College Green, Dublin 2
Just last week it was announced that 17 bus routes from north and west Dublin are to be rerouted away from College Green.
These would be the unloved, uncool buses that get most people – especially most working-class and lower-middle-class people – into and out of the city centre.
The Luas is beautiful and the Dart runs along some of the loveliest urban coastline in Europe.
But 61 per cent of all public-transport trips taken into Dublin city centre are by bus. Dublin Bus carried 140 million passengers last year, and about 85 million of them went through College Green.
But they’re not cool people; they are disproportionally less affluent. They are also disproportionally less likely to have cars, which means, ironically, that they don’t need to be offered an attractive alternative to the car.
For working-class commuters it’s a long and winding road (Fintan O’Toole, Irish Times)
Rollingnews
.
Those bus routes should have been removed from College Green long before the Luas even existed.
Oh fupp off O’Toole, you pompous patronising old windbag. Everything is always about class warfare with him.
“Dublin Bus carried 140 million passengers last year, and about 85 million of them went through College Green”
The fact that well-over half of all bus routes on a busy network go through College Green, an already choked thoroughfare with loads of traffic lights, and which now has a Luas line running through it, shows that some sort of rejigging of DBs routes through the centre needed to take place.
“Dublin Bus carried 140 million passengers last year, and about 85 million of them went through College Green.
This is not credible.
85 million is an average of 233,500 per operating day.
A double decker bus carries 92 passengers maximum including standing (correct me if I am wrong). So 2,540 full buses per day.
Dublin Bus operates about 18 hours per day. So an average of 141 full double decker buses through College Green every hour of operation. Or one every 50 seconds in each direction. This is not credible. The frequency is not this high at off-peak times, and many buses pass through with lots of seating room.
That was the first thing that struck me. 60% of all journeys, at all times, across the whole network, through College Green? That’s a load of cobblers’ awls.
TIL “load of cobblers’ is cockney rhyming slang!
“cobblers’ awls” == “Balls”
+1 Rob. Well said.
Measured commentary as usual there Rob
Lots of nonsense being written about this including claims “buses are being banned from the city centre”. No they aren’t.
Jaysus, O’Toole, getting pretty defensive there over the buses?! What Rob_G said above – College Green is/was a clusterfupp of traffic and it’s going to smooth things out for the other zillions of vehicles across the city centre by rerouting the buses. Nothing to do with class. Literally everyone uses the bus. Jeepers.
I beg your puttance, I managed to live in Dublin for 6 years without taking ‘de bus’.
On occasion I took a tram or dart but mostly I used taxis if not driving.
That said, I’m all for smacking a congestion charge on cars, then even more people would get the bus and I could drive into the city Centre quickly paying my tree-fiddy, or whatever the commensurate sum for a prole bypass.
Tolls are a great way to keep the roads clear for people who get up early in the morning
Cool story, bro.
That bike lane on the right of the pic, which runs along outside the bank is lethal. A pedestrian is going to be killed there if its not changed.
I suggest Fintan takes a trip with the cool people on the beautiful Luas red line once in a while
The re-routing of buses has less to do with class warfare and more to do with the impossibility of re-routing a freshly laid Luas line
Driving out of town there a few weeks ago, they’ve made a balls of traffic along the quays.. extra bus lane – which was empty. And normal traffic reduced to one lane. Clowns. It was a mess.
The new lane layout on the north quays is bonkers. The far left bus lane just suddenly stops, so all the buses in that lane get stuck trying to get into the lane beside it – or they just don’t bother with using it at all, so it’s wasted. Cars have to drive in the outermost lane and then they have a tiny window of time in which to cut across two bus lanes if they need to turn left. It’s absolutely dreadful design.
Yeah..I couldn’t make head nor tail of where the fupp I was supposed to be driving. I was driving along in the bus lane anyway for a while coz I just didn’t have an hour and a half to spare.
They’ve made an absolute hames of it there.
It’s supposed to be empty so buses don’t have to stop.
Grasping a bit there Fintan me auld flower.
Its like working people don’t get the luas? Luas from broombridge is cheaper than the 122 to go to oconnell street.
Fintan is correct! (forget about the class warfare). DCC and their joke traffic engineers by prioritising the Luas made a total cluster thingy of College Green and city centre traffic. Are they on the Luas payroll? Brown paper bags? Dublin Bus carries a vastly greater amount of commuters than Luas and should be prioritised over the Luas any day. Discommoding bus users whilst rerouting buses onto adjacent congested city streets is a total and utter farce.
+1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaSi2Z74Ou8
In unrelated news: I’m glad Leo’s campaign against people who defraud the social welfare is bearing fruit –
https://www.rte.ie/news/courts/2018/0129/936788-music-teacher-welfare-fraud/
If you’re going to bring up something completely unrelated then at least try to get the basics right.
DEASP inspectors began to investigate the teacher in 2015, Leo became minister of DEASP in 2016.
Plus: https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/ireland/welfare-cheats-campaign-was-a-mistake-817630.html
Rob G, from your link
Investigators from the Department of Social Protection said it was important to remember that the majority of people claiming welfare were doing so legitimately.
Indeed yes.
I thought everyone was broadly in favour of social welfare payments being made to people who needed and were entitled to them, and against people who were obtaining money from the social welfare through fraudulent means, but when I said as much in the comments section of this site, everyone was lining up to argue with me…
That’s not what happened.
In your unrelated comment above you attempted to link Leo’s “Welfare Cheats” campaign to the conviction of the teacher who committed welfare fraud. However, in your haste to toast Leo, you failed to realise that the investigation was in train long before he became minister and launched his “Welfare Cheats” campaign (since described by the Sec Gen of DEASP as “a mistake”).
You got it wrong fanboy
so you have to wonder between the costs of the investigation and prosecution etc
did they get to break even at all
yer man should get Revenue type interest and penalties on top of the full sum
Ok, to clarify: I am glad that the DEASP, before, during, and after it was under Leo’s purview, are prosecuting those who fraudulently claim SW payments.
The DEASP might think that the campaign was a mistake, but I still think it was a good idea.
@ Frilly – even if criminal prosecutions end up costing money, I still think it is a good idea if they punish the guilty and discourage others from committing the same crime.
“yer man should get Revenue type interest and penalties on top of the full sum”
– agreed
How about that sharp 90 degree turn on the contraflow cycle lane? That’s safe.
When those uncool ppl stop voting for FF FG & LAB Maybe something will change, maybe
bullseye. And here it is, straight from the horses mouth:
https://beta.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/dail/2017-05-10/30/ – Dublin Transport: Motion [Private Members]
“Government has completely failed to mobilise additional investment in transport infrastructure available under the European Fund for Strategic Investment (EFSI), and of the EFSI transactions within the European Union, 6 per cent are in the transport sector, yet in Ireland there has not been a single transport project put forward by the Government to the European Investment Bank (EIB) under the €500 billion funding stream; and
— that the decision to cancel the DART Underground project, described by the National Transport Authority as ‘the missing link’ in Ireland’s rail infrastructure, was short-sighted and a costly set-back for the liveability of the city, while the only large transport infrastructure contained in the Government’s Capital Plan, ‘the optimised Metro North’ proposal, could be fundamentally lacking capacity as it was recommended on the basis of reduced employment growth and passenger demand projections in 2013, which are no longer accurate; “