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Dublin - BusConnects

marno21

Two weeks after a similar publication for Metrolink, the NTA have published a tender for design of 16 Core Bus Corridors for the BusConnect project:

https://irl.eu-supply.com/app/rfq/publicpurchase_frameset.asp?PID=127159&B=ETENDERS_SIMPLE&PS=1&PP=ctm/Supplier/publictenders

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Last Stop

CatInABox wrote: »

Disappointed in the H spine, it's essentially the same as it is now, would have like to have seen them do something with the city centre end of it.

Also disappointed with the timeline, 2021 before it starts, 2023 before it's all in place.

Seems odd they didn’t link it with the G spine

Last Stop

The new network seems to have lead to a big increase in the number of peak hour service. This is undoubtedly driven by capacity but has lead to some corridors exceeding their maximum frequency and design criteria of 2 minute frequencies or 30 buses per hour.

N11 - south of UCD - 15 peak + 19 regular = 35 buses during peak hour
- north of UCD - 6 peak + 24 regular = 30 buses during the peak hour

N4 - 27 peak (wow) + 12 regular = 39 buses per hour. Considering an automated metro is doing 40 per hour that’s going to be a disaster!!

While I can’t say I’m surprised, I am a bit puzzled as to why they didn’t run even some of the N4 ones down the G spine instead. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense but then again neither does treating buses as a form of mass transport.

gjim

Marcusm wrote: »

Re articulated buses, this will require a step change in passenger attitude and fare enforcement. They were rolled out fairly significantly under Ken Livingstone in the U.K. and one of the observed phenomena was a dramatic reduction in the number of recorded passengers - basically anyone who didn’t have a pass could choose not to tap on and only do so if they saw an inspector. This led to enforcement taking the form of 3-4 inspectors plus 2 cops and long dwell times on inspections. The 453 became known as the 45Free.

The systems I've used generally have you tap/tag on at the stop - Luas style - and not on the bus itself (although I vaguely recall some exception - maybe in the Netherlands?). This somewhat reduces the opportunity for thievery.

But I agree that enforcement would have to be stepped up significantly if buses were to use something like the Luas ticketing system. To be honest I'd welcome a more "German" style approach to fare protection in Dublin. Any issues with your tickets and you're hauled off the vehicle - you can try to make your case/excuses later if you want to contest. Enforcement is done by teams - often undercover where they only flash their badges after the bus starts moving.

In fact I always wondered why fare evasion isn't treated like theft the way shoplifting, for example, is? This would mean a trip to a Garda station and the possiblity of criminal charges.

This sounds crazy draconian but the entire system of fare protection should be weighed towards making the lives of the 99% honest passengers smoother and the whole system more efficient - even if at the cost of making examples of the 1% who are caught cheating.

As outlined in my previous post, the cost of forcing passengers to queue past the bus driver is a massive reduction in the carrying capacity of the overall system. I'm guessing double deckers made more sense when you had a separate conductor on the bus checking tickets which allowed all the doors to the used and thus dwell times were far less than they are now.

The resulting reduction in dwell times has so many benefits: faster journeys, less bunching, increased passenger carrying capacity and less demands on precious road space for bus stops.

Joker2019

devnull wrote: »

No, to do so would fall foul of competition and state aid rules, since effectively you'd be taking a private enterprise out of business in order to throw state money at a similar route which if not stopped at local level would result in a claim about state aid under EU Law.

Also if you have this kind of rule there is no incentive to innovate and innovation is something that you really need to keep alive in the sector else a lot of the commercial routes we have today would never have existed if they could just be taken away from them when the state suddenly had an interest in a route it didn't previously.

Would it be allowed say under EU law for an authority such as the NTA to refuse a licence to a private operator operating a commercial route then set up a PSO route after refusing a commercial licence on a route that is the exact same or very similar.

