New blow to Public Transport

[Thac0man]

Circle Line with 10,000 pre-paid customers has packed up and gone into liquidation. This was an excellent service and although a little more expensive than Dublin Bus, the cost was well worth it because Dublin Bus is such a unliable service to those living at the fringes of Dublin.

Link here:
http://www.rte.ie/news/2008/0620/bus.html

And Circle Lines own statement here:
http://www.circlelinebus.com/

The Dublin Bus service all year round to some of the areas serviced by Circle line was so bad that relaible communiting was simply not possible. The alternatives to Circle line are, Dublin Bus, which is intermittent and despite public and political campaigns to improve the service going back years, no improvements have been made. It is even a regular election issue. The lack of any improvement is perhaps a sign of the Dublin Bus Unions power.

A slight improvement was made to the service a few years back when 5 people were killed while waiting for the Dublin Bus service on the quays. This improvement was in the form of Buses actually leaving when they were supposed to. This improvement lasted all of three weeks and then communters were left to their own devices and the elements yet again, as 'normal service' resumed.

The other Alternative is rail, and using this service is reliant on private feeder buses which run to their own time table rather than the trains - yet is still paid for by Public money.

Noel Dempsey has said he is investigating improvements to the competition laws, which have been fough tooth and nail by Unions.

Mr Dempsey said his Department had written to Dublin Bus following complaints of anti-competitive behaviour by Circleline.

The Minister said he is in the process of introducing legislation so companies like Circleline can operate successfully.

A bit bloody late.

The closure of Circle Line is a sad day for a great many communters who now much face the prospect of unnecessary delays, rude drivers and vanishing buses. A sad day for Transport in Dublin and a backward step.

[LabourLover]

I've never been on a Circle Line bus, but the service couldn't have been as good as you suggested or it would have been able to compete against Dublin Bus.

Also, to suggest the service hasn't improved because of the unions is ridiculous. Dublin Bus has needed extra buses for years, but the government had been reluctant to let them buy them. This reluctance stems from the government being tied to the types of competition in bus services that have failed in other countries.

[Libero]

It is sad. But also foreseeable.

Dublin Bus have a track record of behaving in an anti-competitive manner, where they swamp a route with buses to suffocate new competition. Aircoach survived it, but Circle Line have not.

And what was the reaction of the Minister for Transport when asked nicely to do something about this? He wrote a letter to Dublin Bus.
Good man, Noel, acting as if you were a backbench opposition TD rather than the man with ultimate executive control over Dublin Bus. Then again, we all remember what happened to Seamus Brennan...

Of course, we'll probably never know the true extent to which the actions of Dublin Bus caused Circle Line to go under. The company had scaled back daytime services to about 1 an hour on the main couple of routes. Presumably, those services weren't busy compared to the rush hour services. That left Circle Line having to meet the cost of their capital (buses being big and expensive) with, I can only estimate, maybe 4-6 "busy" journeys per bus per day.
Not a great business plan, even if Dublin Bus behaved themselves.

[instant invigoration]

I had been using Dublin Bus daily until I started to work in Ballsbridge, and now I use Circle Line.

Circle Line drivers - mostly Eastern European from what I can tell - are far more courteous than their Dublin Bus counterparts. Time and again on Dublin Bus, a driver has refused to open his doors despite still being at the stop - yet Circle Line drivers often stop away from their stops to accommodate passengers they can see have not quite made it to the stop on time.

I am very sad to see the service close, and am resigned to a life of standing and waiting for the overcrowded, never-on-time Dublin Bus service.

[Thac0man]

And what was the reaction of the Minister for Transport when asked nicely to do something about this? He wrote a letter to Dublin Bus.
Good man, Noel, acting as if you were a backbench opposition TD rather than the man with ultimate executive control over Dublin Bus.

Spot on.

[DaveM]

I've never been on a Circle Line bus, but the service couldn't have been as good as you suggested or it would have been able to compete against Dublin Bus.

Also, to suggest the service hasn't improved because of the unions is ridiculous. Dublin Bus has needed extra buses for years, but the government had been reluctant to let them buy them. This reluctance stems from the government being tied to the types of competition in bus services that have failed in other countries.

Dublin Bus used its dominant position to saturate the routes in question with supply. The Circle Line service was fine - Dublin Bus simply made it financially inviable. Let's see now whether they maintain that level of service once the competition has been driven away.

