Limerick Buses WTF?

5uspect

So i was heading home today from town to Castletroy and fortunately the 308 was pulling up just as I came out of centra after getting some change. Unfortunately the driver was going for his lunch break, so i would have to wait another 20 mins for the next bus. Annoying but I've gotten used to a third world bus service. 25 mins later another 308 pulls up and out hops the driver and says the next bus won't be leaving for 20 mins. Then up pulls the €1 bus also not going anywhere for half an hour. :mad:

So does anyone else think the bus service in Limerick is terrible? I've been to Germany a few times (with German girlfriend) and I am amazed at how they can manage to keep a bus service right on time. There's go great trick to it either, they just plan enough time into the route to allow for traffic, so you'll often find yourself on a bus thats waiting at a stop for a couple of minutes while the timetable catches up with them. Drivers also can radio the central depot to ensure they are spread out properly and report traffic jams etc.

Its a shame we can't manage something similar here in Limbo

Inge Binge

Oh dear, don't get me started... One of my favourite topics: public transport in Limerick...

IB

Sunn

i was in dub last year and the bus and dart services were exellent. Especially with the bus lanes etc.

Thankfully i live close to town and dont need to rely on the bus service..apart from going to college.. which is awful. ugh

zuma

Having spent 6months in Germany myself the state of Irish public transport is something we brought upon ourselfves by electing, by proxy, parties such as the PD's to power.

Ireland will ALWAYS have shít public transport because we love our cars/the idea of cars too damn much!

Wishbone Ash

I think it would also be unfair to compare Ireland with Germany. Their 80 million population will bring economies of scale that we will never manage.

Inge Binge

zuma wrote:

Ireland will ALWAYS have shít public transport because we love our cars/the idea of cars too damn much!

What choice do you have if you live in a rural enviroment like let's say Feakle in Co. Clare near Tulla. There are 2 Busses. Two nit per day - no: two (!!) per week! one to Gort and one to Ennis. Hello?!?!? This is not only a joke - that's a shame!

Wishbone Ash wrote:

I think it would also be unfair to compare Ireland with Germany. Their 80 million population will bring economies of scale that we will never manage.

Is keeping the time table depending on population and economic power of a countrty?

If you have lived in Germany then you know how angry people can get if the train is 5 minutes to late... Imaging what i'm undergoing here

IB

5uspect

I agree Dublin is getting its act together. Even my girlfriend thinks the LUAS is excellent and you know those Germans are hard to please when it comes to publuc transport!
I definately thing its more a timetabling issue than a resources issue here is Limerick. Sure Germany is a bigger ecomomy with much better infrastructure, but their system anticipates delays and traffic that the schedule can absorb. I've not saying we need a more complex public transport we need one that runs on time. They recently changed the 308 to run every 15mins from every 20 mins. Great idea but it doesn't work. I constantly find myself waiting 25 - 30 mins for a bus only to see two buses going the other way at the same time. I would rather have a bus every 30 mins and have it work. At least you know then when your bus will be there.

Also on this doubling up of buses on routes - wouldn't it make sense for both buses to stop halfway out off load the passengers on one onto the other bus and send the empty one back into town to correct this timetable screw up?

gaf1983

What annoys me about this country is the way the public services have a problem doing simple things right that in most other countries you would take for granted.

Time to whip out my 16 point plan - in March 2005 I sent this letter to a number of local TDs, as well as Bus Eireann, the Department of Transport and both the Limerick Post and the Limerick Leader. The Limerick Post published an edited version of it, fair play to them. Not sure how many of the suggestions have been acted upon though.

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Original Message

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From: James Gaffney [mailto:gaf1983@campus.ie]
Sent: 10 March 2005 17:00
To: info@buseireann.ie; Department of Transport; info@limerickcity.ie;
jan.o'sullivan@oireachtas.ie; tim.o'malley@oireachtas.ie;
michael.noonan@oireachtas.ie; peter.power@oireachtas.ie;
minstate@justice.ie
Subject: Suggestions for Limerick City Bus Service


Dear all,

In my opinion the Limerick City Bus Service has problems. In the following
letter I will outline what I believe some of these problems are, and I will
give my suggestions on how to overcome them and improve the service. I see
no reason (apart from the obvious one, lack of funds) why Limerick can't
improve it's bus service to the extent that it is a model of good public
transport for other towns and cities in this country to copy.

From my experience the only people that take the bus in Limerick are those
that have to, i.e. the elderly, students, people that can't drive and people
that can't afford cars. Given the choice between taking the bus and driving,
most people in this city opt for the former it seems. If taking the bus
means half-hour waits only for a dangerously overcrowded bus to pull up and
reasonably refuse to take on any more passengers, coupled with really long
walks from the bus stop to wherever it is you wanted to go (There is some
statistic that everywhere in Paris is within 500m of a metro station. I
doubt the same could be said for Limerick regarding bus stops - if people
have really long walks after their bus journey, often in the wind, the wet,
the rain, they will be discouraged from using the bus)....Bus Eireann have
to get their act together so that people will choose the bus rather than the
car. If they can convince more people that they are offering a good service,
they will increase their revenue and then be able to invest in improving
their service even further. I've a couple of suggestions of how they could
improve their service:

1. Schedule the busses for every 10 minutes on the busiest routes, every 20
minutes on all other routes. People willl only choose the bus over the car
if they know their bus will be at their stop when they want it, or at least
if they know they won't have to wait all that long. This would involve
buying more buses and hiring more drivers - good for employment then.

