Improving Dublin Bus

seamus

Sorry to drag it back a little guys...

SickCert wrote:

This may be hard - i once left the shed 15 minutes late through a mechanical fault. A simple flat battery can cost about 10 minutes. Though i do agree, the peeps should be told the full story on my late arrival.

DB aren't running an airline. If a bus isn't working, the driver takes another bus and goes, he shouldn't be waiting for it to be fixed.

cdebru wrote:

Yeah all you have to do is install canteen facilities on 1000 buses

Nope. At the big stops (UCD, Parnell Sq, etc) you lease a building and provide canteen and changing facilities there. Drivers then find out where they'll be tomorrow and go straight there. It makes no sense to go to the garage first. On out of the way routes, it's tough to avoid, though if the unions weren't so backwards, drivers would probably be willing to do a longer stint in the bus in return for a longer break when they get back to the depot. At the terminii of every route, there should be subsidised food/drink in the closest cafe. That way drivers take a break at the end of every route, not in the middle.

murphaph wrote:

At least 1/2 the stops need to be removed from the network. People should walk a bit further to their nearest stop in order to maintain a better, faster bus journey. How many effing stops does the 39 make on the loop around Hartstown/Hiunstown?

I disagree. Although there are a *lot* of stops that are stupidly close together, reducing the number of stops just in effect reduces the usefulness of the service. People are lazy creatures. If their nearest bus stop is more than 5-10 minutes away, they simply won't use the system for day-to-day travelling. There is a certain logic to it - if you've to walk 15 minutes to your stop, and then 15 minutes to your destination after getting off, then why not drive yourself and spend those 30 minutes in the privacy of your own vehicle?

SickCert

DB aren't running an airline. If a bus isn't working, the driver takes another bus and goes, he shouldn't be waiting for it to be fixed.

At 730am and 4pm there are no spare buses, everything is moving to its start point. There are normally two buses kept for 'non-runners' but after that, get the tools out.

That way drivers take a break at the end of every route, not in the middle.

Where does the bus go while the drivers are snacking? The whole point is keeping the bus moving. If an 11 driver breaks at Wadelai Pk then the next driver should take over there? The guys are based in Donnybrook and most drivers live southside.

At the terminii of every route, there should be subsidised food/drink in the closest cafe.

You'll be surprised some cafes dont want bus drivers.

Zaph0d

seamus wrote:

...reducing the number of stops just in effect reduces the usefulness of the service. People are lazy creatures. If their nearest bus stop is more than 5-10 minutes away, they simply won't use the system for day-to-day travelling. There is a certain logic to it - if you've to walk 15 minutes to your stop, and then 15 minutes to your destination after getting off, then why not drive yourself and spend those 30 minutes in the privacy of your own vehicle?

Bus stops are currently an average of 5 minutes walk apart (350-400m). Doubling the distance between them would add a maximum extra walk of 180m or approx 2.5 minutes. The average extra walk would be 45m or about 40 seconds.

The question is: would that average 40s discourage more people that it would attract because of faster journey times and reduced bunching?

Luas has 13 stops on the green line. Would anyone really suggest that this tram would provide a better service if it stopped 26 times over its 9km journey? That's the way buses operate and it's madness. 33 stops between Foxrock church and the city centre.

A compromise would be to make every second stop setdown only.

Bus stops are changing from a pole in the gound to a shelter with bike parking, electronic display, ticket machines, recessed space for the bus to park, integrated with bike lanes etc. Adding these features becomes more viable when there are fewer stops.

antoinolachtnai

I don't think this would have much effect in comparison to other changes. It wouldn't reduce bunching because it wouldn't reduce the time at stops very much.

The reason is that acceleration/deceleration time is usually quite short in comparison to the time sitting at a stop.

The exception is situations where it's difficult to get back into traffic after stopping. But most of these seem to have been eliminated already.

It also depends on the type of location and whether there are large junctions which slow down pedestrian journeys.

If you were to take lessons from the success of the Luas and apply it to the bus service, it would be to:

- simplify the ticketing

- have a high frequency and good stop information

- reduce the number of routes (the Luas seems to show that people are prepared to walk a significant distance to use a service that is perceived as regular and fast.

