I’m convinced that you have to actually be going out of your way to make it this bad…
Two German medical professionals have moved into the apartment below me this past week. They’re both doing some exchange programme and are hoping to be doctors one day but our transportation services and infrastructure has left both of them absolutely bewildered. We’re only 5km from the hospital but I told them if they’re starting at 9am then they’d want to be leaving the apartment around 7am at least because the ESRI has stated that Irish people are some of the earliest risers in Europe because our public services are so unreliable. I tell them to look on Google for more reliable times as the Dublin Bus App is not accurate. They ask me why this is and I tell them that Dublin Bus (as well as TFI) themselves have informed the public that it’s not reliable. They look at each and naively inquire as to why an organisation would announce that its own product is unreliable. All I can do is shrug and move on..
So along comes the morning and they check Google – it says the bus is delayed 8 minutes. Not to be caught off-guard they leave regardless but as soon as they’re outside the front door the bus is pulling away from the bus stop. Surely that must have been the earlier one, right? Nope. The electronic schedule board at the bus stop states that the next bus will be along in 16 minutes. Fair enough. Eventually, it counts down…5 minutes, 4 minutes, 3 minutes, 2 minutes, 1 minute…Grand. But then, strangely, it starts to count back up again! It goes from 1 minute, to 2 minutes, to 3 minutes and all the way up to 5 minutes before it starts counting down again. Finally, it reaches 1 minute-to-go, and then “Due”. Fantastic. But no, the bus completely disappears off the face of the earth. Not a single trace of it – one of the dreaded ghost busses; a no-show. The electronic board states the next bus is in 10 minutes. Fuck sake.
The bus stop is getting busy now but after 10 minutes along comes the bus. The driver doesn’t even acknowledge the people at the bus stop as he drives past. There is now such a back-log of people that the bus cannot fit any more inside. Another 12 minutes for the next bus…
After 12 minutes along comes not one but two busses right behind each other (they pity the poor bastard that needs to wait 45 minutes for the next one because the busses won’t spread out). Everything is looking up until they realise that there aren’t many bus lanes. They may only be travelling 5km but they’re moving at a speed of 4 km-an-hour as they’re stuck bumper-to-bumper behind private vehicles and moving at a snails pace (it would literally be fast walking). They arrive at ten minutes to nine – nearly 2 hours spent trying to go 5km!
I find myself in a similar situation and know friends who had to turn down career opportunities as a result of such poor public services. A quick Google search tells me that it will take me the [best part of 2 hours to travel 12km](https://i.imgur.com/s01jgUs.jpeg) from Tallaght to Dun Laoghaire. I’m not having a go at any one party but how is it that one of the wealthiest countries in the world; a first world country with a surplus of 8 billion euro, finds itself so utterly incapable of providing for its taxpaying citizens the most basic of public services?
by thunderingcunt1
47 comments
Ask Eamon.
Bikes would solve this
Technically those 2 Germans aren’t tax paying citizens. /s
And doesn’t the 75 go from The Square to Dun Laoghaire dart station in about 70 minutes?
Cycling 5km takes about 15 minutes. Good for your health, the environment, your pocket and your time management. I’d assume the Germans would be into this.
Money is shite for bus drivers.
Used to be a great job. But not so much anymore.
They’ve introduced loads of new routes but appear unable to staff them.
Need an underground but are gonna spend billions connecting to the airport rather than the suburbs and through town.
I don’t get the bus anymore, I did up until Covid. I do still irregularly though.
The 11, 4, 9, 13, N4, 155
I’ve never experienced a ghost bus. Never found the timer to be wrong. I’ve always found the bus service to be great in Dublin. If there were less cars on the road, I might still get the bus everyday.
Majority of the countries problems can be traced back to lack of accountability, on local and national levels. From housing, health care, infrastructure, childrens hospital… who has ever had to stand down on the back of the calamity that they’ve got themselves into.
Google ‘electric bus charging ports & planning permission’. That alone sums up the doom loop we’re in
Probably because whenever anyone protests anything that isnt related to some Instagram cause-du-jour you all get catty and mock them for it
Our infrastructure is shit because of us. Any time changes and improvements are proposed you have a bunch of NIMBY cunts making noise about it, and unfortunately they’re typically active voters so the local politicians listen to them.
Those in favour of the changes are rarely as vocal.
