Dublin Bus shift change in town

brianc89

Apologies if this has been discussed elsewhere or a similar thread exists. I couldn't find anything.

I got the number 1 bus today on Pearse Street going northbound. This was the first stop for the bus.

The bus arrived to Parnell Square eight minutes late. At this point, there was a shift change which delayed it further.

What's the story with this? Could they not change shift at the first stop???!!!

brianc89

Also, maybe it's my bias but I feel like every single bus I take into town has a shift change. It's SOOO annoying!!!

Wishbone Ash

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119855800#Comment_119855800

You get a bus to go from Pearse Street to 'town'?

Now that is a bit weird (unless of course you are elderly or have a disability).

HeidiHeidi

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119855833#Comment_119855833

The no. 1 bus goes from Pearse St to Ballymun/Santry - who knows what the OPs destination was, as they didn't say.

There's a bus depot beside Mountjoy Sq, which might account for the driver change at the nearest stop on that route - and most changes happening in the city centre.

DaBluBoi

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119855852#Comment_119855852

Route 1 is currently operated by Broadstone, though. The bus depot beside that park is a different one called Summerhill...

brianc89

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119855833#Comment_119855833

My destination was Drumcondra. I stayed on the bus during the driver shift change.

In any case, I regularly use the bus for short hop with the €1.30 rate. It encourages me to leave the car at home. Don't think there's anything weird about it.

brianc89

Wait, so can you guys explain exactly how shift change works at Dublin Bus?

Why do you need to be near a depot? Is it assumed they drive to work and need to park somewhere?! Or need facilities at lunchtime etc.

You would assume they could use their own bus network to get to a "logical" place to change shift such as the first or last stop?!

markpb

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119856207#Comment_119856207

If drivers did shift change at the end of a route, DB would have to pay wages while the driver is travelling from the depot to the start point and vice versa. Imagine how much money that adds up when you consider all the drivers working each day. I assume it's significantly more efficient for the shift change to happen at the depot if the route passes close to it.

brianc89

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119856254#Comment_119856254

Wait. What?

Am I the only smuck in the country who doesn't get paid to commute to work? OMG.

I am bringing this up with my boss immediately 🤣

Del2005

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119856207#Comment_119856207

Driving hours could be the reason. Drivers can't drive for more than 4.5 hours, so driving to the end of the route could easily have a driver run out of driving time before they reach the end. Then you have a bus stuck and no one available nearby to take it and the passengers.

How do they get to the last stop without wasting a lot of their shift? There is rarely any facilities at the last stop either, so where does the driver wait? It's bad enough that the drivers have to sit on the bus and urinate in the bushes on their breaks.

mikeybhoy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119856737#Comment_119856737

Drivers on scheduled services of less than 50km in length can drive for 5hrs 30mins and do not use tachograph cards.

mikeybhoy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119856289#Comment_119856289

Drivers don't get paid to commute to work they start work when they sign on in the garage.

Tombo2001

The Driver change has been at Parnell St for decades, so should hardly be a shock to any regular users.

Its completely obvious why it happens there if you think about it for even twenty seconds as Parnell St is the most concentrated intersection of bus routes anywhere in the city. (And Pearse Street isnt).

Not sure why you call it a Shift change, maybe it is one, but I always thought it was just drivers changing routes from one bus to another, in which case they might jump off a bus going one direction and hop on a bus going another direction.

I would guess their work routine is different to the regular work routine that people have where they can kick back and have a cup of tea, go to the jacks, sign on to boards and whinge about buses or whatever. When they are driving, they are driving.

I'd imagine drivers cant be driving for more than 90 minutes or so, and rightly so.

mikeybhoy

How long does it take to do a driver change 5 mins max. A bus could easily be at the stop for the same time if there was a heavy loading given how bad dwell times are in Dublin.

gipi

There used to be a Dublin bus club off O Connell St, near Marlborough St, if I recall. Maybe Parnell Square is used for driver changes as it's close to this venue?

It's been a long time since I was in the area, don't know if the club is still there.

brianc89

Sorry just to be clear here, I'm not having a go at any Dublin Bus drivers. Absolutely not. I just want to understand how the system works.

