Night time public transport around Europe...

Tusky · 25-03-2009 11:03PM #1

Hey, I'm researching an article for our student website which focuses on the cutbacks that Dublin Bus have made. In particular, it looks at the scrapping of the weekday nitelinks. I am looking for any information for night time transport in other European cities (preferably capitals) during the week (Sunday-Thur) but would also be interested to hear about weekend services also.

Ive rooted around on the net but its difficult to get concise info. So maybe some of yea have first hand info from living or traveling abroad ? Anything relating to cost/regularly/last bus would be very helpful.

All help muchly appreciated!

L1011 · 25-03-2009 11:13PM

I know Brighton's system very well - to make DB seem worse, its not a capital, about 300,000 people. Its bus company does serve lots of outlying towns like DB does though.

It has two 24/7 busroutes. Overnight they cost £1 if you have any prepaid ticket (saver, annual pass) or £2.20 without. Never less than 30 minute frequeny on either bus, seven days a week. One crosses the city and one goes out to suburbia, mainly serving the universities. These do the equivalent coverage when you size down the city of the inner nitelinks here, the ones that stay inside the M50 or go to Tallaght/Lucan/Blanch.

They've never really had the equivalent of outlying Nitelinks throughout the week, but they have four routes on weekend nights. Last bus on these is 2.30; service is similar enough in price (£5) and coverage (two/three buses) to the outer Ashbourne/Maynooth nitelinks here.

buses.co.uk is the companies website and the 7, 25 (24 hour) and N29/N69/N98/N99 are the routes if you want to get timetables. Its a privately owned bus firm but I've no idea what if any subsidy they get. The 24/7 routes seem fairly lightly loaded on weeknights and most people are using day tickets and paying the £1 so I'd guess some of the services are run solely to keep the ability to say its 24hr.

acontadino · 25-03-2009 11:16PM

the transport in roma is a shambles.

dub_commuter · 25-03-2009 11:23PM

I was in Glasgow recently and it was excellent:
http://www.firstgroup.com/ukbus/scotland/swscot/nightbus/index.php

20 routes, 2.50 each.

Metrobest · 25-03-2009 11:32PM

Barcelona - night buses replace metros on weekdays from 1-6am. They run every 20 minutes from Placa Catalunya in the centre to every district in the city. The fare is normal fare and the buses stop everywhere inbound and outbound. The metro runs at weekends in addition to night buses.

Amsterdam - buses about every 30 minutes replacing trams. There's a small add-on to your standard strip/zone fare.

Tusky · 25-03-2009 11:37PM

This is great stuff guys, cheers. Keep it up!

Our service really is a shambles. These other cities have buses either all night or until 4am on a Thursday. We have NO night buses on a Thursday. Disgraceful.

Metrobest wrote: »

Amsterdam - buses about every 30 minutes replacing trams. There's a small add-on to your standard strip/zone fare.

This is on a weeknight ?

murphaph · 26-03-2009 01:06AM

In Berlin the regular public transport (including underground and DART type trains) run continously on a normal schedule (eg, trains every 10 mns even in middle of night) from Friday around 4am until around 1am Monday morning. On monday at 1am the underground stops running and is replaced by night buses which run (I think) every 20 mins and follow the course of 90% of the underground network. A few very quiet lines get no replacement service. The trams keep running all week through the night but the trams are almost exclusively in east berlin only. There are also "metro buses" which run 24 hours a day 7 days a week on a 10 min schedule during the day and 20 min schedule during the night. During the weeknights when the system depends on buses and trams exclusively, they have designated 'hubs' so you are guaranteed cross-pavement interchange (ie, the buses meet at the same time and wait for say 3 mins to allow people change over) so even in the dead of night on a wednesday you are using a netwrk and not a single line a la nitelink. It's altogether extremely comprehensive and you can go out any night of the week to any part of the city and still be guaranteed a ride home. The 'regular' service starts up again at 4/4.30 am anyway so the night service only has to get the city by for 3/3.5 hours. The cost is the same as a normal ticket during the daytime to use night services.

dowlingm · 26-03-2009 01:32AM

Not Europe, sorry, but...

Toronto -
subway and main bus routes close between 0100-0200 to 0600
surface: 1 streetcar and 23 bus routes (including two airport routes) 0200-0600

cost: same as day time
http://www3.ttc.ca/Fares_and_passes/Prices/index.jsp (1 CAD=0.60Eur)

intervals - busy routes <10min, peripheral routes 30min - 40ft low floor buses.

night bus map: http://www3.ttc.ca/images/fixedImages/TTC-bluenight.pdf

AlekSmart · 26-03-2009 01:35AM

All excellent stuff,but as far from Noel Dempseys mind as his posing for a bit of an oul portrait.....