Want to make changes or improvements within public services? Unions and older staff resist everything, they’re comfortable with their status quo and won’t want things being shaken up.
I’ve been living in Dublin for 15 years and never had difficulty with commuting. I must be the luckiest person in Dublin or something.
Tell your German friends to get bikes. Avoid this shit show completely.
I feel the pain. If it says 10 mins on the sign… I walk. And as an experiment, Ive walked the bus route a few times. Bus has never ever caught up with me over a 40 min walk.
Also love the TFI app and live depatures webpage. Especially early in the morning. Its great being stuck on 5 min, for 5 mins, then getting (*scheduled*) and cancelled
I totally feel your pain. I used to have a 10km commute from Northside Dublin to Southside Dublin, and I’d have to leave at 7 to be in for 9, and that’s if the buses showed up! I did cycle for a while, but it felt very dangerous and also not idea while it’s pissing rain. Wouldn’t get back till almost 7pm as well. Genuinely was miserable, I was wrecked all the time. 90 min fares weren’t a thing at the time so I was paying €10 a day. Crazy.
We are wealthy but spend it all on health and welfare (not that we get a good health system for the money). Spending on services and infrastructure doesn’t exist.
That’s what we chose so to answer your question, we are at fault.
You’re expecting a bit much. Efficient buses basic?
Eh, that 8 billion is not for spending on the common folk, it’s just there to make the government look like their doing a bang up job, and if they were to get into Europe, they could get them that money there as well.
The general point you make is definitely valid but there is no reason to leave 2 hours early for a three mile commute. Cycle it in 15 mins or walk in 45 and hop on a bus for part if it comes.
For why we can’t make buses more reliable it’s because we can’t do the most effective thing to make them more reliable without people throwing a fit. That being take cars off the road.
The demand is that we’ve got to make buses more reliable before we can make them reliable then we’ll do the changes that make them reliable. So an unsolvable problem.
The same 2 parties have been in power for over 100 years, it’s complacency. Why would they invest in it if they still get in office without it
We spent more on refugees than public transport
Promotion in the public service is completely dependent on interview performance so the people who are promoted are often glib, lazy wasters who know how to play the system. There is no benefit to hard work. Everyone gets the increment and your performance is never rewarded with promotion. Many of the managers are completely superfluous. The lower grades do all the work which is then rubber stamped by upper management who take the credit. The same grades write the speeches and policies for the politicians who are basically human puppets who need a speech written for every supermarket, creche or shed opening. The two main parties are riddled with careerist crooks at every level. No surprise they aren’t doing anything well except enriching themselves and their cronies.
My guess is that it’s a generational divide.
Politicians and older people (50+), who ran Ireland for decades, looked to the US as the richest country in the world, often visited, had relatives there. Many people had the right aunt who came back to visit with amazing presents and lots of money.i
They looked to the US to emulate, so smaller government, lots of motorways, less investment in public services.
The younger generations, have a different expectation. They’ve been exposed to all of Europe because of Ryanair, and are more likely to have friends in Berlin than Boston. They expect good public transport and services.
As the older generation retire, I predict we’ll see a shift towards a more European model. That’s already happening right now and will continue.
Also, to be optimistic, there are signals to be cautiously optimistic about public transport in Ireland.
The formation of the National Transport Authority. Since the 80s public transport in Ireland was balkanised with fares, planning and general coordination broken apart. Since the NTA has been formed, it’s generally moving in a better direction with things being more coordinated and while not perfect, far better than before.
If you want to help this, then join groups like Irish Rail Users, and the Dublin/Cork/Galway Commuter Coalitions, as they’re campaigning to make things better.
Edit
Source: I’m a public transport campaigner for a few years and that’s my observation.
Realistically we are about 30 years behind every first world developed nation in all our services, education, hospital and transportation.
Look at the state of the N4 (4 fucking lanes)
the M50 isn’t even better.
It takes to fecking long to get things done.
It’s 5 km. Maybe use a bike.
