro; in Dublin any time <7 minutes feels like a blessing.

(Yes, I have a deep-seated hatred for Dublin Bus.)

facehugger99

The money to pay the eye-watering salaries and inefficient working practices of the drivers has to come from somewhere

D3V!L

The Dublin price is the monthly tax saver ticket for the Luas.

direstraits

I would have no problem paying if the service matched the price. We are paying premium prices for a standard service.

dfx-

It's because the people who run Dublin's public transport (not Dublin Bus, but the National Transport Authority) are trying to mimic London in every way possible, mostly with prohibitive cash fares and options available.

So it's no surprise we are most like them in terms of cost.

Assetbacked

5th most expensive city to rent in the world too, as was published recently.

Dublin offers shockingly bad value on the lifestyle front. There is absolutely no way these things should cost as much they do, it represents an appalling state of affairs.

Thingymebob

Thingymebob wrote: »

In the top three, yes monthly passes. In London that would include night buses and also the weekend tube. In Auckland the last buses and trains are just after midnight. In Amsterdam monthly ticket covers night services. Dublin and the rest not sure.

Still horrified

What zones in London though? All zones is a massive area compared to the others.

end of the road

facehugger99 wrote: »

The money to pay the eye-watering salaries and inefficient working practices of the drivers has to come from somewhere

can you name these inefficient working practices? what metric are you using to judge that the drivers earn eye-watering salaries?
bus driving after all wouldn't be the most popular job in the world i'd imagine, so a good wage would likely need to be paid to attract staff. if dublin bus and others don't pay well they won't get staff.

pjohnson

end of the road wrote: »

can you name these inefficient working practices? what metric are you using to judge that the drivers earn eye-watering salaries?
bus driving after all wouldn't be the most popular job in the world i'd imagine, so a good wage would likely need to be paid to attract staff. if dublin bus and others don't pay well they won't get staff.

Ah nice your back again! Championing inefficency still.

Hector Bellend

go on the public transport

rainbow kirby

Aegir wrote: »

What zones in London though? All zones is a massive area compared to the others.

The price listed looks relatively close to the price for a zone 1-2 monthly travel card. (£131.00)

Mutant z

Those insane prices for a subpar transport system the end should justify the means but sadly it doesn't come close.

Donald Trump

I have a great idea

Lets turn this into a thread about the pros and cons of cycling and cyclists.


I heard that some cyclists have been known to sometimes break red lights.

And that some drivers dangerously endanger cyclists

suicide_circus

Yeah but the craic is up to 90

_Kaiser_

D3V!L wrote: »

The Dublin price is the monthly tax saver ticket for the Luas.

So probably not even an accurate comparison vs the others considering the luas is 2 fixed routes and doesn't serve most of the city's suburbs at all.

n!ghtmancometh

My yearly tax saver Dublin Bus ticket is 104 (around 3.40 per day) a month. Unlimited travel on any bus, including nightlink and airlink. Think it's fairly good value tbh.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

Canard wrote: »

Eh, no idea where that number for Dublin came from, not even a student pass is that 'cheap'. An adult day pass is a whopping €160.50. It's absolutely disgusting and I have no idea why we put up with the constantly rising prices and appalling service. I've taken to walking anywhere I need to go unless it's pouring rain, and it sometimes doesn't even take much longer given how infrequent the buses are and the constant delays / lack of actual connections like you would find in one central tube station. AND that huge price only includes buses. The helpful daily 'cap' on leapcards kicks in at €7 (and that's only if you haven't used the Dart / Luas as well, which pushes it up even further)... who even takes enough buses for that to become in any way useful?

I just got back from living in Paris where you pay €75 and have access to the entire transport network in Paris *and* the surrounding areas. Your employer generally pays you half of it back (which means, looking at the above DB link, a month of Paris transport essentially equals a WEEK of Dublin Bus transport), and a student pays €300 per year, which is actually affordable. In Paris you might roll your eyes at a 3-4 minute wait for a metro; in Dublin any time <7 minutes feels like a blessing.

