BusConnects Dublin - Bus Network Changes Discussion

blanch152

Phil.x wrote: »

Seriously who came up with using the blanch centre as a hub! Do people forget the gridlock at Christmas time and now this genius want more buses crammed in there, journey times will double, people will be saying remember the good days when it only took 80mins to get home.

What they needed is more 39x buses and not a life altering experience of going through the bloody shopping centre carnage.

Stop the bus I want to get off.

The issues in Blanchardstown will be around how to interchange with the main route. If travellers used to the 70 from Dunboyne or the 39 down the Clonsilla Road and through the village have to divert to the Blanchardstown Centre, it will not work. An inbound stop near the hospital would work. At the moment, on the 39A, from the Blanchardstown Centre to opposite St. Brigid's GAA, there is no other stop. That won't work for this change.

dfx-

n!ghtmancometh wrote: »

69 is currently the quickest bus to the city that serves Clondalkin, so naturally they are going to screw around with it and make it worse, not increase it's frequency. For good measure, they'll cancel the Xpresso versions too that generally get into the city in 40 mins or so. But hey, this plan has been concocted by a trendy consultant/creative type who use the Twitter hashtags and all that jazz so what do we, the people who actually use the services, know sure?

There is no need to mess with or 'reroute' the current 69 route or indeed the 68, except once again to cover other areas. There's nothing wrong with either, they're both doing well.

All Clondalkin needed was an improvement of the 13 as it stands today. How hard does that have to be without having a consultant re-draw the whole network?

Victor

For those that haven't worked it out (it took me a while).

Routes beginning with N - northside cross-radial routes
Routes beginning with S - southside side cross-radial routes
Routes beginning with W - westside cross-radial routes

Qrt

Victor wrote: »

For those that haven't worked it out (it took me a while).

Routes beginning with N - northside cross-radial routes
Routes beginning with S - southside side cross-radial routes
Routes beginning with W - westside cross-radial routes

I don't seem to see an S1? I find that a bit odd.

dublinman1990

The proposed hours of service look interesting.

Weekdays 5am to 12 midnight
Saturdays 6am to 12 midnight
Sunday 8am to 12 midnight

BonnieSituation

dfx- wrote: »

There is no need to mess with or 'reroute' the current 69 route or indeed the 68, except once again to cover other areas. There's nothing wrong with either, they're both doing well.

All Clondalkin needed was an improvement of the 13 as it stands today. How hard does that have to be without having a consultant re-draw the whole network?

But there is a need to re route and change everything!!!

You can't do this in isolation.

We need to rid ourselves of this An Lár concept.

The days of getting your bus to the pillar are gone.

That being said, I have a grá for the current 69 route due to the missus living in Islandbridge.

BonnieSituation

dublinman1990 wrote: »

The proposed hours of service look interesting.

Weekdays 5am to 12 midnight
Saturdays 6am to 12 midnight
Sunday 8am to 12 midnight

And what's happening between midnight and 5am? Do the high frequency routes continue?

LeinsterDub

dfx- wrote: »

There is no need to mess with or 'reroute' the current 69 route or indeed the 68, except once again to cover other areas. There's nothing wrong with either, they're both doing well.

All Clondalkin needed was an improvement of the 13 as it stands today. How hard does that have to be without having a consultant re-draw the whole network?

The whole network needs to be replaced. Sure certain routes are working for certain people. However if you're a DB user who doesn't want to go to town your fecked. If you're a DB user in certain places your next bus is an hour away. If you're a DB user on certain routes your bus is always rammed

L1011

That seems to have been out of scope for this for some reason but I'd expect the unnumbered spines at least to be 24h. Considering there's going to be 24h routes before year end allegedly

Uriel.

dublinman1990 wrote: »

The proposed hours of service look interesting.

Weekdays 5am to 12 midnight
Saturdays 6am to 12 midnight
Sunday 8am to 12 midnight

so those starting a 7am shift in, for example, a city centre hospital are still unable to get public transport to work on Sundays. Nice.

12 midnight is a joke, slightly less of a joke than 23.25 I suppose.

