I love getting the bus, don’t you? It appeals to my nosey side. Ever since I was a kid, I have loved being on the top of the bus, hopefully right at the front, looking into people’s gardens and over walls into the secret world of other people’s lives.
I like the public nature of the whole experience, watching commuters as they go about their business. This is also my nosey side; just the pleasure of watching people and wondering where they are off to. And then there’s the essential democracy of it; the fact that we are all collectively being shuttled from A to B.
These days, many people on the bus are locked into their digital universe, headphones on, sending the unmistakable signal out to all and sundry that they don’t want to be bothered. But there are always the chatterboxes who strike up conversations with whoever is misfortune enough to catch their eye.
I regularly get lectures on economics when I’m on the bus.
Recently, during the Graham Dwyer trial, a guy I vaguely knew from years ago sat beside me with his packed lunch and enthused about his weekend experiences in Dublin’s BDSM scene, which isn’t a patch on Berlin’s, I’ll have you know. Or so he said.
People talk about surprising things in public places.
Like all public services, Dublin Bus isn’t perfect, but it is communal and great cities are based on good communal experiences, whether they are public transport, public parks, public hospitals, public museums, public buildings or the public street itself.
Good public transport is the essential hardwiring of a proper city. The better the public transport, the better the city. Good public transport links between city and suburbs are the adhesive that bonds various parts of the city together.
When I was a kid, I loved getting the 46A from Dún Laoghaire to town. I especially liked the way this bus route meandered through the diverse suburbs. I experienced a range of feelings, from acute anxiety when passing through the council estates of Monkstown Farm, which I feared lest some “shaper” would hijack me for “odds”, to the mild jealousy when passing the walled lawns of Foxrock.
In contrast, a city that depends on the car exclusively is a nothing place. The car destroys cities – and we know that from all the evidence in America. It is not just the commuting to the outer suburbs which creates the soulless wasteland of an empty city at night surrounded by dormitory suburbs, but the singular experience of being in a car, hidden away from the rest of the population, means we never have the giddiness of the chance meetings with the rest of the city, which is one of the great joys of city living.
As a result of this, I am always concerned when I hear that there is a showdown between Dublin Bus drivers and Dublin Bus management over Government plans to privatize parts of Dublin’s bus service. I can see both sides of the argument.
The Government wants to open up parts of the city to private operators and the unions think the private operators will take the best routes, further squeezing Dublin Bus. The Government – rightly – approves the Ryanair model, which proves that if your get your fares right people will travel with you. This approach, the Government says, will actually provide more buses, more routes and ultimately, more jobs for bus drivers.
The drivers don’t see it this way. They see that the private operators will cherry pick the best routes and they – the public bus drivers -will be left driving for a company which will have smaller and smaller revenues because the profitable bus routes will be gone and they will be left dependent on a public subsidy.
In order to see how this might work and get a sense of both sides, I decided today to do a bit of a small, non-scientific experiment. I looked at two very different experiences where the public and private buses operate in my locality.
In Killiney, there is the public “Killiney bus”, as it’s known here. It is officially the 59 route, which goes from Dún Laoghaire to Killiney and then on to McIntosh Park in Pottery Road around by Deansgrange. This is a circuitous route that you couldn’t make up on acid, let alone sober trying to get directly from A to B.
But the route was planned according to the pattern of housing estates of the past from the council estates of Pottery Road to the three-bed semis of Glenageary, the corporation “buildings’ in Glasthule, the haughty mansions of Killiney and the two-up/two-downs of backstreet Dún Laoghaire. This is what a public route looks like.
In contrast, you have also the Aircoach to the airport, which leaves Killiney Castle Hotel and heads into town directly. I will be getting it later today; it’s a great service, beats driving and at €8 one-way is so much cheaper than a taxi. I get it regularly and it’s always on time, usually quite full, but not so full that you can’t get a seat, the wifi works and if you are prepared to chill out for an hour, it’s undoubtedly the most civilized way of getting to the terminal.
My experiment started earlier yesterday, when I got the 59 to Dún Laoghaire from Killiney village. It was a bit late: it was supposed to be there at 12.15 and came in at 12.27, but as it was a lovely day and the view from the bus stop to the Sugarloaf was beautiful, a little wait was no hassle. Although why a bus at midday in the suburbs should be late is open to question. There was only one other passenger on the double-decker bus. It is also expensive. At €2.55 for the 4km to Dún Laoghaire, compared with €8 for the 25k to the airport on the private bus, there is something wrong with the pricing structure on the public bus.
The bus itself was new, had working wifi, was very clean and the driver was – as almost always – good humoured. Tragically, only five people got on the bus from Killiney to Dún Laoghaire – all were over 65 and therefore on the bus pass. This means that the only revenue the bus received on this trip was my €2.55. The private operator would rightly scrap this route. Why would a profit-driven company keep it?
In contrast, the Aircoach makes decent money by keeping fares low and operating on a route where there is constant all-day traffic.
This anomaly is what the workers at Dublin Bus feel. If they are left with the 59-style routes, which are the legacy of past patterns of housing, before we saw mass suburban car ownership, they will be attached to the carcass of a dying animal.
Is it any surprise that they are up in arms?
My worst nightmare, sitting next to a pervert on a bus. Smelling womens cheap perfume. Near the sick fuck who doesnt cover his mouth when he coughs. Youd have to be desparate to mingle with these low class citizens. Id walk first.
Hi David
Great reflections on 46a. I was a bus conductor early 80s on the route and Mounttown was one of the most dangerous areas. Friday / Saturday nights fares could not be collected. Favourite missiles used against conductors were batteries. The only way to control potential violence was to drive as quickly as possible to keep potential troublemakers seated. They alighted at Mounttown and sighs of relief abounded, not least amongst other passengers….
