Dublin Bus Flat Fare?

mgmt

bk wrote: »

I've just come across this very interesting study into integrated ticketing and fares in Dublin from 2000 !!

http://www.transport21.ie/Projects/Integrated_Ticketing/Integrated_Smart_Card_Ticketing_in_the_Greater_Dublin_Area.html

That link dosnt bring you anything. I believe this is the study: http://www.transport.ie/upload/general/2648-0.pdf

Interesting read about the rebated system and the zonal system.

LXFlyer

bk wrote: »

However I wonder could we see some increase in subsidies to support this. I know times are tough, but if we are not going to get DU and MN now, then it is imperative that we maximise the value in the existing services we have. A small increase in the subsidy to cover the cost of multimode travel savings would only be a small fraction of the cost of MN and DU, money that we won't be spending now.

Note a hope.

Varadkar has already indicated that subsidies will fall further in 2012.

antoinolachtnai

The other way of dealing with it is by reducing the cost base at Dublin Bus.

The subsidy per passenger is actually increasing year-on-year.

I don't see how a flat fare would really reduce dwell times, unless, perhaps, the fare were set at a flat 2 euros and kept at that level for some years. The ticket technology is what will reduce the dwell times.

By the way, I don't mean to sound negative in comments above. I think taking a bus is way too complicated for all the parties involved, and simplifying the bus experience in as many ways as possible is the way to go.

AlekSmart

bk wrote: »

I think it is that most people in Dublin just aren't use to the concept of flat fares.
I suppose I'm more use to the concept as I originally come from Cork. So used to flat fares. Wouldn't it be ironic that it BE got it's act together they could have significantly shorter dwell times then DB.

If you could make the flat fare €1.60, then the vast majority of users wouldn't pay more. Only €1.20 users would be effected and lets be honest, probably many if not most of them aren't really €1.20 users, they are probably really higher fare users fare dodging anyway.


Anyway walking is good for you.

So really the 50c and €1.20 fares are an anomaly in public transport and should really be done away with anyway. It just seems the Department of Transport don't have the balls to face any political criticism if they were to do this.

This is one area where somebody is just going to have to make a decision call.

Hopefully,there are now some operationally well versed types within the NTA who have actually travelled on Dublin`s Bus Services regularly....(there's NO substitute for hands-on experience)

One very pertinent aspect IMO is the number of people who will drop a €2 coin in and tell you,"It's ok,don't bother" when I tell them there's a change ticket or those who reluctantly take the Change Ticket.

As another poster pointed out the Travel 90 Individual Fare of €1.85 is pitched about right in terms of discounting vs distance/time.

As this thread is demonstrating,the Fare issue quickly bogs down in circular arguements about which group subsidises the other,which directly reflects on DB's so-called Motto...."Serving the entire community".

Service Providers need to concentrate far more on serving those customers who are prepared to put some thought and effort into their commuting rather than wringing hands endlessly about those who will never be anything but vexatious and disruptive to the service as a whole.

As bk sez,the 50c and €1.20 fares are little more than anomalies and should not be used as benchmarks to figure out a bearable fare.

If we are to make any real gains from contactless technology,then we need to ensure that ALL reduced/concessionary/promotional fares are available only on SmartCards.

Those who wish to remain with Coin-of-the-Realm,Crossing Palm`s with Silver etc should be under no illusion that their clinging to tradition carries with it a (hefty) additional cost,what could be fairer than asking them to pay extra for their desire to keep the World flat ?

Remember too, the DSP Free Travel Scheme very effectively looks after the travel needs of the Elderly,The Disadvantaged and those who have Intellectual Disabilities,so the Cash-Free principle really only impacts on those who make a conscious decision to thwart its beneficial effects on the service as a whole.

AlekSmart

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

The other way of dealing with it is by reducing the cost base at Dublin Bus.

The subsidy per passenger is actually increasing year-on-year.

Antoin has in several posts now referred to the "Cost Base" which is,I suppose,a kind of neutral sounding reference to wages.

In the Public Transport business the largest chunk of this will be Drivers with I`d suspect Fuel coming in 2nd ?

The issue of wage cuts is a very live one throughout the country in almost every sector.