Hurrache

L1011 wrote: »

The stops there are not currently being served by a large double decker every 3 minutes at peak to flush away any buildup, are they?

L1011 wrote: »

Add the frequency figures for the contributing routes together and it sometimes ends up as less than 3 minutes. The only way to end up with it being more than 3 minutes would be widespread cancellations, every single day.

The posts you were responding to above were regards to Blanchardstown. As it is now, all of the above you mention are regular occurrences because of traffic around the centre. You'll get build up while you watch your bus sit in traffic down the road for easily over 5 minutes. Weekdays not so much of an issue, weekends, regularly.

LegallyAbroad

XPS_Zero wrote: »

I'm working for a TD and around politicos all the time and I can already see moaning coming in via email:


-"I'll have te walk more te get te a stap!"
-"I'll have to change busses where now I can just get on a bus outside me door and go str8 in!" (IMO failure to explain why changing is good will be what kills this plan, the NTA MUST explain this properly - explain how common it is via the tube and other busses in other countries and works better)
-"people will have to learn new routes all over again"....right...so? People had to learn how the Luas worked, how LEAP worked etc should we not have done them to avoid the temporary teething period?


It's critical for the wonks at the NTA to constantly keep in mind that our political culture is parish pump 'everything local' will tear this to shreds. Ambitious TD's who know local and general elections are 1-2 years away will start hacking this up looking for exceptions to their bit. If you want a sense of how this will be torn to bits and totally ruined go look at the very minor common sense changes on the 7 and 84 routes when they were connecting them to the Luas, avoiding meandering winding housing estates etc. A walk around the corner and down the street was presented as some kind of unbearable hike for seniors and you had the RBB types out in force.


Look at how metro (the resold version of the same plan FF had in 2007) which already had it's route planned and sorted finally IN THEORY got back on track then not a minute later "ahhh now dats gonna cross our GAA pitch" (TD x calls for a diversion). This is why I think we should switch to a PR list or at least MMPR system like Germany so our politicos will have a NATIONAL focus, too many major strategic projects get ruined or pulled apart because of how it will affect one block or town in someones constituency who happens to be an independent or "deputy lord mayor" or some other bollox title.


I remember when the 45 route around my old area got axed and replaced with combo of other routes people acted like the sky was going to fall, but a much more frequent 145, better 45a and 84 no longer being such a nightmare replaced it and all was well.

In fairness to people, what does it profit them if the overall bus service gets better, but their bus service gets worse? The overall good of Dublin transport isn't much use to you if your commute gets longer.

XPS_Zero

LegallyAbroad wrote: »

In fairness to people, what does it profit them if the overall bus service gets better, but their bus service gets worse? The overall good of Dublin transport isn't much use to you if your commute gets longer.

My point is that this is the exact problem with our political system it leads to poor overall national policy due to local interests.
You can see it in health as well. Every study ever done shows that big regional centers with multi disciplinary teams of docs and high patient flow produce better treatment outcomes for patients (ie might take you longer to get there but when you do you get better care) but like this ^ all that matters to people is how close the thing is to their doorstep and they don't think about any other factors. My local a&e is closing!! Tha'ts all they think about, they don't consider (of course, cos they don't KNOW unless someone political makes the case) that their local micky mouse hospital does not have maternity or cardiac or nuro say, and they'd have to be transferred to that bigger center ANYWAY
Same with the two tier system, the (usually illusion) of skipping the que for a non urgent surgery means they tolerate the entire system being structurally messed up ironically helping to cause the longer waiting times to begin with, a feed back loop. People only thinking about their immediate personal interests.



Politicos should be providing leadership to explain the benefits of this rather than slavishly just pandering to people.


I had the 7B outside my old shopping centre where I grew up just down the road, but what use is the thing to me when it's so infrequent? I'd rather a better service where I have to walk slightly further knowing any time I go to that bus stop I wont' have to wait long.

L1011

Hurrache wrote: »

The posts you were responding to above were regards to Blanchardstown. As it is now, all of the above you mention are regular occurrences because of traffic around the centre. You'll get build up while you watch your bus sit in traffic down the road for easily over 5 minutes. Weekdays not so much of an issue, weekends, regularly.