I've used lots of public transport in European cities over the years and shift / driver change mid-route in the city centre seems to be a feature of Dublin Bus only.

When you're traveling just a few km, let's say from Drumcondra to George's St, then a 3-5 minute addition to your journey is a lot, when you only need to go a few extra stops the other side of the river.

brianc89

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119857058#Comment_119857058

We live in a big busy city. 5 minutes is a lot of time if you're running late for an appointment or need to catch a connecting bus / train etc.

Especially if you're only going another 2 or 3 stops. Sometimes you decide to get off and walk and sometimes you wait for the bus to get going again.

Of course with Murphy's Law, you always make the wrong choice and are left sitting there, or watching your bus speed past you, cause it left as soon as you got off!!!

Dyr

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119857134#Comment_119857134

I hope you're not implying that Dublins unique approach to public transport is in some way inferior because it's not the norm in other countries

You probably think that the customer should come first or some other foreign notion, 😫

LXFlyer

The driver changes happen at Parnell Square on the 1 for the simple reason of proximity to the staff canteen at Earl Place. That’s where they have their breaks in the city centre.

Historically Parnell Square is where cross-city routes change drivers.

Bear in mind that the 1 used to continue to Sandymount. It is only a temporary situation until the A Spine launches.

Other routes change over drivers outside depots if they pass them.

Mid-route driver changes happen with most urban operators across these islands - it is not specific to Dublin.

LXFlyer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119856903#Comment_119856903

Driver changes happen only at the start or end of a shift, and when they are going on or returning from their break. They don’t get off one bus to drive another, unless there’s been disruption.

beachhead

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119856737#Comment_119856737

Driving hours would have a lot to with where a changover takes place as well as convenience.I'm sure the duty roster manager would have selected changover points for each route.

Burt Renaults

It only really becomes a problem when the first driver (i.e. the one taking their break) is in a hurry and arrives at the handover point way too early.

brianc89

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119857573#Comment_119857573

Okay thanks that makes sense on the 1.

In general, the driver changes have gotten much much quicker, so credit to the drivers for that.

But I still find it frustrating that this happens at all. You get to the city centre and only need to go 2 or 3 more stops - but then the bus stops for 3-5 minutes. It can add up to 50% onto your journey if you're doing a relatively short journey.

LXFlyer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119858100#Comment_119858100

Again, in the case of the 1 this is a purely temporary situation for a number of years until when the A Spine launches.

There are going to be situations like this while the network is transitioning over different phases from the old network to the new BusConnects version.

The 1 & the 40 both have temporary termini at Shaw Street and Earlsfort Terrace respectively until the A and F Spines launch, when those routes will be subsumed into new cross-city spine routes.

This will happen with other routes as we start to go through the other phases and some routes get split in two. The section of routes that are not BusConnected will have to terminate at similar locations.

There’s not much you can do about it given the much reduced number of suitable locations to terminate bus routes in the immediate city centre.

Mid-route driver changes are a fact of life where you have long cross-city routes and no facilities near either end for drivers to break at.

LXFlyer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119858043#Comment_119858043

Yes, pre-AVL I was amused by how people couldn’t grasp that the second driver might not actually be late turning up, but rather the first driver arrived too early! It’s less of an issue these days with the AVL box.

TranslatorPS

To summarily answer all the questions happening here:

handover points are chosen on two merits: is it a suitable location to take breaks at, and can it be accessed from the home garage either by foot or on a single bus ride rather briefly and logically? And worst case scenario - can a bus be left there if there's no driver available to complete the journey?

The handover points currently in use in Dublin Bus include, but are not limited to: Eden Quay, Abbey Street, Parnell Square, Parnell Street, Aston Quay, Bachelor's Walk, Pearse Street, Ringsend (garage), Donnybrook (outside garage), Bray Station, Bray Castle Street. Go-Ahead have handovers in Dun Laoghaire, Bray Station, Blanchardstown SC, Liffey Valley SC (L51 only), Finglas Village. Some Bus Eireann services also have breaks in the city centre, such as the 103 and NX, and their handover locations are Beresford Place, Connolly Station (with walk time to Busaras usually built in - more on that later), and Blanchardstown Hospital for the 105.