Also would an authority be allowed to revoke a licence and replace it with a PSO service if the commercial operator fell below standards for example operating older buses, higher fares, more limited timetable and unreliable service.

cgcsb

Ideally the Malahide road, Stillorgan road and Lucan road should have had luas lines built on them 10 years ago, we should have had a 4 line DART network with spurs built 40 years ago and more recently a comprehensive network of bus and cycle lanes providing good pt coverage everywhere. But here we are talking about having integrated ticketing in 2 years time and an improved bus service. I say by all means get it done, get it done yesterday and move onto the next decades delayed project.

LXFlyer

Last Stop wrote: »

The new network seems to have lead to a big increase in the number of peak hour service. This is undoubtedly driven by capacity but has lead to some corridors exceeding their maximum frequency and design criteria of 2 minute frequencies or 30 buses per hour.

N11 - south of UCD - 15 peak + 19 regular = 35 buses during peak hour
- north of UCD - 6 peak + 24 regular = 30 buses during the peak hour

N4 - 27 peak (wow) + 12 regular = 39 buses per hour. Considering an automated metro is doing 40 per hour that’s going to be a disaster!!

While I can’t say I’m surprised, I am a bit puzzled as to why they didn’t run even some of the N4 ones down the G spine instead. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense but then again neither does treating buses as a form of mass transport.

You might want to re-examine the routings and indeed the existing service levels for your calculations.

Currently between 08:05 and 09:05 there are scheduled to be 51 buses inbound passing on the N11 at Donnybrook Garage, 6 of which are 39a (this is the peak number of buses).

This plan sees that reduced with the re-routing of the 39a replacements (B1 and B2) via Nutley Lane (8 services) and the curtailment of some of the peak extras at UCD, although I suspect that in practice the latter may end up continuing to the city. The B1 and B2 won’t serve any stop on the N11 apart from the UCD flyover.

There will be 15 E services, and 12 peak services (301, 302, 311 and 312) instead passing Donnybrook, which is 27 services an hour.

Between Stillorgan and UCD there will be a further 1 regular (213) and 9 peak (E9, 313 and 316). That’s a total of 37 buses, compared with 47 now.

A bit of a reduction!

The report makes clear in the text that the N4 corridor requires significant additional focussed peak capacity.

devnull

Joker2019 wrote: »

Would it be allowed say under EU law for an authority such as the NTA to refuse a licence to a private operator operating a commercial route then set up a PSO route after refusing a commercial licence on a route that is the exact same or very similar.

I do not think that the NTA would be in the business of refusing a commercial route and then suggesting that they run it as a PSO route as that would undermine the whole licensing mode and again you'd have the issue that operators wouldn't bother applying for routes that could be taken off them, which means the routes may not exist at all and also no doubt there would be challenges from the commercial operator if that was to happen.

Also would an authority be allowed to revoke a licence and replace it with a PSO service if the commercial operator fell below standards for example operating older buses, higher fares, more limited timetable and unreliable service.

The guidelines to licensing commercial routes can be found here.
https://www.nationaltransport.ie/downloads/guidelines_for_licensing_public_buses.pdf

Bear in mind however a commercially licensed operator is self-funding and buys it's own vehicles and doesn't get any subsidy. Whilst a PSO operator may be able to use newer vehicles and lower fares, that is because the fares are being subsidized through our taxes and the newer vehicles are being paid for out of a transport budget and given to them.

That being said I would be in favour of some improved licensing guidelines in the future that take into account reliability of service more and also take into account breaches of road safety - for example in this particular case, the fining of the operator €11k by the RSA and no action from the NTA is completely inadequate.

tom1ie

LXFlyer wrote: »

You might want to re-examine the routings and indeed the existing service levels for your calculations.

Currently between 08:05 and 09:05 there are scheduled to be 51 buses inbound passing on the N11 at Donnybrook Garage, 6 of which are 39a.

