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Irish Rail Report

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F Great Eastern

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Supposed to be late 2017.

They've almost finished installing the tracks for the full route and there appears to be the beginnings of signal installation in some areas. However they still need to install the overhead lines and build the platforms for the stops and take delivery of the new longer trams to expand the fleet and obviously then test everything.
 
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Techniquest

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Excellent news, let's hope it opens on time as I have a feeling I know where next year's #TechsAntiFrothmas trip will be!
 

Hornet

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Perhaps I am wrong here, but the trams will have a dedicated lane and O'Connell Street will only have Northbound trams, the southbound will go down another street, a rare case of not shoving everything down O'Connell Street!

https://8fd89272520f28b59d77-37ddf8...Pack-Dawson-Northbound-Update-1-724x10241.jpg

A more detailed set of plans from the above (11 pages of GA's (General Arrangement Drawings))

https://8fd89272520f28b59d77-37ddf8.../LCC-Route-Pack-Dawson-Northbound-Update1.pdf

I did have a more detailed set somewhere but I cannot find them. They would be too Technical for many.
 
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F Great Eastern

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Just past through Dublin last night and noticed that at the airport Dublin Bus have rebranded their travel information desk as a "Travel and Bus Information" with no company logo to be seen or clear indication who is running it it appears to present itself as a proper travel information desk but instead is actually a commercial sales desk purely to promote Dublin Bus.

Of course, the advice given there is basically only involving Dublin Bus and Irish Rail and when I asked them a question yesterday to see what way they would direct me, they directed me to a long drawn out commute via their own transport companies when there was a direct bus from a private that operated very regular and ignored the tram (also not operated by them) as well. When I asked if there was another service I was told that they think the service "no longer operates."

It's funny how their strategy is, to people who are in Dublin, preserve our own brand at any cost to prevent a fully integrated system, whereas at the airport completely play down their own company name to appear as a generic body who is appearing to offering public assistance choosing the best service for their needs when in fact they don't. It's no wonder Irish transport is so messed up.
 

ainsworth74

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I must admit as a visitor I found the bus system to be rather unfriendly. Exact change only on the bus and the timetables only seemed to list the departure time from the origin meaning guesswork required to work out the time the bus was due! The LUAS on the other hand was great.
 

F Great Eastern

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The way timetables are produced like that with just the time from the terminus is very user unfriendly, especially when RTPI signs are only at about the 15% busiest stops all over the city, however it hass been like that for a long long time.

Transport for Ireland has been successful at getting Bus Eireann city services in other cities to use proper timetables as the services have been reconfigured with a new timetable sheet design, so pretty much all of those terminus based timetables have been removed when the networks were recast in a lot of the cities by TFI.

Example of the new regional city format rolled out in last year:
http://buseireann.ie/timetables/1468581032-219.pdf

Example of old BE format
http://buseireann.ie/timetables/1425472429-174.pdf

With Dublin Bus it has been less easy like with a lot of things they really really do not want to lose brand image, even more so than Bus Eireann. TFI actually have stop by stop timetables produced for all Dublin Bus routes, which were produced by calculating aggregate and average data taken from real time performance of buses in order to construct "proper" timetables and this data is what powers the TFI Journey Planner. However DB don't want to use such data.

A few years ago TFI got a design team to mock up a 200 page PDF of new information standards to apply throughout the country covering everything from on bus signs to platform signage for train stations, bus stop signage, mapping, standardized fonts and layouts and colours, route diagrams, timetable layouts etc similar to a way everything is standardized in London.

Again unfortunately however virtually nothing has been rolled out because of opposition from operators who simply want to keep their own individual image.
 

Hornet

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Dublin Bus is a bit better formatted, but the same kind of idea
http://dublinbus.ie/Your-Journey1/Timetables/All-Timetables/16-2/

The problem with Dublin Bus also is the route variations (see left hand side of first timetable) you can have many buses running different variations of routes, yet they all have the same route number.

