New Galway to Ballina Route from GoBus

devnull wrote: »

It's not a joint license, the license belongs fully to GoBus, the only input from Bus Eireann these days seems to be marketing support and little else. BE still advertise GoBe.

Ah, I see BE website now has a few pages for GoBE, that is new, the last time I looked all mention of GoBE had been scrupped from the site! Strange, maybe things have thawed a little between them. Though with competition with BE on the Ballina route, who knows!

bobbyss wrote: »

Absolutely not mixing up any bus.I have long experience of interiors of Citylink and Gobus! I mentioned BE because it reminded me of Gobus and lack of legroom. BE I found very dirty. Beside seeing Volvo on outside how would you know what type of bus you are boarding? I was on a Gobus earlier today and I my knees were against the seat ahead.

Shrug, I don't know so. Not my experience at all. Do you perhaps sit at the back of the coach? They have more legroom at the front due to the theatre style seating.

The GoBus are Volvo 9700, 13m long with 53 seats.
The Citylink are Vanhool TX16 Alicron, 13m long with 53 seats.

So as you can see from the specs both are the same.

The Citylink also has overdeckers which Vanhool TX21 Altano, 14.5m long with 70 seats. Maybe that is what you've been on with them? Great coach, best in the country.

All the specs for Citylinks coaches here:
https://www.citylink.ie/about-us/our-fleet

Aircoach Plaxton Panther 3's are 12.6m long with 49 seats (for intercity coaches).

BE has lots of different coaches, but one example would be the SE class, 13.9M long with 55 to 63 seats!

As how to tell what coach you are boarding? It is no secret to those of us who are interested. Here is a Youtube video about GoBus 50th 9700 coach:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmyRyJN81dU

And some more info about their fleet here:
https://www.gobus.ie/dp.php?c=about-gobus&t=gobus-ie-fleet&id=45

I agree completely with you that if I was taking the coach to Galway I'd take a Citylink over the GoBus. But you have to understand, you are spoiled in Galway with those choices, the Citylink Vanhools are the best coach in the country and Citylink is hands down the best operator. Plus you have a lovely private bus station in Galway. And GoBus is arguably the second best operator in the country.

However the rest of the county is vastly inferior to what you have in Galway. Less competition, poorer operators, no fancy bus station, you get picked up on the road next to the river in both Cork and Dublin. And much lower quality of coach in general. The rest of the country is a good 10 years behind Glaway, at least.

The GoBus 9700's coaches are far from perfect, but they are above average for the rest of the country outside of Galway.

And this thread is specifically about the Ballina route, GoBus 9700's would be a VAST improvement over the old coaches BE that currently operate on that route and that is all they need to beat BE on this new route.

I expect what is happening is that they are now getting the new Mercedes Tourismo to better compete with Citylink on the Galway route. The recently purchased 9700's will be moved to Cork, where they are good enough to compete with the Aircoach Panthers and the older 9,700's will go on this new route where they will be much better then the equivalent BE coaches. And maybe we will see some other similar routes from them. Hopefully we will also see the Mercs in Cork too eventually.

bobbyss wrote: »

Thank you indeed. You're well versed in all this.
The promo video of Gobus did show the seats and clear to see no meaningful headrest.

Here is the GoBus seats:


And here are the seats on the Citylink Vanhool overdecker:


Look much the same to me, though perhaps the Citylink ones are a tad higher.It has never been an issue for me to Cork, but obviously if you prefer Citylink, go for that. I'd love for Citylink to operate Cork to Dublin and when I do go to Galway, I love going on the Citylink overdeckers, the seat at the top front have a great view

bobbyss wrote: »

The coach station itself is fine but many drivers have complained about how tight access is. It would be interesting to know how many scratches are on the back left of all busses there what with all the tight reversing to exit bays. But it certainly is a light year improvement on the previous coach station situated beside the old homeless hostel, the coach station being al fresco.

Ah right, I've been talking from the perspective of passengers. Drivers and operators would be a different story.

