Will Dublin Bus get more buses?

Aim2Please

Hey all,

forgive my ignorance but I'm not really up to date on the whole privatisation issue with regards to Dublin bus. If privatisation does not go ahead in one form or another and if it has been decided that it won't then why has Dublin bus been only given 20 buses? I would think 200 would be about right! If it hasn't been decided when is it likely to be?

I mean I don't know how much a bus costs, but surely it can't be more than a 100K? which means 200 buses would only cost 20 millon?

corktina

Aim2Please wrote:

Hey all,

forgive my ignorance but I'm not really up to date on the whole privatisation issue with regards to Dublin bus. If privatisation does not go ahead in one form or another and if it has been decided that it won't then why has Dublin bus been only given 20 buses? I would think 200 would be about right! If it hasn't been decided when is it likely to be?

I mean I don't know how much a bus costs, but surely it can't be more than a 100K? which means 200 buses would only cost 20 millon?

my guess would be €200,000 plus....but your point still stands.....

markpb

That would involve the government and particularly that most annoying of ministers (now that Callelly is gone) Cullen , admitting they were wrong and giving up hope on their plans for privatisation.

Which is never going to happen really when they can just stick their heads in the sand and pretend DB don't exist.

Capt'n Midnight

[Broken Record]Dublin Bus have a turnover of €180m a year for about half a million journeys per day.
they get €60m per year from the Govt[/Broken Record]

http://www.finegael.ie/PrintNews.cfm?NewsID=27390 or about 2 months worth of M50

http://www.nra.ie/PublicPrivatePartnership/ProjectTracker/M50SecondWest-LinkBridge/

D'Peoples Voice

Aim2Please wrote:

Hey all, forgive my ignorance but I'm not really up to date on the whole privatisation issue with regards to Dublin bus.

FF have learnt not to annoy unions in the run-up to an election,
so nothing too radical will be done this side of the election.
My gues is they will promise to do it as part of their manfesto,
and try to get the mandate for it.
You see if they try to do it before the election,
the unions use their monoply position to blackmail the government,
by threatening to go on strike and bringing the city to a standstill.
This makes the government look to be the culprits,
and voters blame the government and therefore won't vote for them.

You must remember, with Unions, its all a game!
The travelling public are their bargaining power.
As said so many times on boards.ie there should be a central transport authority, and they franchise(and subsidy if necessary) every route.
then let the various bus companies bid for each.

From what I'm told, Dublin Bus want to be the transport authority whilst also being an operator, hence they get to say what routes other companies get! Is that fair? You judge, but lets just say there hasn't been a lot of private companies taking up Dublin Bus offer!

shltter

D'Peoples Voice wrote:

From what I'm told, Dublin Bus want to be the transport authority whilst also being an operator, hence they get to say what routes other companies get! Is that fair? You judge, but lets just say there hasn't been a lot of private companies taking up Dublin Bus offer!

Well actually the only part of the Dublin bus network that DB has operated something along these lines is the School bus service and there has been no shortage of private operators willing to take up the offer.

Macy

Privatisation = better service is a myth. All you'd be doing is replacing a public monopoly with a private one, for the benefit of no one except shareholders. You can see this all over the UK, where all the independent companies that came in the wake of privatisation collapsed and/or merged into one or two massive companies. The result has been reduced service and increased costs. There's no evidence from previous privatisations in this country to suggest buses in Dublin would be any different.

The Government should allow Dublin Bus buy buses to provide the service they want, instead of pandering to the PD's and all the companies that they entertain in tents in Galway.

Privatisation doesn't work, Dublin Bus actually works very well, if it's left get on with it.

shltter

Aim2Please wrote:

Hey all,

forgive my ignorance but I'm not really up to date on the whole privatisation issue with regards to Dublin bus. If privatisation does not go ahead in one form or another and if it has been decided that it won't then why has Dublin bus been only given 20 buses? I would think 200 would be about right! If it hasn't been decided when is it likely to be?

I mean I don't know how much a bus costs, but surely it can't be more than a 100K? which means 200 buses would only cost 20 millon?

asically

Cullen has basically rowed back on Brennans plans and decided not to break up CIE AFAIk he still wants to open up the bus market but the plan now is more along the lines of leaving DB with what it has at the moment and the new Transport regulator identifying new routes that are required in the city and that these new routes would be franchised out and that DB would be allowed to bid for at least some of the new routes.

Minister Cullen wrote a letter to the DB unions recently and said that he has asked DB to do a complete network review and come back to him with suggestions as to what they need and that would form part of transport 21.

A big part of the problem is that Seamus Brennan shot his mouth off with plans that had not been tought through and that had no possibility of working. So we basically wasted 3 or 4 years doing nothing.

MarkoP11

Dublin Bus has a thick leash around its neck and it is firmly tied to a post outside the DoT on Kildare Street, the management in Dublin Bus have little authority to make the changes that are so needed.

In the persuit of the Transport 21 cost breakdown for rail/metro I also got the Dublin Bus numbers http://www.platform11.org/transport21/costs.php#dublin_bus

And €529 million is a lot of cash

shltter

Are you sure that money is allocated to Dublin Bus for fleet expansion and replacement because it is very close to the figure allocated for QBCs less the the Cork QBC money and the cost of the 20 buses already provided.

In the ministers letter to the unions recently he made no mention of any allocation of money short medium or long term he did however say that they T21 would double the QBC network in its lifetime

As we all know QBCs are useless with out buses to operate on them

MarkoP11

http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/ireland/2005/1118/1389728400HMETRANSPORT.html

Asked to price the various projects, Mr Cullen said he was not going to give out particular figures because all of them would be subject to a competitive tendering process.

