irishbuses.com blah blah blog

noreply@blogger.com (irishbuses.com) — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 00:24:00 +0000

Corporate Communications are so critical to most companies these days, its all about spin & not being spun, especially when it comes to the Internet. In a single tweeting, company medals can become company mud.
Spare a thought for the press release from Malev Airlines which sadly was grounded yesterday due to cash flow problems. The cash flow problems grounded the fleet as well as the ability to hire somebody who could translate the Hungarian into the English language, the esteemed leader of Malev will live to regret opening his mouth.
Taken from the Malev website, but be warned, its more double Dutch than anything else......

"Unfortunately, the patterns, making the best kept and which have worked hard to avoid. Although in recent days there was still hope for the continuation of operations, and passenger confidence was undiminished, but in recent days appeared to cause the information provider partners lost confidence, and from one day to another, began to ask for advance payment of the services they provide. This cash outflow is accelerated to such an extent that the airline is now untenable situation. Is also known that the owner, despite the best intentions, the EU condemned the decision of not able to provide additional financial resources to operate. Against this background, the Board decided to order the Hungarian national airline to end its proper functioning. All utasunktól apologize. " - saidLimburger on Lorant CEO.

At least the first word was correct...." unfortunately "

a serial disaster

noreply@blogger.com (irishbuses.com) — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 19:02:00 +0000

Earlier celebrations about the latest craze of " mega squares " on the streets of Dublin have been shredded with the latest brand to go big on four corners. Its that time of year when trusty favourites take centre stage in the advertising cycle, jostling for position with anti smoking, cold killers & the diet products with the ladies favourite....Special K.

Alas the mega square version is like a chopped pepper or butchered heart if you want to be gruesome, that red frock doesn't fit very snugly into the new square marvel & with her hands chopped off, its more like a biology class rather than a breakfast bowl, its actually quite horrific the more you stare at this blood soaked babe.

Kellogg's have been getting out of the bed on the wrong side lately, from product recalls & quality controls to distribution disasters & sadly the mega square is a diet gone too far.

Dare to wear red, or just red faced.

Leap n weap

noreply@blogger.com (irishbuses.com) — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 22:35:00 +0000

It was a LEAP at the bus driver today as the hard pressed Dublin citizens paid their shillings to get to B from A, some had already done their homework with the green gizmo leap card to avoid the punitive increases.
Still, one bird that really isn't worried about the NTA approved wedgies is our lovely Rachel Allen, that kitchen goddess who can roll out the pasty with his luscious lips while beating an eggs into a frothy flirt. Rachel, who we have come to role model as our mother hen chef was also leaping about recently, well, in her Audi A7, 11 D of course, no skimping with the flour here, doing her bit shooting a few birdie, proudly displayed on the bonnet. It seems Audi are none too pleased with the unpleasant pheasant advertising, nor the thousands of Rachel fans glued to her cookery books.
So if you fancy plucking Rachel's feathers, she's plenty of space in the A7 should you wish to abandon Dublin Bus & slum it cross-country style with the snazzy alloys.
Wax jacket & loaded gun indeed are essential travel accessories, no need for a leap card, a stuffed bird in the oven at 200 degrees instead.
Nice one Rachel.

( photo courtesy independent.ie )

why did I overtake

noreply@blogger.com (irishbuses.com) — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 20:27:00 +0000

Expect the unexpected, what about to happen is not exactly what you were thinking....