As we are currently witnessing with the Banking Executive`s there will be little scope for voluntary large scale wage reduction from Blue-Collar workers as long as we hear of an endless supply of "Legal Difficulties","Contractual Issues" or an assortment of other VERY serious reasons why VERY highly renumerated executives can not have a reduction
imposed upon them.

The good Prof McCarthy`s average earnings for the CIE group came in around €46,000 I think,a figure which I doubt will tempt many applications from former Anglo-Irish executives looking for a bit of an oul job !!!

Bus Drivers in DB already had a previously agreed 6% increase put on ice and in reality it simply won't be paid.

The prospects of any further wage increases are virtually nil,which I feel,makes focusing solely on wages a futile exercise when far more benefits accrue from continuing to improve the standing of the Bus Service through efficient operation rather than somewhat half-cocked Cost-Cutting schemes,whose effects can often be les than reliable !

bk

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

I don't see how a flat fare would really reduce dwell times, unless, perhaps, the fare were set at a flat 2 euros and kept at that level for some years. The ticket technology is what will reduce the dwell times.

You are correct a flat fare on it's own only partly reduces dwell time.

To get maximum benefit, you want a flat fare in conjunction with smart card, with the vast majority of people using the smart card.

Imagine, two lines of people being able to enter the bus at the same time, being able to quickly tag on at the card reader either by the door or by the driver. And no need to interact with the driver, ask for a particular fare, etc.

That would definitely reduce dwell times.

antoinolachtnai

AlekSmart wrote: »

Antoin has in several posts now referred to the "Cost Base" which is,I suppose,a kind of neutral sounding reference to wages.

In the Public Transport business the largest chunk of this will be Drivers with I`d suspect Fuel coming in 2nd ?

Actually there are a lot of people employed at Dublin Bus that are not drivers.

The good Prof McCarthy`s average earnings for the CIE group came in around €46,000 I think,a figure which I doubt will tempt many applications from former Anglo-Irish executives looking for a bit of an oul job !!!

46,000 euros is an excellent wage and many people would like a job which paid so well. Of course this is an overall average, not just drivers. The CTTC report has a table on drivers' wages.

The prospects of any further wage increases are virtually nil,which I feel,makes focusing solely on wages a futile exercise when far more benefits accrue from continuing to improve the standing of the Bus Service through efficient operation rather than somewhat half-cocked Cost-Cutting schemes,whose effects can often be les than reliable !

Sure, there are lots of ways of addressing costs as well as wages.

The issue isn't the wages. It's the cost-per-vehicle-mile. If Dublin Bus really can't do it any cheaper, then surely someone else should be given a go?

mgmt

Dwell time causes journey times to be about 20% longer on Dublin Bus:

The DTO QBC Monitoring Report for 2007 measured boarding and alighting time as a percentage of total journey time. On corridors where services benefited from significant bus priority, boarding and alighting time was a significant portion of overall journey time.
 Malahide Road am peak: 22%
 Stillorgan QBC am peak: 21%
 Finglas QBC am peak: 19%
http://www.transport.ie/upload/general/final%20report%20bus%20review%20220109.pdf (page 85)

What a waste of time and money. Why cant we get Michael O'Leary in as a director of Dublin Bus instead of a FF political hack. If anything the Ryanair model tells us that transport modes dont make money when they are stationary.


Dublin Bus explain the high dwell times:

The standard cash fares for both companies are currently approved by the Minister for Transport. Prepaid ticket prices do not require ministerial approval. An indirect result is that discounts for prepaid tickets relative to cash tickets are less than in many other cities. As a result cash paying passengers make up the majority of fares for each company, resulting in cash handling costs and increased dwell times at bus stops.

[Same report page19]

schemingbohemia

Antoin has also moved the goalposts as to which average he uses when it suits him, it's subsidy per passenger when that works but per bus when comparing to London.

The Deloitte report showed that DB and BE have a low subsidy in international comparisons.

schemingbohemia

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

Actually there are a lot of people employed at Dublin Bus that are not drivers.



46,000 euros is an excellent wage and many people would like a job which paid so well. Of course this is an overall average, not just drivers. The CTTC report has a table on drivers' wages.



Sure, there are lots of ways of addressing costs as well as wages.

The issue isn't the wages. It's the cost-per-vehicle-mile. If Dublin Bus really can't do it any cheaper, then surely someone else should be given a go?