Don't I know it! My local route (27) is a cross city service. There are five variations to the basic route, two of which go from either Terminus to the City Centre, one from the Bus Garage at Ringsend to Jobstown, one from the City Centre to Clare Hall and one that diverts from its route to pass through Crumlin village. All these variations are covered by the one Route Number (27). Have travelled a few times on the diverted Crumlin service. There has been plenty of occasions where passengers not realising that the Bus they are on is the only one of the day that takes the alternative route. Cue angry passengers. Also on the odd occasion the driver forgets and sticks to the basic route. Cue angry passengers! I've also seen Buses turn up with 27C on the front, (no service exists) heading into the City Centre. (I believe it's the Driver using his initiative)! To top it all the bus terminates in the south west suburb of Kiltalown, not Jobstown, a gripe that locals here have put up with for over 40 years, and something that Dublin Bus has done SFA about. Ask the Driver of a 27 where he terminates and he will say Killinarden, not Jobstown. Seriously you could not make it up!

https://www.dublinbus.ie/Your-Journey1/Timetables/All-Timetables/272/
 

Techniquest

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Jeez and people in the UK moan about bus services! My regular bus home running between 3 and 5 minutes early almost every night doesn't seem like such an issue now!
 

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However the other things that don't help is the awful dwell time of buses, which is probably the worst I've ever seen in a capital city.

When I worked in Dublin for 3 months my bus journey took 40 minutes to work from where I was staying and it was very common that at least 15 minutes of that would be spent by people getting on and getting off due to the stops being very close together, one door boarding and alighting* , driver interaction being required for large numbers of boarding passengers due to the fare system, it's not a fast service for the most part by and stretch of the imagination!

Have you ever visited Manchester by any chance? Hah!

It's the Western Rail Corridor that re-opened, not the Ballybrophy Limerick via Nenagh Line.

Oh, I see. The text makes out like it is a branch line. 2 services a day are not going to be hugely well used. Could they just run Limerick - Nenagh with a few additional journeys? I notice they have a morning train from Nenagh to Limerick but no additional evening service later than 1655.
 
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DT611

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Oh, I see. The text makes out like it is a branch line. 2 services a day are not going to be hugely well used. Could they just run Limerick - Nenagh with a few additional journeys? I notice they have a morning train from Nenagh to Limerick but no additional evening service later than 1655.

They could, but they won't. They have been wanting to close this line and much of the network since the 1970s and they will get their wish.
 

DT611

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Running the direct Lim - Dub trains via Nenagh might be more cost effective

Direct dublin services were tried but had low take up due to the speeds on the branch and the fact the train requires a complicated time consuming move to head toards dublin.
 

F Great Eastern

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So I was in Dublin on Monday and got to see the new Phoenix Park Tunnel services in action running from the Heuston side to the Connolly side for the first time and whilst loads are not sensational, they are not bad and much better than a lot of the branch lines that we are talking about closing.

However the big problem here is that there are delays all over the network at peak time since the services have been brought in due lines of trains blocking each other, infrastructure failures, with points, signalling issues and more alarmingly congestion none of which were foreseen by Irish Rail before these services started.

The even more alarming thing is that Irish Rail have spent almost €100m on renewing the signalling systems and equipment over the last few years in the city center and to allow many extra services to be run and the moment that a small number of new services are thrown at the system they spent so much on, it appears to be unable to cope despite the fact the additional services added are only a fraction of the additional services the new system was designed to allow.

The end result is of much speculation
a) Did Irish Rail simply not adequately plan the new services?
b) Is the new signalling system fit for the purpose it was supposed to be?
c) Are Irish rail able to implement such infrastructure and services properly?

Meanwhile Bus Eireann are in crisis too as their staff are looking for up to a 21 percent pay rise in the commercial arm despite the fact they are losing money, although the average passenger might not think it based on how many new expressway vehicles they continue buying despite the fact they have "no money"
 
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ainsworth74

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I'm sorry a 21% rise?! On what grounds?! Bargaining position they can't expect to actually get that can they?
 