Calm down

noreply@blogger.com (irishbuses.com) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 21:15:00 +0000

The Nook & Mr Dunnes sweet shop may have packed up on North Frederick Street, but there's a new resident on the street & its just managed to squeeze in.
Our city forefathers never cease to amaze their Dublin citizens & the latest is something bound to slow you down, especially if your on public transport.
Some time ago, car traffic was banned from entering North Frederick Street, allowing the convoys of city & rural buses flow quite nicely down towards O'Connell Street & surprisingly was only flouted by the odd motorist, usually of culchie car registration, so blind eyes were turned.
Alas, the bonanza was not meant to last, for this is a recession, we need to tighten our belts & indeed our buses need to breath in, for this wonderful engineering marvel is slapped right at the top of North Frederick Street to impede the progress of commuters into the city with this insane traffic calming station, demanding all vehicles slow down to 30 km, they'll be lucky as it takes quite allot of dexterity & skill to shimmy past the concrete islands, meanwhile, huge creators in the road surface before & after the device are left unfixed.
Who comes up with these ridiculous & costly " improvements " that only snarl our already slow motion passage through the City Centre.
Calm down.

Gobh mo leithscéal

noreply@blogger.com (irishbuses.com) — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 23:00:00 +0000

Its arrived, well it was always coming, just like your bus, due, due, due

After a hastily added paragraph on the nta website, the Irish version of your bus was finally added to the orange glowing poles in late December, so the opportunity to blah blah blog about them couldn't be let go by.
Not just will your Irish bus now countdown, but every customer will be educated, in that due is " am " as Gaeilge, I never knew that, you learn something everyday. The bus will be am, I am, I am due.
More satirically, one further addition has been added to these orange marvels. At first, uneducated customers still reeling from the cupla focal may believe that there bus is fitted with a toilet, for a new symbol resembling a customer sitting on an armitage shanks is added just before the due minute/ noimead, in reality its a wheelchair symbol.
All we need now is the nanny state messages about crossing the road etc, which scroll along the lower line to start finger pointing in the native tongue - ar aghaidh leat !!!

On yer bike

noreply@blogger.com (irishbuses.com) — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 20:58:00 +0000

Found this new video pedaling its way on YouTube.
Its all so happy go carefree cycling on the new cycle track along the canal, entitled " instructional video " for cyclists, featuring the first traffic light system especially for bikes along the route.
Its all so well choreographed, with the bike stopping at the white line, waiting for the pedestrians to cross the track & then the little green man, opps, I mean little green bike giving the all clear to the law biding peddler. Ah, its even on one of those Dublin Bikes, the ones you see in town, usually tearing down a one way street, or on your nearest footpath, you know the type., with some crazed mad thing pedalling like fook & still going nowhere, with his 3 speed ATB.
The makers are obviously in cuckoo land & should really have used the word " aspirational " in the video somewhere because it ain't going to happen in Dublin's fair city, where the bikes are so......
( even in the snapshot above, yer man on the wrong side of his funky new cycle track ), ya just love the stupidity of the whole concept.
I'm seeing a RED light.

a square thats just mega

noreply@blogger.com (irishbuses.com) — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 00:12:00 +0000

Cue the drum roll & gasps from the audience.
The mega-square has arrived, well officially that is.
Memories of these" square " sided advertisements cast back to the ill fated AerDart service but the latest tweaking has really taken off since Johnny English got plastered to the side of a Dublin Bus Enviro500 in October last. With the extra splash area on the gigantic Enviro500 on either sides, married with the adframe, this ad type is going down a sensation with the ad agency Bravo really pleased with the outcome, sadly the return of the overall wrap as trialled with HB ice cream melted away, big budget long term campaigns are not financially digestible in the current " melting " climate.
So far following Johnny, Nikon, Aviva & Vodafone are sticking to the new ad innovation.

spelling disruption

noreply@blogger.com (irishbuses.com) — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 23:18:00 +0000

After record numbers ran the big race in the Capital yesterday, it seems Dublin wasn't the only place to have service disruptions, it seems to have been a Marathon in Dulin as well, where ever that was. In summary, the wonderful orange glowing signs were giving mixed messages yesterday, either being switched off entirely or not even getting the capital city spelt correctly.

While we are all guilty of the off spelling mistake, simply turning off individual signs was unforgivable along routes, which were affected or not.

These displays can provide any amount of pre determined information, like diversions, specific route changes & times but the turning off was a real time mistake, not everybody, particularly the older generation so dependent on the local bus have access to the WWW.