(Yes, I have a deep-seated hatred for Dublin Bus.)

I presume you meant monthly pass at that price.

It is a rip-off though:
Dublin - €134 for one month, bus only, no night services.
Berlin - €81 for one month, every mode of transport (including ferries across lakes!) includes night busses.
Also covers a second person after 8pm and on weekends.

And people wonder why I moved....

banie01

Public transport in general in Ireland is an expensive option.
The default option for the semi states seems to be to raise prices when there is a funding crunch.
Surely the aim should be to increase user uptake of the service, aim for increasing passenger volume rather than raise prices and push more commuters off the service.
From a purely economical standpoint, where we have a stated aim to increase public transport use, the 2 primary factors in my mind are Capacity and price.
Price should be low and ideally low enough that it makes taking a bus or train a viable alternative to taking a car.
Capacity should be high enough and frequent enough that waits are minimised but that seat utilisation is high so as to maximise utilisation of the available capacity.

Those 2 factors are of primary concern in urban areas. They are much more difficult to address on regional services due to rural fragmentation.

I live in Limerick, a city that is undertaking the "smarter travel" trials and TBH apart from some cycle routes I can not think of any meaningful impact it has made.
The bus service is expensive, it's €4.60 for a return ticket to the city centre...
On a usually crowded bus that is often late.
I can drive to town, park for 1hr and drive home with any shopping and have change from the same €4.60 even with amortising insurance and maintenance costs into the equation.

Leap card and day saver tickets can and do reduce the costs.
But to ensure a meaningful uptake of public transport use, the customers have to see the benefit of use and at present, there really isn't any compelling reason to use public transport when a car is available.

wouldnt be without the bus, its a very good option for me where i live. cheap, frequent, quick.

rainbow kirby

n!ghtmancometh wrote: »

My yearly tax saver Dublin Bus ticket is 104 (around 3.40 per day) a month. Unlimited travel on any bus, including nightlink and airlink. Think it's fairly good value tbh.

£1.50 flat fare for bus journeys in London. Over €3 cash fare to get from my parents' area into Dublin City centre. Bus is once an hour on a Sunday. That's daft.

rainbow kirby

rainbow kirby wrote: »

£1.50 flat fare for bus journeys in London. Over €3 cash fare to get from my parents' area into Dublin City centre. Bus is once an hour on a Sunday. That's daft.

im not sure that a comparison with london is how one measures value of dublin bus.

how far is your parent's area from the city centre and what are the alternative modes of transport and what's it worth to you to not walk it.

three quid is nothing.

Amirani

People moan about taxes quite a bit. They also tend to moan about infrastructure spending and spending on transport systems in Dublin. We're primarily a car-loving/dependent country.

Look at current and previous Metro proposals, Dart Underground and various other transport initiatives around the city. They get lambasted by the same old economists (McCarthy etc.) and resented by those outside of Dublin. Then you have NIMBYs within Dublin moaning about various aspects of projects and protesting against them (Na Fianna situation etc.)

Not surprised whatsoever that we have such a high burden of funding on public transport users.

questionmark?

banie01 wrote: »

.

I live in Limerick, a city that is undertaking the "smarter travel" trials and TBH apart from some cycle routes I can not think of any meaningful impact it has made.
The bus service is expensive, it's €4.60 for a return ticket to the city centre...
On a usually crowded bus that is often late.
I can drive to town, park for 1hr and drive home with any shopping and have change from the same €4.60 even with amortising insurance and maintenance costs into the equation.

Leap card and day saver tickets can and do reduce the costs.
But to ensure a meaningful uptake of public transport use, the customers have to see the benefit of use and at present, there really isn't any compelling reason to use public transport when a car is available.

The leap card price is €1.61 but you are choosing to pay €2:30 each way. €3.22 for a return trip on Leap is good value with regular users getting even better value with period tickets. The service around the country needs to improve but I can't understand people who choose not to get a leap card and pay more whilst cribbing about the price.

n!ghtmancometh

rainbow kirby wrote: »

£1.50 flat fare for bus journeys in London. Over €3 cash fare to get from my parents' area into Dublin City centre. Bus is once an hour on a Sunday. That's daft.

