Madam, – Aidan Collins wonders (September 17th) why Dublin Bus does not operate the centre doors on its buses.
This issue has been knocked back and forth between the public, Dublin Bus and the drivers’ unions for at least two decades. At various times, it looked like a resolution was imminent.
Dublin Bus once even went so far as to widely circulate a leaflet entitled, if memory serves me, The Ins and Outs of a Dublin Bus, explaining to the public how, from a certain date, passengers would be required to exit via the centre doors. The date came and went, and the drivers continued to refuse to operate the centre doors.
It seems to have escaped Mr Collins’s attention that Dublin Bus, quite some time ago, came up with an innovative solution to the problem: since the year 2000, with a very small number of exceptions, it has purchased only buses without centre doors.
(The elimination of the centre doors was to compensate for the capacity loss suffered by the inclusion of wheelchair space in every bus purchased since 2000.)
With the eventual retirement of the pre-2000 fleet, there won’t be any centre doors to operate. Problem solved. – Yours, etc,