More competition for the railways on a key corridor:

[ACustomer]

If Aircoach cannot take non-Airport passengers, it's due to the restrictions on their licence (issued by DoT?). I see also that the DoT has refused all-night licences and scuppered the 746. Why? It seems to be a truly neanderthal organisation, and maybe I was a bit harsh in rushing to blame the unions (not that they are totally blameless....)

[Thomas J Stamp]

Originally Posted by ACustomer

If Aircoach cannot take non-Airport passengers, it's due to the restrictions on their licence (issued by DoT?). I see also that the DoT has refused all-night licences and scuppered the 746. Why? It seems to be a truly neanderthal organisation, and maybe I was a bit harsh in rushing to blame the unions (not that they are totally blameless....)

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.

From what I read the new ones are dual doors and that if they are not accepted by BAC/Unions (there has been problems with dual door operation in the past) then they (as in the routes that will be put onto) will be francised out from BAC to private operators. There is a savage amount of buses involved, basicly doubling the amount of tri-axles, which makes sence as BAC want to shift more Pax with less of a fleet.

On top of that, McCarthy 2 advocates selling off the only profitable bit of BAC as it currently stands in the Airlink service.

[Mark Gleeson]

The NTA own any DB or BE bus on a 11 plate and so spec them. But they don't own any trains bought for Irish Rail (I asked)

The tri-axles are a classic Irish solution for the you are not allowed increase the fleet size. So DB went and replaced every single decker with a double decker

The situation is a mess

[comcor]

Originally Posted by Thomas J Stamp

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.