Infrastructure that never happened

Luas for Sligo Town

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/sligo-plans-tram-system-to-beat-traffic-1.168341

There was also that psychotic plan to build a flood barrier from Howth to Bray with 'a Luas running down the middle'.

A key part of BRT type services is that the dwell time must be fixed/predictable which is very difficult to achieve with double decker buses even with 3 doors - more half the passengers are funnelled through a single one-way stairway.

The fixation with double deckers in ireland is odd - nearly the entire rest of the world phased them out decades ago and I'd be surprised if they comprised more than 1 or 2% of the fleet world-wide. Single decker artics can support BRT/tram like patterns of use and can share infrastructure with trams. Double deckers cannot. Never mind the accessibility argument.

Yeah, yeah they have them in Berlin, but even there are 10 single decker buses in Berlin for every double decker and their most prominent use - on line 100 - is primarily a tourist route.

Going non-standard/bespoke for PT infrastructure and stock is never a good idea - particularly for a relatively small country. Having a unique rail-gauge should be enough.

BusConnects was a missed opportunity to strategically plan for moving away from this anachronistic bus format. Keep a few around for tourists.

"You are correct, you wouldn’t want to stand on them too long, but up to 30 minutes tends to be ok. The thing about them though is that in most cities with these folks usually take trains or Metro into the city and normally these busses cover just the last few km connecting these stations. They tend not to have the exhaustingly long routes like Dublin has."

I'll be honest and say that if I had to stand for 30 minutes every time I used a bus to go into town I would only use them when I didn't have a choice. People can criticise me all they want for that attitude but I suspect that I would be far from the only person who would think this. Also I suspect that out of rush hour the main users of the bus network would tend to be older people that may have physical difficulty in standing for that period.

Like it or not buses are the backbone of our public transport network at the moment and likely to be for quite a while into the future. If we are going to expect people to abandon private transport in favour of public transport we need to be offering them a reasonable experience. Cost may become a factor as well as journey times for private transport but it would be better if we could make use of public transport a virture rather than a necessity.

Articulated buses can have as many seats as a double decker - 40 to 60 - although typically, in my experience of using them, they generally have been configured at the bottom of that range. And all the seats are equally accessible to all passengers - while with double deckers using the upstairs seats is impractical if you have a disability, are elderly, have a kid's buggy, e.g., or a lot of shopping/luggage, etc.

They form the basis of a long term on-street public transport strategy as they can share infrastructure, stops, ticketing systems and road space with trams. So typically what I've seen in a number of European cities is an evolution: as bus routes become busier, they are first provided with more segregated road space. If demand increases, these alignments can be upgraded to trolley buses, which can eventually be upgraded to tramway but all formats can share street space and infrastructure. BusConnects could have provided the first steps for such an evolution by at least providing reserved alignments which could later become hybrid bus/tram.

The issue with them, from a Dublin perspective, is that they cannot share routes/alignments with double decker buses - or you end up with the worst operational characteristics of both - so it's a bit of an all-or-nothing thing. It's a pity BusConnects didn't pick one route and have it dedicated to this vehicle format - maybe the E spine - which could use Luas infrastructure between Stephens green and Parnell Sq.