How to improve public transport connectivity

Andrew Duffy

I'd like people to post and discuss reasonable suggestions for improving connectivity between different public transport services in our cities, with lobbying the DTO and the Department of Transport in mind. I'll start off with a few:

Integrated ticketing - I don't mean fancy electronic cards, I mean a bit of paper you can buy in advance that gets you from one point in the city to another. The Travel 90 tickets are very good, but there needs to be a version that includes trams and trains, and the required validators need to be installed at all tram and train stations.

Redesign Heuston station - This is our busiest transport node, and it's a bit of a mess. Here's a few things I've thought of while waiting for trams and buses:

• Make the bus-only road in front of the station two-way with parking bays (there's plenty of room). Then, all bus services travelling either direction on St. John's Road West can be diverted via the station. This might even be possible with buses travelling on Parkgate Street, but there might be capacity constraints.
• Build a single-track spur from the Luas line down the side of the station as far as Platform 10, with another stop for the platform accessible from that side (Platform 5, I think). This should be ready in time for the start of services through the park tunnel, which should stop at Platform 10.
• Redesign the citybound carriageway of St. John's Road West to have two traffic lanes, one of them a peak-hour bus lane, and a physically seperated taxi rank. There is room.

I'm not familiar enough with Pearse and Connolly to suggest changes, since I stopped using the stations regularly several years ago.

Keyzer

Good thread...

IMO there is no point in having seperate transport systems running in a city
i.e DART and LUAS not linking together, LUAS and LUAS not linking together.

I would like to see the following -

LUAS lines connecting with each other, as they should have been from the start.

Luas lines connecting with Dart lines, as far as i know the only connection is at connolly station.

A second dart line from Maynooth, heading into the city, then moving back out through southside of city to clondakin - tallaght for example.

Links from all of the above to a new rail line to the Airport.

More Luas lines.

seamus

I think one of the main things that would improve our system no end would be to increase the number of circumferential routes, as opposed to radial.

In Dublin, the vast majority of busses take you from somewhere, into the city centre. Any busses that don't go into the city, the 75 for example, have a very long route, that criss-crosses all over the place.

Both of these things discourage commuters. I live in Lucan, and I cannot get a bus that goes anywhere but into the city. It will not take me to Clondalkin, Tallaght, Blanchardstown, and any other of a multitude of places that are closer to Lucan than the city is.
The same problem is experienced by commuters all over the city and Greater Dublin area. Many people now live in one area, and work elsewhere that's not in the city, but public transport is just not a viable option.
I used to live in Knocklyon, and go to college in UCD. There was one bus from Knocklyon/Tallaght to UCD, that left each morning at 7.30am and came back at 5.30pm. So bus there is not a viable option. And that's just an example. It is virtually impossible to travel between areas in the Greater Dublin area without having to get a bus into the city, then pay for a second bus out of the city to your destination. MOre often than not, that's over an hour's travelling time for a journey that would be 15-20 minutes in a car.

Realiability of the busses is quite bad, but just an increase in the number of routes would vastly increase public confidence in using the busses, because they'd actually be going where people want them to go!

Andrew Duffy

@Keyzer - they're all pretty huge infrastructural investments. I'm hoping for suggestions on how to improve the usefulness of the current system so more people would use it.

I forgot a few:

Improved Signage

• Every train and tram station, and every key bus stop, should have good quality signs (not fingerposts; we need them to point the right way) directing people to connections and nearby attractions - think of the signs directing you to a museum from a train station in every other city.
• All stations and stops should have an intermodal network map (bus routes will have to be restricted on the map, but the Parisian one does show a hell of a lot) and a map of the route(s) you are currently on. The direction you are travelling should be abundantly clear.
• Regularly updated posters near automatic ticket machines should list the benefits of buying a commuter ticket (preferably not from the ticket machine) with simple examples.

Make commuter tickets more attractive - The current system of tax relief is broken, as employers are not willing to purchase tickets due to adminstrative overhead. Tax relief should be at source, or abolished altogether and the price of commuter tickets reduced once they are bought outside of the station, or in the station but outside of peak hours. Your commuter ID card could be substantially increased in price to offset some of the cost, and then you could use it to buy cheaper intercity tickets when you need them - this kind of system is successful use in other countries.

dmeehan

a simple thing: naming bus stops
and using appropriate names not like No. 23 Dorset st.
and using the same name for a corresponding stop on the other side of the street for busses going the opposite direction.

and to use an LED display inside the bus telling passengers what the next stop is called


makes it very handy for giving directions etc.

loyatemu

problem with naming bus stops in Dublin (and many of them are named on the stop already) is that there are so bloody many of them, often very close together.

eg. you'd have "Donnybrook" "Donnybrook (a little further along)" "Donnybrook (by the Spar)" etc.

