BusConnects Dublin - Bus Network Changes Discussion

You’re correct LXFlyer, there would be a bit of work involved behind the scenes. Dublin Bus have a good record of being able to adapt to planned closures, in previous years they have changed rosters and schedules for a number of events. Their Marathon and St. Patrick’s Day operation is impressive.

If a large section of the city centre streets are now closed every Saturday then the relevant authorities have to adapt our public transport. Simply having no information on a website and switching off RTPI while bus schedules fall apart is not the way to go.

A few Saturdays back I missed a bus to Blackrock on Nassau Street. I was unfortunate as it was the exact time a protest started. I could see the following three buses stuck behind on the app and they never ran the route. Out of curiosity I tracked those buses later in the day and they were all massively delayed. The following Saturday I tried to catch the 6pm 74 from Eden Quay only for it to be cancelled. When I contacted Dublin Bus they said the earlier protest had delayed the bus. 

Using a bus on Saturday has become unreliable and it’s not only affecting the city centre. The idea that there’s no bus through Ongar, Dundrum or Bray for an hour because there’s a planned protest miles away in the city centre is baffling.

Having a special Saturday Disruption plan would provide clarity to passengers and allow operators to maintain a service in the suburbs. We would really only need to alter routes which are cross city. There are suitable turning points at Merrion Square for the 4, 7/A, 47, C1 and C2, Leeson Street for the 11, 46A, 39A, 145 and 155, Hatch Street for the 9, 14, 15/A/B, 16, 65/B, 68, 83, 122 and 140, Cook Street for the 13, 27, 49, 54A, 74, 77A, 151, 123, 150, Wood Quay or Smithfield for the north quay routes, and Parnell Square or Mountjoy Square for O’Connell Street routes. It would be a shame to cut routes in this way but it’s happening anyway, only it is disorganised and lasts much longer than any protest.

The alternative is that we continue the weekly scenario of buses driving towards closed streets and end up on a congested diversion with delays affecting the route for hours. Passengers are left stranded across the network, RTPI is switched off and the poor staff in Dublin Bus spend their day on social media explaining there has been no bus for an hour because of an earlier protest in the city centre. We can do better than that.

Easily 10+ min gap at peak times on this section. You will get 3-4 buses with 2-3 mins then nothing for 8-10 mins. Same cycle repeats most of the day.

Its longer off peak early mornings/weekends etc.

It's not up to Dublin Bus to have a plan, the NTA set the schedule and any details related to specific days.

NTA policy is take credit for anything they perceive as positive but give the blame to the operator when things go wrong

They can raise the point with the NTA at least if they want to.

Even Dublin Bus's black hole of a complaints section on their website lists timetables and service as a category. Maybe anyone who selected that should be told to contact the NTA?

Does anyone know how efficient a Luas is in terms of energy usage?

For example would a Luas use more energy than the equivalent electric bus in terms kw per km.

I'm just thinking in terms of climate change, is the Luas better than electric buses.

I know the Luas carries much more people than a bus.

The Saturday protests and marches are becoming ridiculous at this stage, especially for people relying on PT for work. I've started to turn down Saturday overtime now (which I need!) because it's so hard to get home after on these miserable evenings. Worked from 7am-4pm yesterday and didn't get home til after 7pm. 13 RTPI on College Green outside Habitat was showing 18 mins so I went to get a coffee to get out of the rain (no bus shelters for one of the busiest cross-city stops either, another failure) and an empty 13 sailed by as I crossed the far lights at Trinity, so RTPI was worthless. Then went and stood on Hawkins St for the 17:00 hourly 69 and waited til 17:15 for it to appear and gave up. Luas Red Line leaves me a 30-minute walk down the N7 to get home, but at least I could be somewhat sure of it actually running. But I couldn't squeeze on the first 2 that arrived into Abbey Street, finally forcing my way on the 3rd one after waiting 25 odd mins for the privilege.

I dunno what the people chanting outside M&S think they're going to achieve, but it just makes commuting even more miserable for us long-suffering PT users. DCC/AGS/NTA need to come up with some sort of solution to either hold buses short of the city centre like Paddys Day, or provide a dedicated protest area. The 'shur its grand' approach is ridiculous in this day & age, especially considering how much money has/is being spent on re-branding the bus services in the city. A lot of occasional or first time PT users use PT at the weekends & it will be incredibly hard to convince them things are getting better when this awful service is being offered up with terrible communication from providers/NTA about service disruption.

The protests are not the only problem, thats true.

But they are a consitent and predictable problem. They happen every Ssturday now and every Saturday they result in major delays or even curtailment of Luas services across the city centre.

The Marathon and Xmas Day are one off events and I think people have a tolerance for those (although mitigation plans should still be in place) but these protests are causing havoc every single saturday and there is no end in sight.

A designated protest area that does not shut down the LUAS lines or most cross city buses seems an obvious solution.

Your obvious solution completely ignores people's constitutional right to peaceful assembly and the Garda are going to be very loathe to intervene here.

The best plan is for the NTA to actually deal with the issue and adjust services accordingly. That would require a much more agile mindset than they're used to.

I thought your first issue was that you missed a bus because the real time display wasn't up to date. Surely that's in the power of the NTA to manage?

If you're suggesting the NTA carry on as usual and not adapt and the solution is really to decide where people can protest, more power to you.

Also, there's not much point of having realtime transport information if I can't provide realtime transport information when something out of the ordinary happens. Everyone can see what's in the timetable, but the passengers need to be informed when/where the servies are actually running.

RTPI doesn't need to tell you how long a bus is going to be delayed due to a protest march, it can just give a message about major disruption to services. If a bus isn't coming there is no point in it giving the time to the next scheduled bus were it to be operating.

It's a question of credibility, if people find that RTPI is regularly incorrect and not reliable, the credibility, and therefore attractiveness, of the entire bus service suffers.

If a bus is diverted, it is still going to follow a route which has bus stops on them - feels like it should be possible to display that alternate route too. Maybe it isn't technically possible. But currently the level of information is "services are delayed - good luck!", which isn't terribly useful.

I understand if the bus is stuck somewhere, then it is pointless to display "2 min" when it could be 2 hours - but maybe the system could display "not moving" or something similar?

I mean, even normal day to day operations are frustrating for passengers using the RTPI - let alone when there's anything out of the ordinary happening. There's traffic every day.

Saw this, this morning on X (From the 15th of Jan Mind you)

Just goes to show how poorly planned Bus infra (and infra in General) has been.

https://x.com/dubslife1/status/1746955070300725426?s=20