Strikes, congestion and delays - it's no surprise that so few people take the bus, writes Paul Cullen, Consumer Affairs Correspondent.
So, just another crazy week in Dublin's transport world. Most of us won't get on a bus for love or money, figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) appear to show, while thousands who do rely on the service are left stranded by a strike.
Just 6 per cent of Irish commuters take the bus to work, according to the CSO figures, while 57 per cent rely on their car for the daily journey. In Dublin, 14 per cent use the bus and 48 per cent drive, still an extraordinary inversion of the situation in most other European countries in which, typically, public transport accounts for about 80 per cent of commuting trips and the car is favoured by fewer than 20 per cent of travellers.
It's true that some of the passengers lost by Dublin Bus have migrated to shiny new public transport options such as Luas, but the figures still show a marked aversion to the humble bus, the workhorse of public transport in the capital. Dublin Bus has invested millions in a new fleet, launched new routes and extended many others as well as making its buses more accessible and attractive, yet it hasn't been able to shake off its dowdy and unreliable image.
So why are we so averse to travelling by bus? Strikes, now occurring at the rate of at least one a year, don't help. This week's dispute at the Harristown garage is typical of the "strike first, talk later" approach to industrial relations within the company. There was plenty of public sympathy among the general public for the unions' demand that drivers on two new cross-city routes be able to start and finish their shifts in the garage rather than in the city centre, but little support for the action taken.
MAYBE WE'RE JUSTobsessed with our cars? Not so, says Conor Faughnan, public affairs manager of AA Ireland: "We're often portrayed as having an irrational love of the car but I don't believe that. Car ownership here is lower than in many other European countries. The fundamental problem is the deficit in public transport and the lack of an integrated network. Dublin Bus is the workhorse of the system but even at its best it's bursting at the seams."
You might expect an AA representative to play down the influence of the car but Faughnan, to be fair, is a big supporter of funding for public transport. "Self-funding public transport is as logical as coin-operated street lighting," he remarks, before going on to describe Dublin Bus as "under-respected and under-funded".
The practical difficulties involved in travelling by bus are all too easy to see. They include: a lack of orbital and cross-city routes; a confusing and cumbersome ticketing system; the distance between the termini of different routes; and poorly maintained and often dirty buses and bus shelters.
Paddy Doherty, business development manager of Dublin Bus, points out that 30 per cent of routes actually cross the Liffey, but this includes routes that barely make it over the river, such as to a city-centre terminus such as Mountjoy Square.
Critics of Dublin Bus, such as Sean Murphy, policy director of businesses organisation Chambers Ireland, say we'll never see a significant improvement in bus services until there is competition. "The current dispute throws into relief an issue of national importance," says Murphy. "We've been talking about liberalising bus transport for years, yet there has been little progress."
Murphy faults Dublin Bus for referring to "passengers" rather than "clients". This, he says, betrays a mindset obsessed with the throughput of numbers rather than servicing the needs of clients. He points out that when Aircoach first offered private bus services to Dublin Airport, it had difficulty convincing people that its coaches were for ordinary bus passengers because they were in such good shape: "That speaks volumes about the condition of the buses people were used to."
The breaking up of state transport monopolies and their replacement by a patchwork quilt of private operators has a chequered history, particularly in the UK where many bus and rail services got worse rather than better. The other criticism of liberalisation is that the private sector is likely to cherrypick profitable routes and leave the rest for the State provider. Murphy, however, believes competition can be introduced in Dublin bus routes without cherrypicking or unnecessary duplication. "You just tell an operator to provide buses on a route from, say, 6am to 1am the next day at a specified frequency. An operator who fails to keep to this loses its licence."
YET, THE BIGGESTproblem facing Dublin's buses is the same problem faced by cars - congestion. The short trip from Parnell Square to O'Connell Bridge can take anything from 10 minutes to 45 minutes, depending on the traffic at the time. Doherty says such variations make it very difficult for Dublin Bus to schedule routes with any reliability, and speeds as low as 6 km/hour are not sustainable for public transport. The company reckons congestion costs it €60 million a year.
Drivers have also noticed that periods of heavy congestion, previously confined to the pre-Christmas season, are now happening throughout the year. Last April, for example, was marked by lovely weather - and unremitting traffic jams.
The reliability problem gets worse as routes lengthen in order to reach people living ever further away from the city centre, and to meet the need for cross-city routes. Fast-growing areas such as the "north fringe" (which stretches from Baldoyle to Ballymun), Swords, Lucan and Ballycullen are all 10 to 15 km away from the city centre.
Quality Bus Corridors (QBCs) were meant to be the answer to the congestion problem, but their introduction has been subject to delays. However, the two newest bus lanes, on the north quays and the Rock Road, have been credited with a 15-minute improvement in bus journey times. With more QBCs in the pipeline, including a number of orbital routes, Doherty says the emphasis will be on giving buses using the lane end-to-end priority for the entire route.
Dublin Bus gets about €65 million in State subvention each year, equivalent to 25 per cent of operating revenue. Up to 2000, the subvention was running at less than 4 per cent of revenue, but even the current figure is lower than in many other countries.
Some 50 of the 100 new buses delivered to Dublin Bus are now on the roads and another 25 are caught up in the current dispute. By the end of the year, Doherty says, 70 per cent of the fleet will be accessible to wheelchair users and buggies and further innovations have been introduced in the newest buses to make them more comfortable and accessible.
However, buses have their limits, as Faughnan points out. Internationally, light rail and underground systems are used as the means for transporting large number of passengers quickly in cities, with buses used to reach the parts other systems cannot reach. Ultimately, with the development of a metro in Dublin, this is the kind of model we will arrive at. Until then, however, buses will be the only show in large parts of Dublin city.
On time? If only we could tell
Although 50 of the 100 new buses delivered to Dublin Bus were this week on the roads, they might be of some comfort to passengers if they knew when the next bus was coming. Dublin Bus timetables still list the start time of a service, and approximate intervals, and leave passengers to guess the rest. Only a few stops are equipped with the kind of signs used by the Luas to tell how long it is to the next train, although the company is promising to revamp its passenger service information over the next year. Passengers trying to plan complex journeys across the capital will get little help from the clunky Dublin Bus website, on which some corporate information hasn't been updated since 2001. It reflects poorly on the company that far better maps and connection information is to be obtained from www.justroutes.com, for example, a new venture using Google Maps technology