lxflyer wrote: » The stretch from Fairview to Griffith Avenue is only bus lane on one side of the road and just beyond Kilmore Road - totalling about 700m. Without CPO'ing every front garden it's going to be difficult to put in full BRT.
Cool Mo D wrote: » Where is the problem with the Malahide road? It's already continuous bus line almost the entire way from Fairview to Clongriffin, minus about 100 metres in Artane and Marino.
lxflyer wrote: » While I think the Swords and N11 corridors are good candidates for BRT, and possibly Blanchardstown, I remain totally unconvinced about the Malahide Road and Rathfarnham routes due to there being insufficient road space for two BRT/bus lanes and two normal traffic lanes for substantial portions of each route. Without widespread CPOs being instigated, I cannot see it working, and the number of CPOs that would be required I just cannot see being acceptable.
monument wrote: » BRT is effectually dealing with five corridors, not one or two.
antoinolachtnai wrote: » If they have done the homework, where is it? Saying that it is possible to get from swords to the city centre and back in 70 minutes is not homework. It is just bald assertion and politicking.
antoinolachtnai wrote: » The Ballymun density for the km either side of the corridor looks a lot higher to me, looking at the map. Is there a study?
antoinolachtnai wrote: » The reason Metro North was proposed to go via Drumcondra to Swords had little enough to do with the density of the population there.
Swords BRT Turnapin -- 1,790.4 persons per SQKM (~50%+ business / motorway) Kilmore A -- 4,551.9 persons per SQKM Whitehall C -- 3,006.8 persons per SQKM (includes Omni Park, other businesses) Whitehall B -- 5,189.3 persons per SQKM (goes from the Ballymun Road to Swords, with some unfinished apartment developments in middle) Whitehall D -- 4,242.6 persons per SQKM Whitehall A -- 2,706.1 persons per SQKM (includes DCU and a few fields) Drumcondra South C -- 4,254.7 persons per SQKM Drumcondra South A -- 4,437.9 persons per SQKM Botanic B -- 6,661.2 persons per SQKM Drumcondra South B -- 4,488.2 persons per SQKM Ballybough B -- 9,568.6 persons per SQKM (includes areas on both sides of the canal) Inns Quay A -- 12,346.9 persons per SQKM Mountjoy B -- 12,418.2 persons per SQKM Rotunda A -- 18,792 persons per SQKM Mountjoy A -- 17,753.3 persons per SQKM North City -- 9,544.6 persons per SQKM North Dock C -- 7,241.7 persons per SQKM Mansion House A -- 6,488.1 persons per SQKM Mansion House B -- 1,662.5 persons per SQKM St. Kevin's -- 7,919.4 persons per SQKMLuas Green Line: Stillorgan-Leopardstown -- 4,261.4 persons per SQKM Stillorgan-Merville -- 2,450 persons per SQKM Dundrum-Balally -- 2,797.2 persons per SQKM (includes Sandyford Business Park) Stillorgan-Kilmacud -- 4,206.6 persons per SQKM Dundrum-Kilmacud -- 3,512.1 persons per SQKM Dundrum-Taney -- 4,296.5 persons per SQKM Churchtown-Woodlawn -- 3,375.6 persons per SQKM Clonskeagh-Farranboley -- 4,169.4 persons per SQKM Churchtown-Orwell --1,888.4 persons per SQKM (golf club) Rathmines East B -- 4,426.4 persons per SQKM Rathmines East C -- 4,584.9 persons per SQKM Rathmines East D -- 7,563.9 persons per SQKM Rathmines East A -- 6,715.9 persons per SQKM St. Kevin's -- 7,919.4 persons per SQKM Royal Exchange B -- 8,700 persons per SQKM Mansion House B -- 1,662.5 persons per SQKM
cgcsb wrote: » The car parking is a conundrum alright. I think many of them will eventually disappear over time. Jervis Street, Ilac and Brown Thomas could be more profitable as offices. Also DCC could decide that those endless signs around town, pointing you towards car parks and telling us how many spaces there are, are no longer required and are contributing to visual clutter/pollution. Throw in a congestion charge and the car parks will start to die of natural causes.
