DART+ (DART Expansion)

lxflyer wrote: »

It's still not going to materially longer than driving and parking, and walking from the parking.


If someone who is apparently passionate about public transport investment isn't prepared to use the options that are there, which include a high frequency light rail line reasonably close to them, what hope do we have?

What suits you in terms of Dublin PT options may not suit somebody else. This "what hope do we have" response to people not doing as you do is very unhelpful. The route examples you quoted are very outdated in a city the size of Dublin. It may be doable, but that does not mean its attractive.

The person you are referring to is probably passionate about PT options that are rail based just like other cities. Im certainly not of the younger generation and I don't know if you or Idbatterim is, but I've travelled enough to know that what exists in Dublin today is nowhere near enough to get people out of their cars. Dublin has been a predominately bus based PT city for many many years. I consider myself to be a victim of it since the 1970s. It was so bad that once people could afford cars, they went with it. You don't rid a city of poor bus perception by improving the bus service alone. You need to introduce radically improved rail services that are fast and connect with likewise bus services. Over the last 40 + years all we have done is DART and luas and its nothing more than piecemeal stuff.

Funding for schemes (both overall amount and specific projects) is indeed very political.

Apologies if I am going OT here but the 'fiscal space' stuff is much misunderstood. Building DU and MN (for example) together might be 500- 600 per annum for 6-7 years.

There are no EU rules preventing this expenditure taking place once you raise taxes (or even just not cut them) to fund it.

Several EU countries spend twice as much as us per head on public infrastructure at the moment. It is just funded from either higher taxation or just not spending as much on other things.

Deedsie wrote: »

Could we go a day without trashing on Ireland? Since this thread started we went in and out of a recession and rebuilt and stabilised our economy. If you'd like to live in Germany more power to you but I wouldn't leave Ireland for Germany if I had U-bahn station from where I lived to the door of where I worked.

Everyone knows we have our faults in Ireland but to trade what we have for Germany. No thanks.

Sorry mods for going off topic but the constant whinging is tiresome at times. Is after hours not provided for people who want to talk shíte?

Nobody is talking sh1te.

Its expressing immense disappointment at what is going on and has been going on for donkeys years. It is very easy to get into a mindset of "trashing Ireland", as you put it, when the politicical attitude to addressing PT concerns is diabolical. Its a great little country in a lot of ways, but its an absolute disaster zone when it comes to PT investment and PT is a very important issue for any nation when it wants to attract inward investment that can offer a decent quality of life to potential employees. I reckon we will be found out eventually.

A lot of people, including the OP who started the thread made a decision to live abroad, where PT options provided a benefit to their lifestyles, a benefit they couldn't find in Ireland. This country spent the entire "Celtic Tiger" years doing as little as possible in PT terms while an explosion in property development was fostered and the media was dominated by stories of people living miles away from employment having no realistic alternative to the car. We appear to be re-embracing that scenario.

mhge wrote: »

This is wildly optimistic...

Bus from Ballinteer to Dundrum - 8-10 mins Add walk from your house and a random long wait, if it arrives at all: DB does not do timetables as they are commonly understood. 20 minutes, if you're lucky - but you never know with DB! Might just as well be 30.
LUAS to SSG - 15 minutes Fair enough, just add 5 minutes for walk over and wait. Another 20 minutes.
SSG to Four Courts 15 minutes walking Google says 21-23, often in the rain.

You'd be lucky to be there within an hour. Besides, developed public transport is not about 20 minute walks!

You clearly missed the part of my posts above where I stated that I actually do this trip myself.

With respect I was speaking from personal daily experience of travelling between Ballinteer and the city centre - there is no need to be so withering and condescending in your response. Let's not get carried away here and start wildly distorting the reality from perception.

The post I was responding to stated that public transport was not an option for that specific journey, and I am pointing out that it most certainly is - I do it every single day.

This is actually the option that many people will have for Metro or DU - not everyone lives directly along the lines themselves - many people will need another mode of transport to get to the trains themselves, so it is hardly uncommon.

In the very early mornings the bus gets into town in 25-30 minutes, but after that using the LUAS wins hands down.

I gave three options for getting to the LUAS - bus, walk or drive - people could add cycling as well - I'm not sure what is wrong about that?

I use the real time app to check the times of buses so that I'm not waiting at the bus stop to get to Dundrum so please don't come up with tripe like telling me it takes 30 minutes. Clearly you don't seem to have embraced modern technology? The app does work and I can stand over the 8-10 minutes trip time quoted. But no one is forcing me to take the bus - I can still walk, cycle or drive to the LUAS.

It's this sort of nonsense that people post who don't make these trips on a regular basis that really annoys me, and then tell me that I don't know what I'm talking about when I do that trip every day?

And from personal experience, I can tell you that walking from SSG to the Four Courts takes me 15 minutes. Google maps always overstates the time taken. If it's raining I would catch a bus. With the frequency of buses along Camden St, you're never waiting more than 2 minutes.

I would stand over my timing estimates - and with respect an hour is wildly pessimistic.