2.60 with leap if you're comparing like with like. Cash is always going to be higher so as to try and disincentivise people from paying with it because it slows down boarding. It's the reason why you can't pay cash at all on London busses.

Dublin has such a low subsidy for public transport compared to other cities, another reason for fares being high. It's like everything in this country, we wan't great services but don't want to pay the taxes to fund them, or implement measures to make them better, as witnessed with the current shambles of buses, cars and luas competing for space in key areas of the city. Any other city in the world would have banned private cars from theses areas at least. Not here though, we'll just let expensive busses and trams sit in traffic instead so auld Mary can park right beside the door in Arnotts. Same happenned in Cork when the council dared to prioritise public transport.

Dr Brown

I blame Varadkar he destroyed the bus service in my area when he was minster for transport.

Cupcake_Crisis

With the Toronto monthly pass it’s expensive but basically uncapped. You could get 6 subways, 4 busses, 2 streetcars and a night bus all in 1 day and it’s all covered by your pass. It works on a transfer system. Was so handy. You can also claim about €10-15 back per pass when you do your taxes.

Conservatory

The number 14 bus is a disgrace. It serves Beaumont hospital and my area and it’s regular that I’m in town a half hour waiting on it.
I don’t know one person on my street not paying tax.
I can get a bus down the Malahide road and walk for 10 minutes or a bus down the airport road and walk ten minutes but sometimes my feet hurt from running around in work boots all day and the walking ten minutes to-from work to the bus stop.

I can’t wait until we finish this job and I can go to a site with parking.

Try_harder

Does the price include the tax deduction? You can save up to 51%

Mousewar

Oh great, another public transport bashing thread.
No, seriously, it's great. That monstrosity of a service deserves to be criticised at every opportunity.

I helped a tourist buy a return ticket from Shankill to Bray (1 stop) yesterday for her and her child from one of the machines. 6.20 was the price. I almost apologised to her.

I do like the drivers though, they always wave back at my son on the platform and sometimes blow the horn!

Pauliedragon

On that list I can only speak for Sydney and I'm wondering where they get the no's from. There is no weekly or monthly system. It's a simple pay as you go. My weekly cost would be about 1/5th of other peoples as I lived close to work. factor in they have weekly caps where after 8 journeys price goes down by half and also some people get multiple modes to work bus then train or ferry etc. It's near impossible to calculate an acccurate $ amount.

banie01

questionmark? wrote: »

The leap card price is €1.61 but you are choosing to pay €2:30 each way. €3.22 for a return trip on Leap is good value with regular users getting even better value with period tickets. The service around the country needs to improve but I can't understand people who choose not to get a leap card and pay more whilst cribbing about the price.

The leap card return price at €3.22 still costs more than an hour's parking and amortised costs.

The leap card is handy, but it means that should I not have a leap card I need to source one. B.E sought to incentivise Leap Card use by offering a reduced fare and penalising the user's least likely to avail of the Leap Card.
Just as handy would be B.E enabling NFC payment as an option with either a driver selectable fare option for Adult/Child/Student.
Immediately opens up their service to savings in allowing the elimination of Leap Card admin and massively reduced cash handling charges.

Conservatory

banie01 wrote: »

The leap card return price at €3.22 still costs more than an hour's parking and amortised costs.

The leap card is handy, but it means that should I not have a leap card I need to source one. B.E sought to incentivise Leap Card use by offering a reduced fare and penalising the user's least likely to avail of the Leap Card.
Just as handy would be B.E enabling NFC payment as an option with either a driver selectable fare option for Adult/Child/Student.
Immediately opens up their service to savings in allowing the elimination of Leap Card admin and massively reduced cash handling charges.

