which goalpost moving? 100% capacity increase to 10% capacity increase. Is that what you mean.
Let's ban cars for a 10% capacity increase on public transport. That will win hearts and minds.
just a teensy bit of goalpost moving there, no?
rush hour can last a few hours, so yes, it's quite possible that a bus making one return journey could stretch that into one and a half or more return journeys during rush hour.
One bus going from Bray to Heuston taking 40 mins carrying 50 passengers -say - compared with the same bus carrying the same passengers in 80 mins. The bus will be able to make twice as many journeys per day, so doubling capacity with the same number of buses. Now it is most unlikely that the service could achieve anything like that, but a more modest improvement of say 10% or 20% would mean an increase in capacity of 10% or 20%, providing the timetables were adjusted to take account of the faster speed.
Whether the bus is full or not, the higher speed makes the journey time shorter which means the bus can make more journeys per shift/day. Now obviously, the current speed of buses during congested times in Dublin barely breaks double figures, so an improvement is easier. This is what Busconnects is trying to achieve.
Why do we tolerate illegal parking, cars driving in bus lanes, cars breaking red lights, cars parking in cycle lanes, cars parking on the pavements, etc.?
[Last week or so, (18th Jan) I was travelling south down the N11, passing Oatlands School when the traffic suddenly stopped. There was clearly an incident on the N11 opposite what used to be the bowling alley. Now I could not see what it was, but the traffic was stationary for maybe 10 mins. The traffic started to try to move, and some cars (BMWs and Audis) started going down the bus lane and were followed by many more cars until it was choked. Then I saw an ambulance and a fire truck trying to get through the traffic with no success - many cars tried t make space by moving left, but those in the bus lane refused to move. Eventually, the ambulance and fire truck got through. The Garda started letting cars through, but not those in the bus lane. Turned out to be a four by four on its side on the central reservation, presumably with people still in it. If those in the bus lane had kept it free, it would al have been over in jig time. It does not take many selfish drivers to make life difficult for all.]
Sigh, that's an answer to a question that was not asked. Please try again
Have you heard of unions? And is that bus going to be able to do two runs during rush hour when capacity is already maxed? The extra capacity is unlikely to be needed outside of those peak times.
forgetting 100% capacity increase which is just not possible being capable of carrying 1000 people instead of 500 is not of much use when the majority of people want to get in to their destination between the hours of 8 and 10 and 3 and 6 each day.
simple - if a bus can get into the city centre twice as often in one day (running with the 'doubling of speed' idea as a concept) - say a 100 seater bus, getting into the city centre ten times a day instead of five times, that bus is now capable of carrying 1000 people into the city centre every day instead of 500.
option 2 is the one secretly yearned for by the group who control this sub-forum but only the Dullards openly state it on thread.
The consternation when the attempted grab of Strand Road was rolled back by Court Order is proof of this...even arterial routes like Strand Road aren't safe.
@[Deleted User] I'm honestly struggling to understand your viewpoint.
Giving you the benefit of the doubt and based on your comments on the setup in your current city, it's actually a very real possibility that you and others here are closely aligned in terms of what the end result might look like just it's being referred to as different things.
With that in mind, can you outline what "car ban" actually means in a practical sense. Use Dublin as the example.
I'm asking because there are 3 possibilities here wrt to the car bans you keep referring to and what they might look like.
1. Restrictions on access on some streets, realignment of flows (2-way to 1-way), reassignment of freed up road space to add bus, bike and pedestrian infrastructure (may or may not still include car access, just space for this would be reduced). Through access would be maintained but through diversions away from the center. No on street parking spaces with the exception of disabled spaces.
2. No cars, anywhere, ever. Dublin becomes 100% car free inside a boundary you provide for context. Nothing fancy, just a Google map screenshot with a boundary (rough).
3. Something else
I'm trying to understand where you are coming from because you seem to be complaining about #2 being the objective while pointing out the benefits you get from #1. The disconnect is #1 is what almost everyone is aiming for but you seem opposed to what needs to be done to get it.
Please explain how increasing the speed of a fixed number of (already full) bus seats increases capacity. Only extra buses will increase capacity. That isn't reliant on their speed.
yep, a bus driving even at walking pace in the city centre would typically be taking up the same amount of space as two cars - with probably no more than three occupants - with probably 10 times as many passengers.
