Let's Be Honest Public Transport in Ireland is an Abominaiton Because it is Meant to Be...

Many thanks!

It provides hope. Three return trips a day is a lot better than the one return trip on Friday.

I just hope the legs hold out to get me to the three miles to the village if it materialises.

It still isn't quite as up to the mark the service was in my youth. There was a time when the bus used to travel to the grotto at the intersection of the road to the two main villages.

I guess its the catch 22.

Until the bus service is almost as cheap and convenient as a car, then people will use their cars, thus eliminating the need for the bus service.

I suppose someone has done their homework, but extending the route by a couple of miles would make all the difference to what in summer is a very popular area.

We built a little bit of elevated rail over 130 years ago, the likes of Frank McDonald are still complaining about it. Not going to happen, underground is the only way.

If it’s along the main road linking that village to the nearest town or near a crossroads along it, then there’s every chance of a Local Link service being established under Connecting Ireland.

One can’t expect regular rural services to directly serve people’s homes in the countryside, that’s the job of the demand responsive transport, but it’s perfectly reasonable to expect a network of routes that serve the towns and villages and operate along main roads building up connectivity.

Look at the Local Link network around south Wexford - there’s now an hourly bus between Wexford and Rosslare, ten return services a day between Wexford and Duncormick via Taghmon and Wellingtonbridge, at least five return services a day between New Ross and Wellingtonbridge, and at least four services linking the Hook Head peninsula with New Ross each day, and all of these are running 7 days a week.

I must be using the wrong Irish rail site so - that price above was for anytime this Friday.

Fares on some lines, e.g. Wexford are lower as trains are slower.

Why, what's the logic? That sounds crazy, the people the bus picks up on the way on the Castlegregory or Brandon and even Dingle route are various distances from their local villages, I assumed the bus just picked up and dropped where it was needed. There are no marked bus stops anywhere except Tralee and maybe Dingle.

I try to minimise trips to town to one or maybe two a week. Even for the week I have to make several trips back to the car for the basic weekly items.

About twice a month I bring feed for my kwackers. I use a parcel truck to offload that.

The reason I want to avoid car use is to save money and help the environment.

Paying delivery services to come twenty miles from Tralee would be lunacy as it would both cost me more and involve a load more trips by trucks, not cars.

Explain why the village that the bus is projected to stop in shouldn't have a bus service?

It would answer my needs if the bus came straight through its intended stopping point and carried on to my village. Would this satisfy the transport requirements? It used to stop at an equidistant point between the two most densely populated villages which was fine, that was in the "good old days" though.

Bringing more than a shopping bag would be impossible. I wouldn't bat an eyelid thirty years back, but I have had periods when I was unable to walk to my own gate. I doubt I am alone in that situation either.

So I really don't see the logic of deliberately providing transport only to a point where a fit person would be able to cycle in anyway.

You might be at an age where three miles is insignificant, I can promise you there will come a time when it can be quite an obstacle.

What is a Kwacker?

A variable.

Currently Welsh Harlequins.

It seemed appropriate when I was after advice on various groups for my "kwackers". It's now a collective term covering the goose, ducks, five chickens and a cockerel.

I think I came here after advice a few times.

The name suited, so it "stuck". :-)

The Irish political system can be good for representing some voices, but by God it means that if a party has a TD with an uncertain electoral support, he or she will listen careful to NIMBY and other such people who are likeliest to vote. Hydrogen has great potential and there's a car or two in certain markets, but indeed, not for decades.

Politicians and senior civil servants all have parking, fine cars and the usual perks. The supposed Thatcher quote about older public transport users being failures at life would be said quietly by them.

=

Rathfarnham Village to Dundrum Town Centre is no more than 20 mins on the 75 and 12-15 mins on the 17, plus an 8 minute walk.

Those journey times that you're quoting are baloney.

Edit re your first point:

Regarding the first trip, again the point that I made earlier - how many people are making the exact trip from Rathfarnham to Clondalkin that you are doing? Not enough I'd wager to warrant a extra bus route over the S6 & W2 (currently the 75 & 76).

When it comes to orbital journeys there are limits to what public transport can deliver as everyone has different starting points and ending points. They have to serve traffic generators along the routes to get backsides on seats.

The S6 will be every 15 minutes, doubling the frequency of the 75 so that will help in terms of connections at Tallaght, and the W2 will be every 15 minutes as well. That makes it more feasible than the current situation as there will be less waiting time.

But there will always be trips where the car will be faster or more suitable. People have to have realistic expectations.

Well it seems to me that if you look at the myriad of school busses on the roads that criss cross Ireland carrying vulnerable passengers some even without the option of alternative transport, then why can't the work be done to progressing an equally needed transportation requirement?

