Bus Éireann Wtf

TheQuietFella wrote: »

In my opinion it's all to do with our 'National Debt'
That still hasn't gone away people!
Nurses, transport, workers pay, social housing have all been hit and
will continue to do so! We're going backwards!

I don't really buy that. Even during the height of the money no object Celtic Tiger years CIE was quite capable of providing shockingly inconsistent and poor services. They're not known as Cycling Is Easier for nothing!

Wanderer78 wrote: »

It's well known that funding and support for public services has been in decline for decades now, in favour of privatisation, a large proportion of the population would even prefer privatisation of public services

But will they be prepared to pay for the privatisation?

I don't see much evidence of the quality getting worse. I remember the state of the bus service in Cork in the 1990s and it was absolutely awful. The city / outer suburban busses used to be cast offs from Dublin Bus, often with all of the green branding inside and a Bus Eireann paint job. A lot of them could barely make it up hills, puffed smoke and were in very poor condition generally.

I also remember Bus Éireann running busses to Cork's satellite towns like Carriagline from Parnell Place bus station and having no indication of which bus went where - they didn't have the correct rollers with Cork destinations (possibly still old Dublin Bus rollers) or they didn't bother using them. I didn't even realise that there was a bus number for any of those routes.

It was like something you'd expect to see in pre-EU Eastern Europe.

The state of some of the trains before the last major fleet upgrade was also very patchy. There were modern 1980s intericites, but you could equally pay for a normal ticket and end up on some 1960s/70s bone shaker or even a commuter DMU on Cork-Dublin if you were unlucky. At least nowadays you can be sure of a modern intercity train with fairly reasonable facilities.

I remember when I was maybe 12/13 going on late night trains from Dublin to Cork that were some kind of old BR intercity design and it often had no heat on a winter's night. You'd be sitting there in a coat with steam coming off your breath, desperately trying warm yourself on a cup of tea!

There was no golden age of CIE or Irish public transport. It was always bad. Or, at the very least it was always very patchy and unpredictable. You could get modernity on one bus / train and then something out of a scrap yard on the next one.

john boye wrote: »

I think you're thinking of Cork vehicles themselves when they were painted from green into BE livery. The Bombardiers and GACs down there wore green just like the Dublin ones until BE was formed. Very few DB/DCS vehicles moved to Cork. I do remember though a lot of ex-Cork buses coming to Dublin live out the rest of their days and they were absolutely clapped out.

Nope, they were fully branded as Dublin Bus inside, complete with logos in various parts of the interior. They were absolutely definitely ex-Dublin bus.

john boye wrote: »

Actually I was thinking more in the past but just remembered that the VAs went to Cork in the mid 2000s. They most certainly weren't in green though.

There were Dublin Bus logos inside anyway that's all I know.

I have no idea what model they were other than they were old and clapped out.

It may have been the blue/green whatever colour seats they had but I distinctly remember being rather annoyed that it was a clapped out Dublin Bus.

I also remember the way they didn't have digital ticket machines so you got a perfectly square bit of paper, often with nothing printed on it.