"Every one is project costed on year-by-year basis in Transport 21", he added.

He rejected suggestions that buses were being neglected. Under Transport 21, there were allocations of €529 million for buses in Dublin, €240 million for buses in the other cities and €599 million for Quality Bus Corridors (QBCs) and traffic management.

shltter

mmm I just wonder why they did not include that in the T21 call me suspicous but I wonder if he is refering to the current level of subvention spread out over the life of the t21

Also in his reply to the unions letter to him expressing their disappointment at the lack of any commitment to DB in T21 he made no reference to this figure which is very odd.

D'Peoples Voice

Macy wrote:

Privatisation = better service is a myth. You can see this all over the UK, where all the independent companies that came in the wake of privatisation collapsed and/or merged into one or two massive companies. The result has been reduced service and increased costs. Privatisation doesn't work.

Which Part of the UK?????????
Local bus services were liberalised in 1985. Most services outside London were fully deregulated. Under this highly market-oriented régime there was a loss of bus passengers of 30 % over the period 1985-99, which has continued since.

In London, however, all bus services were placed under a tendering régime. This saw an increase of 11% in bus use in 1985-99, with subsidy declining almost to zero.

www.ceep.org/en/documents/contributions_speeches/Seminar26FebContribJF.doc

Why do Irish people think Dublin's experience will be more akin to that of rural Devon than an urban area like London?

John R

DB already fund their own fleet replacement programme as part of their annual budget. These are strictly replacement buses though, not additional ones.

For 2006 an order for 100 double-deckers has been placed which will cost around €23m.

They have been replacing the fleet at a rate of around 100 buses per year for quite a while now.

By replacing single-deckers and minibuses (all of which are gone now) with larger double-deckers they have been able to greatly increase carrying capacity with the same number of buses. That is at an end now as most of the smaller buses are already gone and the ones left are needed for routes unsuitable for larger buses.

Unlike in the past when most buses were only fit for scrap, DB are now replacing their fleet before they are life-expired. The single deckers have mostly gone to BE for the schools fleet and the double deckers are sold on through the UK.

The 20 new buses this year were originally part of the fleet replacement but a quick change was made after the Minister announced them as "new" and the 20 old 1992 buses they were due to replace were kept on.

Added to a number of seriously damaged buses this year and the last minibuses that have been withdrawn this month there are probably only 5-10 more buses in the fleet now than there were this time last year.

They are still 200 buses short of the number promised by the last grand plan (The NDP) mainly thanks to Brennan and his fantasy privatisation schemes during which time the DoT put the brakes on all improvements by both Bus operating companies.

John R

D'Peoples Voice wrote:

Which Part of the UK?????????
Local bus services were liberalised in 1985. Most services outside London were fully deregulated. Under this highly market-oriented régime there was a loss of bus passengers of 30 % over the period 1985-99, which has continued since.

In London, however, all bus services were placed under a tendering régime. This saw an increase of 11% in bus use in 1985-99, with subsidy declining almost to zero.

www.ceep.org/en/documents/contributions_speeches/Seminar26FebContribJF.doc

Why do Irish people think Dublin's experience will be more akin to that of rural Devon than an urban area like London?

Outside London consists of much more than rural Devon. It includes cities such as Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow, Leeds, Newcastle, Sheffield, etc all of which are much closer in size, population and traffic patterns to Dublin than London is.

Bus usage in London decreased considerably over that period, only the number of single journies increased as many of the routes were cut into two or more smaller routes.

When the London govermnent was decentralised and TfL took over the running the bus services were in a mess and required a huge investement. Currently the London Bus network recieves about €1Billion a year subsidy.

London is noe the only city in the UK with more than two significant operators running services and they are the only local authority able to enforce strict franchising rules on the operators as a result.

shltter

D'Peoples Voice wrote:

Which Part of the UK?????????
Local bus services were liberalised in 1985. Most services outside London were fully deregulated. Under this highly market-oriented régime there was a loss of bus passengers of 30 % over the period 1985-99, which has continued since.

In London, however, all bus services were placed under a tendering régime. This saw an increase of 11% in bus use in 1985-99, with subsidy declining almost to zero.

www.ceep.org/en/documents/contributions_speeches/Seminar26FebContribJF.doc

Why do Irish people think Dublin's experience will be more akin to that of rural Devon than an urban area like London?

Why stop telling the story in 1999

Lets continue the story yes tendering started about 1986 and by 1997 about 60% had been tendered and in 1998 the subsidy had been almost reduced to zero. However by 2001 the first year of full tendering the subsidy had risen to nearly 100 million pounds and it has continued to rise at the 2004/05 it was about 800 million and is expected to be over a billion now

The subsidy was reduced with tendering in the beginning by not investing in renewing the bus fleet and cutting labour costs but by 2001 the bus companies could not keep any staff because the wages were so poor and TFL had to pay drivers a bonus payment above what their employers were paying them just to keep drivers in the sector.

The subsidy in 1984/1985 was 235 million in london this year it will be about 1000 million


It should also not be forgotten that over the same period here in Dublin the state subsidy of Dublin Bus was reduced to zero as well when Micheal Lowry was Transport minister without tendering being introduced the service got worse and in 2000 Dublin Bus could not hold onto its staff

So the lesson is that in the short term through not investing in buses and reducing labour costs subsidies can be lowered or eradicated but in the long term it just comes back and bites you on the ass

http://www.london.gov.uk/assembly/past_ctees/trans2mtgs/2001/trans2feb20/minutes/trans2feb20.pdf

http://www.thisislondon.com/news/londonnews/articles/5329044
http://www.london.gov.uk/assembly/reports/budget/budgetissues_nov03.pdf