2. Establish a night service. Sure the taxi-drivers will be up in arms, but
isn't competition good for the consumer? This could be run to some of the
areas most in demand at night time but maybe only every 40 minutes.

3. If they feel that double-decker buses are too awkward what with bridges
and that, why not invest in those single-storey buses twice as long as
normal buses with the accordion type thing in the middle?

4. Give the public more incentives to use the bus. For example, in the town
in France I lived in for a while, Besançon, nearly everyone that used the
buses had weekly, monthly or yearly bus passes. This was made by making the
bus passes much cheaper than buying single tickets - for instance my student
monthly bus pass there was €21 whereas if I bought single tickets (each one
costing a euro) I would have spent well over €50 on the bus per month. The
bus passes were available in every newsagent, and also in the universities
and schools. The bus company also had a shop in the centre of town to buy
them. Encouraging the majority of people to have travelpasses is also good
because it speeds up the time it takes to get onto the bus - there is no
waiting for change, all you have to do is flash your ID.

5. The town also had a great idea to show car-users what life on public
transport is like. If you brought your car into a mechanic in Besançon, the
bus company alllows you to travel for free on the bus for the duration of
your car being out of action.

6. Perhaps put park and ride facilities on the outskirts of the city, i.e.
at Coonagh, Patrickswell, Annacotty etc. Make the use of these facilities
much cheaper than city centre parking. Hopefully this would free up traffic
so buses would run on time and make restore the public's faith that the bus
would be on schedule.

7. The design of the current buses needs to be changed. There's too much
seating on them for a start - it's fine when there are hardly any passengers
on them but positively dangerous at 5 o'clock in the evening when passengers
are squashed up against the front windshield. Remove some of the seating and
replace it with areas to lean, bars to hold onto, and fold up seats.

8. Put 2 doors in the buses - one for going in at the front, one for going
out towards the back/middle. Much time is wasted when everyone that wants to
get off the bus has to be let off the door before the people waiting can get
on.

9. At every bus stop put maps of Limerick showing all the routes highlighted
in different colours. Don't have every route necessarily going through town
- have more routes using orbital roads along the lines of the UL-Raheen via
Childers Road route.

10. Widen the Childers Road.

11. Publicity campaigns informing the people of great changes made and the
ease of taking the bus.

12. More bus shelters.

13. Get property developers of ever expanding suburbs in places like
Annacotty and Raheen contribute towards the extension of bus routes into
their estates. We can't have everyone relying on the car, the roads just
can't accomodate them all for a start.

14. Many of the less-used bus routes stop at 6 o'clock. I believe they
should stop at 7 or 8 at the earliest, as this will give people who work
until then to catch a bus home. Perhaps one of the reasons why some bus
routes are so underused is because they are so infrequent)

15 It would be good if city buses left from outside the bus and train
station too. Perhaps they could leave from where the taxi rank is, and the
existing taxi rank could be moved to within the train station car park. At
the moment there aren't even signs in the train station directing visitors
about where the city bus stops are located.

16. Run loads of extra buses on big match days in Thomond Park and the
Gaelic Grounds, especially from park and ride facilities. Perhaps include
free use of public transport for the day of the match in the price of the
match ticket.


To conclude, I believe that the solution of Limerick's bus problems (and,
indeed, traffic problems) is to convince people that have the choice about
whether to drive or not that the bus is a better option. I believe this
could be achieved through implementing the measures I have outlined above.

Yours sincerely,

James Gaffney,

I wonder why the public transport system in this country is so substandard. Is it only because of lack of funds?

Karmafaerie

Let's just elect Mussolini and be done with it!;)

billy the squid

*quietly sits in corner gnashing teeth*

1. Schedule the busses for every 10 minutes on the busiest routes, every 20
minutes on all other routes. People willl only choose the bus over the car
if they know their bus will be at their stop when they want it, or at least
if they know they won't have to wait all that long. This would involve
buying more buses and hiring more drivers - good for employment then.

It doesn't matter if the bus comes every thirty seconds. They have so fcuked up the routes of late that they would still be unpopular. They first need to sort out some routes that serve most of the people. A bus that takes you from Weston into town via Raheen is unacceptable. And the three busses in the morning and three busses in the evening is not enough. The weston route (for example) passes through a part of the city where fewer people would have cars.

2. Establish a night service. Sure the taxi-drivers will be up in arms, but
isn't competition good for the consumer? This could be run to some of the
areas most in demand at night time but maybe only every 40 minutes.