DT611

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I'm sorry a 21% rise?! On what grounds?! Bargaining position they can't expect to actually get that can they?

Oh they won't get it, infact they actually aren't expecting to. Basically in ireland the unions will go for a high number as an opening gambet, and will negotiate down to the actual number they are looking for, or at least get the best they can. That's not to say the opening number isn't rather high though.
 

F Great Eastern

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I'm sorry a 21% rise?! On what grounds?! Bargaining position they can't expect to actually get that can they?

http://www.rte.ie/news/2016/1206/836939-bus-eireann-transport/

They claim that they are owed backdated pay claims that were agreed some time ago and to bring them in line with the rest of the companies such as the LUAS and Irish Rail, however the difference is that the other companies are in a monopoly position in their respective industries at the moment.

Bus Eireann is structured into two divisions
a) Expressway (Commercial, intercity services, with regulated competition)
b) PSO (Commuter, City and Town services with no competition allowed)

The problem is that the Expressway side is heavily loss making at around €6m per year essentially because Bus Eireanns cost base is much higher than that of the private companies and the management of that particular side of the business have not been proactive enough at developing the business or managing the finances of that company in a way which is responsible where private companies have then came in and took a lot of their market share away on the intercity routes.

Basically the regulations state two operators can operate on any commercial route. Non stop and stopping services are considered separate routes. Once there are two operators, who may not operate in a predatory way, no more licenses for a particular route will be issued. The issue is that BE have been reluctant to take chances on new routes, only for privates do actually do that and succeed in growing the market as well as taking passengers from air, rail and BE itself which has substantially shrunk the revenue base of BE and customer numbers on key corridors, leaving BE with services that are losing money because of this.

The Unions are now calling for the private operators to be stripped of their licenses and for themselves to be the only operator on a number of routes because that BE Commercial are in a hopeless position commercially, they are heavily loss making, are locked out of a lot of key corridors and their staff want a huge pay rise that the company itself cannot afford because of the fact its commercial arm is struggling on the open market.

So basically the aim of this is to try and force the government into doing something to bring back their monopoly so they can dictate the market again because of the fact is that currently they have a wage bill that is much higher than their rivals and a route network that is out of date and losing passengers so their only way to avoid serious pay cuts to change their pay to be in line with the rest of the market is to increase company revenue massively and the only way that can be done is by removal of competition.

Essentially it's a struggle between what is ideologically more important, the continuation of a very old and long standing public bus company and the jobs and terms and conditions of the people who work in it or an open market.
 

ainsworth74

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The way we do buses in GB leaves a lot to be desired but that sounds even worse! Many thanks for the info :)
 

F Great Eastern

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The way we do buses in GB leaves a lot to be desired but that sounds even worse! Many thanks for the info :)

To be fair to the staff, whilst their claim is too high, the problem is that many of these staff have been working in the company for many years and the company itself has only had to deal with competition for the last 15 years or so, before then if a competitor wanted to operate a service it was pretty much tough luck, the company simply isn't used to working in a competitive landscape and obviously in a competitive market a previous monopoly is going to have to be run in a more cost effective manner when it has competitors.

The problem is the average wage bill in BE according to their accounts is just over €52,500 incl pension whereas the average wages in the bigger privates is around €38,000. First for instance pay a little above that with wages at about €39,300 on average for their ROI employees. However BE is unquestionably much heavier on management and has many more mid-grade managers than most companies would have in the UK for example, many of which has been in the company a long time.

You also have Bus Eireann who, as a sister company of Irish Rail under the same ownership group, refuse to target rail passengers whatsoever because of the common ownership. This was something a lot of the privates were able to exploit, as they would simply target everyone but BE were very cautious to avoid going after a modal switch from rail at all and in the case of some services went to great lengths to avoid doing so which is another factor which hasn't helped them.

