Sorry, but I disagree totally. It’s not the management who refuse to open the centre doors. It’s not management who drive the buses while chatting on their mobile phones. It’s not management who hurl abuse at non-white passengers. It’s not management who make passengers stand in the rain while they sit alone in the bus reading their paper. The truth is that the companies that make up CIE are run for the benefit of the Unions. Passengers are a necessary evil who are treated with utter contempt. Take train travel. The train sits there ready to take on passengers. But are passengers allowed on? No. Of course not. They have to queue. Because someone has to check their ticket. Since tickets are checked again on the train we can only assume the first check is to keep someone in a job.

The pay and conditions of CIE employees will be protected under EU law. There was absolutely no reason for the unions to take action other than for ideological reasons. They don’t want to have to compete with privatised services because they know they’d only be shown up. And their choice of a no-fares day demonstrates their moral bankruptcy. By refusing to collect fares they were stealing from their employers. Worse, they were also putting the travelling public in dodgy situation. After all it is the passenger’s legal responsibility to have a valid ticket. I shudder to think what would have happened if there had been an accident. Would the passengers have been properly covered by insurance?
All the no-fares day did was demonstrate the CIE union’s moral bankruptcy.

As for what should be done to fix the woes of public transport, I feel that some research should be done on systems used abroad to see what would work best for us, and then the government, civil service and a professional managment team (not the CIE bunch) should sit down and work out how to implement a new service.

And legislation should be passed to prevent the unions from having so much power that they can halt the running of a such an important service – I am all for the rights of the worker, but when it comes down to stopping a crucial services on whom so many depend, it’s absolutely unacceptable.

Ireland’s public transport is not as bad as everyone makes out — a few attempts at using some of the other systems overseas will point that out pretty sharpish.

Also, bus drivers aren’t really friendly and helpful anywhere in the world, AFAICS.

But don’t mind me, I’m writing from SoCal where there is *no* usable public transport. And take a look at
how the train system runs here.

My point: Irish public transport isn’t as bad as people always seem to think…

When a person in Kerry has to get a train to Dublin, to take a train to Galway, something is very, very wrong, in my opinion.

Why doesn’t Cork have a rail system similar to the DART? etc etc.

My point: Irish public transport isn’t as bad as people always seem to think…

Well, in my experience, it’s awful when compared to the MBTA in Boston, or the Muni / BART systems in San Francisco, or the Metro in Paris or Prague and based on reports from friends based in Munich, that’s far superior as well.

Then there’s the whole thing in the papers recently about the Metro in Madrid being done for a fraction of the cost of what the Dublin Metro will cost…

Face it, Dublin transport blows…