I find it quite surprising that the CTTC haven't, in the Mazars report, actually stated what the average wages of it's own drivers are, simply relying on other reports and comparisons. Surely if they were paying their own drivers a lot less they would have included it in the report?

Also Mazars use the CSO's NACE 60 (land transport) to compare average wages of Bus Eireann drivers (46k) with the average wage under that heading. It's important to note that that figure includes our good friends the taxi driver, who if legend is to be believed (and their tax returns), all earned the exact same amount for many years which was considerably less than that actually received.

dowlingm

Toronto flat fare zone measures approximately that of the city bounds, an area of 630sqkm.

Fare is $3/EUR 2.16 cash, $2.50/E1.80 for multi-purchases of tokens and $121/E87 for an unlimited month pass bought at a turnstile (there are subscription options). Passes are tax deductible in your end of year return and is not linked to your employer. This pass is a swipe card or flash to driver but a smart card run by the regional transit system is likely to roll out eventually.

ppjjobrien

I've come late to this discussion and I read most of the posts, but not all! So, apologies if I'm flogging a dead horse!

It strikes me that the key point behind a flat fare structure is the customer and the simplicity it offers and not the more operational side of things (eg dwell time, though this of course helps behind the scenes as part of wider efforts to make public transport more attractive). What we have now as a ticketing and public transport 'system' is preposterous and anti-customer and relates only to a bunch of semi-states acting like children fighting over toys in the playground. The fact that those people that do use public transport have figured it out, doesn't mean it's attractive, simple and functional for all. We need to simplify the whole system and focus on getting people where they want to get to - discussions about DB, BÉ, RPA, Luas, IÉ, NTA etc etc etc are a distraction - a single transport system, with excellent up to the minute information, a single brand and a simple, intuitive fare system for all modes is required and may indeed happen soon(ish!).

In London (where I live!) the introduction of full flat fares (and the corresponding introduction of the Oyster system) meant that the price point of buses was a single, low fare which made travelling by bus feel like less of a mystery. The introduction of finger diagrams mimicked the success of quality information previously seen on the underground. This latter approach is now in the process of being rolled out at Dublin Bus.

I'm from Dublin originally and for the 22 years I lived there, the only fare I knew was from my home to the city centre - every other journey involved fumbling around for change. In my later years, travelling back 3-4 times per year, I've noticed that I've become more reluctant to use the bus due to the uncertainty around using it (poor information on buses, their routes, how much they cost, how long it would take etc). I was having a chat with my mum recently about her use of the bus. She used to be dependent on public transport and went everywhere by bus. Since getting a car, she rarely takes it and now that 5 years have passed she said the main reason she didn't use the bus was uncertainty. It's an interesting point about the psychology of travel - public transport needs to be easy, or it alienates occasional users.

I would therefore commend a flat fare system for Dublin and as an added bonus I would further simplify it, by making all one-off fares valid for 2 hours (it's not a passenger's fault if the system doesn't provide a particular link - in fact it seems perverse that a passenger should pay more for a less convenient and longer journey. This two hour approach would make network integration more viable and sensible. Transfer 90 tickets would obviously be redundant. This approach is used all over the continent (e.g. Berlin and the Netherlands).

For that matter, a further and customer-centric approach would see this fare upgradeable to be integrated across all modes (DART, Luas). It is within the NTA's remit and outlined in their Draft GDA Transport Strategy to see such a integrated farebox take place. I would apply one zone to buses and, as in London, a simple zonal approach to DART, Luas, Metro (inside the canal-ring = zone A; inside the M50 = zone B; inside an identified outer Dublin travel area = zone C - I would then have the standard ticket cover zone AB, BC or ABC - I won't go into this here - Berlin uses this approach and when I lived there it really made sense and was so simple to use!).

With an e-purse, a fare cap per day equivalent to the available travelcards takes all the hassle out of wondering what fare option is best - the system automatically gives you the best price for the journeys you've made in a day/week/month.

Bear in mind that all these considerations only apply to moderate to light/occasional users, as more frequent users should presumably be incentivised into using seasonal/monthly/weekly tickets.

The arguments about the few who would lose seem marginal to all those who would benefit from a simpler system.

As for pricing, I think one shouldn't under-estimate how improved information (better route maps, bus stop information), integration and simplification of services, and simplified pricing can make public transport more attractive and boost passenger numbers and hence revenue - part of London's success was having an attractively priced option for public transport that made people re-consider their habits.

