After weeks of misinformation and political pressure, NTA cancels 24-hour ‘Christmas buses’ as E-Spine delayed until after election

by Joecalone

21 comments

  1. NIMBYism and parish-pump politics ruining the city once again. Nearly all the Dublin North West candidates are at it.

  4. The PDs will have to explain this one or they are going to lose some preferences.

  5. I genuinely don’t understand what the election has to do with it if the plans are ready to be implemented?

  6. People really hate going from a direct route to having to change. It adds time, you get cold and wet. All the moreso if the changeover is somewhere grim like Parnell Sq. 

    They’ve got to get better at selling changeovers to people. They need to actually convince them they’ll be better off. 

  7. So long as the buses are as unreliable as they are (and since they don’t plan on building real priority, they will be), interconnection is a non-starter. A bus that isn’t coming when I’m leaving the house is… tolerable. I can see it on the GPS, so when it actually exists, I can go to the stop and catch it. If it’s a direct bus, it’ll eventually get me where I need to be.

    Trying to take more than 1 bus, when the connecting bus could be a 20 minute wait, or not come at all is a disaster. Passengers stranded somewhere in the city you don’t want to be. Nobody but a masochist is going to leave the car at home for that.

    I got downvoted in /r/dublin on the other thread about this, because redditors love this watered down bullshit plan, but people aren’t crying foul over nothing. For many areas, it’s a huge downgrade in connectivity for… what exactly. Certainly not a more reliable bus system. Certainly not a more efficient bus system, by now it’s very obvious that the prerequisite bus lane priority doesn’t and won’t exist to favour parking and gardens. So the entire fucking plan is an exercise in futility. Routing all the “spines” to the quays is dreadful too. The quays are unsafe, threatening, dingy, and with our world class injection centre about to go in, it’ll likely get worse soon.

    The bus system has never made so many headlines for poor performance as the past 2 years, while the greens are doing a victory lap over their “wins” on transport.

  10. Fucking hell. Can they not just fucking do it. Christ almighty, 145 should have been a 24 hour service year ago. This shit is infuriating.

  11. The shyte that’s on some FB pages about the 46A. Complete NIMBYs who probably haven’t been on the bus since smoking was banned from upstairs. Whinging about the “disappearance” of the bus.

  12. As far as I can tell, the concerns about the 11 bus are mostly a complete misunderstanding. It’s probably about 30 people who’d be affected, and even then, they’d actually be fine.

    It’s being renamed to 19, and also extended to the airport. I used to live at the end of the 11 terminus and seriously, very few people stay on the bus passt Ballymun Rd.

    I’ve been seriously disillusioned by politicians who are happy to play up misunderstandings for election advantage. 

  13. Hopefully the 145 gets a replacement in that time so UCD students don’t have to add another half an hour on to an already ridiculous commute time

  14. Was gonna give a high preference vote to the soc dems but won’t be now. I’ll be letting them know exactly why too

    Holding the city to ransom over a vocal misinformed minority in one constituency is absurd. Gary Gannon doesn’t care, because his local bunch will still vote for him. But in doing so he has cost the party my vote elsewhere. Hopefully others follow so we can make a dent in this pointless nimbyism

  15. I don’t agree with the new “spine” system. Nobody wants to give up a direct bus route to have to stand out in the cold and wet and pray their other bus shows up and isn’t full. A massive pain and not exactly equitable for older and less mobile bus users.

  16. Please don’t drink drive this Christmas. The government.

    Yea grand, we’ll just use public transport. The public.

    Eh, well no, yous won’t. We cancelled that. The government.

    What The fuck? The public.

  17. The postponing of this spine actually removes a local route that is meant to serve loads of new builds. This and the removal of the 24 hour buses just before Christmas? Explain that to me

  18. FFS I was depending on this change for work. This fucking country

  19. The new system isn’t perfect but the old one isn’t either. The new one is just higher frequency and 24 hour, which is nice.

  20. I was looking forward to a cheaper way home from the pub over Christmas… Nimbys paralysing all and any progress as usual.

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