As for saturation, in respect to Celbridge, Dublin Bus (despite a population increase) haven’t added extra buses in about 10years. The last thing we needed was for Morton’s to stop.

The 25x with the sign via Griffeen Avenue, goes to Grange manor everytime and always leaves at 6pm on time!!

For your five minute walk to Ballsbridge, you must be flapping your wings!

When this walk was attempted, in the glorious Irish summer rain it took 25 minutes to my destination, I didn’t stop at the bridge.

No existing 25x compares to the evening journey home provided by the CL2. 25a /25x drivers do pick their own start times. “Via Griffeen Avenue” as a destination is optional, as from personal experience the drivers go their own way.

Not all passengers have the luxury of travelling light nor do we share the same level of fitness. With the CL I had a minimal distance to walk and no necessity to change busses.

Good luck in the “speed walking”!

You said the following:
“There is no direct link from Lucan to Ballsbridge, this ends with the demise of the CL2. Eight years after we’ve moved into Grange Manor Lucan we are still a fifteen/twenty minute walk from the nearest regular public bus service.”

Well I live in Grange manor also and bus service is brillant. Bus is 5 minute walk or less for the 25x which goes at 735, 745, 750, 755 and always on time and reliable. The 25a stop is only 10 mins away at finnstown and is very good for town too!

Also the 25x goes to baggot St, just by waterloo pub and thats a 5 min walk from there to Ballsbridge which i do every morning, so either you want everything handed to you on a plate or you just lazy!

Saint

All I can say is that Morton’s was friendly and reliable and I can not say the latter for other bus services in Celbridge.

The first thing is how Paul Morton and the other less well known Circle Line Bus interests appear to have misread the public mood.

I suspect there may have been an expectation of mass public outcry,particularly on the issue of Dublin Bus “Forcing” CLB off the road.

This outcry has not happened and the general tone of both media and general public conversation has been reasonable and levelheaded.

There is also a realization that the cessation of CLB services did not happen on a whim.
Given the administrative and operational restructuring of CLB last year,it would appear that a certain level of preparedness was in place to facilitate such a wind-up.

B Drivers comments re the competitive ethic are worth noting also as the supposed Dublin Bus campaign to run Mortons off the road was a very poor one indeed when compared with how the Big Boys operated in the aftermath of Bus deregulation in the UK (Ex London) scenario.

It can be argued that this post deregulation Competitive outburst alone totally eradicated any supposed benefits of the Free Market in Public Transport terms.
It can also be argued that Public Bus Services (EX London) have still not made up this lost ground in terms of operational or public appreciation matters.

It is apparent that there is quite a discerning travelling public here at present and most have had first hand experience of the UK Bus Scene and most certainly do NOT want us to trot down the “Competitive” road.

With certain high ranking members of the EU commission now making remarks regarding a “Two Speed Europe” being a post referendum option it may well turn out that we will be able to avail of a more realistic interpretation of this Competition Directive upon which Paul Morton had staked so much.

This was an anti-competition move

Frankly, you cannot compete when it comes to public transport; subvention is needed. Your “profit margin” on your busiest trips is what, about 3 per cent? and you make no money at all on off-peak trips.

And what DB routes did Circle Line have to compete with, directly? They’re blaming DB on their troubles, after all. Frankly, if “anti-competition” were the case, DB would have operated directly-parallel service with Circle Line and have “unfairly beaten” them out of the business. As Armitage pointed out, DB is not permitted to do anything of the sort.

(Where is the “pro-competition” thingy, anyway? I don’t see private companies trying to run existing frequent bus routes, e.g. on the 10, 16/16A, 46A, et cetera, competing with the existing DB trips.)

Ger said:

with the demise of the CL2 many former passegers are now being forced back into their cars

How many former passengers does this comprise?

All this Libertarian focus on “competition” meant, ultimately, that DB was excluded from exploring new route configurations and responding to customer demands (so a sense of apathy ends up pervading through all strata of the DB workforce/management).

Remember the explosion of service expansion in the early-mid 90s? What caused it to fizzle out? Advance news of the imposition of this “competition” ethos?

As far as service to/from Celbridge, I’m surprised that the 66B hasn’t been extended to Celbridge, beyond Barnhall/Hewlett-Packard. There are, though, two unusual trips, on Sunday in the 66 timetable and Monday to Friday in the 67/67A timetable, which show service from Maynooth in the early hours of the morning operating via Celbridge, Barnhall, Leixlip (and Dodsborough on the Sunday trip) into town. But those are small fish in this apparently large pond…

As far as the few “bad apples” in the shape of a few drivers go, they give the rest a bad name. There’s nothing worse than waiting an hour or so in the rain only to face a torrent of abuse from the driver as you ask why the bus was so late – they may be feeling frustrated due to being stuck in traffic for an hour but at least they were warm. Having said that we’ve come across plenty of decent ones out there, and many of them would be the first to agree with you (at least privately) that the, as you say, “F#$& You” attitude has no place in driving a bus.

As far as the currently timetabled services, one of the reasons the Dublin Bus service is so rubbish from West Lucan is because the Department of Transport won’t allow Dublin Bus to add new routes there or add more buses to existing routes.

At least that has been the case up until now, as the department say in these situations that to do so would undermine the private operator. Since the private operator has gone bust then maybe now they might think again.

As you say, the important point today is that there are local people crying out for a bus to take them to wherever they want to go, and the Department of Transport would be doing a great disservice to all concerned if another operator were not running those same routes as soon as possible.

When Noel Dempsey is writing his letter to Dublin Bus, maybe he could add a p.s. asking them to ramp up their service in that area as soon as possible.

Dublin Bus do not provide a reliabe or convenient service to West Lucan. Their staff seem to think that the timetable and routes are flexible, dependant on their humour. Any questioning of deviation from “start time” or route has been met by a “F#$& You” attitude.

There is no direct link from Lucan to Ballsbridge, this ends with the demise of the CL2. Eight years after we’ve moved into Grange Manor Lucan we are still a fifteen/twenty minute walk from the nearest regular public bus service.

Debate as long as you wish, but the demise of the Circle Line Bus will have serious effect on the quality of life for many commuters.