Dublin Bus cuts the 172 route

I LEARNED today that my bus route to work is ceasing completely on Sunday. Brilliant. Aside from the reasons I'll go into shortly it is completely ludicrous to cut public transport. According to the powers that be no one took the bus. Well as a daily user of the route that is nonsense. Fair enough that isn't a busy route, but it is busy in the mornings.

Aside from that it is a route that goes down Oxmantown Road and invaluable to many of the elderly residents that live in the area. Course I suppose their voice doesn't matter as they will hold bus passes and generating no income.

I understand it is a quiet route for most of the day but what was stopping Dublin Bus from scheduling a morning service and maybe one or two during the day so the older people in my community can get their pensions and shopping.

It is a service that more could have been made of, such as actually advertising where the bus is going. In the 18 months I have lived here I have never once seen the bus properly labelled (is that right) as to its destination, other than Dunard. I don't even know where Dunard is, but it is the start of the route as it goes into town. So many people let the bus go by as it doesn't say it is going into town.

It's also really annoying that we the customers were given two days notice, nice. While this has been mooted and I did, as I said earlier, hear reports that Dublin Bus were adamant that the 172 had no passengers and would go, know it was probably inevitable, still I am peeved. Nevermind the fact that as a daily user of this route it is not empty, far from it unless you count a full bottom deck and some people on the top deck as empty.

Even more annoying, even though the route doesn't stop until Sunday, the timetable is no longer available on their website, you are redirected to one of the Blanchardstown routes.

Maybe the answer is to get a car, yaeh, get more people off public transport and into cars.

Sorry I doubled up on my 365 but there you go, or there goes my bus.

Waiting for the bus - 365

(April 2oth)

Biblical rain

ANOTHER morning of biblical rain, with more coming tomorrow as the tail end of Hurricane Hanna hits is. This is gonna be a looonnnnggg winter. The photograph is from this morning as I waited on the bus :(

O M G

THIS morning as I was going into work along the Quays, I noticed this mad woman driving while eating a bowl of cereal. Seriously, a bowl of cereal.



Now I know the Quays don't move that fast in the mornings but seriously come on. I mean how does this work?

Does she pour them before she gets into the car and leaves it on the passenger seat until the traffic crawls enough to eat, or does she bring a bowl and fill it up as she goes. Either way thats is a major distraction and a danger to everyone else on the road.

What happens if she spills some on her lap, does she just ignore it and drive on? What happens if all of a sudden traffic begins to move, does she move the bowl then not caring whether or not she gets milk on her seats, does she drive on irregardless? Slow moving traffic is not an excuse.

I was tempted to take her number plate but decided against it. What a selfish driver.

Commuting

More commuting pics.


Waiting on the bus and pull out my camera


Getting bored and planting stickers


Seats are not for feet

Morning commute

Some of the things out the bus window this morning.

Morning commute

Bank of Ireland - through the bus window

Whatchadoing there?

Normally when I take pics on the bus people tend to completely ignore me, this is probably helped by me sitting at the back of the bus. This morning this wee girl was just looking at me puzzled, I love the fact that her nose is pressed against the glass.

Valentine's Day

Taken one year ago today on the bus going to work.

De Luas

You never know what you will see on the bus

SERIOUSLY, I have said it before, you never know what you will see on a bus, so it is always worth having the camera handy.



It isn't completely in focus but you get the idea and if you can take a better pic of this (they have been there for a few days anyway, maybe more) please do. You can see them above Doyle's Pub as you go around from Dolier Street round the side of Trinity. I love the way they are hung out, it has to be something done by a fella, eejit. Still it has provided me with some mirth on the morning commute.

On and off

Once again the following were taken during my morning commute. I love these lamps, particularly the colours on the first one. Found around Dolier Street.

Reading on the bus

I'VE done my fair share of lengthy commuting to work, approximately five years worth, and an absolute necessity when travelling on public transport is something to read.

If you are on a journey that might take an hour not only is a newspaper and/or a book essentialI find my camera comes in handy as well. So once my Metro was finished this morning I took out the camera and started looking around.

I took a couple of pics before I realised I had a theme going. So here you go. Reading on (and in the last image off) the bus. There are loads more of my commuting on the bus on a slideshow on Flickr here, seems I spend a lot of time on buses and trains...

Tips for travelling on the bus - for the selfish travelling commuter

RIGHT you asked for it, you know who you are. I'm talking about selfish commuters who must feel somehow that because they have bought a ticket that they own the bus. This post is for you because you obviously do not know how to travel on the bus, where others are travelling too. Hopefully after this post all our journeys can be more pleasant.

As you can probably tell I had one of 'those' bus journeys home this evening, couple the selfish traveller with rain, umbrellas and lots of other people trying to get home and oh it just wasn't nice.

My rant is against the obviously clueless (well I guess they must be clueless, maybe it is just pure and utter selfishness) commuter and in particular the one who irked me this evening, sitting at the end of a seat who think that doing so makes the whole seat theirs; no matter how much you pretend not to notice the bus is packed to the gills. Rather like those drivers who drive into yellow boxes and sit poker-straight staring out the front of the car and not at the hoards of cars honking their horns who are legally turning into the yellow box the poker-straight driver has kept them out of.

I have also noticed that the people who sit at the end of a seat, whether it is on a bus or indeed a train normally read as if pretending to be engrossed in a book somehow distracts the perpretrator from the surrounding dirty looks. I think I would feel that amount of annoyance directed at me.

This evening despite the crowded bus, despite the rain, this woman sat perched on the end of the seat at the back making it doubly hard for anyone to take the seat beside her. Adapting this trick by placing a bag on the seat next to you also doesn't wash. And I am not talking about someone who has got on a semi-empty bus who falls over themselves to pick up their bag and move over when they see people moving up towards the seat.

So the first pic illustrates what not to do:



And this demonstrates what to do.

Early morning at Heuston Station

AS promised here are some early morning pix from Heuston Station.


Just to verify the time, more for myself than anyone else





And as always there are more on Flickr.

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Don't do that here - Grumpy Old Woman part 6

THIS is less of a grumpy old woman post and more of a 'I can't believe that filthy beast just did that and I want to kick him' post.

A man got on the number 10 in Phibsboro this morning and took the seat on the top deck opposite me. But before he sat down he leaned forward from the waist up, covered one side of his nose with his finger and proceeded to blow and empty his nose just like footballers do on the pitch.

Honestly he really did, and sorry to those of you with weak stomachs. I know I had one after that.

In what world is that acceptable, besides his of course. It is absolutely vile, vile, vile..

This surely tops the list of unbelievably nasty things people do on buses, like men scratching themselves as if they are alone or clipping your nails. Stop it, it is nasty and repulsive.




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