Dublin - BusConnects

tom1ie

machaseh wrote: »

The main public wouldn't be large families with kids traveling to the city center, but rather the plethora of people who have to work on sundays and bank holidays. I have a reasonably good job but I still have to work most Irish bank holidays as my clients do not have bank holidays on that day.

Also the bus should be free of charge for kids. You can get a leap card at any corner store for a 5er, so you not having a leap card is your problem and not a system problem.

LXFlyer wrote: »

That’s what having LEAP cards with a pay-as-you-go epurse is for?

The 15b and 16 have both got significant Sunday service increases in the last year - it isn’t a problem anymore.

Ok so how much would it cost for 2 adults and 2 kids to go into town on the 15b on a Sunday using the leap card e purse setup?
I believe the frequency for the 15b on a Sunday is 30 mins which increases to 20 mins after 12.
However I don’t have to wait as long for my car to be available to bring me into town:) (relax lads it’s a joke I’m all for bus usage!)

tom1ie

LeinsterDub wrote: »

I don't see that €10 euro offer on their website . Is it still any option? Cheapest is 16.00 for 7 to 7. Plus you've to sit in traffic to get there , plus you can't have a pint or 2. Getting the bus is a no brainier

You might not want to have a pint or two as you have two kids to negotiate around shops in town? So getting the car would be a no brainer as it’s cheaper. :rolleyes:

LXFlyer

tom1ie wrote: »

Ok so how much would it cost for 2 adults and 2 kids to go into town on the 15b on a Sunday using the leap card e purse setup?
I believe the frequency for the 15b on a Sunday is 30 mins which increases to 20 mins after 12.
However I don’t have to wait as long for my car to be available to bring me into town:) (relax lads it’s a joke I’m all for bus usage!)

I would suggest that they need to introduce a family ticket again - that was great value.

But you’re looking at €7 for all of you each way.

Qrt

So...when is the CRC consultation and when is the redesign consultation?

LXFlyer

Network re-design consultation round #2 is due this month.

Infrastructure consultation #2 will follow after that has finished.

My guess is early 2020 for the latter as December (due to Christmas) is not a good time to be looking for responses.

Qrt

LXFlyer wrote: »

Network re-design consultation round #2 is due this month.

Infrastructure consultation #2 will follow after that has finished.

My guess is early 2020 for the latter as December (due to Christmas) is not a good time to be looking for responses.

Cheers. Redesign should be interesting. I don’t rely on buses for going into town so the orbitals should be a benefit. I’m fairly sure they’re staying, but then again, you never know...

Sam Russell

Just a thought.

A bus is about 12 metres long and can carry about 70 passengers. A car is about 5 metres long and generally only carries the driver.

So, one bus occupies the road space of 2.5 cars, and carries 28 times as many people in the same road space. If the average speed of commuter traffic is 10 km per hour, a bus will pass you in about one minute, but the cars will take 28 minutes to pass.

Makes you think.

We need to get commuters out of cars and into buses. Maybe they should look at making the buses free and the parking very expensive as an experiment, with a possible congestion charge at the canals.

With no cars on the roads, buses could average two or three times their current speed, which would have the effect of having two or three times as many buses.

Just a thought.

MJohnston

Sam Russell wrote: »

Just a thought.

A bus is about 12 metres long and can carry about 70 passengers. A car is about 5 metres long and generally only carries the driver.

So, one bus occupies the road space of 2.5 cars, and carries 28 times as many people in the same road space. If the average speed of commuter traffic is 10 km per hour, a bus will pass you in about one minute, but the cars will take 28 minutes to pass.

Makes you think.

We need to get commuters out of cars and into buses. Maybe they should look at making the buses free and the parking very expensive as an experiment, with a possible congestion charge at the canals.

With no cars on the roads, buses could average two or three times their current speed, which would have the effect of having two or three times as many buses.

Just a thought.

There's the classic demonstration of this:

CatInABox

Sam Russell wrote: »

Just a thought.

A bus is about 12 metres long and can carry about 70 passengers. A car is about 5 metres long and generally only carries the driver.

