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Annual St Patricks day Public Transport whinge

MrMorooka

Share your stories of yesterday here.

I'll start - I wanted to go to Blanchardstown Main St last evening, at 1830 I was at Leeson St intending to get a 39/38. From the research I had done, although they were operating from a northside terminus because of the parade, that diversion should have been lifted at 1700. a-b.ie had suggested the Leeson St option to me.

However, it became evident after 10-15 minutes that in fact the diversion must have still been in place, as any scheduled 37/38/39s on RTPI were disappearing as they switched off the timetable to live data. Took me a while to realise that was what was happening. Dublin Bus's twitter account had seemingly stopped for the day at 1700, and I couldn't see any way for me to know the diversion was still in place. Was I wrong? Was there some official way I could have figured things out?

In the end, I had the good sense to take a 46a to Doyle's Corner, then was able to get a 39 at Drumalee.

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LXFlyer

dfx- wrote: »

where on earth does the thinking come from that social media should only be monitored in 'office hours'? It's not just DB...

Same with revenue protection. The santry/beaumont/airport corridor has been crawling with teams of inspectors between 12-4pm, then nothing on the entire network beyond 5pm. Buses are still crammed at 6-7pm and I usually use evening services, I don't think I've ever seen a ticket check beyond 4pm. Are they not interested in revenue protection outside of 9-5?

Au contraire - I've certainly seen the RPU out and about outside of office hours - they do have an entire network to cover! Just because you don't see them doesn't mean they're not out there.

cdebru

lxflyer wrote: »

Au contraire - I've certainly seen the RPU out and about outside of office hours - they do have an entire network to cover! Just because you don't see them doesn't mean they're not out there.

RPU finish at 4pm you may see an inspector checking a bus on his/her way home back to depot after they have finished stance work on street.Or they may be there for a specific purpose beyond regular general revenue checking

Mrs OBumble

dfx- wrote: »

where on earth does the thinking come from that social media should only be monitored in 'office hours'? It's not just DB...

Indeed - and it's not just public transport either.

The whole social media phenomena has been game-changing for marketing - but has also created expectations of out-of-hours work for many people who've never had to do such things before. Or if they did it was for one-off events not every day.

Most companies still don't have the HR policies or infrastructure for this at all: IT staff have been quietly doing informal time-in-lieu policies since forever. But these don't work for customer services and marketing-operations roles.

Realistically, until the NTA establishes required customer-support coverage as part of PT contracts, the companies are unlikely to provide it.

Carawaystick

Mrs OBumble wrote: »

Realistically, until the NTA establishes required customer-support coverage as part of PT contracts, the companies are unlikely to provide it.

Dublin_Bus_Direct_Award_Contract_Schedules_2014_to_201911.pdf
section 13.4.1
The Operator shall ensure that all queries for travel information related to the Services
received from customers and members of the public regarding the Services are responded to
in a timely manner, without charge to the customer or member of the public.

cdebru

Mrs OBumble wrote: »

Realistically, until the NTA establishes required customer-support coverage as part of PT contracts, the companies are unlikely to provide it.

They already do.

Victor

The RPA did a survey about 8 year ago about what people wanted from public transport. The two overwhelming issues were "When's my bus?" and "Can I pay with one ticket?", each with 90-95% support. In other words, the transport providers were failing 90-95% of their users on these two issues. While Leap Cards has gone a long way on the ticketing, information is still dire. I've had an apology from a Dublin Bus manager because I had a customer service staff member lie to me repeatedly.

Mrs OBumble wrote: »

But these don't work for customer services ... roles.

Voxpro will hire people to do your customer support 24x7. For example: https://www.water.ie/help-centre/contact-us/

BILLING, REGISTRATION AND GENERAL ACCOUNT ENQUIRIES

Call: 1890 448 448*
Int: 00 353 1 707 2824

Lines are open 8am - 8pm from Monday to Friday and 9am - 5.30pm Saturday.

WATER SUPPLY, METERING AND EMERGENCIES

Call: 1890 278 278*
Int: 00 353 1 707 2828

Lines are open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Mrs OBumble wrote: »

But these don't work for ... marketing-operations roles.

Those gob****es need to keep away from social media - they know how to communicate, but they don't know what to communicate. In the middle of March, the front page stories on transportforireland.ie were about naming trains stations after dead rebels and the February Luas strike.

I had an email exchange recently with the NTA about the shambles that is the information about the St. Patrick's Day and Easter events, e.g. the Garda plan incluudes sending buses down this street: https://www.google.ie/maps/@53.3411371,-6.2790275,3a,75y,76.79h,82.7t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sdWRJlZl26DPPqfcPV-1bQg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

I was told to leave their staff alone.

