Multiple no show buses on the rock road

Cookie_Monster

Was at the model rail show in Blackrock college today followed by the punchbowl for lunch. Went to get a 7 or 7a home (outbound) and waited for 35ish mins when 2 x7s, 2x 4s and 1x 7a that were all due failed to materialise.

Ended up getting a dart to DL and 45a home.

What's the deal here?, I haven't lived in Ireland for years now but still keenly follow baords and transport in particular. It certainly seemed like things have gotten better from reading on here, but how can at least 5 buses simply fail to exist and the stop info only had 7a's due at minimum 28 minutes continuously in the time we were waiting... 2.10 in the afternoon onwards

john boye

Apart from the usual driver shortages, there was a pro Palestine March in O'Connell Street around the time you were waiting and would have affected all the buses you mentioned in both directions.

z80CPU

go ahead 17 service no better cookie. I also used this to get to the same exhibition, bought some expensive $hit too that shall be run on my layout. To humour you, I patiently waited at the stop on the road out to the village bypass and watched the LED Timetable for the for the 17 Go Ahead:

17: Due

17: 1min

17: Due

17: 1 min

This nonsense went on and on for 7 minutes until it did turn up.

Ger Roe

The Irish public transport system has become so fragmented with various service operators and regulatory authorities, to the point that no one has an overall picture of how it should work, the power to make it work, or a responsibility to ensure that it is fit for purpose.

Here in Wicklow, the 133 Bus Eireann service has got to the stage that it fills up before reaching Newtownmountkennedy on most weekday mornings and it then sails past every stop between there and Dublin city. The app will tell you that it is on time and heading for you, but it doesn't say that it is full and won't stop. Still.... I suppose their stats look good in that they reach their allocated stops on time .... no one seems to care if they actually stop. I asked Bus Eireann if they take daily records of the amount of people left standing at stops at peak morning and evening times and they conveniently declined to answer the direct question posed. They said that there are issues every autumn when schools and colleges return and it takes time to get the schedules and capacities right - what an excuse! They admit to knowing when problems are going to arise, but they can only be re-active in dealing with seemingly guaranteed peaks in business opportunity. If that was a truly commercial business they would be out of business with that approach. They basically accept that there is a considerable period of time every single year, when they are going to fail to provide services to their customers. It is straight from the Lord Farquadd business approach .... " Some of you are going to miss your school, work, medical and college appointments .... but it is a risk we are prepared to take."

Complaining to the operator will get a response back to say that you should get on to NTA and TFI, writing to TD's will result in them then sending you the same BS excuses that the operators and regulator has already sent to you. They just pass on the same excuses - what is the point of their existence if they can do no more than a member of the public making a complaint?

The issue is not just affecting services on the rock road..... the whole national public transport management process is a mess of over complex operations and overseers, with no one actually having any power to make the badly needed day to day improvements. The 'powers that be' talk of grand future plans, in the meantime the public are dealing with a joke of a system that is literally driving them away from considering public transport as a viable and reliable future option. Here in Wicklow, the current result is increased traffic on the N11 to the point where you can be effectively trapped in the county until after 9am on most mornings.

bikeman1

All outbound traffic was suspended at that time on Saturday due to the Palestine march from City Centre out to the US Embassy in Ballsbridge. Nothing could get past. In this instance it wasn't the driver shortage. It took most of the day to get back on track.

Coupled with the Dublin Marathon needing around 10,000 people to head to the RDS to collect their numbers at the expo there, plus a Leinster Match at the same location, a Crossfit competition there too, the whole area was heavily congested all day.

p_haugh

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121300865#Comment_121300865

That's a usual affair for the 17, it shows due in 1 minute, disappears, then actually appears 5 minutes later. Happens pretty much every time I get it home from Blackrock.

My theory is that the drivers leave the terminus 5 minutes late so that they're less likely to have to stop and wait to get back on time further along the route.

LXFlyer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121301491#Comment_121301491

The bus companies get penalised for late running of over 6 minutes, and I’ve spotted that practice on other GAI routes where intermediate running times are too generous.

When the expected time on RTPI stays at the same number of minutes for an extended period, it generally means that the bus is stuck somewhere - RTPI works by applying the predictive journey times per the stop-by-stop schedule to the GPS location of the bus.

TranslatorPS

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121300865#Comment_121300865

RTPI feeds basically show you the scheduled journey time distance between your current stop and the bus' position – as LXFlyer said above. What that boils down to is the bus being a distance of 1 minute's journey time away but not moving – and normally I'd expect that to be either horrible traffic around the corner or fake delaying the terminus departure.

z80CPU

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121302580#Comment_121302580

fake dealying terminuse departure then. dublin buses were coming and going ok in the meantime

john boye

I notice that a lot with with go ahead services. Tbh my suspicion is that the RTPI at stops on GAI routes works differently to DB routes and is based on scheduled times rather than real time.

Polar101

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121302646#Comment_121302646

I've noticed that as well.. "5 min" is often very different between GAI/DBus.

Cookie_Monster

Ok, so there was a protest on causing issues, fair enough. Why can't they put that info on the displays? Could have gone straight to the dart then rather than wait for promised buses to not turn up 😡