It's also not been very commercially savvy At times BE Expressway is trying to serve every man and it's dog and bowing down to every community and protest group going believing it is the operator of the people, when in-fact it should simply be more ruthless with the commercial network and doing what it takes to get it performing to the highest possible levels. Unfortunately at times it's more concerned at the politics and trying to make sure it doesn't have a negative image than actually doing what is best for the company and that is a contributing factor of why it lands itself in the current situation.

Then you come to the amount they spend on marketing every year and new vehicles. They're running a fleet about half the age or less of a lot of their competitors, they've basically replaced the whole commercial fleet in the last 4 years at the cost of many tens of million on new vehicles, despite the fact they've made losses of several million every year in that time from their core operations, they continue to spent multiple millions a year advertising on TV and everywhere despite the fact the company claims to have no money they continue to simply spend with no control in these areas in the hope that marketing campaigns and new vehicles can cover the fact the services themselves are not competitive.

For me that is a terrible strategy particularly when the public are quite happy to stop using BE to use older vehicles on privates that start earlier, run later and are cheaper and offer faster journey times. The idea of investing money in these areas would be great if the public at large were willing to forego the nuts and the bolts of the service to sit in a newer vehicle, but they're not and they're simply ****ing money into the wind in my book and making a bad situation even worse.

The unions would like to portray this as the big bad privates who are depriving BE income that is rightfully theirs but one has to ask how BE, a company who was an incumbent and had a huge head start over all of the other privates, who had to start up from nothing to take on BE, could end up in a situation like this. Simply blaming the government for allowing competition might be politically convenient for the unions and their ideology, but it's far from the main cause of this.

There are many examples of routes, especially non stop ones between major cities, that BE claimed were "not viable" that privates have then gone in and made them pay and then BE have complained that their own services have suffered because of this as they then cannot get a license for the route because the two for that non stop route is already taken for a route that previously they did not feel one operator could make pay, but now feel three can?

If you are in a market where there is competition allowed, If you don't keep on innovating or improving things sooner or later, or taking risks to improve services you risk someone else doing it and taking your business away, that's pretty much what happened here. Management were caught asleep at the wheel and their lack of commercial acumen is directly to blame for this mess, if they had been more pro-active in managing the company and more ruthless in their decisions, I am sure the company would be in a much better financial position.
 

DT611

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There are many examples of routes, especially non stop ones between major cities, that BE claimed were "not viable" that privates have then gone in and made them pay and then BE have complained that their own services have suffered because of this as they then cannot get a license for the route because the two for that non stop route is already taken for a route that previously they did not feel one operator could make pay, but now feel three can?

In fairness if they did go for the routes and it turned out they were right that they're was indeed no demand , you can imagine the backclash from politicians and all else. Don't get me wrong, it's likely they have themselves to blame mostly for their situation, it's not the privates fault. But i also understand how politics operates here in ireland,.
 

F Great Eastern

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In fairness if they did go for the routes and it turned out they were right that they're was indeed no demand

But they cannot have their cake and eat it at the same time.

Personally the fact that they claim such services are not financially viable to operate is quite staggering since they have passenger data on who is going from where on all of their services and in what numbers at what particular time and also the access to survey large groups of people if need be through what is a very strong brand. It's either naivety or management that are far too catious with their outlook.

It's quite ironic that now they are left with a bunch of service s that are not financially viable because other operators have started operating services they dismissed for the same reason that actually did turn out to be financially viable in the end. However it's also possible that the high cost base in BE really has not helped at all in that regard.

You can imagine the backclash from politicians and all else. Don't get me wrong, it's likely they have themselves to blame mostly for their situation, it's not the privates fault. But i also understand how politics operates here in ireland,.