This is such a perfect summation of how shit the situation is. And a few comments have touched on issues that contribute towards things being this shit, but I’ve concluded that Ireland is destined to always be shit in these types of things because people just accept mediocrity and half arsed results here. I think it’s also a mixture of some people never experiencing superior equivalents in countries that actually do things better which would increase awareness of how it doesn’t have to be this shit and difficult to do basic daily functions, and some people who just don’t care enough to complain and just try to get on with it. A lot of Irish people are too afraid to even complain if there are issues with their food in restaurants, just so meekly averse to even the most minor and basic – but completely understandable and normal – confrontation. So Ireland will continue on like this, forevermore. At best we will always be lagging behind our peer countries that actually are progressive and innovative and efficient and care about rules and doing things right, not only for their own individual experiences but for society as a whole, something our country filled with NIMBYs struggles with.
The children’s hospital and lack of metro or even just a Luas or train to the airport sums up Ireland’s attitude, it is the land of “ah sure be grand”. Rich on paper, poor in mentality and motivation.
Ireland is not as rich as it seems. Leprechaun economics, heard of it? Check Wikipedia. Ireland is an economic disaster waiting to happen.
incapable is the wrong word. they are perfectly capable of doing so but they simply choose not to. welcome to neoliberal governments.
in addition to that, there’s a horrible culture of NIMBY-ism in ireland that is holding us back tremendously. i really think the whole thing needs a serious overhaul. but then you run into the above problem of the government likely not choosing to do anything about that so we just end up a bit like an ouroboros made out of shit.
>How is a first world country with a surplus of 8 billion euro so utterly incapable of providing for its taxpaying citizens the most basic of public services?
For most of the history of the state we were a poor country. We really only have had motorways in recent decades.
Other first world countries have had a century and more to develop.
There is a new S8 bus, that goes between Tallaght to Dun Laoghaire. It replaces the 75/175 and looks to be more direct than the old bus.
https://transitapp.com/en/region/dublin/go-ahead-ireland/bus-s8
Politicians here do the bare minimum to make things easier for citizens, see the leap card fare changes. They’re welcome, but people wouldn’t care about leap card fare reductions if the transportation was more wide spread and accessible. But that’s all our government cares to do because it takes little to no effort and scores them brownie points for braindead voters who will hear them say how much they care about commuters in reducing the fares and then give them the number 1 next election. Which is all the politicians truly care about.
I wish people would cop on and see that this is all that happens time after time after time and they’re being played for fools by the governing parties. Meanwhile people get robbed with our taxation which gets pocketed or brown enveloped as a bribe, there’s no housing for anyone unless you’re in the top 10% or so of earners, social services are on a knife edge and our educated workers are emigrating as they feel abandoned.
Ireland is a country full of people and leaders who only give a shit about themselves and themselves alone, it’s the most “fuck you got mine” place in Europe. This mentality is rife across all sectors and serves as the go to explanation for so many of the country’s problems. I personally think this is also why it’s so hard for some people to make friends and form connections with others, people tend to view each other here in terms of what value you can directly add to someone else’s life and you are judged as such. If you don’t add value, you are dismissed. There’s no sense of national pride and willingness to improve the nation for all, it’s more “how can things improve for ME. Because that’s all that matters”.
Until it becomes trendy for people to give out about problems that have existed for decades that would help improve the nation, nothing will get done. Our politicians love clout so anything that gives them any and either makes them look good or garners them votes is all they care about. Expect the spin to start soon ahead of any election this year or next year, even from politicians you actually like. They think they’re smarter and better than the people, and this belief is reaffirmed every time they get voted back in. So learn to vote correctly if you don’t know already (ie give each candidate a number), trust no politician especially one you see in the news routinely (clout chasers) and above all else just hope for the best. I’m personally so jaded so I don’t expect things to improve, I used to have travel on public transport for 2 hours just to go 40km and that situation hasn’t improved. We’re lead by donkeys.
Not incapable. Unwilling.
We built homes in the worst of times, and communities and facilities.
Then those homes became “assets”, and FF blew up the economy with an overreliance on a resulting property whose bursting cost us all a decade of our lives, if not worse.
Labour thought subsidising private landlords with HAP would fix the emerging problem of affordability. FG refused to build at all because their brightest idea is Nintendo-style artificial scarcity and inflation.
Right-wing parties will do right-wing economics for right-wing voters, and the benefits of others in their class, of course.
They don’t care about us, our needs or our lives. Seeking to live a life with dignity, purpose or fulfilment in a well-resourced and equal society is an impediment to market ideology and the enrichment of its adherents and true believers.