This plan sees that reduced with the re-routing of the 39a replacements (B1 and B2) via Nutley Lane (8 services) and the curtailment of some of the peak extras at UCD, although I suspect that in practice the latter may end up continuing to the city. The B1 and B2 won’t serve any stop on the N11 apart from the UCD flyover.

There will be 15 E services, and 12 peak services (301, 302, 311 and 312) instead passing Donnybrook, which is 27 services an hour.

Between Stillorgan and UCD there will be a further 1 regular (213) and 9 peak (E9, 313 and 316). That’s a total of 37 buses, compared with 47 now.

A bit of a reduction!

The report makes clear in the text that the N4 corridor requires significant additional focussed peak capacity.

How do they plan on delivering the extra peak capacity?

LXFlyer

tom1ie wrote: »

How do they plan on delivering the extra peak capacity?

Extra buses doing peak hour only trips compared to all day.

Look at Chapter 7 for the proposed route by route hourly frequencies through the day across the week.

CatInABox

One of the interesting things in BusConnects is that they're now looking at making some bus lanes properly bus only. That'd solve a lot of issues as well, but proper enforcement has been an issue with existing bus lanes.

I really hope that the NTA take over traffic enforcement from the guards, it can't come soon enough.

LXFlyer

CatInABox wrote: »

One of the interesting things in BusConnects is that they're now looking at making some bus lanes properly bus only. That'd solve a lot of issues as well, but proper enforcement has been an issue with existing bus lanes.

I really hope that the NTA take over traffic enforcement from the guards, it can't come soon enough.

Quite so, bus lane enforcement could certainly make a difference on the current Rathfarnham QBC which is the slowest of the existing QBCs.

From the Dodder to Terenure, north of Harold’s Cross Green to Leonard’s Corner and on the SCR are the worst performing sections where enforcement would make a difference.

And that’s before we talk about yellow box enforcement.

Last Stop

LXFlyer wrote: »

You might want to re-examine the routings and indeed the existing service levels for your calculations.

Currently between 08:05 and 09:05 there are scheduled to be 51 buses inbound passing on the N11 at Donnybrook Garage, 6 of which are 39a (this is the peak number of buses).

This plan sees that reduced with the re-routing of the 39a replacements (B1 and B2) via Nutley Lane (8 services) and the curtailment of some of the peak extras at UCD, although I suspect that in practice the latter may end up continuing to the city. The B1 and B2 won’t serve any stop on the N11 apart from the UCD flyover.

There will be 15 E services, and 12 peak services (301, 302, 311 and 312) instead passing Donnybrook, which is 27 services an hour.

Between Stillorgan and UCD there will be a further 1 regular (213) and 9 peak (E9, 313 and 316). That’s a total of 37 buses, compared with 47 now.

A bit of a reduction!

The report makes clear in the text that the N4 corridor requires significant additional focussed peak capacity.

We are spending 2bn on infrastructure designed to handle 30 buses per hour. No one is arguing that the current system isn’t working.

South of UCD there will be 37 services.
Between UCD and Nutley lane there will be 35 services (the 27 you mentioned plus 8 B services)
On the N4 there will be 39 services. That’s every 90 seconds. A segregated Luas couldn’t do that and we are expecting buses to?
To provide the same capacity as the 39 buses would take 9 Luas trams.

LXFlyer

Last Stop wrote: »

We are spending 2bn on infrastructure designed to handle 30 buses per hour. No one is arguing that the current system isn’t working.

South of UCD there will be 37 services.
Between UCD and Nutley lane there will be 35 services (the 27 you mentioned plus 8 B services)
On the N4 there will be 39 services. That’s every 90 seconds. A segregated Luas couldn’t do that and we are expecting buses to?
To provide the same capacity as the 39 buses would take 9 Luas trams.

I am not discussing LUAS here - as the moderator has already outlawed that.

I’m correcting your analysis of the N11 - the number of buses using the corridor is dropping under this plan and not increasing as you suggested in your opening paragraph. It’s already much higher.