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‘The drivers don’t see it this way. They see that the private operators will cherry pick the best routes and they – the public bus drivers -will be left driving for a company which will have smaller and smaller revenues because the profitable bus routes will be gone and they will be left dependent on a public subsidy.’ Dublin bus drivers are free to leave Dublin Bus and join the new private operators if they wish too. What’s the problem? Oh, wait, maybe they won’t get all that overtime, or their performance on the bus will be monitored, or they’ll… Read more »
An under performing route is an under performing route. It is noble that we believe that the state should fund such bus services, but it is doing so at a loss, and who is covering that loss, you and me, the tax payer. If you want to look at a corollary look at the railways of Ireland, once upon a time Ireland had the most railways per acre in the world, then the 50s and 60s came along and most of the lines were closed due to massive inefficiencies of operation, ironically due to the rise of buses which were… Read more »
I’m a 20 min walk from the luas and find I actually get home quicker than using the 16 bus which is only 5 min walk from me! Every time Dublin Bus workers go on strike more people probably realise they’re better off using the luas- no wonder luas passenger numbers have out passed estimates despite being completely packed at rush hour. Out of the luas, rail and Dublin bus; DB will probably have less than 60% of those passengers when the luas extension is finished and that’s before the new and existing private routes are taken into account. With… Read more »
Decisions like those concerning bus routes, are a consequence of bailing out the banks and the bondholders and insurance companies. We are living in a world of consequences. All that pervasive piss-up culture that ran riot between 1998 and 2008 is now coming at a price. It was a supreme level of arrogance in our society that thought that we could get away with it. We spent wastefully. We pissed money down the drain literally. It was a moment of mindless euphoria. And it resulted in dire consequences. We did not ALL party. But enough of us is DID party,… Read more »
The biggest gap in public transport in Ireland is the need for the DART-U. This is a train from Connolly underneath the Liffey to Pearse and around to Heuston and Islandbridge. Cost : circa 3 Billion. A lot of money. But – cheaper than INBS and more expensive that bailing out EBS. Overall effect : reducing the fuel import bill in Ireland’s east region, massively. It is called “network externalities” I believe. When you have a system in place, that is available as a support for other parts of the system, the entire system works more efficiently. Unfortunately, we are… Read more »
Here is another subject with regard to economics. Rail freight. Every country has rail freight. But I suspect that Ireland’s rail freight business is under-utilized.
In particular questions must be asked about the rail freight potential between the Midlands and the South East [ Waterford Belview, Rosslare ].
I suspect that Irish Rail are not in the business of “looking for business”.
I am with David on this one, I think. I suppose he is defending insiders, but only in the outer circle as it were. The privatizers would, I assume, be further embedded. Privatizing may be all right in theory but I am very suspicious of it in practice. Hudson quoting Balzac warns that all the great fortunes originated in theft on a massive scale, and adds that this involves public assets. My old route to work was the 48A from Ballinteer. I used to cycle it but the inward journey was easy as it was all down hill while the… Read more »
Hi,
“In contrast, the Aircoach makes decent money by keeping fares low”
That’s incorrect. Keeping fares low drives sales and revenue. Money is accumulated by management (they manufacture sfa) by shafting Mustafa or Jamal or Piotr or whoever is driving the bus with a min wage zero hour contract and cut throat competition for the “job”.
The phrase “Arbeit macht Frei” comes to mind.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbeit_macht_frei
Transport in the Dublin region brings up a number of issues. 1. Why are these inefficient routes retained and why are so many of them in affluent areas and heavily subsidized by ordinary taxpayers? 2. Why are affluent suburbs in general so well served by public transport (ie. the Dart serving Howth to Greystones)? 3.If you live in Greystones/Howth and work in Dublin your transport costs are approx 12 to 20 Euro a WEEK net after tax relief if you buy an annual ticket. Great for the stockbrokers in the IFSC but a lot more expensive for plebs in commuter… Read more »
hi David.
This is a link to an add filmed on a bus encouraging members of the public to use the services of the financial regulator when confused about the various offerings from various financial institutions,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l74083zafAM
I was just wondering if we could ring the assho%e and ask him/her to explain why they are sitting on their fingers when the public is being massacred as explained by max keiser here:
{ 1. Why are these inefficient routes retained and why are so many of them in affluent areas and heavily subsidized by ordinary taxpayers? 2. Why are affluent suburbs in general so well served by public transport (ie. the Dart serving Howth to Greystones)? 3.If you live in Greystones/Howth and work in Dublin your transport costs are approx 12 to 20 Euro a WEEK net after tax relief if you buy an annual ticket. Great for the stockbrokers in the IFSC but a lot more expensive for plebs in commuter towns paying for cars/petrol/insurance/tax/tolls etc. probably costing approx 150 Euro… Read more »
Deco This is not rocket science. We’re Independent for some amount of years now so we can’t go on blaming our “colonial legacy”. But we have a habit of copying UK policy in lots of areas and changing the boilerplate slightly to make it “Oirish” and it’s not f**king working. This applies as much to our health services as our transport services. The German model works for transport. Look at how they modernised the old East German States to integrate them into their regional and nation system. They know how to run a transport system so why not copy a… Read more »
The essential democracy of a public bus commute would be the fact that the company was owned by those who worked it among other aspects perhaps? With regards to the belief that the better the public transport, the better the city I would guess that on the list of priorities of those living in the city and who would desire to see the city improved this is something of a lower priority –but this is only my opinion. Now as regards the Government’s plans to privatize parts of Dublin’s bus service and returning to the theme of democracy, I ask,… Read more »