Indeed and politics has a lot to do with this, but Expressway should have been strong enough to stick it up to the politicians and say that as a commercial operation Expressway has to act commercially and if people are left behind in other places that is something for the government to deal with and not their problem, because quite frankly that is the truth and whilst the government may not like it the management of a commercial businesses job is to act in it's own interests and they failed spectacularly in that regard.

The simple fact is that a lot of the privates had similar protests when they added express or new services that cut out the towns, Dublin to Waterford and Dublin to Cork are two places that come to mind, but as commercial businesses, they knew things were necessary in order to survive and also to continue developing their services, since they knew if they did not offer these improvements or new services, sooner or later someone else would and the end result would be them losing their position on the corridor.

Instead Expressway continue to try to accommodate every single protest group and serve every last person and by doing so pushed much bigger numbers into the arms of the competition who were giving the bigger numbers exactly what they wanted. In a way it's admirable that Expressway tried to serve everyone on their commercial services but they ended up being a jack of all trades and a master of none and many of the services lacked focus and therefore they were eaten for breakfast by operators who gave large numbers of people what they wanted.

Essentially Expressway needs to start, living, breathing and acting like a ruthless commercial business fully like it's competition and whilst that may be unpopular with some people, politicians included, it is the only way the company can survive.
 
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DT611

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But they cannot have their cake and eat it at the same time.

Personally the fact that they claim such services are not financially viable to operate is quite staggering since they have passenger data on who is going from where on all of their services and in what numbers at what particular time and also the access to survey large groups of people if need be through what is a very strong brand. It's either naivety or management that are far too catious with their outlook.

It's quite ironic that now they are left with a bunch of service s that are not financially viable because other operators have started operating services they dismissed for the same reason that actually did turn out to be financially viable in the end. However it's also possible that the high cost base in BE really has not helped at all in that regard.



Indeed and politics has a lot to do with this, but Expressway should have been strong enough to stick it up to the politicians and say that as a commercial operation Expressway has to act commercially and if people are left behind in other places that is something for the government to deal with and not their problem, because quite frankly that is the truth and whilst the government may not like it the management of a commercial businesses job is to act in it's own interests and they failed spectacularly in that regard.

The simple fact is that a lot of the privates had similar protests when they added express or new services that cut out the towns, Dublin to Waterford and Dublin to Cork are two places that come to mind, but as commercial businesses, they knew things were necessary in order to survive and also to continue developing their services, since they knew if they did not offer these improvements or new services, sooner or later someone else would and the end result would be them losing their position on the corridor.

Instead Expressway continue to try to accommodate every single protest group and serve every last person and by doing so pushed much bigger numbers into the arms of the competition who were giving the bigger numbers exactly what they wanted. In a way it's admirable that Expressway tried to serve everyone on their commercial services but they ended up being a jack of all trades and a master of none and many of the services lacked focus and therefore they were eaten for breakfast by operators who gave large numbers of people what they wanted.

Essentially Expressway needs to start, living, breathing and acting like a ruthless commercial business fully like it's competition and whilst that may be unpopular with some people, politicians included, it is the only way the company can survive.

I'm not disagreeing. However you have to understand that as bus eireann are in the position of relying on government funding they cannot do anything to annoy the politicians. I Get it comes across as being mad, but you must understand that leaves the company in, even with a commercial arm, a rather unfortunate situation. if you were in the position of the management where you could risk the rath of the government, what would you do? Standing up to the politicians in ireland rarely ends well. Don't get me wrong, i'm in no way saying how they operate is correct, but i also understand the situation they are in in terms of the government. It's all well and good saying they should stand up to them and what will will be, and i don't disagree in theory, but in reality it could make things a hell of a lot worse for the company.
 

F Great Eastern

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I'm not disagreeing. However you have to understand that as bus eireann are in the position of relying on government funding they cannot do anything to annoy the politicians.

Of course the PSO arm are, but this is not the PSO arm, it's the commercial arm which is supposed to be separate.