So, one bus occupies the road space of 2.5 cars, and carries 28 times as many people in the same road space. If the average speed of commuter traffic is 10 km per hour, a bus will pass you in about one minute, but the cars will take 28 minutes to pass.

Makes you think.

We need to get commuters out of cars and into buses. Maybe they should look at making the buses free and the parking very expensive as an experiment, with a possible congestion charge at the canals.

With no cars on the roads, buses could average two or three times their current speed, which would have the effect of having two or three times as many buses.

Just a thought.

Yes, increasing frequency, speed and reliability would drastically improve the service. I saw recently that another city focused on reducing journey times, and saw that for every minute that they took off a journey, usage went up by 1.3%. Raging that I can't find that now.


There's also this article in the Dublin Inquirer by David O’Connor that has some really good points about traffic in Ireland.

machaseh

Sam Russell wrote: »

Just a thought.

A bus is about 12 metres long and can carry about 70 passengers. A car is about 5 metres long and generally only carries the driver.

So, one bus occupies the road space of 2.5 cars, and carries 28 times as many people in the same road space. If the average speed of commuter traffic is 10 km per hour, a bus will pass you in about one minute, but the cars will take 28 minutes to pass.

Makes you think.

We need to get commuters out of cars and into buses. Maybe they should look at making the buses free and the parking very expensive as an experiment, with a possible congestion charge at the canals.

With no cars on the roads, buses could average two or three times their current speed, which would have the effect of having two or three times as many buses.

Just a thought.

Doh. In terms of space and environmental efficiency, public transport trumps cars any time of day (as well as would cycling, of course). The problem is that the people who use their cars are generally more wealthy than the people reliant on public transportation, meaning the political will to make dublin less car-centric is simply not there. For example if you are going to turn the Quays into a pedestrian / biking zone (perhaps even with some LUAS or bus lane extensions), half of Dublin will be RAGING and no TD is going to burn their fingers on something as radical as that.

The first step would be to build the bus corridors as they were planned among the current busiest corridors (from city center to Howth, Clongriffin, Swords, IKEA, Blanchardstown, Tallaght, Rathfarnham, Bray, Ringsend etc), as in complete bus lanes without any interruptions, and build bike lanes SEPARATE from car/bus traffic along those routes. Yes that will probably require the sacrifice of a couple of front gardens. In addition, more Orbital (non-city-center) routes should be introduced as those are the travel relations that most often require a car.

The step after that would be to convert some of those most busy corridors into new LUAS lines.

Sam Russell

MJohnston wrote: »

There's the classic demonstration of this:

That shows one bus in one lane and a four lane space for the cars, but we do not have four lanes for cars in our cities - most are single lane. While it does show the idea, but the scale of a single line of cars over three km long just to carry the same number of people, and that the bus takes one minute to pass a point while the cars take 28 minutes to do the same.

It is the scale of it that is breathtaking.

machaseh

Sam Russell wrote: »

That shows one bus in one lane and a four lane space for the cars, but we do not have four lanes for cars in our cities - most are single lane. While it does show the idea, but the scale of a single line of cars over three km long just to carry the same number of people, and that the bus takes one minute to pass a point while the cars take 28 minutes to do the same.

It is the scale of it that is breathtaking.

And the fact that this concept is not taught in our education system is staggering.

Seth Brundle

MJohnston wrote: »

There's the classic demonstration of this:

If you were to widen the road by removing most of both footpaths, then the queue would look fairly short

Last Stop

Sam Russell wrote: »

We need to get commuters out of cars and into buses. Maybe they should look at making the buses free and the parking very expensive as an experiment, with a possible congestion charge at the canals.

With no cars on the roads, buses could average two or three times their current speed, which would have the effect of having two or three times as many buses.

Just a thought.

While in theory what you are saying makes sense, unfortunately it doesn’t fully work like that.

Studies have shown that free public transport actually decreases the numbers walking and cycling because there’s no financial penalty. This puts an unnecessary strain on the system.

Again increasing the cost of having a car does work but only if you have the capacity to handle those who will switch to public transport. Given the current capacity issues on all modes of transport in Dublin and the time it will take to alleviate these, bringing in a congestion charge now will just make commuters angry and would be a political land mine.