Stop voting FF, FG, Labour, Green. Make sure SF, SocDems and others are held to account. Join your trade or tenant’s union, get active in your community, whatever your hobby, interest or passion.
Why is your screenshot not a recent one? The buses have changed since, more frequent and more direct
It’s infuriating. Some of the poorest countries in the E.U have better infrastructure and public transport than us. Ireland needs to start heavily investing in infrastructure but they just keep spending the money on extra social welfare payments.
Well there is a number of reasons but three main ones
A) Nimbyism. A lot of countries don’t suffer this. We do. Our planning system is fundamentally flawed and results in frivolous objections delaying projects and inflating their costs. Even a single reasonable rejection shouldn’t hold a project hostage that is for the greater good. We need to remove this from our planning system entirely.
B) Expertise. We contact everything. It costs a fortune and results in penny pinching and by the letter projects. Other countries have dedicated , qualified public servants who are project managers for infrastructure and effectively the contracts for for building. We have no knowledge so we have to contract everything. We then appoint boards to oversee but even with the best intentions they don’t have the skillets or expertise and have too much pressure to be precise on tax payer expenditure. See children’s hospital for recent example of this calamity.
C) Land hoarding paydays. Many countries have easy compulsion orders for the sale of land where the state requires it for the greater good. We don’t. We end up paying fortunes to farmers or land speculators , or having to complicate a project at great expense to go around this problem. See Swords Metro for this example.
Effectively it needs a government at the start of their term to overhaul this and spend four years building this area up with legislation changes, department building and good hiring.
But because of politics is short sighted and we have no real policies that go into length, these changes likely won’t ever happen
As a Finn from Helsinki I was also quite confused with the busses in Dublin (ours just work even in snow, or at least you’ll get info in the app and at the stop). Often they just never come or drive by without stopping. After a year here I usually just walk if it’s not along the tracks and is less than 5km.
With the trains it’s pretty absurd that you have to go to Twitter to get updates. Lately without logging into Twitter you’ll see updates from 9 months ago.
> But no, the bus completely disappears off the face of the earth. Not a single trace of it – one of the dreaded ghost busses; a no-show. The electronic board states the next bus is in 10 minutes. Fuck sake.
yep this is equal to some sort of mental torture
5kms? you’d be there by taking a bicycle in 10-15 minutes tops
Half of Dublin Bus Service was privatised, Transport for Ireland. The privatisation model is to give the worst possible service at the highest possible cost, there is also a desire to run down the public bus service so the rest of it is privatised.
The best option in theses environment conscious times would be to have a nationalised public transportation services that run both day and night meetings the demands of the public . But Minister for Transport Eamon Ryan, leader of the Greens, “Mr Climate change” said it would cause “unnecessary journeys”. He’s a useless neoliberal shite that has 8 advisers and is going to get his party wiped out in the next election!
You’re talking about a country that built a a new bridge across the Liffey, and then lost the remote for 4 years so it couldn’t be opened, to only have a new remote commissioned for €1,800… a delay of 4 years… because of a lost remote. That’s what we’re dealing with here!!
FWIW a quick google search, found the S8 bus which goes from Tallaght to Dun Laoghaire, and takes an hour. Shows up on Google Maps if you search.
Also found this article announcing it, and it seems it’s a new route since Nov 26th 2023 so maybe that’s why your search didn’t find it.
https://oisinoconnor.com/bus-connects-sandyford/
Teta
We are the problem lets be honest, we say we want brilliant transport options but gripe and moan and block planning for such and drive our cars everywhere
Check out the s8,maybe it will take less time.
The DART was built in the 1980s, during a deep poverty era and even with the celtic tiger and now in 2024 with surplus money all they have added are couple of trams.
Just buy a car
Wait until they get to work. Then they’ll really see the shit show.
Governments role is to transfer your funds into the pockets of others. That’s it.
Ireland should be like a European version of Dubai with our relatively high personal taxes and overinflated corporation tax take. Ireland is a second world country in a lot of ways.
In my experience, Dublin Bus is generally very good for going into town say but trying to go across the city as you describe the services are much less frequent and take longer and more prone to delays. Like I’d honestly say you’re better off taking 2 busses for this commute via town as it’s much more reliable. The new TFI app is a bit glitchy but way more accurate than the old one btw you can now see the live location of the bus.