One other item to be borne in mind is the level of Local Taxation which these places levy.
This can be either in the form of Local Sales Tax,VAT,or Property Based such as Ground Rent or Rates...or as in France a direct Vehicular tax per Department the proceeds of which go directly back into PUBLIC transport.

Minister Dempsey has VERY clearly flagged his intention to Cap Dublins Public Bus services at the new artifical levels.
This decision will become even more important when the December 2009 Deadline for Public Service Contracts arrives as the Fleet Size on that given date will be the baseline figure for all future progressions.
Thus it can be seen that Bus Atha Cliath`s 120 Bus downsize will have far wider implications for the Capital much further into the future.

The involvement of Minister Dempsey in allocating and otherwise facilitating PPP Toll Road operators is another area of great concern as it cuts directly across his responsibilities towards Bus Atha Cliath as main shareholders representative.

Forget about recession etc,the REAL reasons for Dublins abysmal Public Bus Service lie in more mundane areas such as old Party links to the Motor Trade in certain areas and of course the TAX heavy status of the Private Motorist. :mad:

dowlingm · 26-03-2009 02:16AM

True Alek - Toronto fare recovery on operating costs is about 75pc after recent service increases, the remainder being largely subvention from local property tax. The Transit Commission is a city agency, not a spawn of the provincial or federal transportation department.

Capital comes from property tax but for large new projects the province and feds will usually fork out 1/3 each.

Rawr · 26-03-2009 06:32AM

Here in Oslo, Norway, the nightbusses are nearly as bad as what has happened to the Dublin Nitelinks.

There have only ever been night routes on Friday and Saturday here, running on a very similar timetable to Nitelinks, for about the same price. (Like with DB, your standard ticket is not usually valid)

However, almost everyday, most normal busses and trams run until 00:30 and the last commuter trains leave the city at 01:00

Please let me know if you need more info Tusky.
Some timetable stuff here (with English too):
www.trafikanten.no

KC61 · 26-03-2009 08:54AM

In doing something like this I would suggest that you do need to look at similar sized cities rather than looking at huge capital cities.

A good comparison I find is Edinburgh, where the service is operated by Lothian Buses primarily. They have a comprehensive night time service which you can see at http://www.nightbuses.com/home.php

I think that it does still have to be borne in mind that Dublin Bus planned to launch a 24 hour service on the 746 until at the very last minute some years ago the Department of Transport pulled the plug.

The model for Nitelinks is somewhat dated and there has to be a case for a switch to normal stopping services being introduced (perhaps with limited stops in the city centre area).

Interestingly, the night bus service in Cardiff was withdrawn in 2006 due to low patronage.

antoinolachtnai · 26-03-2009 09:06AM

AlekSmart wrote: »

All excellent stuff,but as far from Noel Dempseys mind as his posing for a bit of an oul portrait.....

One other item to be borne in mind is the level of Local Taxation which these places levy.
This can be either in the form of Local Sales Tax,VAT,or Property Based such as Ground Rent or Rates...or as in France a direct Vehicular tax per Department the proceeds of which go directly back into PUBLIC transport.

So they have a wider tax base than us. This has nothing in particular to do with public transport. If you are trying to suggest that it is impossible to run a public bus transport system without a large public subsidy, I'd point you at Edinburgh, which seems to receive very little in the way of subsidy (Lothian claims that 1 percent of revenue comes from subsidies (see http://www.competition-commission.org.uk/inquiries/ref2006/citylink/pdf/third_party_summaries_lothian_buses.pdf).

I am not saying that it is a good idea to run a bus service without a subsidy, I am just saying that it is possible.

It is a fantasy to think that Dublin Bus is grossly under-subsidised. In 2007, the firm received 184m in fares. It received 80m in 'public service obligation payment', recognised 13m in capital grants from the government and received a further 7m from profit-making activities.

That is a total subsidy of EUR 100m. This is a large subsidy.

Minister Dempsey has VERY clearly flagged his intention to Cap Dublins Public Bus services at the new artifical levels.

I am not making a case for Noel Dempsey, but where has he flagged this? When did he say anything about a cap?

This decision will become even more important when the December 2009 Deadline for Public Service Contracts arrives as the Fleet Size on that given date will be the baseline figure for all future progressions.

Are you sure? Where is this in the legislation or the directive? If there are going to be 'progressions', what's the problem?