Even without cars on the roads, buses will be slow compared to other modes. On board ticketing, ramps for access, a single point of entry, inconsistent stopping patterns mean that buses do not offer both high frequency and reliable journey times.

Capacity or lack of is still the issue with buses. Even running at a frequency of every 2 minutes you’re taking about roughly 2,100 people. Looking at the figures from approach roads to Dublin, this would not be sufficient to take all cars off the road or in most cases even half

This morning between 7-9 there were the following number of cars on
N11 NB junction 5 - 7250
N7 EB newlands cross - 6650 (take 720 away from red cow park and ride = 5930)
N4 EB junction 2 - 7645
N3 SB junction 3 - 5470
M1 SB junction 2 - 8360

While it is appreciated that not all of these are going to take the bus regardless what you do, to reduce congestion a significant proportion need to change. Remember that this only considered the numbers who are driving outside the M50. When you add in
A) Those who drive within the M50
Those who already take public transport
C) The peak travel numbers don’t come until November and are typically mid week
D) Luas/DART/Commuter rail are running at full capacity

There is simply no way that buses can handle these numbers.

Sam Russell

Last Stop wrote: »

While in theory what you are saying makes sense, unfortunately it doesn’t fully work like that.

Studies have shown that free public transport actually decreases the numbers walking and cycling because there’s no financial penalty. This puts an unnecessary strain on the system.

Again increasing the cost of having a car does work but only if you have the capacity to handle those who will switch to public transport. Given the current capacity issues on all modes of transport in Dublin and the time it will take to alleviate these, bringing in a congestion charge now will just make commuters angry and would be a political land mine.

Even without cars on the roads, buses will be slow compared to other modes. On board ticketing, ramps for access, a single point of entry, inconsistent stopping patterns mean that buses do not offer both high frequency and reliable journey times.

Capacity or lack of is still the issue with buses. Even running at a frequency of every 2 minutes you’re taking about roughly 2,100 people. Looking at the figures from approach roads to Dublin, this would not be sufficient to take all cars off the road or in most cases even half

This morning between 7-9 there were the following number of cars on
N11 NB junction 5 - 7250
N7 EB newlands cross - 6650 (take 720 away from red cow park and ride = 5930)
N4 EB junction 2 - 7645
N3 SB junction 3 - 5470
M1 SB junction 2 - 8360

While it is appreciated that not all of these are going to take the bus regardless what you do, to reduce congestion a significant proportion need to change. Remember that this only considered the numbers who are driving outside the M50. When you add in
A) Those who drive within the M50
Those who already take public transport
C) The peak travel numbers don’t come until November and are typically mid week
D) Luas/DART/Commuter rail are running at full capacity

There is simply no way that buses can handle these numbers.

Those traffic numbers come out about 35,000. Dublin bus have about 1,000 buses which can carry 70,000 passengers.

While I accept you argument, those numbers are not so far apart. If Metrolink was up and running, and the Luas GL was extended to Bray, and adequate P&R as provided to exploit these, then the situation would be quite different.

I accept that the free PT might not work well with the wrong passengers taking advantage while the target group still sit in traffic.

However, there does exist some solutions that can help the situation.

salmocab

machaseh wrote: »

The problem is that the people who use their cars are generally more wealthy than the people reliant on public transportation,

Is this true though? Whilst obviously big cheeses in city center companies are more likely to have a spot, I think there are a lot who just choose to drive as they prefer it and will pay or even have inconvenient parking for themselves away from the job rather than use PT.
a few years back I was commuting from rathfarnham to Dorset street working 8 to 4:30 and getting the 16 home was a nightmare. Eventually 4 of us decided to pay the parking between us as driving was just easier and time wise took the same as a good day on the bus and generally quicker than most days. I’m a fan of PT and now luckily can use the luas everyday but driving for us was a no brainer then.

Last Stop

Sam Russell wrote: »

Those traffic numbers come out about 35,000. Dublin bus have about 1,000 buses which can carry 70,000 passengers.

While I accept you argument, those numbers are not so far apart. If Metrolink was up and running, and the Luas GL was extended to Bray, and adequate P&R as provided to exploit these, then the situation would be quite different.

