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Unread 09-05-2011, 16:22   #20
comcor
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Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: Cork-Dublin, Cork Commuter and occasionally DART and Dublin-Wexford
Posts: 855
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Thomas J Stamp View Post
there is a lot of bizzare politics involved in the dublin bus situation. Since Mary Harney (??) in Enterprise/Employment there has been a pressure to privatise in full or part of Dublin Bus, by several different methods. That led to the bizzare refusal of the DoT to licence the Airlink service through the Tunnell as it impacted on private services, to ideas like francising out individual routes of BAC to the current interesting one that concerns the delivery of the latest batch of tri-axle buses.
I think that pretty much sums it up.

For the last decade or more, there have been competing ideas on how the bus service should be organised, ranging from complete a completely privatised deregulated service to maintaining a completely nationalised bus service.

And since a policy hasn't been developed, the consequence seems to have been every licence decided on an ad hoc basis.

Which basically means a complete mess.

I really hope the new Minister takes this one on as sorting out the bus regulations could be something that the government can achieve to improve the quality of public transport without having to spend too much.

I tend towards a system like in London or The Netherlands where there is a state body responsible for deciding on routes, frequencies and ticketing, but who contract out the operation to a private operator.

But to be honest, any consistent system is probably better than the current one.
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