BusConnects Dublin - Bus Network Changes Discussion

When buses have to pull in for the "short delay to get the bus back on schedule" (this is far too frequent and the schedules clearly need to be revised), why do they always sit with the front doors open? It's every single time and even during this freezing cold weather of the past fortnight. Is there a valid reason?

I think the lack of a bus map is very off putting for people who rarely travel by bus (and even for people that do often travel by bus who are going to a new destination), and an updated bus map should be available on the TFI website whenever a change is made.

This would not be a big job at all if an editible pdf were available (where the coloured routes were not 'flattened' into the pdf). It would simply be a matter of deleting the old route (which would take a couple of seconds) and adding the new route, which of course would take a bit longer, but it would be minutes rather than hours.

The person I was quoting was expecting them to know things about the destination. Not how to get there.

I don't think the journey planners are really very good. They sometimes miss the obvious routes and sometimes give some very strange advice. The sort of thing I mean was being advised to get off the 17 at the west end of Bird Avenue and wait for the last 142 of the morning when going to UCD (this was before the introduction of the S4). This would save a bit of a walk but in my opinion it was very poor advice since what would happen if the 142 didn't show up (even if it was on the tracker, it might be as phantom bus)?

If you regularly travel on this route then you would know this, but we want buses to appeal to irregular users (who might then become regular users), and after a few experiences of using advice such as this, they will go back to their cars. We need to give the maximum amount of information that we can to these sort of users to encourage bus travel, and as I said above, it is really a small amount of work to prepare a map compared to preparing timetables, say.

I am not saying that we should have maps instead of journey planners, I am saying we should have both, and also full timetables and also the pdf that gives the frequencies throughout the day. The more information the better.

The problem is an irregular user would not even know it is a bad suggestion and even if they did, they would not know what app was best or what settings to change. A map could indicate peak hour only services in a different colour so a user would know to beware. I think the more information available to users on the TFI website/TFI app the better.

Id expect a bus driver to know what routes their services crossed, to be fair, especially outside the core

On a 46a "Hi mr Driver where can I get a 37 to Castleknock ? " "I'll give you a shout at Hanlons to get out next stop"

if thats the case how come when I was waiting for a 7/7a on the rock road I watched the RPTI display count 3 buses down from 20 mins plus to due now and have none of them show due to some protest or other in town blocking the place up?

Surely if it took bus location into account the time wouldn't have counted down and disappeared? It would have just been stuck at due in 30 mins etc?

Felt like it was predictive based on terminus departure time only.

TBF, there are plenty of times buses aren't running due to a driver not being available, and they never get marked as cancelled on the real time display.

You'd obviously make an exception for protests or anything unusual like that which makes it hard to predict, but the manual intervention by Inspectors to cancel a route could be improved.

I think that the RTPI displays on stops would be a little bit better if they didn't show the countdown but the scheduled time in hh:mm format for trips that aren't confirmed to run (i.e. logged in). This is typical in some continental systems: the timing is somewhat shown, but the pax are somewhat warned that there is no predictive timing available so be cautious.

Anyone questioning whether a bus driver is only expected to drive a bus, and not expected to help customers with connections, should read the mission statement from Dublin Bus.

They mention customer experience like 10 times. Clearly Dublin Bus expects a lot more from their drivers than just driving the bus, as do their customers.

https://www.dublinbus.ie/policys-and-procedures/dublin-bus-strategy

Ffs, ok let's cut to the chase, have we set a date for the public crucifiction of the guy who didn't know something?

Get the Internet folks and stop delaying commuters by doorstepping drivers with questions.