I accept that the free PT might not work well with the wrong passengers taking advantage while the target group still sit in traffic.

However, there does exist some solutions that can help the situation.

Again it’s not necessary the number of buses but the capacity and frequency. Dublin bus is already carrying close to 70,000 passengers during these hours. To do what you’re saying would require an effective frequency of 1 per minute which simply isn’t possible. They had to automate Metrolink to get below the 2 minute frequency mark.

Metrolink won’t be operation for another 8 years at best
The green line can’t be extended until Metrolink phase 2 is complete (2040’s at the earliest)
Even providing park and ride, you need the capacity to handle the numbers who park and buses simply don’t have that.

Unfortunately we are now paying the price for years if not decades of underinvestment in public transport. There is very few quick fixes.

Some possible quick solutions (which would ease some of the pressure) would be:
Expanding Dublin bikes (cheap and quick)
Expanding the Taxsaver scheme to cover modes such as Dublin bikes membership and gocar or other car sharing schemes.
Government decentralisation. If a civil service job doesn’t need to be in Dublin... move it
Peak time fares (and removing free travel during peak times)

I just really hope that we don’t have any knee jerk reactions in attempting to solve the problem quickly and cheaply. Unfortunately that is what Busconnects appears to be.

Smiles35

Making full use of those new cycle tracks means pulling the thumb out as regards legislation for electric bikes/scooters.

loyatemu

Last Stop wrote: »

Again it’s not necessary the number of buses but the capacity and frequency. Dublin bus is already carrying close to 70,000 passengers during these hours. To do what you’re saying would require an effective frequency of 1 per minute which simply isn’t possible. They had to automate Metrolink to get below the 2 minute frequency mark.

Metrolink won’t be operation for another 8 years at best
The green line can’t be extended until Metrolink phase 2 is complete (2040’s at the earliest)
Even providing park and ride, you need the capacity to handle the numbers who park and buses simply don’t have that.

Unfortunately we are now paying the price for years if not decades of underinvestment in public transport. There is very few quick fixes.

Some possible quick solutions (which would ease some of the pressure) would be:
Expanding Dublin bikes (cheap and quick)
Expanding the Taxsaver scheme to cover modes such as Dublin bikes membership and gocar or other car sharing schemes.
Government decentralisation. If a civil service job doesn’t need to be in Dublin... move it
Peak time fares (and removing free travel during peak times)

I just really hope that we don’t have any knee jerk reactions in attempting to solve the problem quickly and cheaply. Unfortunately that is what Busconnects appears to be.

Dublin Bikes is a Last Mile solution, you still have to get people into the city. Also it's currently €25 per year, it doesn't need tax incentivisation (there's also BleeperBikes who cover a much larger area that DB)

As for GoCar, it's a nice idea but I don't think it has much to offer in reducing traffic - it's largely aimed at urban dwellers who have no car, or families with only one car. Your average car commuter drives into town, parks their car, and the car doesn't move again until they go home. I think the govt needs to revisit the idea of levying a charge (BIK or whatever) on company parking in urban areas.

is_that_so

loyatemu wrote: »

Dublin Bikes is a Last Mile solution, you still have to get people into the city. Also it's currently €25 per year, it doesn't need tax incentivisation (there's also BleeperBikes who cover a much larger area that DB)

As for GoCar, it's a nice idea but I don't think it has much to offer in reducing traffic - it's largely aimed at urban dwellers who have no car, or families with only one car. Your average car commuter drives into town, parks their car, and the car doesn't move again until they go home. I think the govt needs to revisit the idea of levying a charge (BIK or whatever) on company parking in urban areas.

Ultimately they can but not until the public transport options are a whole lot better.

machaseh

loyatemu wrote: »

Dublin Bikes is a Last Mile solution, you still have to get people into the city. Also it's currently €25 per year, it doesn't need tax incentivisation (there's also BleeperBikes who cover a much larger area that DB)

Problem with dublinbikes is not cost but rather that it only exists in the city center and a few neighbourhoods adjacent to it. When I used to live in D13 or in Tallaght dublin bikes was nowhere to be found, and I had to purchase my own second hand bike even though I had almost no money at the time. Sometimes my bike would break down and it would be inconceivably annoying, I would have LOVED to be able to use dublin bikes in those areas. For example to bike to the nearest luas stop in Tallaght, biking is very handy (biking paths are also a little bit better there than in the city as there's more space).