There will be infrastucture works before any route changes. That is made very obvious in the plan.

Hurrache

L1011 wrote: »

There will be infrastucture works before any route changes. That is made very obvious in the plan.

There's not much that can be done within the environs of Blanchardstown Centre though unless they buy some of the carpark from the owners.

Qrt

Hurrache wrote: »

There's not much that can be done within the environs of Blanchardstown Centre though unless they buy some of the carpark from the owners.

That's probably the plan, but I do remember The Square had their own revamp of the bus situation planned. Fifty people can easily get on the 27 during peak.

LegallyAbroad

XPS_Zero wrote: »

My point is that this is the exact problem with our political system it leads to poor overall national policy due to local interests.
You can see it in health as well. Every study ever done shows that big regional centers with multi disciplinary teams of docs and high patient flow produce better treatment outcomes for patients (ie might take you longer to get there but when you do you get better care) but like this ^ all that matters to people is how close the thing is to their doorstep and they don't think about any other factors. My local a&e is closing!! Tha'ts all they think about, they don't consider (of course, cos they don't KNOW unless someone political makes the case) that their local micky mouse hospital does not have maternity or cardiac or nuro say, and they'd have to be transferred to that bigger center ANYWAY
Same with the two tier system, the (usually illusion) of skipping the que for a non urgent surgery means they tolerate the entire system being structurally messed up ironically helping to cause the longer waiting times to begin with, a feed back loop. People only thinking about their immediate personal interests.



Politicos should be providing leadership to explain the benefits of this rather than slavishly just pandering to people.


I had the 7B outside my old shopping centre where I grew up just down the road, but what use is the thing to me when it's so infrequent? I'd rather a better service where I have to walk slightly further knowing any time I go to that bus stop I wont' have to wait long.

Health service isn't quite like with like, insofar as it's better for individuals overall (Even if they don't know it) to have a better health service, further away, than a poor service, with worse outcomes, closer in proximity.

In the 7B example you're trading frequency for distance, and that's fine. But plenty of people writing to their TDs are losing frequency and not gaining in proximity to the bus i.e. there is literally not trade off, they'll just be worse of.

Indeed, that goes for entire areas, such as Clontarf, or as others have mentioned, Castleknock. Obviously, if you're a Councillor for the Clontarf Ward, it's not a very good plan when your constituents are not only worse off overall, but are just simply worse off - there's no positive whatsoever to trade off against the service being lost. The Report actually acknowledges this. I'm surprised somewhat at the lack of realpolitik from the consultants, that they didn't try to provide some carrot in such instances.

XPS_Zero

Belfast is outdoing us with their Glider BRT thing coming in - Belfast, not even a capital city.
Translink already outdo us in several other aspects:
-Their over 60 and over 65 passes can book tickets online for the bus (we can't, unless, ironically, were going on goldline!).  They also give the option of booking a ticket without a specific seat, on the train, with IE you have to book the seat.  A minor difference but shows more flexibility.
-They give you the option with their MLink to have online mobile app tickets, something NTA still hasn't done.
-They have a staff member on every single train.
We need to up our game, were already WAY behind - I know I'm like a broken record on this but I fault both the FF and FG govts for not using Transport 21 as a recession era stimulus package, think of how much less congestion and crowding we'd have now.  The minimum change and the fastest we can implement is a change to our bus network:
-It does not involve digging deep or cut n cover tunnels
-It involves almost no planning permission and NIMBYs objecting and needin to be bought off
-It can be done with a minimum of new infrastructure
-It costs less but has a huge outcome disproportionate to that cost even more than Metro/DU
It would be madness not to implement this as quick as possible, to let it get pulled apart by sectional interests.