antoinolachtnai wrote: » Firstly, I agree with you that there are ways to make buses go faster on that corridor and all others. That should be done for sure. There are a bunch of ways this can be done, and most of the ones involving road space have already been done. The problem comes down to road space at the narrowest points on the road and more specifically to junction capacity. As it is, the space for private vehicles has already been reduced to one lane. You can't reduce it any further. Even if there were no private passenger cars commuting or shopping, you still need quite a lot of commercial traffic just to sustain a modern city (restocking, remove waste, alterations/construction/repairs, sales and so on), and this needs to be facilitated.
antoinolachtnai wrote: » Rearranging the road space doesn't make any more of it. This is especially the case at junctions, where rearranging the space is likely to result in less road space rather than more (because pedestrian volumes require space of their own).
antoinolachtnai wrote: » Dublin city centre has its own problems and they are serious. It is no longer a national centre for shopping - people from outside the city now go to the outlying shopping centres rather than the city centre.
antoinolachtnai wrote: » The flaws with the study are that it deals with perceptions of relatively junior people in the retail business (store managers) and deals in a very odd way with outliers. It only surveys the shoppers who are actually in the city, not the ones who decided to go elsewhere.
antoinolachtnai wrote: » But if all the money is spent on one or two corridors, it may result in a 15 percent improvement on those two corridors, but this will only amount to a 1 or 2 percent improvement overall, and this will not make any real difference.
antoinolachtnai wrote: » (I actually doubt the Swords corridor can deliver much in terms of improved modal share, because the airport and swords are already better served than the BRT can serve them, and the suburbs between there and the city are not that densely populated. But a study would need to be done to find out. This could be done easily enough using census data, but it apparently has not been done.)
antoinolachtnai wrote: » The problem comes down to road space at the narrowest points on the road and more specifically to junction capacity. As it is, the space for private vehicles has already been reduced to one lane. You can't reduce it any further. Even if there were no private passenger cars commuting or shopping, you still need quite a lot of commercial traffic just to sustain a modern city (restocking, remove waste, alterations/construction/repairs, sales and so on), and this needs to be facilitated.
antoinolachtnai wrote: » Dublin city centre has its own problems and they are serious. It is no longer a national centre for shopping - people from outside the city now go to the outlying shopping centres rather than the city centre. The flaws with the study are that it deals with perceptions of relatively junior people in the retail business (store managers) and deals in a very odd way with outliers. It only surveys the shoppers who are actually in the city, not the ones who decided to go elsewhere.
antoinolachtnai wrote: » (I actually doubt the Swords corridor can deliver much in terms of improved modal share, because the airport and swords are already better served than the BRT can serve them.
antoinolachtnai wrote: » and the suburbs between there and the city are not that densely populated.
antoinolachtnai wrote: » But a study would need to be done to find out. This could be done easily enough using census data, but it apparently has not been done.)
AlekSmart wrote: » This City Centre Car Parking issue is rumbling along with NO end in sight. These operations morphed from being "Bombsite"surface car parks,supervised by "Lockhards",to the significant business opportunities which exist today. Any attempt to restrict or eliminate access to City Centre Multi-Stories will be met with rapid,effective (and Expensive) opposition. AFAIR,a legal warning shot was fired across DCC's bows some years back,which was apparently of the highest risk in terms of potential cost to DCC compensation wise. Whether the NTA has the measure of the Multi-Story Operators remains to be seen ?
cgcsb wrote: » I would imagine that with luas BXD, 5 radial BRT routes, a new two way cycle path along the quays and possibly DART underground that Dublin in the 2020's will be largely car free bar deliveries and some access to the city carparks on a restricted and congestion charged basis, possibly with a total ban during peak hours. The NTA/City council need to be brutal in handing over road space to BRT, this won't work while attempting to appease the motor industry at the same time. It's decision time, and short term populism has to go in order for the city to grow. The NTA has thus far proven it's self to be somewhat capable for a state agency. Let's hope they have the liathrodí to grab the required road space.