The involvement of Minister Dempsey in allocating and otherwise facilitating PPP Toll Road operators is another area of great concern as it cuts directly across his responsibilities towards Bus Atha Cliath as main shareholders representative.

Can you explain this in more detail? Are you saying that imposing tolls on motorists is bad for Bus Atha Cliath?

munchkin_utd · 26-03-2009 09:37AM

KC61 wrote: »

In doing something like this I would suggest that you do need to look at similar sized cities rather than looking at huge capital cities.

I'd have to agree.
Berlin/ London/ Paris/ Madrid/ Budapest..... overshadow Dublin in size.
Cities like Munich/ Barca/ Hamburg might be a little more apt for a comparison.

In Munichs case (and its a city the same population as Dublin), the nightlinks have a skeleton service only during the week. Only night trams fanning out from the centre and the odd bus runs, and that at an hourly schedule.
A feature of the system is that most lines meet downtown, wait for 10 min for people to transfer from one line to another, and then go on their way out of town again.

At weekends though its better again. Theres extra cross town lines then and all services are at a half hour interval.
In addition, theres extra suburban trains leaving downtown at about 2am.
Best of all, it is the same price as a normal.

As other above said, SOME cities in europe run a regular service till after midnight. Munich is the same and the last regular Undergrounds leave town just after 1am on a normal weekday night. At the weekend theres also trains at 1.30 -ish and 2am -ish so to be fair, you often wouldnt even need the night busses/ trams in the first place!.

Map and routes and info (incl english annotation) on the night bus/ tram here:
http://www.mvg-mobil.de/pdf-dateien/minifahrplaene/MVG_Miniplan_Nacht.pdf

triple-M · 26-03-2009 10:18AM

http://www.gvb.nl/english/travellers/transporttypes/Pages/nightbus.aspx heres a link to night buses around amsterdam,with a handy little map,i've always found amsterdam easy to get around its area is much smaller than dublin but it has a similar population therefore an extensive network of buses is not really needed and its got a great train/tram/metro service with trains running 24/7 between amsterdam centraal and schiphol airport http://www.ns.nl/cs/Satellite/travellers/about-trip/night-train-and-schiphol?packedargs=language%3Den#taking-the-train-at-night-id

MOH · 26-03-2009 10:30AM

Metrobest wrote: »

Barcelona - night buses replace metros on weekdays from 1-6am. They run every 20 minutes from Placa Catalunya in the centre to every district in the city. The fare is normal fare and the buses stop everywhere inbound and outbound. The metro runs at weekends in addition to night buses.

Amsterdam - buses about every 30 minutes replacing trams. There's a small add-on to your standard strip/zone fare.

Used to live in Amsterdam, regularly went out in Utrecht and was able to get a train back at least once an hour, no matter what time of night.

Weekend in Stockholm late last year, bought a 72 hour travel pass then spent ages trying to work out what time the Metros ran until. then asked a Swedish friend who explained that was the first year they ran 24 hours. Never waited more than 2 minutes during the day, or 10-15 at night.

Polar101 · 26-03-2009 10:38AM

Helsinki, Finland - buses run until 1:30am every day, after that there is a night bus service on Fridays and Saturdays but not Sunday-Thurday. The night buses cost about 2 euro more than regular services, and run until 4:30am or so (usually 4 services a night). The metro services ends at 11:30pm or so, after that buses replace it.

Gruffalo · 26-03-2009 05:47PM

munchkin_utd wrote: »

In Munichs case (and its a city the same population as Dublin),

Where do you get that from?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dublin

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich

I know wikipedia is not always perfect so if you have better info I would be happy to see it. Surely Helsinki would be a better comparison:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helsinki

That being said, Dublin is not getting any smaller so looking at how cities like Munich manage their public transport would be a good idea - therefore it will not be done by any Irish Government.

Tusky · 26-03-2009 11:07PM

Good point guys, preferably similarish sized cities to Dublin. The greater Dublin are has around 1.1 - 1.2 million people though.

Victor · 26-03-2009 11:16PM

In Cologne, trams (they operate underground in the city centre) run until about 0030 during the week and are extended to about 0430 at weekends with 1-2 trams per hour.

MOH · 27-03-2009 12:50PM

Gruffalo wrote: »

I know wikipedia is not always perfect so if you have better info I would be happy to see it.

According to the CIA, population of Ireland is estimated at 4.2 million, of whom 40% (so about 1.7 million) reside within 100km of Dublin.

Night time public transport around Europe...

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