Dublin Bus - can anyone be happy with the price and service?

I'm not talking about the local trains, PKP is more intecity and long distance, I will say more aobut them in the other thread later.

I find generally the local operators in general do a good job, despite the fact some of them have obstacles put in their place and also track access charges which are too high for the quality of the infrastructure involved.

It is believed to be in part why Przewozy Regionalne, PKP's only true intercity rail competitor, has cut back drastically it's services recently is because of the high track access charges which are also set by PKP who they also compete with via their InterRegio and the dearly departed RegioExspress Brand

But Krakow Glowny was a product of the short lived Dworzec Polski. That company did an amazing job. It's a shame they were forced into liquidation since they achieved more in their limited time span of being in charge of stations than had been achieved in the years before and the years since.

dublindiehard wrote: »

There are some things in PKP which are very relevant to CIE as a whole, when I get chance I will post what they are.

Can't wait.

bk wrote: »

I apologise for digging up an old thread, but reading threw it, many posts here clearly show me that many people here on this thread have never used buses in other countries in Europe and have no idea what a fast, efficient bus service looks like. Sorry that I didn't multiquote the points, but here are the general points.



This one had me really choking! The person who said this really needs to travel around Europe on public transport.

It is absolutely normal for multidoor buses to be used with zero infrastructure. For instance as I posted over on another thread today, using a 4 door bendi bus between Krakow city and airport. Outside the city there are no bus stops, not even bus stop poles!! The bus simply stops at the edge of each road intersection. Only the front door would be aligned with the curb. The other three doors would also open and people would simply step into the middle of the street/intersection and walk to the footpath!

I've seen this on my travels all throughout Poland, Lithuania, Czech Republic and yes even Germany.

In rural areas it is a case there isn't even a footpath. The multi-door bus simply stops on a dirt road and leaves people off into a ditch! Not unusual at all.



Bull****, I see the front doors being used dangerously on a daily basis. The 16 bus stop on Westmoreland St is a perfect example. Often the stop is wrongly blocked by taxis, so the bus just stops a lane away from the curb and people enter and exit by stepping into the lane way.

I see this happening all over the city center daily. Sometimes it is because another DB bus is already stopped at the stop, so the driver behind won't bother to pull in and instead will open the front doors one lane away from the curb and behind the other bus and have people disembark onto the lane.

And I'm not saying they are wrong to do this. It is the reality of running a busy, congested city bus service. But don't make out DB are angels and always concerned about health and safety. It seems to me they only blame h&s when it suits them and they are simply too lazy to use the rear doors.

Interestingly, in Poland, the doors mostly seem to be actually operated by the passengers. The passenger presses a button on either the inside or outside of the door and it opens. Pretty much the same to how the Luas/Dart works. I assume these buttons only work when the bus is stopped and the driver has pressed a button to allow them to be used.

Perhaps this is the solution to the health and safety issue. It takes responsibility away from the driver and places it on the passengers who have decided to use it.



Again this has no basis in reality of what happens throughout Europe! Again taking my Krakow example, I watched as at least 4 or 5 people stood in each of the rear 3 doorways (obviously not the front one). When people wanted to get off, people in the doorway would simply step off to leave them out and then step back into the bus. Simple easy peasy.

Again I've seen this all throughout Europe.

We even see this every day at peak times on the Luas and DART. So I'm not sure why it is such a surprise to people!

Sure people might not be use to it on Dublin Bus. But if DB start to use multi-doors constantly, I'm sure people will quickly adapt to it, just like people in London and the rest of Europe and even Irish people on the DART and Luas.

So the double door buses, clearly have more standing room then their previous, single door equivalents and thus much the same capacity.

Fascinating and all as the novel you wrote is my answer is so what ?

Do the poles and wherever else you have been have the same compensation culture as Ireland ? In your vast traveled have you heard if one of these bus companies paying out €9million plus to someone you ran out in front of a bus ?

The correct procedure when bus stop is blocked is to stop at the stop out the vehicles blocking the stop, the front doors are only used because the driver has no control over the people exiting though the center doors .

So do you want DB to operate to the lowest standards you can find ? I would say if you give each bus driver indemnity that he/she won't be held in anyway responsible for anyone being injured whilst boarding or alighting then no problem they will open any door anywhere you want but until then comparisons with your travels through the former soviet bloc or anywhere else are kind of useless.