How do you do a return on a leap card. I pay 2.15 into work and 2.15 home. What am I missing?

questionmark?

banie01 wrote: »

The leap card return price at €3.22 still costs more than an hour's parking and amortised costs.

The leap card is handy, but it means that should I not have a leap card I need to source one. B.E sought to incentivise Leap Card use by offering a reduced fare and penalising the user's least likely to avail of the Leap Card.
Just as handy would be B.E enabling NFC payment as an option with either a driver selectable fare option for Adult/Child/Student.
Immediately opens up their service to savings in allowing the elimination of Leap Card admin and massively reduced cash handling charges.

I'd go further than that. No interaction what so ever with the driver. No cash accepted. Validation on the right side as you get on the bus. If they accepted contactless payments as well as Leap even better.

It's not BE seeking to encourage people to use Leap it's the NTA/TII or whatever they are called these days.

London bus works perfectly fine without cash. With BE in Cork, Limerick, Waterford and Galway almost on a flat fare structure it makes no sense to be going to the driver to pay. There is also no reason to not give a deadline of 12 months for the end of cash payments. Everyone will have time to sort out getting a Leap card.

rosmoke

Bucharest:
- 60e for car insurance for a 20 year old.
- 154 e for yearly subway system (every 2 minutes during peak times), 50% for students

I'd rather cycle in rain than use any public transport system in Dublin.

For Forks Sake

rosmoke wrote: »

Bucharest:
- 60e for car insurance for a 20 year old.
- 154 e for yearly subway system (every 2 minutes during peak times), 50% for students

I'd rather cycle in rain than use any public transport system in Dublin.

Second lowest wages in the EU though....

rosmoke

Yeah, you can't rely on the state or on low paid jobs to have a good life.

But a job in development it is paid with 2-3k for a senior, so it's not that bad when you buy a 6 bedroom detached house near the capital for 90k.

For Forks Sake wrote: »

Second lowest wages in the EU though....

goz83

end of the road wrote: »

can you name these inefficient working practices? what metric are you using to judge that the drivers earn eye-watering salaries?
bus driving after all wouldn't be the most popular job in the world i'd imagine, so a good wage would likely need to be paid to attract staff. if dublin bus and others don't pay well they won't get staff.

A guy I used to know works at DB. One of the reasons he became a bus driver and bragged about was the long shift breaks they still got paid for. Apparently you could be waiting a couple of hours with nothing to do and you were still getting paid.

I hate public transport. It’s unreliable, expensive and sometimes disgusting.

Prominent_Dawg

Wonder where we would fall on a list of best to worst cities in the world for commuting by public transport in comparison to this list..

Stephen15

I know DB is expensive but a lot of people here are quoting cash prices when it's far cheaper to pay by Leap card. The highest cash fare for an adult is €3.30 barring outer suburban stages whereas with a Leap card the highest fare is €2.60 so folk should get a Leap card and stop paying with cash. Also buses will be no longer accept cash in the next few years hopefully and it will be Leap only with contactless cards being added as a payment method.

Stephen15

rosmoke wrote: »

Bucharest:
- 60e for car insurance for a 20 year old.
- 154 e for yearly subway system (every 2 minutes during peak times), 50% for students

I'd rather cycle in rain than use any public transport system in Dublin.

You do realise the average yearly income in Romania is just over 6 grand

riffmongous

Vienna is 365 euro a year for unlimited travel, or ~50 euro per month for shorter terms, giving you: 5 underground lines which run 3-8 minute intervals during the day and every 15 minutes at weekends, nightbuses at 30 mins, 29 tram lines and 127 bus lines

erica74

Canard wrote: »

Eh, no idea where that number for Dublin came from, not even a student pass is that 'cheap'. An adult monthly pass is a whopping €160.50.

So, going on this, we're actually the most expensive country in the world and we possibly have the worst value for money.

Has anyone here lived in another country with a similar or worse service?

I was eating lunch at the weekend and there was 2 American tourists at the next table discussing Irish Rail and how, if you miss a train, you might be waiting at least 2 hours for the next one and they're always late so you have to be careful with what activities you have booked. I think we rely quite a bit on tourism so I would hate to think our public transport system would put them off.