Currently the N4 has about 36 buses an hour along the Chapelizod bypass at peak service levels but this would rise to 43.

sharper

LXFlyer wrote: »

Currently the N4 has about 36 buses an hour along the Chapelizod bypass at peak service levels but this would rise to 43.

The bus corridor project will also be introducing some new stops along this route.

Stark

sharper wrote: »

The bus corridor project will also be introducing some new stops along this route.

What?

The nice thing about that route at the moment is having a decent stretch without stops so can get into city centre in a reasonable time.

Last Stop

LXFlyer wrote: »

I am not discussing LUAS here - as the moderator has already outlawed that.

I’m correcting your analysis of the N11 - the number of buses using the corridor is dropping under this plan and not increasing as you suggested in your opening paragraph. It’s already much higher.

Currently the N4 has about 36 buses an hour along the Chapelizod bypass at peak service levels but this would rise to 43.

My reference to the new plan was in comparison to the previous reincarnation of Busconnects routes. I pointed out that the number of peak hour services has increase from previously proposed scheme which there has been!
While I don’t disagree that the current numbers are above capacity, when you’re proposing to improve the system, surely this is one of the key requirements... design a system with capacity to meet demand!! Busconnects clearly doesn’t do that!!

sharper

Stark wrote: »

What? The nice thing about that route at the moment is having a decent stretch without stops so can get into city centre in a reasonable time.

You can see it mentioned in section 2.2.2 here https://busconnects.ie/media/1360/busconnects-cbc6-lucan-to-city-centre_finalfixed.html

Between Kennelsfort Road Junction and Con Colbert Road Junction, it is proposed to maintain a single bus lane and two general traffic lanes in both directions. It is intended to provide a bus lane on the R112 Kylemore Road on-ramp road. It is also proposed to provide new bus stop facility and pedestrian footbridge serving Chapelizod Hill Road. Some limited land take will be required to facilitate these works. It is proposed to provide cycle tracks on both the on and off ramps at Con Colbert Road. Similarly, cycle lanes can be provided on Memorial Road.

The idea was to route a lot of the existing buses that are going elsewhere out of Chapelizoid and give that are its own service. Some level of access is maintained by having an extra stop as well.

My recollection was that there were two new stops but I only see one referenced there.

I can easily imagine there being exactly one person on each of those 36 buses wanting to get off at that stop. That's one of the things that drives me nuts about routing through Chapelizoid, stopping at every single stop so one person can get off.

Joker2019

LXFlyer wrote: »

You might want to re-examine the routings and indeed the existing service levels for your calculations.

Currently between 08:05 and 09:05 there are scheduled to be 51 buses inbound passing on the N11 at Donnybrook Garage, 6 of which are 39a (this is the peak number of buses).

This plan sees that reduced with the re-routing of the 39a replacements (B1 and B2) via Nutley Lane (8 services) and the curtailment of some of the peak extras at UCD, although I suspect that in practice the latter may end up continuing to the city. The B1 and B2 won’t serve any stop on the N11 apart from the UCD flyover.

There will be 15 E services, and 12 peak services (301, 302, 311 and 312) instead passing Donnybrook, which is 27 services an hour.

Between Stillorgan and UCD there will be a further 1 regular (213) and 9 peak (E9, 313 and 316). That’s a total of 37 buses, compared with 47 now.

A bit of a reduction!

The report makes clear in the text that the N4 corridor requires significant additional focussed peak capacity.

Don't forget as well that the actual physical buses themselves may well have a lower capacity than currently. The hybrid buses on trial at the moment can only take around 85 passengers which is lower than what a standard SG, EV or AX can take at the moment and there are many VTs that run along the N11 on the 145 and 39a and the NTA has no plans to buy anymore high capacity buses. The only class comparable to the hybrids in terms of capacity is the GTs.

