I read the following article this morning. "From August, bus gates will be in operation on Bachelors Walk and Aston Quay in order to restrict drivers from travelling through the city centre."
https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/major-changes-to-dublin-city-traffic-to-come-into-effect-in-august-1610937.html
The quays have always been a pain in the a$$ to use, no matter the time of day… So, how will this effect people?
: (
Be interesting to hear what things are like this morning. Haven't been able to persuade myself to leave the house yet in this rain but looking at Google maps, the traffic on the M50 looks to be at peak morning traffic levels.
GVB operates all city buses in the Amsterdam Metropolitian Area, which has 2.4 million people.
R-Net isn't a company, it is a network of public transport companies who operate across the Randstad. It actually includes GVB.
The Randstad is an area that covers multiple cities, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, Utricht. 8.4 million people. It isn't just the suburbs of Amsterdam!
R-Net is more like a brand, like Transport for Ireland, an umbrella for multiple companies operating over a large area.
Other R-Net companies do operate services from other nearby cities to Amsterdam, but they are more like BE/GAI commuter services from the likes of Maynooth to Dublin and I didn't include those buses in my 1,200 figure for Dublin.
BTW, small correction, it seems that GVB has 233 buses, though some of those include longer distance commuter routes too which would overlap with BE.
Yeah but there's two company's running buses in Amsterdam GVB the same company that runs the trams and some bus routes. But RNet runs most of the buses that run into the suburbs. So it's a different setup to here.
I agree, Double Decker buses aren't ideal. Though at least they are going EV now, so quieter and less polluting.
It is telling that Amsterdam has only 160 city buses while Dublin has about 1,200!!
Of course Amsterdam has 5 Metro lines and 15 tram lines, that is why they don't need so many buses and it very much shows on the more attractive street space. Though the space is mostly used for cycling, walking and urban space, rather then cars.
Long term, I think we should aim to replicate Amsterdam, though obviously that will take decades, in the meantime we have to make the most of the buses with schemes like this, until we can build Metrolink, etc.
Yep it's definitely in a van drivers interest to have less cars on the road but I think the volume of car users will always stay the same, they'll get shifted around every so often like with this latest plan. Traffic has never returned to pre covid levels in my opinion due to wfh and if we could somehow persuade mammy and daddy to stop driving all their kids to school the roads would be a dream. I get to enjoy two months of pure bliss during the summer when the primary schools close!
Full agree with this. The center of Dublin is like Peak Bus. Also way too many traffic lights in Dublin. In addition, tightening to some turns makes it extremely tricky for some buses to make left / right turns allowing in some instances a single bus getting thru a single traffic light phase.
While buses are going to be the solutions to Dublin's public needs over the next 10 to 20 years, I do feel that the sheer number of buses trans versing thru narrow city center streets is not ideal and doesn't really add to the attraction of Dublin city center.
That's not universally true. Some bunching does happen due to car traffic but the majority of bus routes through the city centre are on dedicated bus lanes. Bunching is happening because there are too many bus stops and buses are impeding each other.
You can't blame the private car for traffic and delays on Dame St. That's entirely caused by buses and insufficient capacity through college green. The complete absence of a pedestrian underpass at either side of OCB and CG is a huge contributor to congestion and removing the private car hasn't and won't change that. DCCs decision to give such short phases of lights in the city core is another strong contributor to congestion.
I think they are referring to buses not in service stopping in these spots along the quays
Those buses wouldn't be causing congestion if they didn't get bunched up, as a result of cars impeding their progress, throughout the rest of their routes.
@MrMusician18
Where else can the buses stop but on the street?
The bigger picture here is that the buses themselves cause a lot of congestion. The north quays for example already had laybys and a dedicated bus lane, with a bus light and there was still delays to buses because they get in the way of each other.
The fact that DCC and DB treat a number of streets as open air bus stations is a huge part of the congestion problem in Dublin.
It was too easy for drivers passing through the city to just drive along the quays, it was a nice straight route.
If we can force these drivers up on to side streets, we can do even more damage to Dublin's city centre and hollow it out even more than it is already.