When I lived in Dublin, I was always lucky enough to have a good bus route within about a 10 minute walk of where I was living but, more often than not, the buses were late and/or overcrowded. I took to cycling most places because at least I was just relying on myself.

Now, I live outside of Dublin, and I miss public transport. Where I live there's no buses, no trains, nothing, so I have to drive everywhere. Walking and cycling aren't an option because it takes around 2 hours cycling and 3 hours walking to get to the nearest town. I would love to have more options but I think that's a long long way off, I doubt I'll see it in my lifetime.

Trasna1

Stephen15 wrote: »

I know DB is expensive but a lot of people here are quoting cash prices when it's far cheaper to pay by Leap card. The highest cash fare for an adult is €3.30 barring outer suburban stages whereas with a Leap card the highest fare is €2.60 so folk should get a Leap card and stop paying with cash. Also buses will be no longer accept cash in the next few years hopefully and it will be Leap only with contactless cards being added as a payment method.

And it's by far cheaper again to have an annual taxsaver ticket. Public transport isn't cheap in Dublin sure but the prices quoted aren't accurate

circadian

Stephen15 wrote: »

I know DB is expensive but a lot of people here are quoting cash prices when it's far cheaper to pay by Leap card. The highest cash fare for an adult is €3.30 barring outer suburban stages whereas with a Leap card the highest fare is €2.60 so folk should get a Leap card and stop paying with cash. Also buses will be no longer accept cash in the next few years hopefully and it will be Leap only with contactless cards being added as a payment method.

The problem here is that €2.60 is a single ticket on a bus. Most other major public transport systems would have time allocated to that ticket and it could be used on connecting buses/trains/ferries or whatever within the zone and allocated time.

Irish public transport is eye wateringly expensive for what you get. How hard would it be for Dublin Bus to put the time a buss arrives at a particular stop on the timetable? Not this "O'Connell Street >>>>10mins Some other stop" craic. There's several stops in between. Do I have to just guess when it'll be there???

I'd imagine for a rail there isn't quite the demand as we don't have a huge population but it does need to be maintained to a standard regardless, hence the infrequent and expensive services.

I'm not surprised at Dublin ranking 2nd. Most large cities in Asia have fantastic metro systems that are cheap. Busan, Seoul, Chengdu, Guangzhou even bloody Bangkok has a better transport system and its mayhem. Buses come on time, as per the the timetable. There is absolutely no reason for Dublin to be as backward and expensive for public transport.

VinLieger

circadian wrote: »

There is absolutely no reason for Dublin to be as backward and expensive for public transport.

Yes there is..... unions

whisky_galore

VinLieger wrote: »

Yes there is..... unions

I'm pretty sure most if not all transport systems the world over have unions.

weldoninhio

Dublin Bus are a joke. I’m currently in a dispute with them about dangerous overcrowding on their buses. I got an email asking me to phone the depot administrator, told them I’d rather have everything by email so we both had a record of what was said. Got a second email asking me to phone the depot admin to talk to her, again I replied saying I’d rather have a record of what we said. Got a third email asking for my number so that she could call me. Again I said the same thing, I wanted to correspond through email. Got a fourth email then thanking my for my complaint and closing it.

Ush1

weldoninhio wrote: »

Dublin Bus are a joke. I’m currently in a dispute with them about dangerous overcrowding on their buses. I got an email asking me to phone the depot administrator, told them I’d rather have everything by email so we both had a record of what was said. Got a second email asking me to phone the depot admin to talk to her, again I replied saying I’d rather have a record of what we said. Got a third email asking for my number so that she could call me. Again I said the same thing, I wanted to correspond through email. Got a fourth email then thanking my for my complaint and closing it.

Luas red line at rush hour is just as bad if not worse.

I have parking in my office in town and have tried not to use it by using public transport but there really isn't any redeemable reasons. It's slower, over crowded, unreliable and relatively expensive.