I would therefore go for the following:

2-hr all buses single journey (cash): €2
2-hr all buses single journey (e-purse): €1

2-hr all modes single journey zones AB (cash): €3
2-hr all modes single journey zones AB (e-purse): €1.50

Day pass all bus (cash): €5
Day pass all bus (e-purse): €4

Day pass all modes zones AB (cash): €6 ... logic: a fraction more than a typical return journey
Day pass all modes zones AB (e-purse): €5 ... logic: a fraction more than a typical return journey

Weekly all modes zones AB (cash): €25 ... logic: drop bus only longer term time tickets - this encourages people to think of the whole system - in Berlin there are no distinctions between modes as you're buying access to the network - it encourages providers to integrate their services better
Weekly all modes zones AB (e-purse): €20

Monthly all modes zones AB (e-purse only): €70 ... logic - a discount of 12.5% of weekly

Annual all modes zones AB (e-purse only - not including taxsaver discount): €700 ... logic 12 months for the price of 10.

I would suggest zones ABC would be an average 15% higher.

There are a lot of lessons from London's bus and public transport revolution and though it has taken ages, Dublin is slowly putting in place all the elements which make it possible to replicate (better information (online, at stop, journey planning), better integration (hopefully across modes), simpler ticketing. The key driver must be the NTA and it has to be hoped that they sort out Dublin first before getting distracted by their national remit - the new brand transportforireland may well do for a small country, but the NTA needs to get a lot louder and a lot more coherent about where they're trying to take us - for now, they seem pretty feeble, but actually they have some pretty impressive legislative tools at their disposal - they must be given a little more time, but they really do have to come out from whatever rock they've been hiding and start engaging about their plans for fares, information, integration etc ...

We live in hope, though we must remain positive - it's a lot easier for public agencies to respond to good ideas than it is to endless negativity (even if that is the Zeitgeist of the day!). I think we might actually get 'there' this time and in five years time we could have coherent fares, information, branding and a transport system that looks more like our neighbours in Europe! ... bring it on!

antoinolachtnai

That is a good idea, but the only way to do it is to cut the operating costs of the services because it would cut the revenue by at least 30 percent. Having a brand for Dublin Transport is basically off the agenda for the short to medium term. NTA has no plans for fares, information or integration. It has a draft strategic intent, that is all. This is a small agency, with very little capacity and it is unrealistic to expect it to have the capacity to do these things.

The project to develop spider maps and so on for Dublin Bus seems to have come to an end. Very little further work is being done on it.

There is no plan to have a single farebox.

The zonal system you suggest is not feasible with the integrated smartcard, which does not allow for zonal caps.

LXFlyer

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

That is a good idea, but the only way to do it is to cut the operating costs of the services because it would cut the revenue by at least 30 percent. Having a brand for Dublin Transport is basically off the agenda for the short to medium term. NTA has no plans for fares, information or integration. It has a draft strategic intent, that is all. This is a small agency, with very little capacity and it is unrealistic to expect it to have the capacity to do these things.

The project to develop spider maps and so on for Dublin Bus seems to have come to an end. Very little further work is being done on it.

There is no plan to have a single farebox.

The zonal system you suggest is not feasible with the integrated smartcard, which does not allow for zonal caps.

I'm not sure where you're getting that impression? A spider map has been published for each area of the Network Direct consultation.

Given the entire network will underging a redesign over the next few months there is little point to drawing up full network spider maps until the process is concluded.

I would imagine at that point that a new network map will be published.

antoinolachtnai

As I understand it, those spider maps that have been produced are exactly that, for the network direct consultation. They were produced for strategic review purposes, and are not necessarily well suited to providing a map relevant to an individual stop or stage.

LXFlyer

No that is not the case - the plan is that they will be rolled out onto the bus shelters on each corridor but not until the corridor redesigns are implemented.

antoinolachtnai

That is great to hear, are the Stillorgan corridor maps being rolled out now?

Sulmac

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

That is great to hear, are the Stillorgan corridor maps being rolled out now?

They've been at stops (that have bus shelters) on the N11 for a while now.

LXFlyer

Sulmac wrote: »

They've been at stops (that have bus shelters) on the N11 for a while now.

As are the N4 and N3.