AndrewMc

Andrew Duffy wrote:

Integrated ticketing - I don't mean fancy electronic cards, I mean a bit of paper you can buy in advance that gets you from one point in the city to another. The Travel 90 tickets are very good, but there needs to be a version that includes trams and trains, and the required validators need to be installed at all tram and train stations.

(Note: Not familiar with bus ticketing in cities other than Dublin).

Even before intergrated ticketing is figured out, you should be able to get bus tickets at *every* rail station. As it is, in Heuston you can only get single daily rambler tickets (so I'm told by station info desk), which is just ridiculous. Somebody from Cork/Waterford/Sligo/Galway should be able to buy their day-ticket/2-journey-ticket/anything-they-want-ticket before even getting on the train.

dmeehan

loyatemu wrote:

eg. you'd have "Donnybrook" "Donnybrook (a little further along)" "Donnybrook (by the Spar)" etc.

well use a cross st. or a "notable" building/stadium etc.

eg. D'brook Depot or Old Wesley
etc.

Metrobest

I think the real issue is the lack of a metro system in central Dublin. Neither trams nor on-street trams can be the solution for moving mass numbers of people. That said, in addition to other suggestions mentioned, certainly, there are some cosmetic changes that would make public transport more attractive...

- Every bus stop should display timetables for ALL routes serving that stop
- A map at every public transport stop: street map of catchment area plus 'generic' public transport map
- Cycle racks at all 'QBC' bus shelters
- Proper cycle lane network
- A website giving door-to-door public transport information. Check out www.ov9292.nl .. It's brilliant! You type in your address, put in the address of where you are going and it tells you everything! For example, if you put in Howth Road 5 going to 12 Morehampton Road, the website would say "Leave house at 15.31, walk 5 mins to bus stop; 15.35 bus 31 direction city centre; change in O'Connel St; 15.52 bus 10 direction Belfield; arrive Morehampton Road 16.07!

P11 Comms

Terminate the 46A at Drumcondra Station instead of marooning it at "Syringeville" at Parnell Square and offer a discounted combination ticket for both the 46A users and Maynooth/Longford/Sligo rail line users. Getting on a 46A waiting outside Drumcondra would be very useful for onward travel to the city centre and the south side areas not accessible by DART or Luas. It would also ease some of the people congestion at peak hours at Connolly. Drumcondra Station offers lots of potential as a site for a major bus/rail interchange.

This would cost very little to implement and would be a real shot in the arm for public transport connectivity between rail and bus.

It's the little things within integrated public transport which are just as important as the mega euro projects. Like Andrew said, decent signage for staters.

Platform11 wants to see large signs displayed at all DART, Suburban Rail and Luas locations displaying conecting bus services and their destinations. This is already a fact of life in many European countries and in most cases bus and rail are run by many different companies and yet they all fully understand the need to help promote each other.

Yet here in Ireland bus and rail are run mainly by CIE and yet DB, BE, IE until VERY, VERY recently all behaved as if the other two components of CIE did not exsist. This carry-on needs to be completely removed once and for all.

Cork could do with a real city bus service and not the current Bus Eireann "nixer".

Victor

Close Heuston Station.

Connect all the Churchtown / Dundrum busses to Dundrum Luas.

Lennoxschips

Check out www.ov9292.nl .. It's brilliant! You type in your address, put in the address of where you are going and it tells you everything! For example, if you put in Howth Road 5 going to 12 Morehampton Road, the website would say "Leave house at 15.31, walk 5 mins to bus stop; 15.35 bus 31 direction city centre; change in O'Connel St; 15.52 bus 10 direction Belfield; arrive Morehampton Road 16.07!

Heh, I use this site nearly everyday. The only complaint I'd have is that it takes the door to door thing to seriously. i.e. I prefer to walk further to the faster bus instead of taking the slow bus that stops closer by.

But otherwise it's a great site. Tomorrow I need to go to an address in Delft, and it prints out a bus-train-train-bus route complete with all connections.

Metrobest

Lennoxschips wrote:

Heh, I use this site nearly everyday. The only complaint I'd have is that it takes the door to door thing to seriously. i.e. I prefer to walk further to the faster bus instead of taking the slow bus that stops closer by.

But otherwise it's a great site. Tomorrow I need to go to an address in Delft, and it prints out a bus-train-train-bus route complete with all connections.

Yeah, it removes a lot of the 'doubt' from public transport. A lot of people like to take the train, but they don't want to undergo the hassle of procuring tickets/times/connections. This site - and we need a similar site for Dublin - removes that doubt.