Joker2019 wrote: »

Don't forget as well that the actual physical buses themselves may well have a lower capacity than currently. The hybrid buses on trial at the moment can only take around 85 passengers which is lower than what a standard SG, EV or AX can take at the moment and there are many VTs that run along the N11 on the 145 and 39a and the NTA has no plans to buy anymore high capacity buses. The only class comparable to the hybrids in terms of capacity is the GTs.

There is no physical size difference between the GT's, early SG's and later SG's, yet they all had different name plate passenger number. I don't believe that number really reflects reality.

Is there actually any difference in length of the three hybrids versus the SG's? If not I'd just assume they are much the same as the SG's.

Also nothing to say that the NTA won't replace the VT's with new tri-axles. The NTA's issue with the VT's was that non came with Euro 6 engines which they required. Now there are some Euro 6 engined VT's, but now they require hybrid tri-axles, there is non yet, but I'm sure some will come eventually. Though the Wrightbus situation might complicate that.

Joker2019

bk wrote: »

There is no physical size difference between the GT's, early SG's and later SG's, yet they all had different name plate passenger number. I don't believe that number really reflects reality.

Is there actually any difference in length of the three hybrids versus the SG's? If not I'd just assume they are much the same as the SG's.

Also nothing to say that the NTA won't replace the VT's with new tri-axles. The NTA's issue with the VT's was that non came with Euro 6 engines which they required. Now there are some Euro 6 engined VT's, but now they require hybrid tri-axles, there is non yet, but I'm sure some will come eventually. Though the Wrightbus situation might complicate that.

That's what I meant though they have a lower capacity as the physical buses cannot for whatever reason take the same amount of passengers as the current buses. The reason I believe is because the hybrid equipment means it weighs a lot more than a standard diesel bus. The 2014 SGs can take 27 standing whereas every SG since 2015 can take 28 standees.

They could replace the VTs with tri axles but as you say there are no hybrid tri axles on the market right now and they have already replaced 20 VTs with SGs.

Joker2019 wrote: »

That's what I meant though they have a lower capacity as the physical buses cannot for whatever reason take the same amount of passengers as the current buses. The reason I believe is because the hybrid equipment means it weighs a lot more than a standard diesel bus. The 2014 SGs can take 27 standing whereas every SG since 2015 can take 28 standees.

The point is, that number on the plate is BS. No driver sits there counting how many people board! The same number of people can squeeze onto any of the SG or GT's.

In reality I expect non of them actually reach the number on the plate, due to people not realising some empty seats upstairs or the way people tend to cluster around the front of the bus, with plenty of extra standing room in the back.

I'm sure that the NTA and DB know average max peak time numbers for each model based on ticket machine data. I'd love to get my hands on that data to do some data mining, it would be very interesting.

BTW According to the corridor counts, it looks like an average of just 37 passengers per bus! That can't be right, can it?!

LeinsterDub

Last Stop wrote: »

We are spending 2bn on infrastructure designed to handle 30 buses per hour. No one is arguing that the current system isn’t working.

Nonsense.

https://twitter.com/DublinCommuters/status/1186766082947932160

Last Stop

LeinsterDub wrote: »

Nonsense.

https://twitter.com/DublinCommuters/status/1186766082947932160

So in that case, the minimum headway is 5 minutes (12 buses per hour) which means that all the corridors are at or near capacity?

CatInABox

Last Stop wrote: »

So in that case, the minimum headway is 5 minutes (12 buses per hour) which means that all the corridors are at or near capacity?

Where are you getting your capacity figures from Last Stop?

You also seem to be missing the point of that tweet Last Stop, that's not the max number of buses that they're talking about, they're talking about the current set up. Increase the frequency and the pphpd number will go up. It's not a limit on the number of buses that can go on the road.

LeinsterDub

Last Stop wrote: »

So in that case, the minimum headway is 5 minutes (12 buses per hour) which means that all the corridors are at or near capacity?

