Glass Bus Shelters

HelterSkelter

On passing another smashed bus shelter today I wondered why Dublin Bus/Bus Eireann persist in using glass panels in their bus shelters. They get smashed up quite a lot. Does someone high up have shares in the company that makes the glass?!! Anyone have any ideas?

stimpson

A company called Adshel does the bus shelters. I assume they're contracted by CIE so they continue to use glass.

If they used perspex they'd loose out on the work!

DonkeyStyle \o/

Perspex is crap anyway... fades to a disgusting yellow, and instead of smashing them, the scummers would just engrave their names and wipe shít all over them :rolleyes:
I think glass in the bus-shelters looks nice... I don't care if I have to indirectly pay for the replacement glass, I'd rather that than have to live in even more of a bloody kip these people create.

Along the same lines, there's a gate at the end of my road that gets scrawled all over every few months with black marker... now instead of just shrugging it off and leaving it like that, or painting it black... nope.. the owner comes out and scrubs the illiterate crap off and re-paints the gate its original colour.
It may be harder, but I don't like changing the way we decent people live because of a handful of retards.

stimpson

You can get fade free perspex. You still get names engraved on glass with diamond rings anyway (I've seen it on the bus windows), and there is the safety issues too.

Personally I DO mind paying for it (now that I can no longer drive to work). smashed bus shelters look FAR worse than perspex ones. It's a complete waste of money and the cynic in me is wondering who exactly is reaping the benefits.

murphaph

I'm torn on this. We could make everything vandal resistant but we'd live in a prison of our own then. Why should ordinary decent people have to live in an aesthetic nightmare because a minority of scumbags should be put down?

Tough penalties for scumbags and parents of yong scumbags who wreck the place is the only way to go. Any graffitti in Singapore? Nope.

DonkeyStyle \o/

Well I just see it like the rest of us having to eat with plastic knives and forks because a few stupid people have managed to hurt themselves with real ones.

I've seen perspex used in some of the more scummy areas of Dublin, and they really do look horrible... think about it, perspex that lasts years before being replaced will gather an awful lot more cruddy crap than a glass one that's replaced every year, diamond rings or not.
I'd personally prefer to stand at a smashed glass bus-stop for one or two mornings a year and have it squeaky clean for the rest of the time, than have to look at the same depressing filthy perspex every day for the next 5 years.
But that's just me and I'm probably unusually anal about these little things.

I have to say though, I've wondered about the whole glass-provider thing aswell, aside from my own aesthetic preferences, it doesn't seem to make good business sense for them to keep using glass.

HelterSkelter

I normally stand with my back to the glass/perspex watching for the bus so it doesn't matter to me how it looks. It's the cost that concerns me. Does anyone know how much a large pane of glass like that costs? It's gotta be three or four hundred euro.

mike65

There is no good reason for sheets of glass and you know the things are going to be destroyed spilling glass onto the pavement and sometimes the road. I would use opaque plastic, plenty of light comes through the front!

Mike.

Alun

Couldn't they use armoured glass for the shelters that are targetted most often? It'd be much more expensive to start with, but not if you factor in the replacement costs including labour every year or so. Or would they get taken to court by the scumbags because they broke their foot while trying to kick them in

mike65

http://www.mers.org.im/bellevue.JPG

Mike.

stimpson

murphaph wrote:

Why should ordinary decent people have to live in an aesthetic nightmare because a minority of scumbags should be put down?

An asthetic nightmare?? It's a bus shelter. It's not like we are suggesting that we perspex every Georgian house in Dublin.

They are ugly things anyway - it's not like the addition of glass is going to transform them into a wonder of modern architecture.

To be honest, you're lucky to have bus shelters - where I get my bus there is only a wobbly stop - and it was freezing this morning. If we went perspex there would be more money to go around and maybe I could get to work without catching frostbite.

stimpson

mike65 wrote:

http://www.mers.org.im/bellevue.JPG

Mike.

Luxury!

rubadub

Never undertood why there was glass at all, i.e. why transparent, and why not just more ads to pay for them. I think most ads are behind perspex.

ballooba

Adshel pays for the street furniture. They will put it anywhere they can get planning permission. At their own cost. Whether its a park bench a bus shelter or a lampost.

The reason? Do you know how much it costs to advertise on those thing?