If it was a private company operating in this manner I doubt whether either you or the trade unions would be so dismissive of this issue.

[The Word Of Truth]

The reality is that we are now begining the 12th year of FF/PD coalition and we still do not have an agreed position on the opening up of the Dublin Bus market. The legislation governing bus licences is the 1932 Road Transport Act, how wonderful for a modern country. FF/PD have done nothing to open up the bus market and this is indeed a sad day.

[DaveM]

We want it but, simply put, don't have the clout to get it done at the moment.

Cannon not willing to wait on bus competition

Monday 3rd March 2008
Progressive Democrat leadership candidate, Senator Ciaran Cannon, has today highlighted his commitment and that of his party to providing fair and open competition on Dublin's bus routes.

He said that while he accepted that Dublin Bus would be "front loaded" with the buses and staffing that it required, he and his party would not relent in their pressure for the consumer driven competition promised in the Programme for Government.

"There is some merit in front loading Dublin Bus with the buses and staff that it needs to get new routes up and running. This will benefit many more commuters in the short term. It would be unfair to expect Dublin Bus to compete with private sector operators without the requisite resources.

However I will now be asking for the rapid establishment of the Dublin Transport Authority so that we can have transparency in the system and the opening up of the more lucrative routes to all competitors. We cannot wait for consumer driven competition, it is needed to raise standards, to ensure that every decision taken at managerial level, either public or private, is focused on improving the service for all bus users," said Cannon.

Transport Minister Noel Dempsey announced just two weeks ago that he felt the way forward was to extract flexibility and efficiencies from Dublin Bus, rather than going down the route of privatisation. Senator Cannon has today stressed that consumer driven competition remains a core principle of the Progressive Democrats and that without it we would never have seen Ryanair in the skies and would still be paying five hundred euro to fly to London.

However he said his approach to privatisation would be a cautious one.

"We need to be careful in how we proceed. A private monopoly is just as dangerous as a public one. If Dublin Bus is adamant that it can provide a high standard of services to customers at a reasonable cost then it has nothing to fear from competition and I would welcome the establishment of such services. It also has the benefit of having a head start in knowing the market intimately. However there is no better way of keeping an operator firmly on its toes than by allowing fair competition and this is what I am suggesting for the moment. Let's open up the very lucrative routes to competition and see will standards improve and fares go down, I believe that they will and that it will happen very quickly," continued Cannon.

With the establishment of the new Dublin Transport Authority, Dublin Bus and Iarnrod Eireann will have to reveal their profitable and sub vented routes.

Advice from the Attorney General indicates that CIE must become fully transparent. There has been an assertion by private bus operators that Dublin Bus was using public subvention to force them off lucrative routes and that while this arrangement was in place, there would never be a level playing field for all operators.

"The DTA Bill will, I believe, contain the provisions for the opening up of certain routes to competition and we have to have the courage to go ahead and do this as soon as possible. We also need to put in place provisions for innovative approaches from the private sector in identifying new routes and demands not previously served by the public sector. The success of the Aircoach service can be replicated elsewhere if private operators are supported in their endeavours," concluded Senator Cannon.

[Kevin Doyle]

Dublin Bus have a track record of behaving in an anti-competitive manner, where they swamp a route with buses to suffocate new competition.

Please point specifically to the route changes and time table changes employed by Dublin Bus to swamp the route covered by Circle line. Could you also use a timeline for these changes which would show beyond doubt that these changes where reactionary toward driving out Circle line as a competitor.


What you are claiming is totally contradicting the OP which says the service Dublin Bus provides on these routes is intermittent as quoted below from the OP:

The Dublin Bus service all year round to some of the areas serviced by Circle line was so bad that reliable commuting was simply not possible. The alternatives to Circle line are, Dublin Bus, which is intermittent and despite public and political campaigns to improve the service going back years, no improvements have been made.

Of course Circle Line packing it in has absolutely nothing to do with the price of fuel sky-rocketing which has destroyed their profit potential.

[Macy]

I thought it was competition to Dublin Bus that the PD's and others wanted, unless what they really want is private monopolies on routes for companies to cream in the profits?

All that's happened here is that there was competition and one side lost. If the Dublin Bus service is as bad as people are saying, then surely the customers would've stuck with the circle line?

Also, is there any evidence of this "flooding" of routes by Dublin Bus? Or is it just a handy excuse?