That is why the proposal from management to try and hive off the Expressway arm makes sense in a lot of ways, because it would make it much clearer that it is separate arm which actually could help the long term prospects of that company in many ways. Ideally they would remove reference from Bus Eireann entirely

However from the union point of view the big issue is that if that would be the case the costs would need to be reduced into line with market norms which would mean the highly paid jobs in BE which are out of kilter with that of the rest of the market on commercial routes would have to be changed to more in line with that of their competitors.

The unions know that the only way they can keep their pay packages and enhance it further is if that the privates are removed from the landscape and many of them appear to view their ideology of keeping all public transport operated by public companies far more important than giving the majority of the people what they want. T

if you were in the position of the management where you could risk the rath of the government, what would you do?

At the end of the day I would yes, because at the end of the day that is what a commercial arm should do. They are still acting like the market was 20 years ago, they need to get a grip with the times which they haven't done and they have been found wanting.

Standing up to the politicians in ireland rarely ends well. Don't get me wrong, i'm in no way saying how they operate is correct, but i also understand the situation they are in in terms of the government. It's all well and good saying they should stand up to them and what will will be, and i don't disagree in theory, but in reality it could make things a hell of a lot worse for the company.

But unfortunately this is the way it is for a company that has both a public service arm and a commercial arm. At the end of the day those two types of businesses really do not mix well and the problem is that management are trying to make their commercial services a jack of all trades and a master of none and nobody gets a great outcome from that, be that Expressway passengers, staff or anyone else for that matter.

The big issue here is that the unions have exploited the previous monopoly with strikes for many years to get their members very generous pay and terms and conditions and when subjected to an open market they are being severely undercut, not just on price but the fact the services also have shortcomings being exploited by the open market for not providing the level or specification of services that people wanted,

When their company is loss making, partly due to mismanagement, partly due to it's high cost base and partly for historical reasons, it's absolute madness that not only should people who are on very good pay ask for 21% extra pay (negotiation tactic or not), but they also want the government to restructure the market to allow that pay rise to happen regardless of the impact that is had on end users.

Then someone from the trade union will come on the wireless and turn around and say that all transport should be publicly owned because privately run transport drives the cost up, forgetting the irony that they are trying to remove competition just to line their own pockets and drive their own incomes up in the very same way they're castigating shareholders for doing the same kind of tactics.

The problem is that what the union wants they just cannot get right now unless the government starts to turn on the private operators to allow Expressway to have a 20% pay rise on top of what are already the best wages in the industry and unfortunately I just don't think that this is in the benefit of transport in Ireland, it just puts them in the same category as the fat cat shareholders they claim to despise.

Personally I think the only way for BE to survive unless the government commits suicide on the whole sector and bans private operators is to hive off the commercial arm. But staff are not going to take the adjustments to come with it,, so it may come down to pay or jobs sooner or later, but I expect if that happens they'll simply blame the privates.
 
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Bletchleyite

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The way we do buses in GB leaves a lot to be desired but that sounds even worse! Many thanks for the info :)

It does sound like a cultural issue much like that that long existed in the UK. Things weren't perfect before deregulation either, and that was in my view because "we just don't do it that way".

The nature of Ireland's public transport network would lend itself very well to having a single, zonal ticketing system and buses scheduled to complement rather than compete with trains. It should be much easier to do that in Ireland than elsewhere as CIE owns the lot - but culturally it won't happen.

TBH, the only way to solve it might well actually be to privatise and therefore allow a private business with no political leanings to sort the more militant unions out and allow changes to be made so it's run more for the passenger's benefit.
 

DT611

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It does sound like a cultural issue much like that that long existed in the UK. Things weren't perfect before deregulation either, and that was in my view because "we just don't do it that way".

The nature of Ireland's public transport network would lend itself very well to having a single, zonal ticketing system and buses scheduled to complement rather than compete with trains. It should be much easier to do that in Ireland than elsewhere as CIE owns the lot - but culturally it won't happen.