Politicians, I've noticed, frequently get confused between what people are currently whinging about and what they really care enough about to change their vote on.  This is the former, by the time the plans already in place they will have seen it's benefits.  I'm usually the one, on the inside, defending the ordinary voter, but they are honestly like a toddler in terms of their political attention span, you can jiggle a set of keys in front of their eyes and they'll get distracted, they have the memory of a goldfish esp with the 3 day media cycle where the media gets bored of a story then quickly forgets about it.  You can see it with how angry people were there was no reserve fund put in place during the boom years so we had to go with a begging bowl to the troika to fund our deficit and that came with strings we hated - why didn't we put something away people screeched! (because youd' have gone ballistic if they did and said they were 'hoarding' the cash that's why but nobody could say that)
So now they actually wanna develop one (a fairly flimsy attempt at one sure but...) and what are people saying? How can FF support this!!! We've endured loads of cuts it's time to SPEEEEEEEEEND! Give me my extra 10er on the pension my extra 5er on the dole! Give me by tax cut which will be so small I'll barely notice it but I will notice the 2000 less beds in the health service that revenue paid for!  They suddenly forgot they demanded a rainy day fund not 2-3 years ago. 
People were outraged over the last major but plan - what happened? GIGGLY KEYS! huh? what am I mad about now? oh yeh WATER! DAMN WATER CHARGES...er...homeless people, people on the streets it's a disgrace! the govt should do something!! wait what? you wanna build social housing near ME? AH HERE!! RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE PROTEST PROTEST...what was that about water? oh I forgot...why was I so angry about learning those bus routes when an app on my phone can tell me what to do in less than 10 seconds? hmmmm...did you hear yar man on the radio with the 8 kids? they should means test that....GIGGLY KEYS!

Any local whinging will go away if they don't pander to it.

L1011

Hurrache wrote: »

There's not much that can be done within the environs of Blanchardstown Centre though unless they buy some of the carpark from the owners.

That's almost certainly going to be required. For Liffey Valley it absolutely is required.

XPS_Zero

LegallyAbroad wrote: »

XPS_Zero wrote: »

My point is that this is the exact problem with our political system it leads to poor overall national policy due to local interests.
You can see it in health as well.  Every study ever done shows that big regional centers with multi disciplinary teams of docs and high patient flow produce better treatment outcomes for patients (ie might take you longer to get there but when you do you get better care)  but like this ^ all that matters to people is how close the thing is to their doorstep and they don't think about any other factors.  My local a&e is closing!! Tha'ts all they think about, they don't consider (of course, cos they don't KNOW unless someone political makes the case) that their local micky mouse hospital does not have maternity or cardiac or nuro say, and they'd have to be transferred to that bigger center ANYWAY
Same with the two tier system, the (usually illusion) of skipping the que for a non urgent surgery means they tolerate the entire system being structurally messed up ironically helping to cause the longer waiting times to begin with, a feed back loop.  People only thinking about their immediate personal interests.



Politicos should be providing leadership to explain the benefits of this rather than slavishly just pandering to people.


I had the 7B outside my old shopping centre where I grew up just down the road, but what use is the thing to me when it's so infrequent? I'd rather a better service where I have to walk slightly further knowing any time I go to that bus stop I wont' have to wait long.

Health service isn't quite like with like, insofar as it's better to have a better health service, further away, than a poor service, with worse outcomes, closer in proximity.

In the 7B example you're trading frequency for distance, and that's fine. But plenty of people writing to their TDs are losing frequency and not gaining in proximity to the bus i.e. there is literally not trade off, they'll just be worse of.

Indeed, that goes for entire areas, such as Clontarf, or as others have mentioned, Castleknock. Obviously, if you're a Councillor for the Clontarf Ward, it's not a very good plan when your constituents are not only worse off overall, but are just simply worse off - there's no positive whatsoever to trade off against the service being lost. The Report actually acknowledges this. I'm surprised somewhat at the lack of realpolitik from the consultants, that they didn't try to provide some carrot in such instances.

