46A, 11, 19… why change the numbers and routes of buses in Dublin?

Comment & Analysis: With headlines like “Dublin Says Goodbye To The Legendary 46a Bus”, “‘I think Liam would be really horrified with the 46A going’: Bagatelle member on the end of the iconic bus route”, and “Farewell to 46A bus route after almost 100 years”, nostalgia was cranked up to unbearable levels for many people who had the unfortunate experience of waiting a very long time for 46A.

It’s not the first bus route to be changed. Some will say the 46A was given so much media attention because of the posh areas it served; others will agree that it’s because it rhymed and ended up in a song.

But why change the number and the routes at all?

It’s part of BusConnects, a wide-ranging programme to modernise the bus services in Irish cities. In particular, it is part of the Dublin Network Redesign. This part of BusConnects is all about how buses are routed via Dublin’s streets broad and narrow.

You can read more about the overall rerouting project at busconnects.ie/cities/dublin/new-dublin-area-bus-network and more about the changes made on Sunday at transportforireland.ie/getting-around/by-bus/phase-6a-e-spine.

As a National Transport Authority report on the routing part of the BusConnects project outlined in 2020:

BusConnects Dublin will introduce a redesigned, higher capacity bus network which is more coherently planned and more understandable, delivering a better overall bus system for Dublin and the surrounding areas.

The new bus network will serve existing and future passengers in a more sustainable and environmentally friendly way. Reducing the need for private cars and moving more people to public transport is a key part of tackling climate change.

The current bus network has many overlapping routes where the bus services are not evenly spaced and there is little integration between bus services and other modes of transport. The New Dublin Area Bus Network will be a more reliable and more efficient service that will take more people, to more places, more often.

Can you repeat that in plain English?

The bus network needed to be modernised. Streamlining was needed to make the best use of the existing number of buses and the new capacity being added to the network, including main routes, local services, orbital routes and 24-hour services across the city.

So, modernise the routes and stick with the old numbers?

First of all, navigating large bus networks can be problematic. For many/most people, unless you know the route, they find it as hard a tourist. The Dublin Bus network had layers and layers of history as to why routes were the way they were.

The new network includes high-frequency Spines, Orbitals (a mix of high-frequency and not so much), other city-bound routes, local routes and peak-time extra or express routes.

The letters added also help with clarity about what routes do:

  • A to H are Spines.
  • The orbitals are split into their areas:
    • O city centre orbital (due in Summer 2025).
    • W western orbital.
    • N northern orbitals.
    • S southern orbitals.
  • L routes are local routes.
  • 1-99 are other routes which serve the city centre.
  • X (as before) are express routes.

The Spines include merging and reconfiguring the main capacity on main routes, so, old numbers would be out of place in the Spine system, which tries to make better use out of capacity. This diagram shows at a basic level how Spine works with branches in the suburbs where density is (generally) lower:

Dublin will end up with both a more simplified and a more connected network, covering more of the city, and signs are good from the first routes launched that the routes will be more dependable too.

But will there be fewer direct routes?

Networks work when passengers are able to and have confidence in switching buses (or trams or trains). It’s understandable why people are weary of this due to their current and past experiences. But there are promising signs.

There has been a 26% increase in passenger boardings on BusConnects routes, compared to just a 0.6% increase on older routes.

Others have reported that getting to buses has surprisingly been faster in some cases — for example, I know somebody who travels from an area within the canals, and they now have to travel to the city centre core on one Spine to go to their workplace in a suburb that is on another Spine — they say this is faster and more reliable than the old direct bus they used to get.

The Orbital routes — including the high-frequency O route around the city centre due to launch in the Summer — will help people avoid having to go into the city centre core where, for example, there are two parallel routes.

In some cases, switching three times may end up faster than going into the city centre, but I’m sure Dubliners will be weary of that idea.

But some people will lose out?

There’s no doubt that that is true.

Generally, BusConnects will include more connections, including the orbital routes and, for example, the new connection for the first time ever, from Glasnevin and Ballymun to Dublin Airport — before now, it was a case of so close but as far as public transport was concerned, it was so far away.

Some of the people leading the campaigning against the changes are people who will now have to (1) change buses to get to their workplaces or elsewhere or (2), in some cases, walk/wheel a little further to get to a Spine. Some people might also be on lower-frequency routes than before.

