Bus Eireann - is this normal?

dieselbug

magentis wrote: »

What's nonsense is that the very same people that complain about public transport times are the very same people that expect it to cater to their every Whim.

I don't really know what point you are trying to make here.

In the experience I posted about the timetable gave a departure time 20 minutes later than the actual departure time ie I got incorrect information from the website to plan the trip on.

My first bus would arrive 10 minutes after my supposed link had left. I would expect the correct information to be available when planning like this. I think it's called being professional but you call it catering for "every whim"

And my post wasn't a complaint it was actually to compliment the service I was given thanks to two helpful drivers who went that extra bit to sort out the problem.

AndrewJRenko

Wanderer78 wrote: »

Can't see them taking off to be honest, people do come up with some mad ideas though

You're right, they don't take off, but they're pretty good on the ground over moderate distances. Range anxiety is less of an issue now with eBikes.


More people cycle commute into Dublin than use DART, Luas and suburban rail combined, so it's not really a mad idea.

Wanderer78

AndrewJRenko wrote: »

You're right, they don't take off, but they're pretty good on the ground over moderate distances. Range anxiety is less of an issue now with eBikes.


More people cycle commute into Dublin than use DART, Luas and suburban rail combined, so it's not really a mad idea.

have we just created the idea of the boards flying bike?

XPS_Zero

You know whats hilarious to me reading this thread?


BE staff, bus unions in general, are going ballistic at the idea of competition being brought in to DB, opposed competition at Intercity level...but this is their service?


The almost scary thing is they seem totally oblivious to the connection between stories like this and their revenue loss (which im sure is partly from OT as well), passenger loss to the likes of Aircoach and calls for more competition and reform.



They are shocked that private operators are kicking them around with total ease, yet their response to a girl being dumped off a bus miles short of her destination without any thinking by the driver on how she will get to her destination on time is not "this is unacceptable, this is the kind of thing that has people calling for us to be privatized lads, this is why we got no support during the strikes...this needs to stop this is exactly the kind of thing that's killing us"....no their response (and that of supporters) is:


-She clearly mistook busaras for the airport -DOPE!

-HOW DARE SHE GO TO THE AIRPORT WHEN SHE'S NOT GETTING A FLIGHT!! THE BRASS NECK ON THE B1TCH!!!!!! What was she doing not getting a flight hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm? (suspicious tone)

-So she lost her ticket then hmmmmm?



....and yet, you get angry when some of us call for more competition? I've been warning CIE staff for a few years now that there are people in Irish politics, right wing Thatcher worshipers in FG who are dying to rip CIE to shreds, and it gets really hard to defend you when this is the kind of reply you give to a basic customer service complaint.






I was going to do a thread on this but I've decided this one pretty much covers the same basic issue: I've been noticing a GIANT gap between all the shiny Expressway advertising and the actual reality. This is a good example but you can see it on other routes as well. As I said before you'd be more likley to see an American bald eagle on the X1/X2/X5 routes as the lovely leather seated, plug and wifi equipped double deckers you see in those Bus Eireann ads. I travel these routes regularly, I've seen a total of one, in the morning when I was not getting on, and have not actually been on one in nearly 2 years.

Translinks coaches are comfy but they don't use their double deckers on the Dublin route only the Derry route (even then not all the time) and like BE their doubles are more comfortable and have plug sockets. So I have tried a few times when popping to Newry or Belfast to get a BE bus.



Now, helpfully, the new BusEireann timetable for this route gives you NO IDEA if it will be a Translink bus or a BE bus at xyz time, though the Translink one does. So I looked it up on their website a few times and got the BE busses....only...you will get a contractor...and not a good one. A bus with no plugs or wifi (oh there is a wifi that EXISTS but does it WORK? nope, something they share with Translink....), not clean, and not great seats. The odd time I do see a BE bus it's a single decker with none of these sockets or working wifi you see prominently displayed in their ads.


When people see this kinda giant chasm between the ad and the service, beyond what you'd usually expect of course - the Burgers never that thick is it? - they use another service.




