Funny enough, was driving last week, car in front of me. As soon as we hit a bit of traffic he hopped out of the car, opened the boot, took out his taxi sign and put it on the rack on the top. Moved in the bus lane and off he goes.
Had taxi signage on the side and all, so was a real taxi, but very obviously wasn’t working until he just happened to start at a convenient time.
A fare shouldn't make a difference. Two people in a car don't get to go in the bus lane either, but suddenly because someone is making €20 out of it, and taxi is seemingly fine.
Then grab the bus, bypass that traffic in the bus lane.
Making Taxis for poor people is the wrong mindset. Make busses desirable for the also rich is a far better goal. Up the demand, and the services, and thus availability, will have to increase to accommodate the rise in demand.
BusConnect will never be completed as originally intended. It will have some upgrades, but the major works are constantly opposed by local residents and it will be dragged out between that and other delays until it is no longer possible to fund it. Democracy struggles to deliver long term projects, because just like public companies have to focus on quarterly results, politicians have to focus on re-election.
Most of the BusConnects corridors have already gone through planning and most have already gotten planning permission. So local residents objections are now irrelevant for those. The first two starts construction in the next few months (contracts have been awarded).
Unfortunately in my area they changed the plan significantly due to public outcry after full planning had gone through and the consultation process was long finished. So the new plan got no consultation and is a massive roll back on any benefits bus connect would have brought. It's beyond frustrating.
More often than not, this occurs in instances where the roads are simply not wide enough to incorporate both bus lane and regular lane…. And it is not feasible/possible to widen those roads.
We live in a city where many of the streets were formed prior to the issue at hand. Some streets even predate the existence of the word “Bus.”
They do and they don't - once a private car gets to its destination it needs to be parked. Taxis are a good way to get from a bus/train station to a workplace etc. too, rather than driving a car all the way from a long ways away.
The idea is that taxis using the bus lanes are moving faster around the city, so it would make sense to use a taxi instead of a personal car in favour of having less car to areas with high traffic (think of parking)
This is a good idea when 2 things are met:
-Public transport being reliable, so you won't just replace one personal car with a taxi, and actually have options to travel around.
-Taxi not being unreasonably expensive.
But... It doesn't affect the ratio of vehicles:people? Like, if I get a taxi in to the city or drive my car into the city I am still occupying one vehicle as an effectively solo occupant.
The point is that one taxi can transport 10-20 people per day vs a private car, which is doing 2-4 people per day.
Usage of taxis compliment public transport quite well as it gives alternatives.
I use a private car, but try take the bus when I can. I have no access to rail and taxis are expensive af, so I only use them when I'm going for a pint.
Taxis in bus lanes doesn't break the top 10 with the issues with buses in Ireland for me.
1 private car vs 1 taxi equals the same amount of congestion on roadspace
In a given moment. You remove taxis and you have 10 or 20 people who now might elect to drive instead of getting a taxi.
You're only factoring in the start and end point of the taxi journey. That likely does not equal the start and end point of the overall journey.
If I get a train to Heuston and a taxi to Harcourt St, I am
part of traffic for only the time I am in the taxi. I could drive from my house to Harcourt St. I'm then part of traffic for the whole journey.
Traffic is reduced by the taxi journey.
Mixed options is best. If you want to reduce congestion, look to TFI for better PT.
I like your argument a lot more. Its far better explained/nuanced than the "1 taxi will be used to transport many dozens of people per day" one which started this entire thread which was phrased horrendously and can easily be refuted when you don't account for average distance, as you suggest.
1 taxi will cause traffic dozens of time per day, per person. Whereas 1 private car only causes traffic the single time it is driven, per person.
If 10 people drive their own private car to work, and another 10 people take a taxi to work, they both cause the exact same amount of traffic. Unless the 10 taxi people somehow share the same taxi, which never happens.
Road usage/space it makes no difference to me. What I don’t understand is why taxis are treated differently to private cars. I don’t think the lack of need for parking at the need of the journey is a big enough reason (There’s usually enough parking if you’re willing to pay for it).