I still remain completely unconvinced by the poster's assertion that using a car for such a trip would be faster than using public transport.

The reason this particular discussion is important is that Ballinteer is fairly representative of many communities that are located within the catchment area of a frequent rail service, but which would require walking, cycling, driving or taking a bus to that rail service. That will be common among a significant number of communities along MN and DU.

We have got to get over the perception that using two modes is impossible. Certainly in the case of Ballinteer, you will find the vast majority of people getting the bus to Dundrum use the real time apps and are not standing around waiting at bus stops any more.

mhge wrote: »

Hittheroad.ie must be withering, condescending and wildly pessimistic too, when it shows 44-58 minutes minimum for its top five public transport combos for "Ballinteer-Four Courts", and this is without any waiting times at all.

I have actually done parts of this route in the past, and I do similar routes today. I only quoted 30 minutes bus part for when the bus does not arrive or arrives full, which is not unusual for DB as we know. I should have added that people often need to wait out a Luas or two in Dundrum too, as they might arrive full at peak times. The app (which I happen to have embraced since it became available, no need for snark - but then not everyone is able or obliged to, and they need to rely on timetables) is not reliable as it still shows ghost buses that won't arrive or misses buses en route.

If you found an unbeatable combo at a particular time of the day and are willing to walk a mile at the end of it, and your buses and app are all perfect, good for you. There is no way to settle this without asking the person asking to do it themselves and see if they can beat their car so I'll leave it at that.

If you've found 14s full in Ballinteer that are going to Dundrum, or indeed buses on the app that didn't show up, then I am truly amazed, given it is towards the end of the route. That's why I rubbished your 30 minute suggestion.

Let's be honest about this, the vast majority of people have access to the real time information these days. We can all come up with exceptions to the rule.

Timetables have their place, and are useful at the start or the middle of the route, but for a route the length of the 14 or similar cross-city routes there is no substitute for using real time information when you're near the other end of the route.

As for walking in the city centre - I don't have a particular issue with it, and nor do significant numbers of people quite clearly. Dublin bikes are an alternative option.

murphaph wrote: »

Hmmm, can't really agree with this. We have excellent RTI here in Berlin but I set my alarm clock in the morning according to the timetable of the regional train I take in to central Berlin. I then know that if I move it when I get into Alexanderplatz that I can just make the U5 connection which takes me to my office. If I stroll, I will miss it and wait another 4 or 5 minutes for the next one.

I don't need to look at RTI unless something has gone wrong or I'm taking a trip somewhere less familiar and I need to use my app to find the way.

RTI should be like the icing on the cake of a system that runs to timetable, but the fact it seems a regular commuter needs to look at it shows how poor our public transport actually is.

I don't disagree about that for trains - and in an ideal world that would work for buses too, and of course the public bus timetables should show full intermediate points, but right now central Dublin is a building site and cross-city bus routes can easily get stuck - hence using RTPI is pretty much essential when using the buses on the far side of the city on a cross-city route.

Then we have the perrenial moanathon here when the summer kicks in and people complaining about buses waiting for driver changes and suggesting that the new driver is late, when in fact the bus is early. Again you have the debate between those who want the bus to go as fast as it can and those (like myself) who would prefer a fully timetabled route with buses delivering reliable even headways.

In the specific case of Ballinteer to Dundrum I don't think the demand would ever justify a 4-5 minute service - hence with a lower frequency the need to use whatever tools you can.

If I'm using the bus to travel into town I use the timetable all the time as the bus termini are within 2-6 minutes of my stops, and to be honest for the 75 I use the timetable too - I'm mid-route and it is generally reliable. But the 14 will have been travelling for at least an hour and in that time it can get delayed - hence using the RTPI is a good and painless idea.

Sam Russell wrote: »

Mod: Can we get back to the Dart Underground please.

Can you send this mod note to the government too?

BluntGuy wrote: »

The proposed network looks lovely but sometimes needs to brush out the Metro West and one or two of the proposed Luas lines because they simply aren't going to happen before 2015. I want to see a realistic transport schematic for 2015.

Accidentally ended up reading the first page of this thread . I guest BluntGuy had seen the realistic schematic without knowing . It was the then current Luas with map with B1 and Docklands extensions and the current Dart maps

You would think that the strikes at DB (which I'm supportive of) would galvanise the arguments for DU and any other transportation improvement for the city.

As an aside. I'm on a Luas to Heuston to get the Portlaoise train to Adamstown and then a 45min walk to my house.

I live 10min walk from Kishogue. Maddening.

EDIT: Walk only took 35min. God bless Griffeen Valley Park for once.

murphaph wrote: »

I've met a number of folks here who used to live in Dublin and left good jobs at Google etc. because they perceived their quality of life as being too low compared to their expectations. They largely blamed poor transport options in Dublin on it

My bf and I are one of those folks! We've really good jobs here and would hate to leave but this place is getting to be a real drag with regard to transport links, don't want to take this off topic now but we've travelled extensively throughout Europe and it just reinforces how much every other city values PT and how handy it is when done correctly.