Busaras is just mayhem with coaches everywhere and lots of anti-social issues. Cork is horrible from everyones perspective. Stops right next to the river, no shelters, passengers exposed to wind and rain from the river, Coaches having to double park, tour coaches parked up for hours and cars parking in the coach bays to drop people off and pick them up. Complete chaos and to add to it, they are building a new bridge right beside the location and just finished also refurbishing Paticks bridge.

Galway from the passengers perspective is brilliant, dry and modern. But I can certainly see it needs more coach space. I think there was some plan to expand it, but got caught up in some developer celtic tiger/nama recession stuff.

bobbyss wrote: »

But I agree. Galway is well served. I don't, for example, see many non-stop busses Dublin- Limerick, which is a comparable city sizewise. The motorway of course has opened up all of this.
Is there any sign of BE joining in and trying to win customers on a non-stop Galway-Dublin service?

Limerick is dominated by Dublin Coach who somehow run a non-stop every 30 minutes. J.J.Kavanagh operates a stopping service.

EDIT: Oh and I forgot about Eireagle (Citylink) which operates Limerick to Dublin Airport (not city).

The route suffers from the lack of competition with the DC monopoly, they operate very old coaches on the route and seem to have a bad record of maintenance.

BE were too late to the party. The NTA seemingly issues just two non stop route licenses and two stopping license on each route. The is how you have CityLink & GoBus to Galway and Aircoach & GoBus to Cork. So now BE can't get a license to do the same, they are stuck just operating stopping services.

The two exceptions are Belfast, since it is an international border, the NTA rules don't apply and anyone can start a service. That is how you have Aircoach, DC and BE/Ulsterbus all operating on that route.

The other exception as I said is Limerick, I don't know how DC managed to swing being the only operator and operating every 30 minutes. But their are a clear example of why monopolies are bad IMO.

salonfire wrote: »

Lots of mention on this thread about choosing one operator over the other, BE not even considered an option.

If the private operators are offering a vastly superior service and I assume have the greatest market share, where do Bus Eireann make their money on long distance routes?

Well BE are still by far the single largest operator in Ireland. They operate on many routes and to places that private operators don't cover. But yes, each year the privates are opening new routes that compete with BE and where they do, they tend to end up gaining most of the marketshare on those routes.

BE actually operates two different services:

- PSO, public service obligation, routes that are subsidised by the government. Private companies aren't allowed to compete with these routes, they can't get a license for them, which is pretty ridiculous IMO.

These are the majority of BE's routes and they have a monopoly on them. So face no competition.

- BE Expressway, operate routes on a completely commercial basis with no subsidy from government.

These are the routes where privates can potentially get a competing license for and where you see the competition. Expressway has been suffering a lot and for a while BE were talking about selling it off, but that seems to have reduced now.

salonfire wrote: »

On what type of long distance route, is Bus Eireann the preferred choice?

I can't really think of any. Maybe the X1, somewhat competitive there. Mostly people take BE where there isn't an alternative (mostly those PSO routes).

BE intercity services tend to stop at towns in between the cities, while the privates mostly go direct (and thus faster), so if you are going to/from one of the towns inbetween BE are usually the only option. Some exceptions like Citylink's stopping service to Galway do exist too though.

salonfire wrote: »

I have to ask though, what is Bus Eireann's long term strategy?

Moving people between the major population centres is taken up by the private companies.

Relying on the PSO routes is not guaranteed either and could be taken off them.

Serving an older population, who don't pay the full fares, in in-between towns (many seeing population decline anyway), is not exactly a long term sustainable model for a business.

Well, if they or any company are subsidised to operate a service, then it can be long term sustainable, the company makes a profit from the subsidy. Not all public transport should be purely profit driven, it should be subsidised where there is a demand and delivers a public good, but not quiet enough demand for a purely commercial operation.

But you are right, I'm not sure BE really has a strategy for growth.

I suppose the more important question might be, does the government even need to be involved in the day to day operations of bus and coach companies?

Beyond regulation, licensing and subsidies, I'm not sure if the government really needs to be owning bus companies and running them day to day. Just like they no longer run airlines, telecoms, hotels, etc.

So I suppose the question is do the government want BE to expand or are they happy to see them be chipped away at until they are eventually not needed any more?