I am not aware of bleeperbikes, are they available in the outer suburbs?

As for GoCar, it's a nice idea but I don't think it has much to offer in reducing traffic - it's largely aimed at urban dwellers who have no car, or families with only one car. Your average car commuter drives into town, parks their car, and the car doesn't move again until they go home. I think the govt needs to revisit the idea of levying a charge (BIK or whatever) on company parking in urban areas.

Gocar is indeed not the way to go to reduce traffic in Dublin.
As for office space in the city, it is very dear and hard to come by. When I used to work in the docklands, only a very small handful of the most senior employees had the right for a parking spot in the car park underneath the building. Most of my colleagues would come by luas/bike/walking and those who would come in by car would park somewhere about 15 minutes walk from the office and walk the last mile.

CatInABox

is_that_so wrote: »

Ultimately they can but not until the public transport options are a whole lot better.

The number of cars going into and through the city is one of the major impediments to improving public transport. Reduce car usage (through any method, not just BIK) and the bus service can operate faster, more frequently, and with less cancelled services (i.e. there'll be less buses trapped in traffic, so they'll be able to do their scheduled return service).

Sam Russell

CatInABox wrote: »

The number of cars going into and through the city is one of the major impediments to improving public transport. Reduce car usage (through any method, not just BIK) and the bus service can operate faster, more frequently, and with less cancelled services (i.e. there'll be less buses trapped in traffic, so they'll be able to do their scheduled return service).

I was wondering if a slight change in the law would help buses.

'Buses have priority, and if they are indicating to pull out from a stop, other vehicles must give way'.

It might help.

machaseh

Sam Russell wrote: »

I was wondering if a slight change in the law would help buses.

'Buses have priority, and if they are indicating to pull out from a stop, other vehicles must give way'.

It might help.

We have this exact same law in the Netherlands. All traffic needs to yield to a bus pulling out from a bus stop, including bikes and motor traffic, but only within city limits. In rural areas (for example a national road with a bus stop), car traffic has priority.

Although I would support such a rule change in Ireland, I am afraid that this will cause a whole lot of accidents simply due to many drivers not being made aware of the rule change. It would also only have a very minimal effect.

loyatemu

is_that_so wrote: »

Ultimately they can but not until the public transport options are a whole lot better.

people always say that when any suggestions are made to reduce car access to the city. What they mean is they'll leave the car at home when there's a metro station outside their front door that goes straight to their office. The reason the bus service is unreliable is because of the cars. Carrot and stick approach is required.

MJohnston

Repeat after me:

You can't encourage people out of their cars without better public transport.
You can't make public transport better without removing cars from the road.

That might look like a chicken and the egg scenario, but it's not.

The only approach that works is to start banning cars, then the public transport will almost immediately start improving.

We've tried it the other way around for decades, and it's a gigantic fúcking failure.

machaseh

MJohnston wrote: »

Repeat after me:

You can't encourage people out of their cars without better public transport.
You can't make public transport better without removing cars from the road.

That might look like a chicken and the egg scenario, but it's not.

The only approach that works is to start banning cars, then the public transport will almost immediately start improving.

We've tried it the other way around for decades, and it's a gigantic fúcking failure.

You don't need to directly ban cars, but you can reduce road capacity on major throughfares and build a LUAS track there instead, just like what happened on Parnell street for example. People will start complaining about congestion at first, but then they will just decide to switch to the new public transport.

Public transport is made attractive by being quicker or more convenient than the car option.

Sam Russell

machaseh wrote: »

Public transport is made attractive by being quicker or more convenient than the car option.

An urban tale.

A good few years ago, the Stillorgan dual carriageway had a hard shoulder along its length on both sides. It always had stopped traffic on its whole length morning and evening. Someone somewhere had the bright idea of turning the hard shoulder into a bus lane and running buses down it.

