BusConnects Dublin - Bus Network Changes Discussion

bk

"But the question remains however; Do people want it? When we talk about traffic congestion in Dublin City within the short to medium term; we don't know how much of an effect the electric cars will have along the quays if a car ban was still not implemented along that part of the city which will give an impact over the next few years.

An electric car does sound good in hindsight if you want to own one to replace your petrol or diesel car so you can reduce your emissions. But I think you need to get a chance to actually drive the car in order to make it move on the road in order to make a big difference in reducing the transport emissions in your surrounding environment.

However do the emissions in the atmosphere become cleaner when electric vehicles are regularly stuck in gridlocked traffic over longer periods of time?"

I don't think it matters at all if we are talking about electric cars or ICE cars, eventually we are going to have to bite the bullet and ban all cars from the core city center, regardless of their drive train.

The argument to ban cars from the core city center isn't really an environmental one (though it definitely has some benefits in that regard), it is a congestion one. It is basically purely a maths problem, we simply can't fit the number of people who want to drive into the city center.

Irelands population is growing quickly, they are expecting an extra 500,000 people to be living in and around Dublin over the next few years! Ireland is a "wealthy" enough place that almost everyone who wants a car can afford to have one. There is simply no way possible that we can fit an ever increasing number of cars into the city, it simply can't be done. There simply isn't the road and parking space in the core city center.

We really don't have any other choice other then to remove cars and give up the limited road space to more efficient uses of that space, buses, etc.

As for EV's, ideally you have such good public transport, then people have the option of not buying a car at all, at least for those in or near the city. Don't get me wrong, you can still buy one if you want, but ideally you shouldn't need too, it should be so easy to get around without one, it should be optional, rather then a necessity.

Of course outside of Dublin, in rural areas, cars will unfortunately still be needed and better if those are EV.

LXFlyer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119844785#Comment_119844785

That’s due to the “Saturday plus” timetables that remain in effect on GAI services.

thomasj

Ah okay. I didn't realise they were still in operation

A2000

This is where its failing in the peak hour this evening. The sooner they do something about the running times and increase the frequency of the 60 the better. The 18.00 60 from red cow was 40 mins late this evening and as you can see above there were 2 outbound 60s running 30 mins apart

john boye

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119845373#Comment_119845373

It's funny how it's gone under the radar recently in all the press coverage about missing buses. I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere.

thomasj

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119846426#Comment_119846426

Yeah me too . It's been so long since I've been using the 76a and haven't been paying much attention to GAI services . Strange alright.

On the wet windy night that I wasn't in the humour for dragging myself through the city over to Liffey valley , it had me over there in about 20 minutes. It flew over !

LXFlyer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119846426#Comment_119846426

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119846490#Comment_119846490

Bear in mind too that all of the Monday-Friday timetables for GAI bus services posted on bus stops are wrong as the NTA can’t be bothered to update them.

GAI’s staffing problems are severe - they can’t even deliver the Saturday plus service, and are cancelling services still.

Dublin Bus are having serious problems and frankly an amended timetable is needed for them too. It won’t help overcrowding, but it might at least offer a service that can be delivered.

thomasj

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119846512#Comment_119846512

Absolutely . Might be worth looking at Saturday plus for Dublin bus if they can get a handle on the peak hour situation.

Also with regards to GAI , wouldn't a good few of their routes have not much of a difference between the weekday and weekend especially the hourly routes

KD345

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119846554#Comment_119846554

You’d be surprised. One less bus at peak times can cause capacity problems, and of course, when one of the remaining scheduled buses fails to run then you have real problems. A good example of this is the 18, where 49 daily departures from Palmerstown have been reduced to 44 and there are many dropped buses daily which is leaving gaps of up to an hour.

The 175 has been one of the worst affected routes - reduced to just an hourly service throughout the day. Buses are packed and leaving people behind. 34 departures have been reduced to 19 from Citywest.

Other cuts include the 76A only operating between Blanchardstown and Liffey Valley except the 05:50 departure from Tallaght with many of the remaining departures regularly cancelled. The 63A hasn’t operated in months. 

Any passenger consulting a timetable at stops know none of this because they still display a full service.

It really does question the capabilities of delivering the next phase of BusConnects which will see an increased level of service on the southern orbitals.

p_haugh

The 175 has been one of the worst affected routes - reduced to just an hourly service throughout the day. Buses are packed and leaving people behind.

Witnessed this myself last Thursday evening. Got the 175 up to Dundrum from UCD - at the 2nd stop for the center along the Dundrum bypass, a big crowd of people got on.

I proceeded to get off at the following stop by the Tesco end, and the driver proceeded to switch to the "Sorry, bus full" scroll and pulled away without opening the front doors, leaving a similar sized mass of people waiting high and dry.

p_haugh

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119844250#Comment_119844250

Had a look at the location tracking on the realtime app for the c2 this evening, and it looks to be that buses are indeed still using Adamstown Boulevard.

LXFlyer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119847322#Comment_119847322

The other road doesn’t exist yet!

DaBluBoi

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119847357#Comment_119847357

Then why bother updating them to show it as going through that road? It's deliberately misleading to the folks over at Shackleton who desire a bus connection to the city centre

LXFlyer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119848003#Comment_119848003

I suspect someone just made a mistake.

Over the years, I've long since realised that most of these kind of things are down to human error.

average_runner

The whole Bus connect has not improved the lucan bus service, if anything downgraded it.

C1/C2 still going via foxboro even though there is local buses now that can link them to the link rd.

It takes 15/20 mins to get from Johnsbridge to the N4, at the same time i can drive to the red luas line from lucan, get the luas and be in the city centre before the bus!!