TBH, the only way to solve it might well actually be to privatise and therefore allow a private business with no political leanings to sort the more militant unions out and allow changes to be made so it's run more for the passenger's benefit.

they're are actually no militant unions in ireland. Our unions are rather moderate, but In saying that, if any company did try and take them on then they would be making a huge mistake. They're is little to no appitite for privatization here in ireland.
 

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The nature of Ireland's public transport network would lend itself very well to having a single, zonal ticketing system and buses scheduled to complement rather than compete with trains. It should be much easier to do that in Ireland than elsewhere as CIE owns the lot - but culturally it won't happen.

In theory that should work, however the problem with it would be that it would give the unions perhaps even greater control than they have now. I mean if BE go out on strike, they still have Irish Rail or if Irish Rail go on strike people will still have BE, in practice a lot of people have access to one or the other and not everyone has access to Bus and Rail and this is often used by a union to leverage their position.

If one strike could take everything out at once rather than just one third of CIE then you essentially cause even greater disruption by strikes which gives the union even more power, which is something that I think many politicians and members of the public will not be welcoming of, but the unions would be licking their lips at the prospect of that kind of situation where they could use it to extract even better terms and conditions and pay etc.

The plan is for a zonal ticket system to be implemented over the coming years though, TFL style. However DB/BE/IR would all quite like to avoid that as they want to continue to be masters of their own destiny and see a brand such as Transport for Ireland as being a power grab away from them and the unions, staff and management do not wish to see transport being controlled centrally because it becomes much harder to exert their own power nad interests over that of the overarching system.

TBH, the only way to solve it might well actually be to privatise and therefore allow a private business with no political leanings to sort the more militant unions out and allow changes to be made so it's run more for the passenger's benefit.

Personally I think de-regulation would be a disaster and I cannot support that in any shape or form, especially considering the fact a lot of the country is rural and Ireland is a small country with not that many big cities and a lot of small towns and villages, besides it would never be allowed to happen.

The governments favored way is tendering, a la TFL style, however that is now years behind schedule thanks to industrial unrest and unions who are putting may obstacles in it's path. I also wouldn't rule out a long strike over "privatization " as the unions are calling tendering as well, in an attempt to force the government to abandon any possibilities to put routes out to tender.

The essential issue is that whilst a fully publicity owned transport company when run and structured properly can deliver outstanding transport to it's citizens, there's also the chance that the concentration of too much power in the hands of one organisation can put them in a position where they can set the agenda and use that power against authorities and defy authority etc and use peoples dependency on that service as a bargaining chip / hostage in negotiations.

That's why I often tell people in the UK that a fully publicly owned company might not be as rosy as you might think, because whilst it has enormous benefits on paper there are also some drawbacks as well which can happen in reality that are not obvious at first glance.
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they're are actually no militant unions in ireland. Our unions are rather moderate, but In saying that, if any company did try and take them on then they would be making a huge mistake.

I think militant is perhaps the wrong word in this respect. There are not any wildcat or illegal strikes and it's very rare that there is any deliberate obstructing services when not on strikes to annoy people like we have seen in other countries, so if that's how you define militant I agree they are not.

But at the same time it's fair to say that the likes of SIPTU do not take any prisoners. If they want something they won't be found wanting in that regard, there is no pussy-footing around with these guys and they are not scared to strike and they drive a very hard bargain and are happy enough to stay on strike for a while if they need to to obtain their aims.

They're is little to no appitite for privatization here in ireland.

Certainly I would agree as a whole Irish society is more left wing one than the UK, no doubt about that and there is not widespread support for de-regulation, not by a long shot and quite right too since for the type of country Ireland is it just would not work.

However I think that there is some support for involving private operators more a la tendering. I wouldn't say it was a huge chunk of people but there are quite a number who are fed up with the status quo but there would be more people who would be ideologically opposed to this also.
 
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