Electric, Hydrogen & Hybrid Electric Buses in Ireland

If bus stops in Dublin are very close together then what's the harm in missing one stop? Not much of a walk to the stop before in that case. Generally if you're on a crowded bus you know that you will need to start making your way down the steps well in advance of your stop

That is a ridiculous thing to say, you want people to have a worse transport experience just because you want to push your language agenda!

I find the exact opposite with peoples knowledge of Irish, remember most of the country did Irish for leaving cert which stop names are so poorly translated or just made up exactly? Do you have examples?

I did it for my Leaving Cert too and like the majority of people promptly forgot most of it and I completely blank it on signs.

Many streets and areas around Dublin never had Irish names and are made up.

The language we should all be trying to 'save' is far from dead and including 2 languages on info screens isn't a difficult task that most other countries manage fairly well. That's just a rant against the Irish language, your own national language no less

For completeness of your point how much extra does it cost putting Irish on signs? How many Gaelscoileanna would you open with the savings?

If even one extra Gaelscoileanna could be opened with the money saved, it would be worth far more then this rubbish language tokenism. It would mean hundreds, if not thousands of extra people actually speaking Irish!

But "for completeness", let me challenge you on you Spain example. You mentioned the signs showed both Spanish and English.

Well Spain has at least 4 languages, their are also Catalan, Galician, Basque, etc. Catalan is spoken by 4.5 million people as their first language, compared to just 80,000 Irish speakers as their first language, yet those buses in the South of Spain weren't showing Catalan, etc.

Surely those buses in Spain should rotate the signs between all the languages of Spain?

Of course they don't, because that would be dumb and make the signs unusable!

If you go to a Basque region, you will of course see signs that are in both Basque and Spanish (and maybe English), but in the rest of the country they don't bother doing that. They are practical about where these use different languages.

To be clear, I have no problem with putting Irish on a sign, as long as it doesn't reduce usability. Give me a wide, high quality screen with plenty of space for both English and Irish displayed at the same time and I've no problem with it.

You have to stand or sit behind driver and ask them to let you know when the stop comes. It can work, but far from ideal, lots of people with impairments would prefer not to have to keep bothering the driver or other people for help.

It just happens that I listened to an excellent podcast yesterday on The Verge, where they interviewed a visually impaired person who covered almost exactly this topic. He was describing how life changing for him new Meta smart glasses were as they help describe the world around him. Of course he could ask others to do that, but that is was intimidating to constantly to have to ask strangers for help like that, it was life changing for him not to have to always depend on the kindness of strangers for help. Of course those glasses would sometimes fail, but it was still freeing for him when it did work.

I'd seriously recommend listening to this podcast, it was genuinely very interesting:

https://www.theverge.com/the-vergecast/701018/ray-ban-meta-smart-glasses-be-my-eyes-ceo-accessibility-tech

Of course saying the screens/announcements fail a lot just isn't good enough, this isn't rocket science.

The new EW electric buses have new larger screens, however they seem to be poorly used compared to the same/similar screens on BE buses. It is like they just took the old one line PIS and superimposed it on a large LCD screen that the EW's have without really using the space.

Yes, I've noticed the same, I assume with the shortage of mechanics the priority is to keep buses on the road and rightfully so, but I do hope they can sort it in time.

I wouldn't take a bus off the road because one isn't working and there is no other option, but I do genuinely believe they are needed and should be fixed.

I've been on buses without working leap card validators, the driver just waves you on. Doesn't mean it isn't needed and shouldn't be fixed! In Cork I've been on buses where the external destination/route number display weren't working, the driver had a printed sheet in the window, not a great passenger experience, but better then no bus if that is the only option.

Seems to be going to Hong Kong and maybe Singapore, so sounds like it could work for us. Will be interesting to see if they get any interest in the UK. There didn't seem to be much interest in the ADL Enviro500EV in the UK.

Still sounds to be at the Protoype/demonstrator stage. Certainly an interesting space to watch.

The NTA has never stated that!

The NTA made the decision to move to zero emission only buses and until now there haven't been BEV triaxle city buses, thus they weren't an option.

(Yes, ADL has one, but it doesn't appear to be popular and the NTA appear to be unhappy with ADL).

If this Wright bus goes beyond a prototype and into actual production, then it could be an option for the NTA (limited of course to certain routes) and of course assuming it has the necessary battery range.

Triaxles seem to have largely fallen out of favour in the UK, it will be interesting to see if this reignites interest.

I think there are still some questions about this new bus, but I think it is great that the option exists.

Before the zero emission policy, they also wanted hybrids and dual door buses, there weren't really such a tri-axle option at the time (just straight Diesels) and anyway the VT's hadn't reached end of life at that stage yet anyway. They only reached end of life around the time of the zero emissions policy.

I thought it was common knowledge since they've been replacing the VTs with SGs and PAs. Electric tri axles have been around a good few years now and still the NTA don't seem to be interested.

There has only ever been 70 VT's, there is something like 900 SG/PA's! The SG/PA's replaced all the old single door buses, not just the VT's.

Electric tri-axles have not been around for a few years! ADL had a model for the North American market, but never made or sold any for the UK and only made and have only delivered like a dozen to Hong Kong last year! This Wrights option is what I would see as the first potential real option.

To be honest, people get a bit carried away about tri-axles on this forum. It has turned into one of those myths. Even with Dublin Bus, they were only a niche and curiosity! Just 70 out of a fleet of more then 1,000 with Dublin Bus, shows even DB weren't all that impressed with them. They bought those 70 in 2005 to 2007 and then went straight back to buying regular dual axle's with the AX, EV and VG class in much larger numbers. Even DB tried limiting their use to only peak hours due to much higher running costs. If the VT's were so great, why didn't DB continue buying them and stopped after just 70?

The reality is that they are so big, they are only useful on a small number of routes.

I do think maybe an order of 100 or so could be useful for routes like the E1 as PlatformNine mentions. Though I do think we need to see this Wrights bus actually enter production and details about battery size and real world range, etc.