We can't cater for every nook and cranny - trying to do that is what left us with the fragmented mess we have now.  Very few areas will be "worse off" overall.  If we try to cater for the few 100/1000 people who could argue they are worse off we mess up the whole system and screw millions.  This is EXACTLY what we do with health by spreading it all too thin.  You hear this attitude from people in rural areas and small towns in Ireland all the time "our areas loosing this or loosing that"  "we dont get the same investment as Dublin"...NO YOU DON'T! But there is a reason! You dont' have the population density to warrant it.
Are you suggesting we keep the current system just for the sake of a small handful of areas?

devnull

XPS_Zero wrote: »

Belfast is outdoing us with their Glider BRT thing coming in - Belfast, not even a capital city.

Go and look up FTR in the UK and you will see that Glider isn't necessarily going to be the big success some people think it will.

LegallyAbroad

XPS_Zero wrote: »

We can't cater for every nook and cranny - trying to do that is what left us with the fragmented mess we have now.  Very few areas will be "worse off" overall.  If we try to cater for the few 100/1000 people who could argue they are worse off we mess up the whole system and screw millions.  This is EXACTLY what we do with health by spreading it all too thin.  You hear this attitude from people in rural areas and small towns in Ireland all the time "our areas loosing this or loosing that"  "we dont get the same investment as Dublin"...NO YOU DON'T! But there is a reason! You dont' have the population density to warrant it.
Are you suggesting we keep the current system just for the sake of a small handful of areas?

I'm not. I'm simply pointing out that if you make 15-20k people worse off (presuming those west of Castle Avenue will use the route on the Howth Road, which is being very generous), their public representatives are probably going to listen and as a result oppose such a plan. I don't think an area of that size is "a nook and cranny", it's a significant population the size of a large country town with 5 City Councillors.

It doesn't matter to those 15-20k people that very few other areas are also worse overall, if their services are now worse overall.

EDIT: It further seems bizzare that the big idea is that spines will allow easier transit of east-west travel across the city, but the new plan doesn't connect Clontarf to the spines.

MJohnston

L1011 wrote: »

That's almost certainly going to be required. For Liffey Valley it absolutely is required.

Liffey Valley is easily fixable without any kind of car park CPO being necessary. A one way system around the loop would be a possibility, as well as improvements to the N4 junction design. Signal controlling the Fonthill Road roundabout might be a big improvement too.


Blanch is much more difficult, but I think most of the traffic problems there stem from how bad the Snugborough Road junction is. The Blanchardstown Road junction with the N3 is much better, and I believe there's already a bus-only road exiting the centre towards this junction? You could also see another bridge from beside Liberty insurance towards the Waterville Road roundabout being useful.


I also think Blanchardstown Centre would be massively improved by (a) properly blocking all the right turn exits from the car parks so that people only turn left (b) grade-separating the pedestrian crossings somehow (c) possibly making the loop one-way.

L1011

If you're going to have any level of standing (of the bus kind) at LV it'll need a CPO. Considering the roads in question are private anyway, changing to one way or similar would also need consent at the very least.

MJohnston

L1011 wrote: »

If you're going to have any level of standing (of the bus kind) at LV it'll need a CPO. Considering the roads in question are private anyway, changing to one way or similar would also need consent at the very least.

Standing is a different question, the conversation I was replying to was about the traffic issues.


Changing to a one-way (and I obviously have no analysis on whether it would actually improve things or not, I just have a gut feeling it might from driving that area very frequently) might need consent, but Liffey Valley have also had expansions rejected in recent years because of traffic considerations. They might be willing to do whatever it takes to get that expansion.

howiya

L1011 wrote: »

If you're going to have any level of standing (of the bus kind) at LV it'll need a CPO. Considering the roads in question are private anyway, changing to one way or similar would also need consent at the very least.

Is it still free parking at LV? Was last time I was there. A nice little CPO dividend plus potential extra footfall from people interchanging in return for some car parking spaces isn’t all bad

L1011

Its still free and while its getting more limited there are always empty spaces over towards that side.

Hurrache

MJohnston wrote: »

Liffey Valley is easily fixable without any kind of car park CPO being necessary. A one way system around the loop would be a possibility, as well as improvements to the N4 junction design. Signal controlling the Fonthill Road roundabout might be a big improvement too.