[edit]Just realised that Adshel is part of the giant Clear Channel. Believe me, they know a hell of a lot better than you or me what makes business sense. If the CEO stood in the middle of O'Connell St smashing flourescent light bulbs over his head I wouldn't question it.[/edit]

kkposse

yeah i'd say replacing glass in bus shelters makes good business sense for them alright its just a pity we the poor tax payers have to pay for their so called good business sense:eek:

DonkeyStyle \o/

ballooba wrote:

Adshel pays for the street furniture. They will put it anywhere they can get planning permission. At their own cost. Whether its a park bench a bus shelter or a lampost.

Interesting... so we don't pay at all for the upkeep of bus shelters?
I guess that shuts up the 'I don't want to pay for it' brigade then.

Being advertised to whether I like it or not though, that's a whole other axe that needs grinding IMO.

stimpson

Ahh...Clear Channel - say no more.

If it's so lucrative why don't CIE do their own advertising and use it to offset the cost of bus fares...or dare I say it - to ween themselves off government subsides???

HelterSkelter

We do pay for it. They pass the expenses on to their customers (i.e. CIE) like any other business does.

kirving

Yes, everything can be made vandal resistant, but why bother having glass that smashes up into tiny pieces all over the roard, had glass that will rip the hands on little vandalising cnuts.

ballooba

Well I doubt they do pass the costs on. If you look on MediaLive.ie it would appear that Dublin Bus sell the space on the buses whereas Clear Channel sell the Bus Stop ads.

I presume they pay for the upkeep of the ads as well as the initial capital. Surely Dublin Bus doesn't have to pay for every time a drunken youth robs one of Clear Channel's posters.

HelterSkelter

Yeah, but I assume Adshel charge CIE a yearly fee for the upkeep/maintenance of the shelters or for displaying the bus timetable in the shelter. Adshel probably increase their fee to cover for the vandalism.

ballooba

Read here:
http://www.clearchannel.ie/webSite/index.asp?pageTitle=Street%20Furniture&id=24&sectionid=24&Section=24

Whatever it happens to be, it’s paid for by advertising and maintained by us, impeccably.

Guess that knocks that argument on the head.

shltter

It does not cost DB anything it shows the atitude of people around here to DB that instead of critising the gob****es who smash up street furniture people would instead prefer to blame DB even when it is pointed out that a different company maintains the Bus shelters.

Perspex in the shelters was tried before and they still got broken went yellow had peoples names engraved into them were painted on etc etc
and they looked particularly ugly.

Perhaps people could move on to question why these people are smashing up Bus shelters and what should be done to them rather than blaming the victim of the crime.

murphaph

stimpson wrote:

An asthetic nightmare?? It's a bus shelter. It's not like we are suggesting that we perspex every Georgian house in Dublin.

But it's a bus stop today, a phonebox tomorrow, traffic lights the day after that. The list of street furniture and other public property is endless. Should we armour plate every single thing and live in a horrible, stainless steel and concrete city or should we crack down hard on anti-social yobs who do the damage? I don't want to live in a dirthole city like that. I want the scumbags removed from our city.

Capt'n Midnight

IIRC they have to be transparent so they don't block the view of property. How you reconcile that with the huge ads at the end I don't know. And they still have glass when up against a wall :rolleyes:

Shelter is the word and it should be capable of it.

This country needs lots more sheltered places cos it rains often enough.

ballooba

I like clean well maintained glass shelters. The one by my house on is as so. Then again, it is 100 yards from the border with D4.

It's one of the modern Adshel ones with the stainless steel supports.

dr zoidberg

They used to have a glass shelter at my local busstop, but the scumbags kept smashing it so they replaced it with the standard free-standing pole. Nice place really :rolleyes:

daymobrew

ballooba wrote:

Read here:
http://www.clearchannel.ie/webSite/index.asp?pageTitle=Street%20Furniture&id=24&sectionid=24&Section=24

Whatever it happens to be, it’s paid for by advertising and maintained by us, impeccably.

Guess that knocks that argument on the head.

So, now that Dublin Bus and us taxpayers aren't paying for the vandalism, can people please report broken shelter glass to Adshel at 830-2888. I don't have any connection with Adshel.

One Saturday of a long weekend I decided to clean up the broken glass of a shelter (D15, near Coolmine train station) because it would be Tuesday or Wednesday before Adshel would get to it. OMG there was a million pieces, and only one of the three panes was smashed. Took well over an hour. Lots of stares from people but the place looked well afterwards. Never again though.