The fact that your state owned won't protect you forever guys. Don't think it will. You have to sort yourselves out. There are probably some of you heading for your 60s who don't care but think of the younger guys coming up behind you and what will happen if you destroy public support for public owned transport (which is what is happening - it seems to be the main job of transport unions these days...) and some of these ideologues get into power. You think Bertie letting a bit of competition in was bad? There were serious calls by some to just let BE fail, and I dont' mean said in anger during the strike, I mean serious calls of "lets just kill this monster off already and start over it's never gonna be fixed".


You reap what you sow...every single incident like this (and the ones I mentioned) ads up to erode drip by drip public confidence in you and that creates political demands and anger.

Wanderer78

XPS_Zero wrote:

You reap what you sow...every single incident like this (and the ones I mentioned) ads up to erode drip by drip public confidence in you and that creates political demands and anger.

I'd imagine your aware of the mounting research of the failures of neoliberalism globally with policies such as increasing worker insecurity etc?

XPS_Zero

JayRoc wrote: »

Other posters have already pointed out that this sort of thing happens all the time.

Why do posts describing perfectly plausible (albeit highly unprofessional and annoying) situations always result in someone telling us that it's totally unbelievable and "there must be more to this story!"?

In drivers defense, knowing people who have been in the job, I've seen there IS often a giant gap between the story and the actual reality. Keep the whole picture in mind, truth is a three edged sword and all, your side their side reality.



I've told the story on here before but to illustrate again: someone I know was driving a private coach on a school run and they had the coach wrecked over and over by crisps mashed into seats, spilled fizzy drinks, there was even an incident where a can rolled down and got caught down at the brake area. So they banned food.


A girl was eating a bag of crisps and he asked her to put them away. A hum drum thing that would happen every day. She refused a few times he insisted raising his voice. She put them away. Never mentioned anything to him about why she was eating or any special reason. The girl was in no distress, just annoyed she could not eat.



When he gets back to the depot there is a complaint by the parent (there is ALWAYS a complaint by the parent - parents are always always always idiots, their kids never do anything wrong, ever)



Next thing, in one of those local papers the story was told very differently, the girl was diabetic and having some kind of sugar crash...so she was needing to eat the crisps you see to avoid disaster. Only (apart from the food choice as a sugar source not making much sense) she never mentioned this at the time - you would think someone suffering from a medical condition that is possibly life threatening if not managed properly who was having issues would say it to the person preventing them from doing said managing....hmmmm...anyway...the kicker? A picture of her attached to the story holding a bag of crisps with a smile a crisp to her lips "(name) munches on a life saving crisp".


Yes that was a real story....REALLY. Thats what they're dealing with. So yes, BE would not know customer service (as an organization) if it bit them on the ass, but passengers do come up with absurd stories sometimes very different to what actually happened. Always think about this stuff from different perspectives. My problem with the alternative explanations here was their total implausibility.

XPS_Zero

Kyleboy wrote: »

I've been handing over there 5 days a week for the last 20 years and have never seen or heard of another driver just getting out and leaving a bus load of passengers, yet you say its a regular occurrence.....sorry but your talking rubbish, don't worry about it, there is a lot of other posters on here that make up stories about drivers as well.

I get the 145 daily, used the 46a all the time when I lived on campus - I saw it. The engine is off, but the drivers gone. Oh sometimes he'll step off and chat to another driver waiting for a bus to come along, but the poster was totally correct to say they will not, 90% of the time, make any announcement and unless you are a regular will have no idea what is happening.


Sometimes they wait with the engine off or on, in the cab.


Regardless, in typical CIE attitude, instead of listening to the core complaint "my journey has stopped totally and I'm not moving, making me late, for the convenience of the staff" you split hairs. It does not matter a toss if the driver was in the cab, walked away, or waiting outside the bus. My journey has stopped and I might be late - that is all that matters to me.
Sure some of the time (I do think it's a minority though my exp would be anecdotal) the replacements waiting, which seems to happen more at a Bray changeover than Donnybrook...but that should be the rule.