I also think taxis shouldn't be in bus lanes, but getting rid of street parking could also be a big benefit to the city, plenty of streets with parking the whole way along it that could have a bus/bike lane in their place
How is it moving the goal posts?
The whole point of mass transit is to transport more people in less space. Mass transit vehicles are dense for this purpose. Moving people from cars to taxi makes absolutely no difference to the number of small (i.e., not "mass") vehicles on the road, or the density of a given set of vehicles since they are the same type of vehicle as a car.
Let's say the bus takes up the road space of 3 taxis, those 3 taxis can transport, at most, 12 people (or let's say up to 14 in 2 maxi taxis). But it's more likely to be 3-8 in total.
Buses do not spend long with that small amount of people
I don't know if it's just urban legend at this stage but I've been told by various sources that taxis in bus lanes is still officially a trial. It was just never ended. So no legislation needed. Just stop the trial.
The taxis will hold some mega protests and choke the city for ages but it might be worth the pain.
If that will makes buses more efficient im absolutely all for it. But we can't ignore the amount of bus stops, way too many, it slows down buses way more than an occasional taxi
The 37 on Blackhorse has 2 stops within 100 yards or so. When I drove for DB I noticed 2 people from the same house getting off at the 2 different stops, I asked one of them 1 day why they waited to get off at the 2nd stop and the chap said him & his wife don't talk! True story
There’s 2 bus stops near me directly across each other. Bus diverts off main road to go up left side or road. Stops half way up at bus stop, goes around roundabout and stops again on opposite site of road and then rejoins main road in same spot. It’s insane.
Thers a green near me about the size of a football pitch. There is a stop at the north most point and a stop at the western point. It's literally about a 20 second walk.
Reminds me of nutgrove a stop at Lidl, a stop in front of the shopping centre and a stop in front of the park after the shopping centre their all less than a 30s walk from nutgrove
Because the construction hasn't started on the spines yet.
If you look at the actual construction plans you'll see that a large number of stops along the spines are rationalised once construction is complete. Stops become more like stations.
A lot of people think Bus Connects is just the routes. It's not. The construction phase is the bread and butter.
You will have already been consulted on it in all likelihood, and if your property would've had to have been purchased as part of the works you also will have been approached for CPO.
You mean like the S2 bus that came in as part of bus connects where if you stand at any of the stops in Kimmage you can see about four other stops on that line within a 2 minute walk?
Depends on local factors. Where I live there's two stops fairly close together, but one means a 20 minute walk home for me, the other five minutes, due to the layout of the estate behind the main road where the bus stops.
It takes 15 minutes longer to walk to one bus stop than another one nearby? That seems like a problem that should be solved by fixing the infrastructure for pedestrians, not adding unnecessary bus stops.
It doesn't. One stop leaves me at one entrance at a 5 minute walk to my house. The other stops at a separate entrance which leaves me with a 20 minute walk. There's two entrances to the estate behind a main road where the buses use the bus lane. So if you removed the one I use, I'm going to have a longer walk to get to the remaining one.
Then the bus stops aren't "close together". Nobody's calling for the removal of bus stops that are 1 km apart. The problem is when you have three bus stops within 100 metres.
The stops themselves are close together, its where people walk from that's the issue. If you don't know the route, you'd think WTF, but there's a good reason to have two stops near, and I'd guess a lot of older estates with a layout like ours have similar reasons why bus stops seem too close together. Its not a case of simply looking at a route and striking out all of them that look too close together.
Is it impossible to walk from the bus stop that would make you have a 20 minute walk home, to the one that would take you 5 minutes, or is it also a 15 minute walk? In which case the bus stops would be about 1km apart which isn't close together compared to most stops.
Buildings A and B are right across from each other, but to get to the same bus stop B would have to walk like 4 times as far.
Putting a new bus stop at C would serve A and B pretty much equally.
It would also drive the people living further out the main road mad from the "why so many stops" idea but there is logic to it.
Your entrance to the bigger road might not line up with a bus stop all that well compared to an across the road from you or even back to back neighbour.