antoinolachtnai wrote: » Drumcondra is the obvious one that comes to mind, but there are plenty other places on the route where there is big pressure.
antoinolachtnai wrote: » This is a very limited and flawed study in a retail area that is in long-term decline.
antoinolachtnai wrote: » It is an attempt to re-engineer the bus system from something which serves communities (where the people are) to serve corridors (where the roads are). It is bringing rail planning thinking to short-range urban buses. This makes no sense in the context of Dublin and in particular the suburbs we are talking about. The core problem with buses in Dublin isn't the buses or the routes or the street layouts. It's the operations. The quality is too low and the cost is too high.
antoinolachtnai wrote: » But is it really viable? There is no indication from the investigation work done that it would really be viable. A viable replacement for the private car in an area like Beaumont or Santry would be a good (reliable,clean, with adequate capacity), regular (10 minute frequency) bus service at a reasonable price within 10 minutes of everybody's house. It is not radical but it would work.
antoinolachtnai wrote: » I mean the cost, the amount of money it costs to deliver a unit of service, so for example, an hour of operation or a km of vehicle operation. The cost in Ireland is far above what it is in Scotland or England outside London. The result is that fares are too high and services are too infrequent. I didn't say anything about DB's costs. But since you bring it up, I'd really need management accounts or at least a trial balance to really say anything. Can you supply that? My hunch would be that a major step would be to do something about the vast army of people who work in Dublin Bus but who don't actually drive a bus.
antoinolachtnai wrote: » The core problem with buses in Dublin isn't the buses or the routes or the street layouts. It's the operations. The quality is too low and the cost is too high.
monument wrote: » Bottlenecks elsewhere could be done by having more bus/access-only streets, or one-waying private traffic while keeping BRT two-way, or some short sections of shared running, or short one-lane sections of BRT which allow buses to go both ways, etc…. did you have any location in mind?
The amount of city centre car shoppers is overestamted even by retailers:
BRT is part of an attempt to fix the bus system.
And it is part of an offering to have viable replacements for the private car.
monument wrote: » Sorry, have not got a chance to reply on till now… and again, I’m at pains defending the BRT plans without knowing the detail, so please take this as defending BRT in principle more than anything... There are many ways. It’s a BRT menu rather than them having to pick all options: Centre running; at-kerb lanes up to junctions, bus-only streets, priority at traffic lights, kerb-segregated lanes, fixed camera enforcement, on-bus camera enforcement, etc. It is likely that BRT will be replacing many/most local bus routes on the corridors the routes are planned for. But the lane improvements will improve speeds for all buses. No would not be far more beneficial. You’re only able to say that because you’re underestimating and undervaluing the benefits. It could be seen as the gold plate option but on the other hand a lot of the possible ways of improving priority needs political will (will to give traffic light priority, will to have as near as possible continuous bus/BRT lanes). That political will is far, far more likely to support a complete package of measures that BRT has to offer, over slower marginal improvements. Both Amsterdam and Copenhagen originally pushed ahead with promoting more sustainable modes and giving over space to such modes without metro lines or systems in place. I should have included the warning that it’s my educated guesswork rather than firm figures, but there is scope for narrowing what's in the cross-sections I posted (ie remove/reduce buffers, reduce footpaths or cycle paths, remove parking, only having staggered stops etc). My educated guess is that it’s 28-30 meters in places and goes down to ~25 meters in other spots. Bottlenecks elsewhere could be done by having more bus/access-only streets, or one-waying private traffic while keeping BRT two-way, or some short sections of shared running, or short one-lane sections of BRT which allow buses to go both ways, etc…. did you have any location in mind? BTW: Cross sections were created using streetmix.net. I know the city council and other may have a problem with it, but putting two-way on the east side of O’Connell Street could really limit the effect of crossing the Green line at two points -- you’d only then be talking about crossing southbound trams (northbound tram movements and BRT would than be segregated). Almost all road traffic crossing the river in the city centre already suffers from crossing the red line and there’s no way around that for any mode. I would share your concern about Dublin Bus running BRT -- and generally without some kind of tendering for the running of the service (like Luas). The amount of city centre car shoppers is overestamted even by retailers: http://arrow.dit.ie/comlinkoth/10/ Private cars -- it’s worth pointing out -- will still have access to the city centre car parks. BRT is part of an attempt to fix the bus system. And it is part of an offering to have viable replacements for the private car. As I’ve said and I’m not sure how to make it clearer: I’m not suggesting that ranks would be set up to hold all of the oversupply. But part of the problem is that the rank spaces amounts to an undersupply even if the numbers of taxis were at a more sustainable level. Because the plans are fairly radical and for that you need coherent master plan -- and that’s what BRT is!
