As of July 26th, the new Route 10A has surfaced, operating between Phoenix Park and Stillorgan Shopping Centre. How marvelous...Dublin Bus knows just how and where to spend capital monies, don't they...???
BUSRAGE Discussions » Timetables and Routes
Now Route 10A—are we to drown in alpha suffixes again?!?
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Posted 6 years ago #
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Phoenix Park and Stillorgan Shopping Centre??!! I don't know what to say, they want to put the fares up again, and this is what they spend our money on? How about improving some of the orbital routes, such as the 75 or 17?
I really don't see the need for this at all, instead of having this new route, DB could introduce an effective integrated ticketting system (like the "transfer" type tickets used in many cities around the globe), this would allow people to use the 46A and then transfer to a 10 at Belfield.
Why they feel the need for this new route is beyond me, anybody care to defend it?
Posted 6 years ago # -
"Why they feel the need for this new route is beyond me, anybody care to defend it?"OK, I can't/won't defend it, but I *can* give you the inside info on why this route has come to be.
If you look at the timetable btw, you'll see it's not so much a new route, but just a few journeys to and from Stillorgan in the morning peak only.
Now, the reason for the service:
Our story starts in 1999, when Ireland was drowning in money, and Mary O'Rourke was giving fistfulls of it to CIE to upgrade and improve the fleets. That year Dublin got it's last batch of non-lowfloor double-deckers - 195 buses, of which about a third were extra, to increase the fleet size.
(to digress for a moment, CIE took a lot of flack for buying these buses and not lowfloors in '99, but the fact was that none of the 3 major manufacturers who had products on the market would sell them to DB that year, as they had a huge backlog of orders for London. DB couldn't wait, as most of the funding had to be spent in that financial year or be lost. The delay was put to good use, as they borrowed two of each type from the manufacturers, and put them into service on test, thus getting some good experience, and ensuring that they chose the best of the three types in the end, the Volvo B7TL).
At the same time some fleets in the UK were experimenting with a new generation of articulated "bendi-buses", and DB borrowed one from Manchester, to show to the CIR Board and the Minister. They were impressed - it was all shiny and nice and had a large lowfloor area.
For the extra buses in the 1999 order, a new type of operation, known as a "euro duty" came into being. Euros were used to increase capacity in the peak hours. Special staff were recruited, and staff and buses worked split shifts - 3 or four hours in the morning, idle during the day, then three or four hours in the evening. At the time it made sense and was a good way to recruit extra staff (when staff were hard to find) - people who might not normally take a bus driving job would do euro work, as they were on standard Monday to Friday shifts, with no night work.
For 2000, Dublin Bus was allowed buy masses of new buses again - 185 of the new lowfloor double-deckers that they had trialled the year before, 20 small single-deckers, and 20 new bendi-buses. They bought the bendi-buses (hereafter we shall call them the artics to keep it short) simply because they could. No one in Dublin Bus actually had any idea what they would use them for, and there was no plan. They just looked really cool, they were a nice toy, and Mary was giving them anything they wanted.
When the artics were delivered in late 2000, they sat in Broadstone depot for nearly 6 months while the company tried to decide what to do with them.
They eventually started to trickle out into service in March of 2001, on "euro" duties, meaning that they only worked peak hours Mon-Fri. They tried them on the 90 for a while, they invented some new routes specifically to put them on (the 127 and 129, the 65C and 39B). I know this sounds a bit Alice In Wonderland, but believe me, you couldn't make this stuff up if you tried.
The 65C was a wonderful service. It was timetabled to run in the morning and afternoon, but only ever ran in the morning, and if you saw one in the afternoon, it wasn't at the right time. The route was officially quietly cancelled early this year, but *kept running* for several months afterwards!!! To this day there are still some stops with 65C timetables on them!
Latterly, they discovered that the artics were great for clearing the crowds on the Stillorgan QBC, so they stuck on loads of unscheduled extra workings on the 46C using the artics, morning and evening.
Anyway, things have become tighter now, there is not so much money around, and the company has woken up to the fact that they have new and nearly new buses sitting around idle for most of the day, and all weekend. (As someone pointed out to me, putting lowfloor buses on euro duties is a silly move, because they are out only in the peaks - exactly when disability passes are NOT valid for travel! )
It turns out the artics were doing only about 10,000 miles per year (about a quarter of the normal average mileage of a city bus) and so they decided to transfer them to normal, 7 days a week, all-day working.
They eventually decided on the 10 as being the best route for these vehicles, and as and from this Monday morning, the 10 is now operated by the entire artic fleet, plus the odd double-decker as an extra. They still wanted to clear the crowds on the Stillorgan QBC though, so they invented the 10A to/from Stillorgan in the morning peak, so that these buses would be able to work along the corridor - yet another new route created specifically for these buses.
And what of the 90A, the 127 and 129 and the 39B, those other routes created for the artics? They all have double-deckers on them now, and older non-lowfloor ones at that!
So there you have the reason for the 10A.
Like much in the history of Dublin Bus, it makes little sense, but is neccessary in order to justify the money that was spent . . . :)
Steve
[posted by: Steve O'Shea]Posted 6 years ago #
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