ILBondo

Clearly the Busconnects network once implemented although imperfect, is far superior to the existing one. The interim period where Busconnected routes are operating concurrently with the existing network is leading to frustrations. The first few phases of Busconnects, the H Spine and the C Spine, brought about little change other than consolidating already existing routes into a spine, with some fine tuning.

If Busconnects had ambition, the initial phases would have prioritised removing the poorest performing routes and replacing them with higher frequency, faster routes as promised by Bus connects. More priority should have also been given to implementing orbital routes sooner, which are a glaring gap in the current network

Regarding the recent changes, the N4 seems to be a huge success connecting areas that weren't previously connected. The G1 could be a good route if it used the N4 bypass instead of being diverted through Kilmainham/Inchicore, to conform to a spinal alignment for the sake of it.

cgcsb

They should have just brought in the full bus connects network overnight during lockdown with reduced frequencies on all routes and then ramped up frequency as lockdowns eased. Much less hassle and then the only issue now would be staffing

mikeybhoy

Only routes GAI routes with drastically lower frequencies than during the week is the 175 which is half hourly M-F bit only hourly with Saturday. I've suggested before that the frequency on the 18 and 76 should be cut from 20 minute to half hourly and the 175 increased to half hourly as I'm guessing that could be done with the same PVR as the 18+76+175 is currently.

Yes I am aware those routes are not interworked but it would balance things out better than the current situation. Not ideal but better than the current situation.

mikeybhoy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119846770#Comment_119846770

The 63a not operating is hardly of any note. It's a one a day off peak variation of the 63.

pk1991

The NTA told the Transport Committee that they are aware of running times being too short and they are working on an amended schedule.

Also, the will be engaging with DCC on improvements that can be made to the G-Spine route to increase reliability. The didn't explicity state a bus gate at mount brown but I'm not sure what else can be put in place.

The also acknowledged the feedback regarding Route 60 and would look at route reliagnement and increasing frequency subject to driver resourcing.

p_haugh

Dublin Commuter Coalition has a thread on what was mentioned in the Oireachtas meeting, not all of it is relavent to this thread but will put it here for reference:

https://twitter.com/DublinCommuters/status/1589921996355563520?t=oivBON61BXJgM9S2Mp8Xdg&s=19

stephenjmcd

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119849706#Comment_119849706

The NTA would want to update their app then for this to happen. The DB app is the only reliable one, NTA app and on street RTI are awful at the moment

https://twitter.com/DublinCommuters/status/1589948098700537857?s=20

brianc89

Left the car at home and took public transport today. Next time I might just take the car??.....

Went from Drumcondra (near Rail Station) to Malahide to meet a friend for lunch.

Outbound, no suitable trains from Drumcondra to Connolly so I walked 25minutes to Connolly. Got direct train to Malahide. Total travel time 46minutes.

Inbound, I left Malahide at 13.30. Got off at Killester Dart and waited for N4 bus towards Blanch. N4 bus was 10minutes late and had to wait 5minutes for a 16 bus on the Swords Road. I got home at 14.30. Total travel time 60minutes.

In both cases I could have driven faster. Although, assuming the N4 bus wasn't late I enjoyed getting the connecting buses and would do this again. In reality, I would have been better going straight to Connolly and waiting 20minutes for the Maynooth train to Drumcondra.

Observations:

• First time on an N4. Was very busy. Had a weird sense of pride for Dublin for this successful route!!

• Was very frustrating to run from the wrong side of Killester Dart platform to the N4 bus stop. I really hope they open an entrance to southside of Killester Dart soon.

• Drumcondra station is useless. Not even remotely a "turn up and go" station. It's so poor.

dublinman1990

It sounds to me from the tweets above that the NTA going to redirect users of the outgoing Dublin Bus app to make them switchover to the TFI Live app in future.

Did the NTA mention any timeline as to when they will get rid of the Dublin Bus app along with TFI Real Time Ireland and TFI Journey Planner apps from their app stores?

thebourke

with all the big multinational tech companies in ireland,it amazes me how our our IT infrastructure is so poor in a lot of our own companies..

LXFlyer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119849982#Comment_119849982

No heavy rail service aside from DART in Ireland is “turn up and go” right now, that’s what the DART+ programme is all about.

Drumcondra is far from useless - the numbers using it will testify to that. But they know the train times from the timetables.

But I would suggest checking the NTA journey planner (or Google maps!) to plan a trip going forward - all the train, bus and LUAS schedules are loaded onto it.

dfx-

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119840847#Comment_119840847

My point is that does not matter if they do not go where people want to go.

The 13 is full because people want to go to and from that stretch (Emmet Rd, Kilmainham, James, Guinness) to OCS, Dame St, D'Olier St, Lord Edward St, Westmoreland St and College Green.

People are taking the bus that goes to their destination, over the bus with a short walk.

Hotblack Desiato

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119838955#Comment_119838955

https://www.irishtimes.com/life-style/travel/2022/11/07/dublins-vanishing-buses-will-mean-vanishing-passengers/

..

LXFlyer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119850183#Comment_119850183

If they fix the running times on the G-Spine, and they become more reliable, then that may change, bearing in mind too that Dame Street will be closed to buses ultimately.

brianc89

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119850119#Comment_119850119

Thanks. I use Google Maps but I'm not sure how good it is? The N4 option was great (if it wasn't for the delay) but Google maps did not suggest this (for either outbound or inbound).

Drumcondra is not totally useless, but you'll have to forgive me for standing by my opinion. This was my option this morning. Note my Malahide direct train left at 11.50 (from Platform 2).

I chose to walk to Connolly to check out some of the C2CC works, but in future I'd probably just drive to Malahide.