While talking about new connections might seem empty to those people, Dublin needs a transport network that not only suits those who use it today but will help the growing city and its residents.

Even when talking about the greater good, there’s a balance to be had — if we take the high-profile changes to the 11 bus, the huge benefit to the wider community is a direct connection to the airport was downplayed, dismissed and by some people turned into nothing but a negative.

The connection to the airport will not just connect airline passengers but also the many people who work in and around the airport, and also allow for more direct connections to regional and national bus connections at the airport.

More generally, isn’t changing numbers and routes unfair to older people and people with disabilities?

Change can be very hard, especially for some people who are older and people of all ages with disabilities (everything from very visible ones to not so visible ones). However, the older and far more complex system numbering and routing system was far harder to navigate for people who find navigation hard.

Transport consultant Jarrett Walker, whose company worked on the earlier stages of the routing plan, when writing about BusConencts a few years ago, noted:

“…that many of the major corridors leading south into central Dublin were served by a complex tangle of overlapping routes.  These routes often did different things in the city centre, so that there was often no one stop where you could board any of the buses going out a particular major road.”

The Spine system will not only simplify the above by allowing most people travelling in the city using those routes to dependently know if they go to X location in the city centre, the next bus towards home/work/elsewhere will be in 3 to 15 minutes.

Those waiting times depend on the time of day and the part of the Spine they are going to. For example, parts of the areas served by Spines in Kildare have a general frequency of 30mins, but the Spines are generally offering increased frequency across the day compared to the old routes.

If buses are still around in 50 or 100 years and the system needs modernisation again, the people who will have benefited from these changes for a lifetime may be discommoded by the next set of changes.

Of course, there will be hard cases with the current changes. For any individual issues, rough details of the people’s types of journeys would be useful. There have been some very clear cases of misinformation that make people think their route is totally gone when it has just been renumbered and has hardly changed or improved for them (that doesn’t mean it has for everybody). In other cases, an extra walk or switching buses is needed.

Dealing with a city’s transport needs is complex, and improving things is rarely simple.

And… about this Walker guy, what would he know about Dublin?

Jarrett Walker is one of the world’s top experts on bus routing. His company examines the shape, size, and travel patterns of the cities it works in. While his company was working on BusConnect and afterwards, the changes were also informed by consultation and other feedback from residents, groups, councillors and TDs, the NTA, and Dublin Bus.

The net result is hardly just based on the whims of one person, company, or transport agency.

But the NTA never listens to people!!?

That is verifiably untrue — the reports and pages on BusConnects clearly show how changes were made and further changes were made recently in the new phase of BusConnects in response to feedback (some of these changes were ready to go for the previous launch date, but the misinformation claimed otherwise).

There are no drivers for this expansion!

Ireland is close to full employment, more capacity is being added to the bus routes in different parts of the country, and the cost of living issue is strongest in Dublin. In that context, of course, there will be issues with hiring and retaining drivers. But the rollout of most routes have gone relatively well with some bumps along the way.

Ultimately, BusConnects is about getting the most out of the urban bus network. Dublin clearly also needs longer-term upgrades, including MetroLink, Dart+ and more Luas lines. In terms of capacity vs the number of available drivers — one Luas driver, for example, can carry around four times as many people per tram as a bus. And MetroLink will be driverless.

7 thoughts on “46A, 11, 19… why change the numbers and routes of buses in Dublin?”

  1. I sat in bray on sunday morning at 7am directing passengers up to the main street as noone told them that bus connects meant no more city bound bus the e1 replaced the 145 and 155 in the area but no longer serves the bus interchange at the dart station. It instead stays on the main street. In general the new locals worked and people were used to them going to similar destinations as their old numbers . The only bad comment i heard was 1 driver saying that the 63 changing into 2 routes could cause problems at schooltimes as kids will have to walk a distance to change buses in a non sheltered area as the 63 covered multiple schools.

    Reply
    • The 63 was doing a lot of heavy lifting in a sparsely serviced east-west direction from west DLR to the coast. Now the two separate ones are giving some people a walk-to service and for others losing one. Overall not a great uplift on the face of it, but time will tell. Thing is, it is through an area where there is a lot of North-south options, little east-west and many 3-4 car households, so a carmageddon area.