"No-one is proposing banning cars".
It seems to me to be more like an operation to blow-up the bridges on the Rhine to stop the enemy's advance picking the most strategically important waypoints to pin those dasterdly car commuters at bay.
In my city back gardens of an entire street were taken which in conjunction with a tunnel through a mountain to ease access for both cars and buses to the centre of the city.
Dublin is struggling to even claim a few feet of front garden so...abrakedabra, lets ban cars
I am merely pointing out that increasing bus speeds gives an equivalent increase in capacity. Te 100% was to make the sums easier.
Not all passengers are doddery, and buses will stop as required which is part of its transit time.
No-one is proposing banning cars - just restricting them in certain places and at certain times. Cars take up a lot of space for the number of passengers they carry.
my sister (pre covid) used to get the bus from near ongar into the city centre, and would sometimes have been sitting on the bus for 3 hours in a day; the big issue was usually when it got to around cabra, and progress would grind to a halt in heavy traffic.
so as to whether it's possible to increase bus speeds by 100%, it depends on how big a box you want to draw around your parameters.
if it's reducing a 15km journey on probably a dirty wet winter morning from 1h30m to 45m (i.e. bringing the average speed from 10km/h to 20km/h) then we're probably within the realms of possibilty of doing it; as the bus would often barely average walking speed in the city centre.
i don't know how things have changed, she left that job several years ago.
Do you think that increasing bus speeds by 100% is possible by banning cars?
If cars are banned it is self-defeating in that the buses will be stopping at each and every bus stop and will be stationary for longer as passengers board and alight including the most doddery of the population who beg to find space beyond those blocking the aisle.
Some of the most impressionable around here might take your claim at face value. How would you ever make it up to them when it turns out not to be true.
Not many bus routes, if any, have bus lanes over anything but a tiny distance of the end to end route. Plus, many bus lanes are filled with cars pretending to turn left.
Even the Luas is held up by cars at various points.
No-one is calling to ban cars - only restrict them in certain places and at certain times.
The route I chose was one with buslane pretty much all the way. You can send every car in Dublin to the scrapyard and speeds will not increase on that route.
low hanging fruit like pleasant bus stops, anti-socials removed, ease of payment, realtime position information ignored...let's ban cars.
If the average speed of buses doubles, then so does the capacity.
So reducing cars sufficiently to allow buses to travel faster improves the capacity and reduces journey time, and therefore attractiveness to casual users and benefits regular users. Now if the reduction in cars also allows to travel faster, that also increases the attractiveness of cars, so the improvement in bus transit times must be achieved by bus lanes and priority routings. It can also be achieved by curtailing parking and the imposition of a congestion charge.
Of course enforcement will be central to its success.
Taken from Dublin Bus website:
● Please pay at the driver's ticket machine.
● To avail of this fare, simply present your Leap Card to the smart card reader on the right hand side as you enter the bus.
Please make sure that you have the correct change to pay for your fare, drivers cannot accept Euro notes or give change.
That's a barrier to occassional usage and onboarding to the service. Dublin Bus expect everyone gets a leap card and is surprised the Public do not comply.
I just checked for a bus from Blanch to City Centre. It shows the route online but not a chance I can buy a ticket online from the route planner. It is not a problem I have with the service here where I can proceed to Deutsche Bahn's booking engine to pay for a short distance bus ticket.
If 15% of the public only use your transport service regularly and the other 85% have hurdles which make alternatives more attractive then the problem is with the service.
If cars were really so terrible there wouldn't be 2.2 million of them registered in Ireland. The figures speak for themselves.
The way people talk amongst themselves on this sub-forum it is like you are trying to strategise how to get the last few problematic laggards on to the new model of operation when actually the majority are happy to continue using the existing satisfactory solution. It isn't like the migration from Penny Farthing to Safety Bicycle or Horse and Cart to car.
Countering misinformation here are the conclusions from a study on the benefits of Automated Emergency Breaking in cars. AEB is now obligatory in new cars.