Why on earth would buses need 5 minute headway ? We are currently running 60+ buses per hour down OCS

Last Stop

The maximum design capacity of the CBCs is 30 buses per hour. This comes from the core bus network report which was used to inform the GDA strategy and Busconnects. This will have to be used in the application to ABP as it is referred to in the route selection reports (on the Busconnects website) which are being used as the alternative assessment in the EIAR.
Whether you agree with that or not is rather irrelevant and the suggestion that these corridors could handle a frequency greater than every 2 minutes is unfounded.

LXFlyer

Last Stop wrote: »

The maximum design capacity of the CBCs is 30 buses per hour. This comes from the core bus network report which was used to inform the GDA strategy and Busconnects. This will have to be used in the application to ABP as it is referred to in the route selection reports (on the Busconnects website) which are being used as the alternative assessment in the EIAR.
Whether you agree with that or not is rather irrelevant and the suggestion that these corridors could handle a frequency greater than every 2 minutes is unfounded.

They already are handling a frequency greater than 2 mins in certain cases.

Look the reality is that the level of CPO activity mooted at the outset of this process isn’t going to be acceptable politically in many areas, and alternative measures such as bus gates will have to be used instead of continuous bus lanes. The same resistance to massive levels of CPO means your alternative ideas are also not going to happen. They aren’t even on any level of political discussion.

This plan is the only game in town and I think that you need to start accepting that. There aren’t any other options on the table. No it won’t be perfect, but it will result in improved flows along roads that currently suffer from slow bus speeds due to lack of any priority measures or poor enforcement.

LeinsterDub

Last Stop wrote: »

The maximum design capacity of the CBCs is 30 buses per hour. This comes from the core bus network report which was used to inform the GDA strategy and Busconnects. This will have to be used in the application to ABP as it is referred to in the route selection reports (on the Busconnects website) which are being used as the alternative assessment in the EIAR.
Whether you agree with that or not is rather irrelevant and the suggestion that these corridors could handle a frequency greater than every 2 minutes is unfounded.

Can you please provide links to your fact and figures in future

machaseh

Sigh... What use is it to keep complaining about 'there will be too many buses on this corridor'.

This is all that can be done with current infrastructure. Rail-based transit projects are being worked on on their own pace, it's no point to keep complaining abuot how corridor X should be served by a luas instead of busconnects. Even if they would decide to do taht on the spot (which they wont for various reasons, such as money), it is going to take many years before the first luas would run there.

Last Stop

LXFlyer wrote: »

They already are handling a frequency greater than 2 mins in certain cases.

Look the reality is that the level of CPO activity mooted at the outset of this process isn’t going to be acceptable politically in many areas, and alternative measures such as bus gates will have to be used instead of continuous bus lanes. The same resistance to massive levels of CPO means your alternative ideas are also not going to happen. They aren’t even on any level of political discussion.

This plan is the only game in town and I think that you need to start accepting that. There aren’t any other options on the table. No it won’t be perfect, but it will result in improved flows along roads that currently suffer from slow bus speeds due to lack of any priority measures or poor enforcement.

If they are capable of handling a frequency of more than 2 minutes then why are we reforming it? The current system is dysfunctional and needs change. Part of this change should include addressing capacity issues where necessary.

Without wishing to go off topic, the level of CPO required for a Luas Line are less than that required for Busconnects. Running a Luas to UCD removes the need for a CBC on Nutley Lane. The CBN report considers BRT to UCD and therefore doesn’t include this spine! It’s the exact same on the kimmage corridor. A Luas to Rathfarnham found that 150 properties would be impacted, the Rathfarnham CBC impacts 225!

While I appreciate no plan is going to be perfect, the current plan simply doesn’t work! 3 of the corridors are above design capacity from day 1. There seems to be a view that everyone should just accept that more bus lanes is better and don’t mention any flaws. Dublin deserves better!!