For the most part, there is usually just one specific handover point for each route (well, a pair of stops going both ways, shall we say), but routes operated by multiple garages may have different handover points for each garage (C1/C2 is an example), and one route may have two handover points in the same garage's working timetable (which to the best of my knowledge only happens on the C3/C4 right now, with some in Ringsend and some on the Quays - I'm omitting the 145, as that technically has two working timetables, one for Bray, and one for Donnybrook, even though on paper Bray is a subdepot of the 'Brook).

However, both companies also routinely pull buses into the garage in lieu of changing drivers in the city, and there are a number of reasons...

duty structure in all the companies I mentioned above follows more or less the same guidelines, with variations only due to local thinking, local agreements, and/or local requirements or local possibilities.

Officially, every duty (shift) starts and finishes in a depot/garage, or shall I speak in some abstract rail terms, "crew base" (the connotation is that such a point, as long as it's systematically organised, doesn't actually have to be a vehicle base, but for road transport purposes it almost exclusively is). This is for two reasons, as far as I see it: one, I believe Irish law specifies that every employee has a specified work location (so let's treat the garage as one), and two, in Dublin city network terms, this dates back to the days of two-person crews (conductors) and later one-person cash-collecting crews (drivers alone), who have to return to the garage to cash in at the end of their duty - and is in fact something still true in Bus Eireann and similar.

As such, if a duty is scheduled to start service not in the garage, but somewhere en-route, it is already considered to be part of the day's work, and paid for, and follows some specific rules. Hence the two questions at the very start of this post: can breaks be taken there, and can it be accessed from the garage easily enough?

Going through the Dublin Bus locations, it all holds true: Eden Quay going to Clontarf (walk to 130) or Donnybrook (walk to 39A/46A/145/155) is easy, so is Abbey Street going to Summerhill (walk or take 33/41s), so is Parnell Square, Parnell Street, etc, etc, etc. Go-Ahead is a bit of a different story, as all of their handover locations are dealt with using ferry cars or other buses going empty, owing to the lack of transport links to their garage. Bus Eireann expects their drivers to walk to Broadstone, so there's that, but I suppose there isn't much of a problem with BE drivers getting a 4/9/155 or whatever to help their journey.

At their most basic, driver duties are thus composed of a few basic elements: sign-on, piece of work, break, piece of work, sign-off. This is more or less the arrangement in Dublin Bus, as their duties are always either one-piece or two-piece. I've deliberately omitted stuff like travel between locations, as that is paid for and can be considered part of a piece of work, even if it isn't actual driving. Go-Ahead and Bus Eireann both have duties with more than two pieces and one break, although a three-break four-piece duty is pretty much unheard of on this side of the Irish Sea.

As I've just mentioned, travel between locations is also part of the story. Not only are drivers expected to travel between their home garage and the handover location, but GAI and BE both may include walking times to their canteens (such as the aforementioned Busaras, or Dundrum and Blanch in GAI), and in the case of the N4, where handovers take place on Collins Avenue but breaks in Harristown garage, ferry car travel time is also built in.

However, not all routes are given handover locations in the city. Most notably, a number of the currently Ballymount-operated routes required drivers to pull into their garage for their sign-off and their break in DB. This was the case for 17A, 33B, 102, 236/238/239/270 in Harristown, 220 in Phibsboro, 76/A in Conyngham Road, and the 17, 18, and 114 in Donnybrook. A number of these routes failed the "reachable location" argument, especially the 33B, 102, 114, and Blanch orbitals. Others may have had potential spots available under that criterion, but failed the "break location" test (would you really want to subject DB drivers to breaks in Ballymun on the 17A and 220?). Others would have failed the "can I dump this bus" check (17, 18 in particular, but also the aforementioned Ballymun routes). This manouver of course had a side effect - empty miles and empty hours not really earning revenue clocking up. While a route that has their buses out for most of the day may have an empty mile rate of under 10%, I recall that the 17A had a rate of empty mileage of around 33% in its last DB Mon-Fri schedule.

