National Route Numbering

mikeybhoy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123691003#Comment_123691003

The Wexford Bus town service seems to be quite well run. Buses in decent condition and the service seems to be reliable only real issue I see is the buses don't run late enough in the evenings and could be a bit more frequent compared to the likes of the Kilkenny and Carlow services. Perhaps these services could be further improved if converted to PSO.

The Tralee town service on the other hand is a weird one last time I was there many years ago it was being run by a battered up ex DB ME. BusTimes seems to be the only information online about the service no website no nothing. A town the size of Tralee would definitely benefit from a proper town service.

D8 boy

A bus route number can indicate a few different properties to the prospective passenger:

1. Whether it's a local "stage carriage" service, or an express
2. If it's a PSO route which will take Leap and FTP, or a commercial service which may not
3. An indication of where the route serves
4. An indication of the frequency

It's impossible to indicate all 4 properties in a 3 digits, so we need to make some decisions. 4 is probably the hardest to indicate. 1 and 2 are partly linked as there are almost no PSO express routes. So a pattern which gives an indication of the area served and the type of route (PSO vs commercial) is probably the most optimal.

I've done a bit of analysis of route numbers in the 100-999 series, including their suffix variants like the 740A but excluding Dublin legacy routes in that range like the 150.

Based on all that, I suggest the following pattern:

Initial digit	Region	County
PSO
1	Dublin and the north-east	CN
		D
		LH
		MH
		MN
		WW
2	South-west	C
		KY
3	Mid-west and south-east	CE
		L
		T
		W
		WX
4	West	G
		LD
		LM
		MO
		RN
		SO
8	Midlands	CW
		KE
		KK
		LS
		OY
		WH
9	Donegal	DL
Commercial
0	Expresss services	All
5	Local	All
6	Local	All
7	Express services	All

Any thoughts?