_Kaiser_ wrote: »

Ah now... this same excuse gets trotted out again and again, but DB has been awful for decades!!

Some of the stuff bk talks about (multi-door operation, multi-validators etc) is extremely cheap to do and was common-place in Europe 30 years ago! I know.. I lived in Alkmaar and Amsterdam for a period in the mid-80s and these things were the norm, as were the arrival times on the bus stop being for that stop - something we never quite got around to, instead going for an RTPI system with vanishing buses!

Fares have gone up, service has gone down and still we're expected to believe it's down to investment? DB seemed to have plenty of cash to splash on new buses every year in the "good times"?

See a huge part of the problems with DB are out of their control, so you can invest in new buses and nice shiney RTPI, and GPS and ramps and electronic displays but if buses are stuck in traffic and the supposed bus priority measures aren't policed and people can still park willy nilly then it is all largely a waste of money and time, its like giving the chef cheap ingredients and not all the ingredients and then complaining the meal doesn't taste great !! You can hardly blame the chef.

howiya wrote: »

Would the chef get away with putting up the price every year?

The chef doesn't put up the price the restaurant does, kind of like the NTA and Dublin bus I guess.

Polish Rail
Rail services in Poland are very complicated. You generally have two operations, PR and PKP and various classes of trains within eahc operator as well as some much smaller regional operators. Almost all tickets are bought for a per train basis and not an open ticket, and there are many different classes of train on the same line of which tickets are not transferaable.

PKP especially are known for their lax timekeeping, and unreliability. Even this weekend I saw a situation where a train bound for Wroclaw came into Krakow, and the locomotive was took off just as the train was about to depart. About 10 minutes later another one turned up with a group of people getting underneath and above it trying to fix some fault with the new locomotive in a very laid back fashion. The train left about 30 minutes late in the end, and nobody from the staff really cared (the gentleman who my partner asked about the delay said "that there was no rush, since he didn't need to take the train so not really his problem"

PKP:
Express Intercity Premium - Pendolino Trains with premium interiors operating on Polish Tracks between the biggest cities
Express Intercity - High quality express intercity trains connecting medium and large cities.
Intercity - Standard quality intercity trains connecting cities and a limited number of large towns.
TLK - Cheap Railway Lines - services that make more stops some calling at medium towns, but feature the oldest trains (30+ years)

Problem is you may have 12 trains a day between Warsaw and Krakow, but it'll be split between 3-4 different classes of train, all which have their own ticketing structure. A nightmare for planning travel.

PR:
InterRegio - Discounted inter city trains, standard can vary from slightly better than TLK or slightly worse.
Regio - Local trains stopping at Small Towns and the occasional vilage. However in recent years a lot of these regio operated services have been replaced with new modern, comfortable stock.

Recently PR were modernising a lot of stock and upgrading them on board. Recently however they have cut back their schedule heavily, and have to pay track access charges to the competitor, PKP who owns the tracks, and it's widely believed that the track access charges are very inflated for what is on the whole below average infrastructure.

NTERCITY BUS SERVICES
Previously a company called PKS, divided into a number of regional companies offered all intercity bus services in the state. Think of them as the equivlant of Bus Eireann, just with MUCH MUCH older stock. There are many vehicles from the late 80s and 90s going around. If you type PKS Poland into Google Image search you will see what I mean. For many people, this is the only option.

In the bigger cities there has been a revolution of private operators connecting them in the last few years which has even expended to international bus services, people like simple express, plus bus, polskibus and others, all operating very modern coaches such as Mercedes Benz, Vanhool and Scania, to name a few build in the last few years and can be compared to some of the top coaches operating in the UK and Ireland.

There is also a sizeable market for converted van / transit van / mercedes sprinter minibuses operating between small towns and big cities and small towns and other small towns. All of these are privately run and the standard of vehicles can vary from a brand new Mercedes Sprinter, to a knackered 20 year old transit, but they fill a gpa and are very common.

My point is tht whilst there are a lot of things that Poland does well, especially with some of the bigger train stations such as Krakow Glowny and the city bus services in the bigger cities, there is also a lot of stuff that they do poorly.

PKP and CIE have a lot in common

I see the same kind of stuff in PKP that I do in the other companies here in ireland.

I won't bring LOT Polish Airline / EuroLOT into this, but they are also now getting a severe run for their money by Ryanair on domestic plane routes within Poland.