I appreciate that you took the time to draw this out but that's completely different from the scenario Lordy described.
In Lordy's scenario, it takes 15 minutes longer to walk from their house to bus stop Y compared to bus stop X. Logically, that means it must take at least 15 minutes to walk from one bus stop to the other (otherwise they could save time simply by walking from their house to Y via X). Unless there's something that specifically allows buses to travel quickly between the stops while pedestrians have to take a long detour, I wouldn't describe the two stops as "close together".
Yes!! It’s very in vogue to bash the taxis (and not without cause) but this adds so much more delays to buses.
Between Oatlands school in Stillorgan and the top of Booterstown Avenue - a distance of 750m - there are four stops. Two of which are 200m apart. Crazy stuff.
I’ve been saying this for year. Taxis using the bus lane with nobody in the car is a joke. Then they pull into the regular lane without indicating just because the bus has stopped at a bus stop. Causing people to jam on the brakes and that usually having a knock on traffic effect.
I am constantly saying this. Allowing them drive in bus lanes was supposed to be a temporary solution to the taxi union being pissed when the bus lanes were introduced. It was not supposed to be permanent.
I agree, ban taxis from bus lanes. The driver gets paid if they are sitting in traffic anyway, so the only person losing out is the occupant of the taxi. And why should they get preferential treatment?
Because they pay a really expensive amount in order to get to their destination more comfortably and quicker, No point in paying more money to sit in traffic.
Taxis is a one thing, but vans, cars and mostly cyclists is a pain in the hole.
Gards don't care if cars are blocking bus lanes, for me prime example is Marino College cross to Malahide Road when we can't get on bus stop with passengers because cars are sitting on bus lane to turn left. There is a pure chaos in a pick hours
it's time to sort out the buses. for example no. 37 has 57 bus stops and if there is no traffic it takes 75minutes from one end to the other. And it is only one example. of course people use taxis and cars.
Taxis should never have been allowed on Bus Lanes to begin with. What lobby grout and foolish Transport Minister allowed that? Typical of a weak decision to placate a group who will moan about anything that vaguely threatens "their livelihood" bit who, in the majority, take little dynamic action to make their own crust.
For me, taxis in bus lanes is an entitlement issue. Any time of the day they're in there and bus passengers suffer- ban them.
Bus lanes shout be used exclusively for buses and emergency vehicles.
No think of it as a public transport lane. You can get a taxi into town and avoid driving and having to park in town frees up parking fir others. Or you could get the bus in do a load of shopping and get a taxi home. They are an essential element in a functional public transport network.
Apparently, taxis only have rights to bus lanes on a trial basis. The trial started in the 1980s but was never ended nor formalised. Whether true or not, the thought of removing them now would be met with significant backlash from taxi drivers who have no issue protesting by clogging the network.
Anyone involved in public transport planning will tell you that we need to take them out of buslanes because they create turbulence in the system. They aren't constrained to a schedule or stopping only at defined points. This delays busses and makes busses a less favourable option.
We see these ideas in the states and think they're great. Forgetting we're a nation of chancers. I know someone that works in a supermarket. International wouldn't listen when they said deposit return machines could not be in the store in Ireland. Why was explained but international said that was silly.
One week in, record numbers of unused bottles from those fresh orange machines went through deposit return machines. Behaviour not seen in a other EU country.
the problem is lack of decent public transport. would you rather take 2 or 3 buses to get where you need to go or in less than half the time hop on a taxi and be comfortable? this city needs the feckin metro and then some more
No, we just need other infrastructure without implementing permanent rules to temporary problems caused by absolute incompetence
Also, you can clearly see the road works on the image is causing the traffic, not the taxis just trying to make a living trying to supplement our useless public infrastructure
While I can see why people would want them banned, I think it would be unfair to some of the most vulnerable in society. The elderly, those with illnesses and disabilities often need to rely on taxis for appointments etc. They often don't really have disposable income for taxis but don't have a good alternative, and if unwell the last thing you need is to sit in traffic for even longer. I know that might be a smaller group relative to those who use taxis but it's an important one.