Pete_Cavan wrote: » but how can they start a consultation unless they have already determined some basic issues, like how can a suitably uncongested lane be achieved? This is a prerequisite of BRT and there is no point in holding consultations unless they know they can achieve it.
Pete_Cavan wrote: » The website state "Uses own BRT lane or shared bus/BRT lane" so clearly they are happy to share the bus lane where a dedicated lane cannot be achieved. If this is the case, BRT will not be faster than the buses.
Pete_Cavan wrote: » Changing the DB system to use off-board ticketing and rationalising the number of stops would be far more beneficial at a fraction of the cost.
antoinolachtnai wrote: » The problem with these projects is that they are often presented to make it look like they are going to represent some sort of 'quantum leap' in service, when the reality is that they are just justifications to get more budget to gold plate something that was happening anyway. The capital might be better pumped into getting the nuts-n-bolts to work rather than the fancy stuff.
antoinolachtnai wrote: » There aren't that many cities in Europe with a population as big as Dublin's that don't have a more comprehensive system of segregated rail public transport.
antoinolachtnai wrote: » Your diagrams indicate a 100-foot wide road. Are there really roads that wide in Drumcondra? Even if this can be executed on wide sections, how will any road layout solve the problem of bottlenecks in certain places on the route? The bottlenecks are the problem, not the uncongested parts.
antoinolachtnai wrote: » Six junctions is a lot of interaction with an on-street LRT as busy as the Luas. It will result in maybe 4 or 5 minutes of delay on every round-trip. If you create a two-way bus-lane separate from the other traffic between the two directions of BXD, you will create a much more complex junction at either end, and the bus will still need to cross the Luas somewhere or other.
antoinolachtnai wrote: » All could be done, at the end of the day, but you would need really world-class bus operations in Dublin, because bus would be more critical than ever in the mix. You cannot do this with the current management of buses in Dublin. They are just not capable of it.
antoinolachtnai wrote: » Do private cars make up a small percentage of the people travelling on the street very often? On the busiest streets at busy times, this is certainly true, but it is not always true. Private cars are also important for shopping trips for 'higher order' goods. This is why out of town centres are doing well, and the city centre is economically weak. You can't just look at the number of people. You also have to look at the economic activity.
antoinolachtnai wrote: » And again, the problem is there is no viable replacement for the private car (or taxi) in most cases. The buses we have in Dublin are just not of sufficient quality to take the place of the car. They could be improved, and various agencies claims they are fixing up buses, but there is no real will to really fix things. The service is bad, and also very expensive.
cdebru wrote: » So you want to create massive on street parking to facilitate the oversupply of taxis ?.
cdebru wrote: » Also how are they going to stop cars, trucks, vans etc pulling in and parking in the BRT lanes, and why don't they implement those plans on current bus lanes? Improvements that amount to what BRT might deliver could be implemented for very little cost, rationalize stops, use triaxle buses and implement off bus ticketing, and actually police the bus lane laws we have.
MYOB wrote: » Singapore isn't a country I'd like us to be copying regulations from generally but this is something that may be needed at this stage. Would have to be sold to the drivers as "stamping out part-timers" or similar though.
antoinolachtnai wrote: » In Singapore, the drivers were rostered as far as I could tell in 2001 when I lived there (and from conversations with drivers this seemed to be the case). You don't end up with crazy amounts of unneeded cars on the road.