"he punched me in the face and broke my nose" (accuser)
"actually it's not broken there is just a bit of damage" (doc)
"oh ok so, no charges" (garda takes handcuffs off, sends attacker on his way)
The point is the assault, not the semantics.

end of the road

XPS_Zero wrote: »

You know whats hilarious to me reading this thread?


BE staff, bus unions in general, are going ballistic at the idea of competition being brought in to DB, opposed competition at Intercity level...but this is their service?


The almost scary thing is they seem totally oblivious to the connection between stories like this and their revenue loss (which im sure is partly from OT as well), passenger loss to the likes of Aircoach and calls for more competition and reform.



They are shocked that private operators are kicking them around with total ease, yet their response to a girl being dumped off a bus miles short of her destination without any thinking by the driver on how she will get to her destination on time is not "this is unacceptable, this is the kind of thing that has people calling for us to be privatized lads, this is why we got no support during the strikes...this needs to stop this is exactly the kind of thing that's killing us"....no their response (and that of supporters) is:


-She clearly mistook busaras for the airport -DOPE!

-HOW DARE SHE GO TO THE AIRPORT WHEN SHE'S NOT GETTING A FLIGHT!! THE BRASS NECK ON THE B1TCH!!!!!! What was she doing not getting a flight hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm? (suspicious tone)

-So she lost her ticket then hmmmmm?



....and yet, you get angry when some of us call for more competition? I've been warning CIE staff for a few years now that there are people in Irish politics, right wing Thatcher worshipers in FG who are dying to rip CIE to shreds, and it gets really hard to defend you when this is the kind of reply you give to a basic customer service complaint.






I was going to do a thread on this but I've decided this one pretty much covers the same basic issue: I've been noticing a GIANT gap between all the shiny Expressway advertising and the actual reality. This is a good example but you can see it on other routes as well. As I said before you'd be more likley to see an American bald eagle on the X1/X2/X5 routes as the lovely leather seated, plug and wifi equipped double deckers you see in those Bus Eireann ads. I travel these routes regularly, I've seen a total of one, in the morning when I was not getting on, and have not actually been on one in nearly 2 years.

Translinks coaches are comfy but they don't use their double deckers on the Dublin route only the Derry route (even then not all the time) and like BE their doubles are more comfortable and have plug sockets. So I have tried a few times when popping to Newry or Belfast to get a BE bus.



Now, helpfully, the new BusEireann timetable for this route gives you NO IDEA if it will be a Translink bus or a BE bus at xyz time, though the Translink one does. So I looked it up on their website a few times and got the BE busses....only...you will get a contractor...and not a good one. A bus with no plugs or wifi (oh there is a wifi that EXISTS but does it WORK? nope, something they share with Translink....), not clean, and not great seats. The odd time I do see a BE bus it's a single decker with none of these sockets or working wifi you see prominently displayed in their ads.


When people see this kinda giant chasm between the ad and the service, beyond what you'd usually expect of course - the Burgers never that thick is it? - they use another service.




The fact that your state owned won't protect you forever guys. Don't think it will. You have to sort yourselves out. There are probably some of you heading for your 60s who don't care but think of the younger guys coming up behind you and what will happen if you destroy public support for public owned transport (which is what is happening - it seems to be the main job of transport unions these days...) and some of these ideologues get into power. You think Bertie letting a bit of competition in was bad? There were serious calls by some to just let BE fail, and I dont' mean said in anger during the strike, I mean serious calls of "lets just kill this monster off already and start over it's never gonna be fixed".