From my simple standpoint it seems a no brainer. Car journeys reduced, less fuel burnt, better for the country health wise through emissions and hopefully less cars = less accidents, better financially as it reduces imports and better for the entire planet.

I don't know what towns are badly served, but here some villages do have provision, although mine has gone from a poor service to no service.

We don't have towns, the closest being Dingle and Tralee, both seem very well served indeed.

Absolutely.

When are we going to get them?

ANPR seems to have disappeared off the agenda.

An app to tag on and off has been spoke about for a decade yet we still have zip.

Bus priority QBC’s look great on a glossy brochure but how they’re going to get bus priority through the likes of templeogue rathfarnham, rathmines, terenure, in real life………. well we’ll wait and see when the infrastructure goes for/ emerges from (which is another cluster fcuk) ABP.

I was in the middle of replying and telling you your wrong etc etc, but I said I’d better check the app.

I had put in dundrum shopping centre and selected the first option.

When I checked the map I realised it was sending me to dundrum shopping centre, 2, the way, Ravens mill, which is way out near Ashbourne.

Upon closer inspection on google maps there is no ravens mill it’s ravens hill and it’s an estate in rowlestown north county Dublin.

I have no idea how the app decided to send me there- but anyway you are correct a trip from where I am in Rathfarnham to dundrum SC takes anywhere from 27min to 33 min (that’s including walking to and from the bus)

Nail on the head!

Some cities and places I have worked in have the public transport off perfectly.

London was a sheer pleasure to move around in. Well compared to doing anything else in the hole anyway.

The dreaded catch 22, weaning the citizens from cars is like the rest of the approach to saving the planet. It is going to need highly skilled planners to address the problem, very highly skilled politicians to convince people taking a personal, county or even entire country hit that seems to favour others is a worthy and desireable cause.

I hope along with the EU that Ireland approaches the problem and convinces those that will be worse off that it's for the best.

Not an easy thing when it looks like the next door neighbours are ramping up the oil production again and were even looking into new coal production recently.

I notice one of the neighbours has built his wall up with earth ready for the winter. This is entirely new but the floods are increasing at high tide.

I thought this house would see me out, but I tend to wonder :-(

Maybe the kayak bought last year will have a more serious purpose :-(

Your right I don’t use busses much and when I do it’s really only one route into the CC.

However I wouldn’t be persuaded to use a bus service to go to dundrum or clondalkin because the car is more convenient and quicker and to be honest if you put dundrum shopping centre into a journey planner and you get sent to rowlestown near Ashbourne- I’d say maybe the journey planner needs a bit of work too?

Park and Ride definitely has a role to play, just like you describe it: facilitating rural people getting to the city edge.

But Park and Ride is also problematic. You usually need a car to make good use of them, and if you have a car you already have sunk the largest portion of the cost of your transport. The car is comfortable, you control the climate, you have lots of space and you have the luxury of unplanned route changes etc.

Most people, once they are in a pattern of using the car, struggle to get out of it for even the most tiny journeys. And Park and Ride attempts to go against that: ripping people out of their comfortable transport option and trying to get them to switch modes. It will only work well if the rest of the journey is made very painful by car, is my opinion. It means tolling, it means low priority on the road lanes and at traffic lights, it means high parking prices etc. And it also means clampdown on out-of-town shopping centres which convenience car users.

And then you don't want to encourage people to do the daily 2-hour commute from midlands to Dublin etc, which is unsustainable: and in that case is P&R just facilitating a bad practice? It's difficult.

Agreed. Despite the spittle-filled rants of the UK and US right wing, nobody is trying to eliminate private car use (okay, there are some hard-Greens, but every movement has its lunatic fringe...). Private car transport is still a part of a future, environmentally-friendly and sustainable transport system, but the difference is that unlike today, going by private car will no longer be the majority mode of transport; it will go from being the default choice to the fill-in for those trips that can't be done on mass transport or active-transport.

The goal is to provide a better transport option to those people who could use it. Nobody's going to have their car taken from them, but if you asked the commuters stuck in their cars every morning and evening, they'd jump at the chance of being able to have someone else bring them to and from work - they drive because they have to, not because they want to.

Yep I think the pay-as-you-go cars are possibly a significant part of the future transport system. People will be more comfortable taking the "risk" of going without a car if they feel there will be one available at reasonably short notice. Unfortunately I believe part of our insurance system still makes these schemes difficult. You need to have a car to accrue a "no claims bonus" and you lose it without an insured car. I could be wrong about that: Iread it a while back.