Ultimately, there are also working hours and driving hours constraints to consider, and eventually what may seem to be a simple exercise in planning has already spanned a plethora of theses and dissertations, from both software development and application (esp. heuristics!) and mathematical theory angles: how to get the most service out of the least resources given certain constraints, or perhaps the other way around, how to allocate the least resources possible to a specified service given certain constraints. Doing this manually, it's a stepped game, and sometimes in order for a duty to have decent hours, it has to be artificially extended (by having it run to the terminus and then empty into a garage), especially if it wouldn't make it back within legal hours to the handover point on the way back.

In short - your 1 hands over at Parnell Square because it's the best handover location for Broadstone. See rte 9 for comparison.

mikeybhoy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119857153#Comment_119857153

Which can be solved by getting an earlier bus

mikeybhoy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119857221#Comment_119857221

Mid route driver handovers are hardly unique to DB

brianc89

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119859520#Comment_119859520

Yeah because life in a big city is just that simple. 5 minutes here, another 5 minutes there, missed connections, another 5 minutes over there.

If you keep adding up meaningless minutes, very soon you have a meaningful number.

But yeah, you should have just left earlier. How dare you expect that bus timetables might run efficiently and without delay.

mikeybhoy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119859758#Comment_119859758

What a load of codswallop. Give yourself enough time to make a connection and you won't miss it.

Buses have a departure time not an arrival time very possible the bus was running correctly to the timetable when the driver changeover occurred.

mikeybhoy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119858831#Comment_119858831

You forgot to mention the N4 handovers at DCU and uses staff cars to allow drivers break in Harristown. Wonder how they've come to the conclusion that using staff cars is more efficient than having a break room in DCU.

Dodge

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119859546#Comment_119859546

fwiw I was in Milan a couple of weeks ago and noticed a few city centre changes for tram drivers. Didn’t get any buses but saw it with a fair few trams

Noticeable to me because I’d only ever witnessed it on Dublin bus before.

mikeybhoy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119859914#Comment_119859914

Luas do it too at Sandyford and Red Cow. Done at Fairview on the DART.

brianc89

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119859891#Comment_119859891

Sorry, don't dance around your original point which was to say '5 minutes is meaningless - you should have just left earlier'. 5 minutes can be the difference between catching a train or missing it.

I'm not referring to driver changes here - just generally. You obviously have lots of time on your hands, but the rest of the city is in a rush because that's how big cities work.

mikeybhoy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119859946#Comment_119859946

If I had to catch a train at 13:00 let's say. Well then I'd aim to be in the station around the 12:30 mark it's not rocket science.

The majority of people who rush around on a constant basis do so because they don't leave enough time to get to their destination in the first place and I accept unforeseen things happen like accidents, breakdowns etc.

Fizzy Duck

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119859758#Comment_119859758

Well you may lose your 5 minutes with me, cos i'll be sticking to the schedule. At least once a week I'm asked to speed up on a 16 or 41 because someone will miss their flight. Not my responsibility. Safety of passengers first and foremost then the schedule.

brianc89

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119859980#Comment_119859980

An extra 30 minutes? I never said I was catching a plane or a train to Cork.

For example, take a journey that should take 35-40 minutes with one connection in the city centre. If I miss the connection, it could add 20-25 minutes to my journey.

Are you suggesting I factor in 30 minutes contingency rather than expect public transport to run "somewhat" on time?

LXFlyer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119860206#Comment_119860206

The bus schedules are now all drawn up on a stop-by-stop basis and as such reflect stop dwell times. So every individual bus has scheduled arrival times at each stop.

The bus service doesn’t work any more on the basis of driving from one terminus to the other in the fastest possible time, but to a schedule all along the route. That’s to try and deliver a network that facilitates connections.

So while you think that you’re being delayed by a driver change, in fact you’re not, as the bus schedule allows for it.

That’s where a journey planner comes in useful, which does also allow a small contingency for delays when connections are involved. On Wednesday nothing could have accounted for the delays due to the road closures in the city centre.

DaBluBoi

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119859896#Comment_119859896

Surprised they use cars when the 4 and 13 are only a 5-10 min walk away, and have good frequency

brianc89

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119860216#Comment_119860216

Thanks for that explanation. I agree entirely.

