Bus Eireann - Proposal to Tender 10% of Routes in 2021

Yes I meant to say Route 4. Just wondering why they adjusted the route? Granted the old road is very quiet there’s surely an added time disadvantage. Was it due to Dublin Coach and BE going after a different market/funding?

Yep. I read some very good details about the enhanced service for the 133 on the Bray Independent recently.

It mentioned some details in the article and from Darren Hall on Facebook.

19 double decker coaches (LF's) will be delivered for the 101/133.

16 single decker coaches (low floor coaches in GAI and Bus Éireann) will also be delivered as well.

There will be a new town service called the 131. This will operate on a hourly frequency. It will run between Arklow Town & Bray.

It also said that either the 133L or 133B will be run with a TFI operator in Carlow & Kilkenny.

The new timetable will be in place in the new year.

The 133B currently starts and terminates at the bus stops on Castle Street outside SuperValu. Not sure how it turns around for after arriving into Bray however (only currently happens for the 16:50 ex. Bray)

That diagram is a 16.49 arrival 16.50 departure if memory isn't failing me. There certainly isn't a layover issue there right now - there would be in the future, unless they keep on doing such unfeasible turnarounds.

It's a one a day route it dosen't need somewhere to layover. I'm guessing it just runs special from Broadstone to Bray then goes into service as soon as it reaches Bray. An hourly service is different.

All I was pointing was a one a day service dosen't need somewhere to layover or turnaround the same way an hourly service does.

I'm not familiar with the timetable for this service and I didn't know the 16:50 bus operated a service in the other direction previously as I merely have a passing interest in public transport operations and don't know every single timetable and working timetable off by heart. My sincere apologies.

I get that, but if you're going to post a comment such as you did, it does tend to help to look at the actual timetables beforehand! :-)

The 133B is actually two services each way currently, not one!

https://buseireann.ie/inner.php?id=406&form-view-timetables-from=&form-view-timetables-to=&form-view-timetables-route=133b&form-view-timetables-submit=1

It is a couple of short 133s put in when the hourly 133 timetable began and the peak service was taken out of Bray around 2010.

It's been changed a bit since then and the Bray traffic black hole has expanded to the point that serving the current stop on the edge of the town is now awful too so removing all the City bound services to the M11 is long overdue.

Most of the 133s are run from Wicklow outbase not Broadstone anyway.

I'd have thought a few streetlights would be a better fit for the Bray run, an utter waste to have 2 or 3 coaches, particularly high capacity deckers, trundling back and forth to Bray carrying SFA most of the day. There is the need to get them to Broadstone for maintenance to consider though.

Between the 19 Mon-Fri duties that Bus Eireann has labelled as 133 duties (despite a heavy amount of interlining in certain garages, BE duties are still numbered using a primary route, which frankly only works in Broadstone), only five are Broadstone-based, including a split shift. That 4pm Wicklow/Bray service is actually the last run of an 11-hour Wicklow-based duty that doesn't touch Dublin at all throughout the day.

I've been reading in the BE Facebook groups that the 101 is to be getting new VBs instead of LFs; a Drogheda driver said they haven't been type trained on LFs. Which to me sounds ridiculous from a capacity perspective. Drogheda very often put VWDs on the 101 to increase capacity but using a city bus on such a long route is unpleasant to say the least. I doubt they'll stop that when the VBs come in, unless they want to leave passengers standing at stops!

Sure they regularly put VWDs on it anyway at the moment which are a city bus especially the 182 batch with centre doors that are essentially the same spec as an SG.

So the VB would be a big improvement in regards of passenger comfort but may not be so great in terms of capacity so I understand that concern. Over in the UK city buses would be very much the norm on pretty much all provincial routes. So people can't really complain about comfort on BE PSO routes.

It's really great to see the Sunsundegui low floor coaches starting to become the norm around the country. I think they look like a really decent coach fleet.

BÉ have them with the green livery on the 343 from Ennis to Limerick. Although a big number of them are still in the old NTA blue livery that are used on routes between Galway to Cork and Galway to Derry.

GAI also have them in the blue livery on some of their Dublin Commuter routes while they are operated from their depots in Naas/Ballymount.

I am surprised to read that the BÉ drivers on the 133 have not received any proper formal training for driving the LFs on the route.

BÉ should really get their act together on this task. Dublin Coach currently have coaches of similar size to the LFs in their fleet. There was one Dublin Coach driver, featured in the Dublin Coach Experience thread here on boards, who got in trouble with the Guards about overtaking and blocking a cyclist on the road one of their routes last year.

That type of stuff really should not be happening when BÉ drivers are out on the road while driving the LFs. If BÉ don't want any of their own drivers to get in frequent trouble with the Guards about breaking the law from provisions in the Road Traffic Act. They have to get the finger out and give their drivers the type training for the LFs asap.

Some of the BÉ drivers are out there driving them on the NX route from Dublin to Navan. The drivers on the 133 should really be given the same treatment very quickly IMO.

You've misread. The 133s are type trained on the LFs, have been for a while, as they operate the LF300s, but also the LF400s and LF800s now, as the basis of the fleet on that route. It is the 101 drivers that are not receiving LF type training.

Yes, Edenderry is indeed an outbase. Funnily enough, even though it is an outbase, Edenderry duties and Edenderry-starting bus diagrams are numbered lower than those out of Naas, for alphabetic reasons I'd assume.

There used to be a short period when Commuter buses would be dumped in Ballymount for the interpeak period, with drivers being ferried by one bus to Naas after the AM peak, and then another single bus taking them to BMT for the PM peak, but if memory isn't a lying female dog to me right now, I believe that lasted a grand total of about 3 days, and that was during the very first week of 126/130s only temporary working timetable, before Edenderry even happened.

The LFs should be a big improvement for passengers and drivers on the 101 over the VWDs. I've seen the 182 VWDs they were using on the 101 and they are basically an SG due to having dual doors and low back seats.

In the UK outside London there's a lot of operators using double deckers on longer distance country routes.

I saw one on a 190 service a few days ago but didn't catch the number.

Why do BE have such odd fleet numbers. I'm sure there are not 820 LFs in service with BE but yet the fleet numbers suggest they do.

The LF8XX are for the 101/133 tender.

As I’ve posted already, the NTA have clearly decided that they need an additional double deck on the 101, hence LF467 has been reassigned to that tender as LF820.

Driver training on the LFs has been taking place in Drogheda seemingly so perhaps a mix of both.

Alternatively they could be assigned to Broadstone and just be swapped out during the day.

We shall have to wait and see!

Saw an LF on the 101 this morning near Drogheda train station.

What's the Drogheda garage like for parking is it tight? I believe DB had an issue with parking the VTs in Bray outstation so all VT operated duties on the 145 were done out of Donnybrook. Possibly be similar for the LFs in Drogheda?