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

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.

What is a Kwacker?

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.

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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.

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)

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.