Maybe all the money squirreled away from unclaimed change receipts on the buses could be used by Dublin Bus to pay out all these compensation claims. It’s not clear what route this happened on, maybe the 70N?
A man has secured €143,000 damages from the High Court after he had to have five toes amputated when a bus drove over his foot.
The action by Sean Horan (58), unemployed, McClean’s Court, The Coombe, Dublin, was against Dublin Bus arising out of the incident at Usher’s Quay, Dublin, on December 18th, 2003 as he was attempting to board a double decker bus.
Dublin Bus had denied negligence and also pleaded that Mr Horan had failed to remain in the designated bus queue.
Consultants continue to swallow up our transport budget
The RPA have published a report explaining why a line it is proposing would cost lots of money, require the purchase of 10 buildings and 150 gardens and wouldn’t make enough money to justify itself (their criteria, not mine). To make matter worse, it would mean the removal of the Rathfarnham Quality Bus Corridor.
It’s bad enough that we have a situation whereby there are two state transport companies who do not get on with each other, and have to run to the minister every time one wants to play with the other’s toys. In addition to this, the fact that the RPA are bleeding money away with report after report on Luas lines that simply have no chance at all of ever being built is ridiculous. Forget the fact that everyone seems to think it is a bad thing that a particular mode of public transport wouldn’t make any money (public transport is not there to make money!), how about we use the money spent on these reports to build some proper QBCs instead of proposing to remove them.
If these routes justify a Luas, surely a far cheaper alternative is a segregated or part-segregated bus lane (i.e. expanding and augmenting the already existing QBC), with Luas style frequency of service. It would be a damn sight cheaper and could be up and running in no time. Read the rest of this entry »
Noel Dempsey says he’s not sure, doesn’t know and remains to be convinced.
While appearing to make all the right noises to the media, there is something of the same old story when you actually take a look at the kind of things Minister for Transport, Noel Dempsey, is saying in relation to bus provision in Dublin, and public transport in general.
Speak with a member of the travelling masses and they will agree that it’s great that Dublin Bus are after getting some newer buses recently, but Seamus Public will also be keen to point out that he is still uncomfortably crammed onto the shiny new bus, staring at someones armpit the whole way to work. This, after probably waiting quite a bit too. And that’s assuming he can even get on a bus that isn’t completely rammed in the first place. Read the rest of this entry »
Some more detail on what we reported last week follows below. The nonsense of the Irish Government’s ill-conceived and over complicated integrated ticketing fiasco continues, with the solution to the delays now being to hire more consultants. Of course, why didn’t we think if it before!
The government plans to hire external consultants to speed up its long-delayed €50 million integrated ticketing system for public transport. The project is running four years late and €20 million over its original budget.
A report in today’s Sunday Business Post (below) gives some more information on the proposal that has been floating about recently on reducing private motor vehicles from the centre of Dublin. While this is obviously an attempt at kite flying, any plan to reduce cars from the city centre, increase space on the roads for buses and to provide more buses to use that space, sounds good to us. However, we are very, very, suspicious of plans to hand some Dublin Bus routes to private operators. What are the chances that parts of the plan drop off due to negative calls to Joe Duffy, while the privatisation element remains?
And while we’re at it, if some routes will be run by Dublin Bus and some by private operators then the introduction by Dublin Bus of smartcards means absolutely nothing, since only Dublin Bus and one private operator are equipped to take the tickets. As usual, the newspaper article below doesn’t mention this, merely reprinting whatever press release passed the newsdesk.
Even though an integrated system could be introduced tomorrow with the minimum of fuss and using current technologies, the powers that be are continuing to drag their heels. Even worse, it looks like we’ll be wasting money on more consultants.
TRANSLINK has defended its decision to refuse a woman who applied to be a bus driver on the grounds that she is deemed too fat.
The woman, who weighs around 12 stone, has the PSV licence required to drive a large vehicle and has spent 20 years driving buses in England.
When she responded to a Translink recruitment drive to increase the number of women bus drivers, the publicly-owned company told her that she had not been selected.
We were interviewed a couple of weeks back on Dublin City 103.2 FM, by “Good Morning Dublin” presenter Valerie Vetter. Issues touched on were integrated ticketing & transport modes, the petition and us pre-empting the announcement of the DTA bill. We even got to talk about Bertie filling his car with suspect boxes.
You can listen to the interview online now, using the player below.
An article has appeared on rte.ie, announcing the building of a “Luas bridge” between Hawkins Street on the southside of Dublin with (cough cough) Hawkins Street on the northside. The theory goes that this would carry the Luas between the red and green lines (aka Luas line BX).
Now, a bridge was announced previously for the Luas that would link Hawkins Street with Marlborough Street, which would be used to carry the Luas, however it has also been announced that construction of line BX will not start until 2013 at the very earliest, so what is this bridge really for? Read the rest of this entry »