Conclusions:
This study shows the effectiveness and value of AEB systems, especially in the reduction of injuries and in
particular whiplash cases. The results of these and other findings have supported the implementation of an insurance
discount system for AEB systems, and also the testing of such systems with Euro NCAP and other consumer test
organisations which will encourage the proliferation of AEB within the vehicle parc.
I can understand making a service "free" if you've large historical sunk costs in the provision of it but it's lying idle or near idle. So open/free days in dusty museums and the like makes sense - museums are expensive to build and run and if they're empty, it a net loss for everyone.
But this is pretty much the opposite of the situation with PT in Dublin. The fundamental problem of PT in Dublin is the lack of capacity - the infrastructure isn't there to provide a reasonable service to all the people who would like the option to use PT. Making it "free" is not going to solve this fundamental issue. The only solution is to increase capital spending to increase capacity.
Anyway buses, trams and trains are already much cheaper than driving into town when you consider parking and private vehicle running costs. So the choice to drive clearly isn't driven by cost (or cost alone). Walking and cycling have a huge competitive advantage here - they're cheaper/almost free. Making PT free just means muscling into the competitive space currently occupied by walking and cycling.
to a certain extent, i suspect so. but it'd also remove a barrier to convenience for a lot of people. take my next door neighbour, i'm going to make hypothetical assumptions about her. late 50s or early 60s, i don't think i've ever seen her get on a bus. but if she did want to get on a bus, she'd have to sort out change if she wanted to pay with cash, and there's probably plenty of people who don't handle cash anymore. but if she wanted to get a leap card there'd be the hassle of buying it and having to learn how it works, etc. which precludes casual use of the bus.
i'm not saying it'd be transformative or anything, but it would make casual use of PT that little bit less hassle for people and might encourage some people who don't currently use it to try it once or twice.
one thing i did notice that when the leap card came in, it saved me money; because i'd have often found myself in town with nothing smaller than a tenner, which i'd need to break to use the bus, so i'd buy something like a packet of crisps to do so. in a way, it's a similar (slight) lowering of hassle to do it.
I know quite a few people who have free travel passes, and what it means to them is that they use the most convenient solution - the bus or train, or car, or bike, or walk. Without the FTP, they would not dream of using the bus or train. Now, using the car at high congestion time would be a no-no, and the bus or train would be used, or the journey would be delayed or cancelled. Available parking is also a major influencer in their choice.
Free public transport would have a significant effect on congestion - particularly if it was accompanied by either a congestion charge or higher and harder to find on street parking. Of course, P&R would be needed as well, particularly outside the M50.
Cheaper finance deals on cars here are around the price of a monthly public transport ticket. That is the competition. In fact some ev scooters are being advertised with monthly costs equivalent to monthly commuter tickets.
That certainly seems like a real possibility. Is there any evidence from elswehere, one way or the other?
Free PT should only be introduced in conjunction with a rollout of more free P&R and the introduction of congestion charging.
Free pt means less people walking and cycling and the same amount of cars
...because Cars are not deserving of the criticism you lot heap upon them.
I took a citybus here from one city region to another a few days ago and it was a much more pleasurable experience than anything I remember in Dublin with no anti-socials, ability to pay for ticket online, small tidy self-service kiosk at bus shelter which accepts coins, gives change along with credit and debit cards, realtime arrival time at the bus stop and online. The bus was unsurprisingly punctual.
You as a group exhaust yourselves demonising cars while doing SFA to advocate for better public transport service. If you want to get people out of cars then make the alternative more appetizing.
I have been advocating for free PT for years, or alternatively nearly free to cut down on possible abuse of the system.
It is the use of SUVs to transport kids 2 or 3 km to school that exacerbates the problem, plus the inconsiderate and illegal parking. Cure that, and the problem will be noticeably be improved. Just look at the reduction of congestion during school holidays.
After that, get commuters to modify their expectation of door to door car use. P&R and walk the last km would be significant solutions. Now this is not for everyone, but if the many do it or even quite a lot do it, then the problem disappears. Now to get a significant modal shift, it might require a congestion charge, and hike in long term parking charges, but that would be mitigated by free PT.
I am not anti-car in any way. You do not have to be anti-car to see the stupidity of the effect of that the current unbridled use of cars have on our cities. I think most posters on here would consider reasonable restrictions of cars in some areas rather than an outright ban.
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