You reap what you sow...every single incident like this (and the ones I mentioned) ads up to erode drip by drip public confidence in you and that creates political demands and anger.

there is no actual competition being brought into dublin bus and bus eireann subsidized services and such is never going to happen. i believe we have had this discussion before. what is happening is some routes are being tendered out to a fixed contract decided by the contracting authority. that may be extended further, and it may not. even if extended to all routes, it's likely there would only be a couple of companies anyway, and they would all operate the same as far as the user is concerned, because they are on a contract. so no real competition, hence if they are lucky enough to have a choice of subsidized operators then the idea of using 1 operator over another is unlikely to arise because they are the same as far as the user is concerned.
the reason some of the public want the public operators privatized and the reason bus eireann staff got a bit less support then they should have got (they did get good support over all) was because they get paid well. people don't like certain jobs paying well.
as for the political thatcherite idealists, in general the reasons they seem to want privatization or "competition" as you call it, is because they wish to make everything someone elses problem, and get the government out of being blamed for the problems they either directly or indirectly cause while then taking the credit and waxing lyrical about privatization when things go well. they don't care about the user. remember thatcher is said to have stated "there is no such thing as society" which should teach us all we need to know about that ideology surely?
public support for publically owned transport is as high as ever from what i can see. most people have saw from the likes of the uk, what happens once public owned transport is no more. they understand, that public owned public transport is necessary to exist for many different reasons.
as i have, and others have said before, the job of the public transport unions is to look after the terms and conditions of their members. nothing more, nothing less, that's what they get paid for. it's not their job to look out for the interests of the public. fantastic if they are willing to do so but it's not on them to do so. that's supposibly the NTA's job along with the various management of companies.
99% of us on this thread i'd suggest very much know there are the idealogs in politics who want the state operators gone, and the reason for that, is nothing to do with the user but everything to do with free market economics and not wanting to subsidize public transport full stop.

magentis

dieselbug wrote: »

I don't really know what point you are trying to make here.

In the experience I posted about the timetable gave a departure time 20 minutes later than the actual departure time ie I got incorrect information from the website to plan the trip on.

My first bus would arrive 10 minutes after my supposed link had left. I would expect the correct information to be available when planning like this. I think it's called being professional but you call it catering for "every whim"

And my post wasn't a complaint it was actually to compliment the service I was given thanks to two helpful drivers who went that extra bit to sort out the problem.

So,had the bus departed as stated on the timetable,you were leaving 10 minutes between the arrival of your first bus and departure of the second then?

AndrewJRenko

You reap what you sow...every single incident like this (and the ones I mentioned) ads up to erode drip by drip public confidence in you and that creates political demands and anger.[/quote]

Does the same apply to every incident where a private sector company like Virgin or Three or AIB screws over it's customers? Is there a drip by drip eroding of confidence that creates public demands and anger?

dieselbug

magentis wrote: »

So,had the bus departed as stated on the timetable,you were leaving 10 minutes between the arrival of your first bus and departure of the second then?

Yes, correct. It was a Saturday morning so the route was quiet and the bus did make good time. But yes it was tight at ten minutes. I don't think I would have tried it on a Mon to Fri.

The second bus had indeed left but they both crossed paths and that was what made the transfer possible.

MOH

AndrewJRenko wrote: »

You reap what you sow...every single incident like this (and the ones I mentioned) ads up to erode drip by drip public confidence in you and that creates political demands and anger.

Does the same apply to every incident where a private sector company like Virgin or Three or AIB screws over it's customers? Is there a drip by drip eroding of confidence that creates public demands and anger?

Well, what generally happens there is that people who have bad experiences leave and take their business elsewhere. Word of mouth spreads, and companies lose customers. That's something which isn't possible where a public service company has a monopoly on routes, but it increases people's willingness to consider any alternative.

AndrewJRenko

MOH wrote: »

AndrewJRenko wrote: »

You reap what you sow...every single incident like this (and the ones I mentioned) ads up to erode drip by drip public confidence in you and that creates political demands and anger.

Does the same apply to every incident where a private sector company like Virgin or Three or AIB screws over it's customers? Is there a drip by drip eroding of confidence that creates public demands and anger?

Well, what generally happens there is that people who have bad experiences leave and take their business elsewhere. Word of mouth spreads, and companies lose customers. That's something which isn't possible where a public service company has a monopoly on routes, but it increases people's willingness to consider any alternative.

So you're saying that each bad experience we see posted on the boards.ie Talk forums for Virgin, Three, Eir, KBC and others results in lost customers?

punisher5112

Why oh why if BE does something wrong does it then involve DB???

Is this going to be exactly the same as DB and GAI????