At this stage, I'm not making any issue of bus driver changes. I was merely trying to understand why they happen in town and other people have explained extremely well.

At this point, other people here are making ridiculous arguments that we should add 30minutes contingency to journeys because it's unreasonable to expect buses to run on time.

TranslatorPS

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119859896#Comment_119859896

Ah nah, it's there, third to last paragraph ;)

GAI do the same on the L51 in Liffey Valley, drivers shunt themselves back to Ballymount on ferry cars in order to keep the number of buses in service down at two.

As for DCU, there could be a number of things - they probably could use The Helix, but at the same time it is a national events centre that gets locked away often enough (be it for external or internal events), and the restaurants on campus get locked up early enough, while the N4 has breaks happening pretty much all day long from 8am till 4am (it's only on Sundays this particular timespan gets reduced to, wait for it, 10am till 3am). Realistically, DB would have to construct their own break room.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119860318#Comment_119860318

See above timespans of breaks on the N4. There'd be no services to bring the drivers into the garage after midnight ;)

brianc89

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119859983#Comment_119859983

Wasn't you on the pavement then? 🤣

Give us the inside scoop PLEASE!!!

mikeybhoy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119860632#Comment_119860632

A portacabin would probably do the job

Vic_08

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119859896#Comment_119859896

Is there a room available? You'd be surprised how many places get snotty when requested to provide even the most basic provisions for bus drivers.

As already said, mid-route changeovers is not something unique to Dublin. However the presence of proper bus stations at multiple terminus locations in many cities is a huge factor in reducing mid-route changeovers as the presence of a break room and staff toilet facilities at termini actually make them suitable locations for drivers to take a break, imagine that.

LXFlyer

Just to add that using staff cars for driver changeovers used to happen back in the 1980s, when some duties at Donnybrook used them for driver changes on the 17 at UCD.

Vic_08

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119861125#Comment_119861125

Would you be happy to have your lunch break in a portacabin?

I had some truly dreadful break locations in Bus Eireann, shipping containers with a door and window cut in being a popular option, freezing in winter and heat box in summer.

Limerick station was a rancid portacabin for many years and don't get me started on some of the staff toilets, Galway was a particular highlight.

mikeybhoy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119861362#Comment_119861362

The Go-Ahead canteen at the airport is literally a portacabin as is the Aircoach canteen and the Go-Ahead canteen in Dun Laoghaire isn't much better than a portcabin. Go-Ahead were fcuked out of the hotel in Blanchardstown where their drivers were breaking leaving drivers literally using a break bus for breaks for a period of time.

Your right though break provisions for bus drivers in Ireland are usually absolutely crap.

Polar101

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119860216#Comment_119860216

How much time in the schedule is allocated to the driver changes? They do take quite a long time - first a chat, then the first driver clocks out, picks up his stuff and leaves - and then a few more minutes while the second driver sets up to go. Go-Ahead driver changes seem to be even slower (and they don't usually tell the passengers that there is an additional 5-minute wait to get the bus back on schedule).

I appreciate the driver changes are necessary, but maybe they could be done in a way that acknowledges that the passengers onboard would prefer to continue their journey as soon as possible?

mikeybhoy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119863220#Comment_119863220

It takes a few minutes to do as the new driver has to put all his/her details into the ticket machine a slow process due to how outdated the wayfarers are.

The driver also has to adjust his/her seat and steering wheel to their preferred position sometimes the seat can be a bit stiff and a bit of a pain to adjust then the driver may want to catch a breath for a few minutes to have a think what they're doing could be their first time doing that route for a couple of months or driving that particular type of vehicle for a while.

Also the conversation being had could be well be work related and not just gossip could be the outgoing driver telling the incumbent driver about any issues on the route like diversions or any defects on the bus they need to aware of.

hairymaryberry

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119856289#Comment_119856289

Do you start work in one place and finish in another?

Do you disagree that when this happen people should be paid as they make the way back to where they started?

hairymaryberry

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119856737#Comment_119856737

4.5 hours is wrong its 5:45 the max time of a work out.

You could be unlucky and get a duty that is 5:35 first half with a 1 hour break and come back for 2:25 second half, for a 8 hour work day.