The anti social behaviour along the quays and on OCS will stop most people from even walking on this route.
Some behaviour on our busses can be bad also.
"My main point is that we shouldnt restrict car shoppers in the city centre and hope/expect them to be replaced by bus passengers"
Who's restricting car shoppers? Anybody who wants to drive in and shop can still do so.
Why does this red herring keep coming up?
That's a really good idea about the cameras.
BTW Nigzcurran, I see you mentioned in another post that you are a delivery driver.
One thing I was thinking they could do, is that when they put automated cameras in, they could put a website in place where you could register your van and the date/times you need to make deliveries in the city, like a delivery permit and the cameras would not fine you if you past them with a permit.
What happened to all the traffic when Henry St and Grafton St were pedestrianised?
Not really, the alternative routes tend not to have buses on them or only small numbers of buses.
If you step back and look at the bigger picture, they are trying to create separate routes, ones that are mostly only buses (and bikes/walking) and ones that are mostly only cars.
Look at O'Connell Street, in the past it use to be jammed with private cars, now it is mostly just buses. They basically created a North to South corridor from OCS, across O'Connell Bridge and trough College Green that takes the majority of North-South bus routes.
They are now completing that by creating a similar East - West Corridor along the quays that will take most of the east - west bus routes. It is a massive improvement for bus movements across the city.
Cars mostly use the various other parallel streets outside of these corridors.
Guards on junction duty would solve that.
I'm not saying this from a "lecturing" perspective, but is there any benefit in negotiating pre and post 7am/7pm slots for deliveries on your existing route?
I suppose it depends on whether the recipients are available at those times.
My nephew was doing deliveries for a while in town, and I know full well how bad it can get for you. Hope things improve in time.
Even allowing delivery vans to use the quays wouldn't affect the buses that much
So you're agreeing that they would have an effect. Nonetheless, it only takes one vehicle to delay a line of busses.
However, I get the point that you're making and in fairness, discouraging all the drivers who choose to drive (but don't really need to) from making the choice to drive would make your life a lot easier.
Hopefully, I don't commute through the city centre but spend most days in it doing van deliveries. Just get a pain in the hole when they don't make allowances for me! Even allowing delivery vans to use the quays wouldn't affect the buses that much but I know it's difficult to enforce as you will then have every builder in a van using them. I'll report back if I'm down around O'Connell bridge over the next while
it’ll stop a journey I often have to do about once a week. To travel from around City Quay up to around Collins Barracks. Now I would always take the Luas to do that anyway so no impact on me, but some of my colleagues wouldn’t take the Luas and would drive. I’d hope this will get them out of their car
I guess that we won't know until it has happened. How much of the original drivers will consider switching to PT? The remaining drivers will spread out across multiple routes (as they're not all going to the same end point) so the distribution may not be ask evident as it seems.
But surely the rerouted traffic will impact public transport on those routes now instead?
The point of this is to have the buses that do use the quays move faster.
Just 2% of people crossing here are in cars! Yet cars take up 50% or more of the road space!
This will have very little or no impact on most motorists, but it will be a massive benefit to the majority of people in buses on the quays.
What actual journeys through the city centre will this eliminate? I reckon anyone who drives through the city centre to reach their destination will still drive through, they'll just use a slightly different route but they'll just add to the traffic on the new route instead. I can't see anyone deciding to use public transport because of a slight detour
Traffic definitely seems lighter on the quays.
Vast majority on Burgh Quay taking the right onto O Connell bridge, the odd car still going straight down the quays.
The left from westmorland onto the quays seems to have a higher amount still turning left
O'Connell St southbound is annoying because tourist buses block a good portion of the actual bus lane.
And there's still road works on O'Connell Bridge. Will take a while to get the full picture.
Traffic was light enough this morning and has been generally very quiet over the summer months. However, once all the schools and colleges return that will be the test. I came down O'Connell Street from the northside this morning and I can see that there will be tailbacks going on to O'Connell Street bridge with traffic turning right. All these road closures is just send the problems elsewhere. Traffic has been made worse by all these changes.