I would be very selective about the routes this night service was on. I can't see Bus Eireann sending a bus up to O'Malley at 3am on a saturday night.

3. If they feel that double-decker buses are too awkward what with bridges
and that, why not invest in those single-storey buses twice as long as
normal buses with the accordion type thing in the middle?

Double Decker busses would be fine. They have been on Limerick's streets before. The other type of bus you mention is called an articulated bus. Last I heard the number 10 route in Dublin use them.

4. Give the public more incentives to use the bus. For example, in the town
in France I lived in for a while, Besançon, nearly everyone that used the
buses had weekly, monthly or yearly bus passes. This was made by making the
bus passes much cheaper than buying single tickets - for instance my student
monthly bus pass there was €21 whereas if I bought single tickets (each one
costing a euro) I would have spent well over €50 on the bus per month. The
bus passes were available in every newsagent, and also in the universities
and schools. The bus company also had a shop in the centre of town to buy
them. Encouraging the majority of people to have travelpasses is also good
because it speeds up the time it takes to get onto the bus - there is no
waiting for change, all you have to do is flash your ID.

Another positive with travelpasses is that there is less cash in the bus driver's cabin. therefore less incentive to rob them.

8. Put 2 doors in the buses - one for going in at the front, one for going
out towards the back/middle. Much time is wasted when everyone that wants to
get off the bus has to be let off the door before the people waiting can get
on.

In the days of Double deck buses the middle doors never got used. Irish culture is to anarchic to be trusted not to jump on the bus through the middle doors without paying. It might be different in other countries, but here we are a nation of con artists, if we can save a penny by conning someone else, we will try it.

10. Widen the Childers Road.

Eight people had to die at greenmount on the childers road before LCC decided to put up pedestrian lights, and even at that local residents had to block childers road at rush hour on tha Thursday, bringing most of the city to a halt within an hour. Those same people will have serious objections to the childers road being widened in their area. Widening the Childers road is not the answer, takeing the cars off the childers road is. This means, more busses on the childers road.

I would also include the banning of on-street parking in ballinacurra and the construction of a QBC from Raheen to town.

iguana

5uspect wrote:

I agree Dublin is getting its act together. Even my girlfriend thinks the LUAS is excellent and you know those Germans are hard to please when it comes to publuc transport!

There is a long list of reasons as to why the Luas is a very bad system. Certainly it is the best form of public transport in the country if you happen to live in it's vicinity, especially the green line as that one has very little traffic interaction. The red line can be a nightmare as the route was poorly planned with regard to traffic interaction and at certain times of day this causes severe delays.

And if you take into account what the Luas cost, and the lenght of time it took to complete, compared to what that time and money could have, and should have, produced if it had been properly planned. Also a number of bus routes were shut down due to the Luas being opened, even though those buses took different routes.

Transport in Dublin is better than Limerick's certainly, but the population of the Greater Dublin Area is over 15 times that of Limerick, suburbs and environs. And the majority of people in Dublin have to take much longer bus/train journeys on a daily basis than people in Limerick. On an individual basis the public transport is almost every bit as lacking in Dublin as it is in Limerick.

The entire country has in my experience the worst public transport system in the developed world. About seven years ago the city purchased a fleet of buses similar to the city imps in Dublin. Yet the drivers union objected and the buses are languishing in garages. As seemingly wasting cash on unused buses is a better option than sorting out the drivers issues and getting the buses on the road.

Wishbone Ash

billy the squid wrote:

The other type of bus you mention is called an articulated bus. Last I heard the number 10 route in Dublin use them.QUOTE



Aircoach operate six Mercedes Citaro articulated buses on their carpark contract. The use of thes buses would probably require extending the lenght of bus stops in the city centre - the buses are 18 metres long.

As has been previously mentioned, the system could work better if everyone was honest as the Citaros have three sets of doors which allows for rapid entry and exit.

justfortherecor

Currently working in Tokyo for a few months. I get p*ssed of when the train is 2 mins late sometimes on the morning commute. I dont stand a chance when i get back to limerick.

Sunn

justfortherecor wrote:

Currently working in Tokyo for a few months.

that must be fun

chrislad

The eurobus is the most reliable. Pity it only runs once an hour (leaves at 5 to the hour every hour between 9am and 9pm)

irishguy

lots of good ideas there gaf1983, did any of the people ever get back to you that you emailed?

BobTheBeat

Had to rely on the service for 4 years while in college. Used to commute from Caherdavin to UL every morning. I must say it was pretty reliable in the mornings, in terms of the departure times but I could have sworn the drivers themselves made up the connecting schedule.
I specifically chose the Caherdavin to UL bus for mornings and evenings. But it turned out to be be a 50/50 with the route chosen.

Also, I dont know how many times the buses were so packed (well above the passenger limit I might add) that myself and dozens of other students were turned away. I often wondered How anyone could hope to hold down a job with that kind of service?