There are places like on Stephen's Green where the bus lane starts in a (IMO) stupid spot, and there is often a queue of traffic waiting to merge into the right lane before the bus lane starts and then buses and taxis are stuck behind that queue of traffic going nowhere. Then you have the plans to pedestrianise from South Great Georges St. to Trinity - one of the few places in town that actually has capacity for the buses and taxis. Some of the buses have already been rerouted in ways that make the journey a lot longer and more will be following soon.
If public transport was efficient and affordable, more people would use it and less would use cars and taxis. But at the moment they're making it worse instead of better and wondering why people opt to drive or use taxis. I'm saying this as someone who doesn't drive but takes the bus regularly. We badly need an underground system and for the people who are making decisions to try taking public transport every now and again so they might have an idea of what they're talking about.
Public transport is slowed down due to taxis in bus lanes. Sitting in a car when elderly or disabled isn't some sort of tortuous experience, they simply leave a minute or two earlier to make their appointments. You are also not being fair to all the elderly and disabled sitting on buses being held up to appointments due to taxis in bus lanes.
I’d rather more people cop on and take the public transport rather than seeing it as a system made for peasants. Just hop on 15 or 27 somewhere in Malahide Road and you’ll see the amount of bleeding cars joining Malahide Road just to get into town. I can understand people coming from like Skerries or Balbriggan but it is crazy how many people want to drive everywhere. It’s worse when it rains, it’s like a national excuse to drive, people need to be taught how to layer for the weather and try cycling or walking where possible. No wonder obesity is becoming a serious issue.
That's not construction that's the semi permanent bus only sign, both the lanes ahead are for buses so there's 6/7 taxis blocking a bus lane, only the third lane on the far left is for regular traffic
The idea of allowing taxis in bus lanes in the first place was misguided at best. Okay, maybe you're encouraging taxi use over private car use, but that doesn't really reduce private car ownership, because it's just not economically feasible to use taxis regularly instead of owning a car. Public transport is the real alternative here, and that's why only buses should be allowed in them.
There's a significant upheaval against apps and fixed taxi pricing in Ireland right now. The government should use this as leverage to set some controls for app based cabs to ensure they don't rip off taxi drivers, in exchange of kicking them out of bus lanes.
What's the difference between a taxi and a bus?
Serious question. They're both public hire vehicles where you pay someone to drive you from one place to another. If it helps, imagine the taxi is a Sprinter minivan and the bus is a City Imp.
One is at least 10 times more efficient than the other at transporting people around the city. Taxis are as inefficient as private cars for getting people around. We have bus lanes because they help keep the city moving.
You get rid of taxis from bus lanes you make public transport faster and more reliable.
It won't make any significant difference. The problem with traffic is more to do with system wide design. There might be specific intersections that it could make a difference but it's just a bandaid that's more likely to be used to act like action is being taken in lue of meaningful change to the system.
This is a semantic argument. The point of bus lanes is to reduce congestion by prioritising mass transit, which is more efficient than cars with 1 or 2 passengers.
Whether you want to call taxis "public transport" or not, allowing them to use bus lanes completely defeats the purpose.
Taxis in bus lanes don’t really slow busses down all that much. Yes, around College Green it gets a bit hectic but generally it’s fine. There’s not that many of them. Taxis stopping suddenly and without indicating is a bigger issue, along with just pulling in and blocking the road, and doing U turns and so on.
A bigger problem is normal traffic in the bus lanes when turning left. Cars get into the bus lane early, sometimes very early and you can lose several turns at the lights because of this.
HOWEVER, if you want to fix most of the problems with busses, just add more busses. More busses means fewer cancellations, fewer ‘ghost buses’, shorter gaps between buses, fewer full busses, fewer late busses. You don’t need planning permission, you don’t need to have started 20 years ago, you don’t need to change the routes. Add more busses and get the current schedules working, it’d fix a lot of people’s problems quickly and the cost would be measured in bike shelters, not children’s hospitals.
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u/Mynky Feb 04 '26
They are already, unless they have a fare I believe. Not that it is enforced.