Re: Re: Bus drivers under pressure?
Nice pics Misarchi 🙂
They deserve a little expansion as quite a bit can be gleaned from them.
Firstly,the vehicles to the forefront in Nassau St are Touring COACHES which are engaged in the Trinity College “Experience”.
One of the constant and worsening problems in attempting to get any form of realistic movement from the Civic Authorities is for those worthies to understand and appreciate the vast difference in the needs of a COACH operator and a BUS driver.
Nassau St is one of the finest examples of this lack of comprehension.
One item which misarchi`s pics do not show is the reduction in available roadspace on the street by allocating the right hand lane to Car Parking spaces.
This effectively reduces a main outflow from the City to a single lane.
The Dublin Bus stops along the street are some of the busiest on the system and have had little or no attention in terms of Safety or suitability for the hugely increased Bus Traffic now being forced through the unmodfied street.
Indeed one can see with depressing regularity,foreign registered,left hand drive Touring Coaches disembarking their (often Elderly) passengers directly out into the path of wild eyed and dangerous drivers who may well have been stuck in the City Centre for an hour and now see light at the end of the Nassau St tunnel.
Into this mess are thrown Dublin Bus drivers with their (Many) Managers hovering behind their shoulders,breathing dire warnings about Safety and the disciplinary repercussions which will follow if the Driver should fall victim to this chaos.
Drivers on routes 10,11,14,15,46A,145,for example,must first pull in (roughly,sorta,kinda) parallel to the Kerb to load/unload then attempt to pull over to the extreme right lane to position for a Right Hand turn into Kildare St.
Meantime,Drivers on the 4,7,45,63,45,84, must pull in beyond the others and then position (kinda,sorta) in the middle lane and then do a quich shimmy after Kildare St to position for a straight ahead departure through the Clare St “Chicane” (Take note of the Black Rubber burn marks on the kerb).
I very much doubt if the Dublin City Manager or any of his many and varied courtiers have ever attempted to take an Articulated 18Mtr long vehicle full of sweating,heaving and possibly disabled people through such an arrangement.
Once again,and not for the first time,the City Management have a VERY simple and workable solution at their fingertips.
1. Remove ALL on-street car parking between Dawson St and Clare St.
2.Relocate Bus Stops for most Kildare St routes to the (already existing) Bus-Stops outside the Alliance Francais/Heraldry Museum/College of Physicians.
3.Position these routes to the (Newly available) extreme Right lane on Nassau St to allow for Right Turn into Kildare St.
4.Reallocate the Initial Stops on Nassau St for Rock Road QBC Routes and allow these to pull out much earlier into the Middle Lane to align for Clare St.
5.Realign the right hand traffic lane/footpath at South Frederick St/Clare St to allow for direct exit through Bus Priority Traffic signal.
Total cost….?…Significantly less than €38 BILLION I suspect,and all work largely achieved by removing signage and painting road markings along with a few oul Gards reallocated from their Leinster House “Post” during peak time.
This type of thing is sadly symptomatic of our current administrative vacuum whic currently features skip loads of Men-In-Suits delivering ever wilder scenario`s to an astounded Dail Committee…….Bring on T22 I say !!!!