      Reply
  2. I thought bus connects was supposed to be accompanied by bus gates, road reconfiguration etc? I know from my 80-year old mom that when she was using the new L25 route it was great when there was little traffic, yet once it had to mix in with the hoards of motorists it was excruciatingly slow. There were no new bus lanes implemented to support the route.
    That said, I know from my nephew going to Dundrum and Tallaght that the L25 route beats the pants off the horrendous 75 for reliability, common-sense routing and frequency. I suspect it is routes like this that people will have taken to most.
    That said, personally, for me to bus to work is now almost as long a time as walking it – in fact Google indicates I will spend twice as long walking to and from it as actually being on it. Similarly, common trips by bus to e.g. collect car from service garage will be 20 minutes longer – again due to walking time to get to the reconfigured route.
    As you point out Cian, Dubliners are absolutely loath to take a route involving switching buses as the experience is of unreliable transfer times, phantom buses etc. Circling back to my first point, my mom’s journey included the L25 and a switch to a local bus in Churchtown. She was often waiting 30 minutes for the transfer to or from it due to unreliability of either of the two buses. We need to get the bus priority fixed – not car priority as it is at present. That and bus lane camera enforcement for the buses to use.

    Reply
    • Re “I thought bus connects was supposed to be accompanied by bus gates, road reconfiguration etc?”

      BusConnects is made up of many diffrent parts including routing, redesign of roads and ticketing etc.

      Reply
  3. We live on the old 17 bus route which was replaced with orbitals s4 and s6 and we are delighted. The s4 in particular is every 10 mins. It connects us to better bus routes and luas (we are on an infrequent 11 bus route) as well as taking us all over the southside. Some were put out by loss of old 17 but it was infrequent and inefficient (it went everywhere). The biggest bus connects bonus for us is that the frequency of the orbital means I can let my 10 year old take the bus alone to activities knowing that it is so frequent she can’t really go wrong. I look forward to more and more independent travel for her and all the preteens and teens in the area as frequency increases and her skills at navigating the system improves.

    Reply
  4. I’ll start this by flagging that the BC general principle is terrific and I have seen some improvements in some connectivity. However some people will definitely be worse off and my concern is that these are older, generally more disadvantaged and not being listened to. I live in an area which will see a 2.2km stretch have 55% an hour less overall public transport (averaging out between Luas and Bus and between high/low frequency periods) once the Bus Connects network is finalised. That distance includes a 1km stretch which is served only by bus and which under implementation of BC will see a 75% reduction in public transport – replacing services that go 9 times an hour with a twice-hourly bus. Initially the new bus was only going to go once an hour (88% reduction) but we met the NTA with the results of a survey and they agreed that local residents, particularly older people and those with disabilities or with very young children in buggies, would be disadvantaged. This is a historically working class area and many people in these demographics don’t have cars. NTA’s original conception was that the Luas would serve that 2.2km stretch (though it only serves 1.2km of it) – they were completely unaware of the new housing developments being started with 60,000 new residents planned to live along that part of the Luas route route. The only TFI-app recommended route to get people to the nearest post office to collect pensions etc once the Bus Connects plan is implemented will include a 650m walk (250m longer than what NTA agrees is ‘acceptable walking distance’ in urban areas) through an estate infamous for anti-social activity. On the flip side I can now get between my home and my dad’s in under 50 mins – previously I needed to do the going into town and back out thing which could mean 1hr 10 mins.

    Reply
  5. I take 145 on a weekly basis 2-3 days a week to go to Heuston Station as I work around that area. Now sadly with Phase 6a it has split into two routes – E1/E2/39a and 4/C1/C2/C3. On a bad weather it’s really frustrating to get out at Aston Quay and having to change to a different route by walking for a bit. People live around Dublin 4 I’m certain is having a hard time so far on this change. S2 takes much longer to go to Heuston and back, so it’s not really an option for me, in addition to having to walk for 5-7 mins instead of just getting a bus directly outside my home. I never see massive changes where it negatively affects passengers in my home country, so this change here in Dublin is…rather odd.

    Reply

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