Now if I had planned it, I would have had clear identity markers on the buses, so a driver sitting in traffic at at Foxrock would see the 'ONE' bus pass. At Stillorgan, the 'TWO' bus would pass, at UCD, the 'ONE' bus would pass again, and at RTE the 'TWO' bus would sail pass. Next day, the driver would be on the 'ONE' bus.

Only a fool sits in traffic every day, spending hours travelling to work, if there is a better way - and there usually is. I am sorry for those for whom there is not.

MJohnston

machaseh wrote: »

You don't need to directly ban cars, but you can reduce road capacity on major throughfares and build a LUAS track there instead, just like what happened on Parnell street for example. People will start complaining about congestion at first, but then they will just decide to switch to the new public transport.

How quickly do you think that can happen? 10 years? 20 years? How much time do you actually think we have left to solve this problem?

No, we can plan Metros and Luas lines, but they take a long, long time to happen.

Public transport is made attractive by being quicker or more convenient than the car option.

Bull****. My cycle route takes me from Baggot Street along Pembroke Road, then out along the R118 out through Blackrock.

Every single day there's a solid queue of traffic from the RDS to Monkstown Road Every. single. day. Heading into the city in the morning, heading out of it in the afternoon.

This is a queue of traffic that sits choking on fumes on a road that runs DIRECTLY PARALLEL TO A DART LINE. But if that wasn't enough, there's also a mostly empty bus lane with frequent buses zooming along beside the queue of traffic (when a German car driver doesn't choose to decide the bus lane is fine for him, that is).

Those car drivers are easily spending 2 or 3 times the amount of time commuting as anyone on the DART or bus, along that stretch. And they're at least 3 times slower than my fat ass zooming along easily on my bike.

Even if those drivers have a journey that gets more complicated compared to the available public transport beyond Blackrock, the fact is that they've chosen to pass at least 3 or 4 park and ride carparks to get to or from their workplace in the city. Even if those P+Rs are full, the area is strewn with easily accessible on-street parking.

They'd have to switch modes once, but I guarantee each and every one of those car drivers would save at least 20 minutes of journey time each way each day.

By the way, it's of course worth noting that the vast majority of these cars are occupied BY ONE PERSON.

Fúck these people. Seriously, **** em. There should be no placating this kind of mindlessly stupid and selfish behaviour anymore. Time for the cars to go.

machaseh

MJohnston wrote: »

Bull****. My cycle route takes me from Baggot Street along Pembroke Road, then out along the R118 out through Blackrock.

Every single day there's a solid queue of traffic from the RDS to Monkstown Road Every. single. day. Heading into the city in the morning, heading out of it in the afternoon.

This is a queue of traffic that sits choking on fumes on a road that runs DIRECTLY PARALLEL TO A DART LINE. But if that wasn't enough, there's also a mostly empty bus lane with frequent buses zooming along beside the queue of traffic (when a German car driver doesn't choose to decide the bus lane is fine for him, that is).

Those car drivers are easily spending 2 or 3 times the amount of time commuting as anyone on the DART or bus, along that stretch. And they're at least 3 times slower than my fat ass zooming along easily on my bike.

Even if those drivers have a journey that gets more complicated compared to the available public transport beyond Blackrock, the fact is that they've chosen to pass at least 3 or 4 park and ride carparks to get to or from their workplace in the city. Even if those P+Rs are full, the area is strewn with easily accessible on-street parking.

They'd have to switch modes once, but I guarantee each and every one of those car drivers would save at least 20 minutes of journey time each way each day.

By the way, it's of course worth noting that the vast majority of these cars are occupied BY ONE PERSON.

Fúck these people. Seriously, **** em. There should be no placating this kind of mindlessly stupid and selfish behaviour anymore. Time for the cars to go.

There is probably a reason why those people choose to sit in traffic rather than take the dart. For example, maybe the dart in the peak hour direction is too full for them.

I am fine with it, it's their own choice. What I am not fine with is public transport in less affluent areas (i.e. not Blackrock) where people are left stranded at the bus or luas stops because there's simply no more place for them on the peak hour trains/buses.