Carawaystick

Victor wrote: »

I had an email exchange recently with the NTA about the shambles that is the information about the St. Patrick's Day and Easter events, e.g. the Garda plan incluudes sending buses down this street: https://www.google.ie/maps/@53.3411371,-6.2790275,3a,75y,76.79h,82.7t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sdWRJlZl26DPPqfcPV-1bQg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

I was told to leave their staff alone.

I presume the cops will at least put a few yellow no parking cones out :eek:

Victor

Carawaystick wrote: »

I presume the cops will at least put a few yellow no parking cones out :eek:

ehhhh ....

Losty Dublin

dfx- wrote: »

Same with revenue protection. The santry/beaumont/airport corridor has been crawling with teams of inspectors between 12-4pm, then nothing on the entire network beyond 5pm. Buses are still crammed at 6-7pm and I usually use evening services, I don't think I've ever seen a ticket check beyond 4pm. Are they not interested in revenue protection outside of 9-5?

I saw a revenue unit attend to a bus a few weeks ago after 6:30PM. The bus pulled up short of a stop, the crew boarded and checked a few tickets before swooping on one individual who was traveling with a students Leap card. After taking his details (Which they verified via photo ID) they alighted the bus and it continued on. It was as if it was a mini sting of sorts.

cdebru

Losty Dublin wrote: »

I saw a revenue unit attend to a bus a few weeks ago after 6:30PM. The bus pulled up short of a stop, the crew boarded and checked a few tickets before swooping on one individual who was traveling with a students Leap card. After taking his details (Which they verified via photo ID) they alighted the bus and it continued on. It was as if it was a mini sting of sorts.

That's what I meant about non regular revenue checks, so if it was reported that a particular person is using a card that they shouldn't be using , boards at point at a certain time and travels to point b every evening then they may eventually send out an RPU unit to try and catch them.

cdebru

Victor wrote: »

I was told to leave their staff alone.

Usually there are 2 reasons people are told that, one is that you are telling them a truth they would prefer not to deal with, the second is the person seems irrationally obsessed.

I'm not making any judgements.

Victor

cdebru wrote: »

Usually there are 2 reasons people are told that, one is that you are telling them a truth they would prefer not to deal with, the second is the person seems irrationally obsessed. I'm not making any judgements.

I've exchanged about approximately 2,372 emails with the NTA on the journey planner, cycle planner, fares, Leap Card / ITS, mapping and RTPI. This is the first time I have received such a response.

foggy_lad

lxflyer wrote: »

To be fair Victor all of the garage numbers are on the "contact us" part of the DB website - if you call any of them they'll put you through to central control.

The depots and numbers used to be on the timetables but now it is a guessing game.

cdebru wrote: »

That's what I meant about non regular revenue checks, so if it was reported that a particular person is using a card that they shouldn't be using , boards at point at a certain time and travels to point b every evening then they may eventually send out an RPU unit to try and catch them.

I have seen Luas staff taking a woman off a tram and telling her that they had her on camera tagging on and then tagging off again to cancel the journey then boarding the tram and that they had footage of this happening on several occasions and it was all documented and they would be going to court with it as it was clear fare evasion.

Victor

foggy_lad wrote: »

I have seen Luas staff taking a woman off a tram and telling her that they had her on camera tagging on and then tagging off again to cancel the journey

I thought hat you couldn't tag-on and tag-off at the same Luas stop?

cdebru

Victor wrote: »

I've exchanged about approximately 2,372 emails with the NTA on the journey planner, cycle planner, fares, Leap Card / ITS, mapping and RTPI. This is the first time I have received such a response.

It sounds like given the volume of your correspondence they may have formed the opinion that you are a crank, 2372 is approximately one email a day, every day since the NTA came into existence.

chocksaway

Victor wrote: »

I thought hat you couldn't tag-on and tag-off at the same Luas stop?

Nope it's possible to do it. On a fair few occasions I've tagged on while passing the validator, waited a few mins for the luas and tagged 'on' again thinking i hadnt done it the first time.

Victor

cdebru wrote: »

It sounds like given the volume of your correspondence they may have formed the opinion that you are a crank, 2372 is approximately one email a day, every day since the NTA came into existence.

I'm not impressed with your tone. A lot of those emails were for things where the NTA asked for assistance, in particular with the journey planner, where a lot of the data from the transport operators wasn't fit for use, part down to the information being collected for other purposes, part because of a lack of care on the part of those transport operators.

This is how corrupt some of the data was. The requested journey was Carlow-Kilkenny and the returned journey was with one bus.

I was testing an ITS card months before they went public and a Leap Card a year before they went public.

Jamie2k9

Not strictly Paddy's Day related but DB should of extended last departures last night to 00.30. There was 30-40 people queuing for a taxi in College Green and I suspect they were there a long time.