After all those things had been done, then it would be worth looking at the frequency of the stops.

There are plenty of good ideas out there. But in all this, you have to consider the ability of Dublin Bus to make strategic changes.

Capt'n Midnight

Reducing the number of stops eh ?

They've had minimum fare buses for the last 30 years at least to discourage that. Then there are the "flyer" buses again with the not stopping at all stops.

As for having stops further apart , if it wern't for health and safety laws we could bring back the old routemaster type buses and people could hop on/off at traffic lights. Of course the heath and safety laws don't apply to car drivers but that's a different story.

A survey in Switzerland showed that what people wanted most was predictable timetables rather than absolute speed. That's where the DART and LUAS score highly against buses, even those off peak with very little traffic. [RANT]the number of times I've had to go from Bray to UCD and you had the choice of waiting for the 84 in Bray or the 17 in Blackrock after the DART and the number of books I've read at bus stops [/rant]

mac45

Dublin Bus need a 21st Century Management. With all due respect to the individuals involved they are appalling. One of the reasons that the govt wont put any money into the service is that they know that the management wont spend it optimally. Their services are pretty much the same as in 1985 - very few people choose to go on Dublin Bus - they are just a hopeless monopoly...

Flukey

Dublin's suburbs have extended a lot in recent years. Is Dublin Bus keeping up with this? A lot of routes don't seem to have changed much.


There should be more innovative routes. There should be more routes that don't go into the city like the 17, 18, 75 etc. We still have a lot of situations where you have to go into the city to get a bus back out to a place that isn't very far from where you started. They could have circular routes, serving local areas or even a broader spread. Depending on the length of the route you could have buses going only one direction or some going clockwise and others anti-clockwise. You might only need one terminus on the shorter ones, although that might mean a stop and bus changeover for those that want to keep going, so maybe not. There should be more routes going right through the city. There are a lot, but there is scope for more with more starting and stopping points.

With only a bit of imagination there would be a lot that could be done to improve the service. It has improved a lot over what we had 20 or 30 years ago, but there is still more scope to do so.

Mad Mike

More Investment

I cannot claim to be an expert but I have to wonder if the kind of money which was spent on LUAS was invested in the Dublin Bus Fleet - surely that could pay for some big big improvements.

Just as one simple example take Sickcert's point that at peak times there are only two busses on standby to cover for breakdowns etc (is that for the whole city or per garage???). A few hundred million would buy a grand few backup buses to make sure people aren't left waiting at bus stops on rainy days just because of mechanical failure.

markpb

Flukey wrote:

Dublin's suburbs have extended a lot in recent years. Is Dublin Bus keeping up with this? A lot of routes don't seem to have changed much.

To be fair to DB, the blame for the lack of buses and new routes lies firmly with the government. New buses were promised and then mostly cancelled because privatisation hasn't happened yet.

Any new routes or changes to existing routes have to be approved by the Minister for Transport who, from what I've heard, has been slow to do that because he'd rather keep the new routes open for private companies to operate.

SickCert

Just as one simple example take Sickcert's point that at peak times there are only two busses on standby to cover for breakdowns etc (is that for the whole city or per garage???). A few hundred million would buy a grand few backup buses to make sure people aren't left waiting at bus stops on rainy days just because of mechanical failure.

We need the extra new buses on the road. The standby buses should be old stock that is normally sold of to the UK as soon as redundant. You cant have a €300,000 machine on standby - but the old 91/92 D cant be.

Any new routes or changes to existing routes have to be approved by the Minister for Transport who, from what I've heard, has been slow to do that because he'd rather keep the new routes open for private companies to operate.

The licence has to come from them.

Victor

mac45 wrote:

very few people choose to go on Dublin Bus

Only 500,000 passengers per day.

Mad Mike

Sickcert - humour me for a minute - Realistically what could be achieved if a substantial amount of Capital (say €500M) was injected into Dublin bus? Think laterally if nessecary but think about the blockages and annoyances that might be removable with new technology, more investment whatever.

Zaph0d

Victor wrote:

mac45 wrote:

very few people choose to go on Dublin Bus

Only 500,000 passengers per day.

I think mac45 meant that most people who use the bus do so because they have no choice.