At about 8am on the day of Storm Bram’s arrival, a screen in the Dublin Bus central control room shows 67 per cent of the 1,000 or so buses across the city are operating on time.
A further 16 per cent are ahead of time, meaning customers arriving at their stop for their bus’s scheduled arrival could find it had already passed.
The remaining 17 per cent of buses are experiencing delays.
At this peak time, 16 controllers based at the Dublin Bus depot in Broadstone are in constant contact with drivers operating buses across the city.
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Each controller, all of whom are former bus drivers, oversees about 65 buses at one time.
Live footage from cameras along various routes plays from a screen near each workstation, showing significant congestion building at peak time as workers travel to the office..
Malfunctioning traffic lights are reported by a driver near Cork Street, which is then relayed by the controller to Dublin City Council.
Moments later, the camera showing immobile traffic due to the fault moves position, as council officials check for themselves.
Another screen shows a bus at a standstill on a gridlocked Church Street, with a controller remarking how it can sometimes take up to 45 minutes to get from Constitution Hill to the river Liffey during particularly bad traffic congestion on the route.
Pointing to these various “pinch points” which are at a standstill across the city, Dublin Bus spokesman Blake Boland says “things can really fall apart” at about 8.30am on typical midweek office days, particularly during the school run.
“Sometimes people can think that ‘Dublin Bus is letting me down here’, but they don’t realise the real reason that bus didn’t turn up. The congestion is killing us at times,” he says.
For the 33 per cent of buses that are operating ahead of time or are delayed on Tuesday morning due to factors within its control, Dublin Bus faces financial penalties from the National Transport Authority (NTA).
While controllers can fix the buses operating ahead of time by advising drivers to pause at some stops to get back on schedule, they say they cannot control delays due to congestion or other factors.
“The idea is to keep even headway, but people get on that can’t find the right change, or somebody’s Leap card isn’t credited, and all of a sudden that gap isn’t 10 minutes any more,” Boland says.
By 9am, the amount of delayed buses has more than doubled within the hour to 38 per cent. Just over half (53 per cent) of buses are running on time, while 9 per cent are running ahead.
Breakdowns, illnesses and cars left parked on bus lanes, requiring clamping and removal, also cause delays and disturbances.
Saturdays in particular can be challenging if protests are being held in the city centre.
While the right to protest is “really important”, “trying to get hundreds and thousands of buses through the city can be an absolute mess”, Boland says.
Incidents of antisocial behaviour, of which there were 1,053 last year, can also result in significant delays and cause “ghost buses” – buses that never arrive and ultimately vanish from the schedule.
For example, when a bus is damaged – such as its windows smashed by missiles being thrown – it is taken out of service.
If this cancellation is not swiftly fed into a system linked with Transport For Ireland’s TFI Live app, it is not reflected in the schedule, meaning those at bus stops can be left waiting for a bus that will never arrive.
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Noting that the correct procedure, which would see the system updated as “cancelled”, might sometimes not be followed in the control room, Gwen Morgan, director of service operations, acknowledges that Dublin Bus is “not perfect”.
“We’ve never been perfect, and we’ve never claimed to be perfect,” she says, adding that she can “only apologise” for ghost buses, which can also be caused by mid-trip breakdowns or driver illness.
“That’s on us, that’s our bad. That is not what we want for our customers.”
A new system, due to be introduced by the NTA next year, will allow for more “immediate” updates, she says, and it is hoped this will address the issue.
However, she says the vast majority of issues arise from the volume of traffic throughout the city centre.
While calling for congestion charges to discourage private cars from certain “pinch points” in the city, alongside effective policing of bus lanes, Morgan said ensuring the service consistently meets or exceeds standards set under its contract with the NTA has been “challenging”.
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“The number of passengers that we’re carrying is expanding, traffic is getting heavier, and speeds in the city are getting slower, so it becomes difficult to continuously offer that efficient mode of transport to people,” she says.
Public transport should be “looked upon as an equal or better alternative to getting into your car and driving, and that’s where it becomes challenging for us to offer that better alternative”, she adds.
“You’re really trying to entice people out of their private car, to get on a bus, and that reduces the number of cars on the road. Then we’ll have a better chance at succeeding in delivering that efficient mode of transport.”