Blanch is much more difficult, but I think most of the traffic problems there stem from how bad the Snugborough Road junction is. The Blanchardstown Road junction with the N3 is much better, and I believe there's already a bus-only road exiting the centre towards this junction? You could also see another bridge from beside Liberty insurance towards the Waterville Road roundabout being useful.


I also think Blanchardstown Centre would be massively improved by (a) properly blocking all the right turn exits from the car parks so that people only turn left (b) grade-separating the pedestrian crossings somehow (c) possibly making the loop one-way.

The Snugborough Road junction (which will be getting an upgrade soon anyway), while bad, doesn't have that much of an affect on traffic in the centre. The problem lays within the centre itself and trying to get to any exit. The traffic heading to the Blanch Village/Snugborough junction (at Ben Dunne) rarely tails back into the centre itself so doesn't have any affect.

I don't think one way would help too much either, you'd have for example someone coming into the centre at the Quinn Building side, and they'd be forced to drive all around the centre to get back out to where they want, introducing additional traffic into the centre environs.

It'll certainly be a challenge to solve the problems if all buses from within the larger D15 area were to all converge into the area.

They could do an up and over drop off at the N3 inbound for those coming from the Clonee direction, like is currently done outbound, with a short stroll into the centre. But the outbound direction is literally up and over, whereas the inbound would have to compete with traffic at the lights at Mulhuddart and the N3 bridge, which are congested at rush hour, before rejoining the N3 again.

A good start would be getting rid of the guys who stop traffic at the roundabouts, or properly train them. They only seem to add to congestion as they focus on their particular junction and seem to be oblivious to the knock on they have by holding up traffic elsewhere. An issue for the centre management as I'm sure they can see all junctions from their control centre.

murphaph

dfx- wrote: »

There is no need to mess with or 'reroute' the current 69 route or indeed the 68, except once again to cover other areas. There's nothing wrong with either, they're both doing well.

I'm originally from Newcastle and my mam still lives there so naturally I was curious to see the changes. The 68 is not a nice route into town at present IMO. I think moving from an infrequent direct service to a more frequent (and hopefully hourly clockface) service to bring you quite directly to the Red Cow should be a significant improvement.

Added to that, Newcastle finally gets a regular bus route to neighbouring towns and villages like Rathcoole and Celbridge. Newcastle has no secondary school. You go to secondary school in Rathcoole or Celbridge mainly. You make friends in those places and then (certainly in the case of Celbridge) cannot easily travel to see them. There's just the twice a (week)day school bus. It's crap. The W8 route brings these communities together properly and as an added benefit links them to Hazelhatch.

I've been banging on about such orbital routes for years on here and what is sadly painfully obvious from the maps is that the rail capacity falls far far short of where it needs to be. Several stations are not served at all by any bus route and you can't really fault Walker here-he knows the rail network does not have the capacity to absorb huge numbers of transfers. We need Dart Underground and Metro asap to really let the bus do what it does best. The "spines" should be gradually converted into rail corridors. The ultimate goal should be almost no bus routes heading all the way into or across the city. But as a step towards that this plan is most welcome. I hope to god it is not molested by the politicians and vested interests.

TheChrisD

The biggest oddity that stands out to me on the new proposals is the new route 7. A massively long non-spine cross-city radial route just seems off, not to mention that it retains it's own letter suffixes - if it remained that way I'd expect people to confuse the concept of a "7a" and "7b" with the thought of non-existent "A7" and "B7" buses on those spines.

I'd either turn it into it's own spinal letter; or split the route to be part of two other spines. The southside half could become a B3 (Blanch Center - Dun Laoghaire), while the northside half could become an F4/F5 or just remain a radial route terminating at College Green.

Also, what's the deal with the F spine taking such a roundabout route through the city center? Surely if the concept of the new network is around interchanges and consciously changing buses for a quicker interlinked service, shouldn't the F spine continue along Phibsborough Road via Constitution Hill crossing Fr Matthew Bridge? That would mean the A and F spines are the only ones that don't have any directly touching routing, but Christchurch to Parliament Street isn't much of a walk, or you could take an orbital route to change between the two spines.