So much for real time information.....

a new surface

noreply@blogger.com (irishbuses.com) — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 19:57:00 +0000

Have you noticed your local strasse all bumpy & lumpy lately, as the sounds of scraping & smells of tarmac echo in the late hours around the capital as the city forefathers spend this years roads budget as the fiscal year deadline looms.

All cats eyes are motoring down to the North Wall Quay which is receiving some attention as the road gets a new layer. Its more the white lines that will be applied that will make this cosmetic makeover more interesting, as this stretch from The Point Depot to The Custom House was promised a lana bus for many years now, the morning & evening commute for bus passengers frustrated by endless queues of stopping & starting in the melee, coupled with the carte blanche free car parking alongside the whole way up the river.

So with some line painting in progress, who will get the lions share of the road space......

Whats your number

noreply@blogger.com (irishbuses.com) — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 19:38:00 +0000

Well done to Hollywood for launching their latest blockbuster movie " whats your number " starring Chris Evans & Anna Faris the same week as the real time passenger information went live on the Dublin Bus website. This week saw the plastering of " please take my number " on every bus pole within the network, well a slight exaggeration, nearly every one, the man in the van was a busy man in his van, highlighting that by punching in your bus stop number, up pops the arrival time of " your " next bus.

An interesting aside to this marketing campaign is the use of the word " your " to make the relationship between the passenger & bus more intimate, after all, its " your " bus from A to B, its not just a bus for everyone, its for you.

A useful pole at last

noreply@blogger.com (irishbuses.com) — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 21:56:00 +0000

Poles & signs, the city is full of them, but at least some are more useful than others.

A stroll, slow it was, following a wave of tourists, probably ashore from the visiting Marco Polo circus in town, a very upward revealed a really impressive orange glow of information, well impressive if you were waiting on a bus.

The sign to the right " 10 years after a war on terror ", no thanks, lets have a war on " information " like some weapons of mass information.

Those idle chrome poles have been gradually fitted with swanky signs now glowing bright & brim with when the new bus is coming. There have been some complaints that the word " due " seems to hang on like an overhead rain cloud, but at least its something on the horizon. The man with the van seems to have been busy on Nassau Street, as the above photo shows, no less than four trees of knowledge shining a beacon of hope down on the weary passenger.

Fully charged

noreply@blogger.com (irishbuses.com) — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 20:24:00 +0000

After a flat few months, heavenly hybrid is back on the streets of Dublin.

Well everyone is entitled to summer holidays & the lean green machine has been seriously " as seirbhis " until the W man & a new battery pack were installed in this techno marvel in late July followed by some drive trials which extended as far as Bray.

The loss of the 20B will now keep her only on the 16 group, gone are the peak scares to Beaumont so fleeting glances on " the cross " route will be the only glimpse.

Sorry, should we ?

noreply@blogger.com (irishbuses.com) — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 20:31:00 +0000

Eagle eyed will have noticed the new look displays on some Dublin buses, namely from Broadstone, Phibsboro & Summerhill buses with their " Sorry - not in service ".

Should there be such an apology for something that's not in service in the first place ? Does Tesco apologise when a potato is growing in a field & not on its supermarket shelf, does RTE say sorry when you switch on the TV at 10 pm & there's no 9 o'clock news. Just because a bus is running along the road with no passengers doesn't mean you have to pardon yourself, do you ?

The inspiration has probably come from our nearby operators over the water, yet at the same time Transport for London took the view that " sorry " should not be slapped on their mandatory dayglow scrolls, for there was nothing to be apologising for.

So sorry for this blog, really sorry, sorry, sorry sorry.

Conventional 747

noreply@blogger.com (irishbuses.com) — Thu, 26 May 2011 23:40:00 +0000

Like mushrooms, some new Dublin Bus stops have been popping up along the quays as the revamped Airport Express 747 takes to the streets on Sunday next. I nearly typed Airlink, but the latest marketing suggests the route is to be called Airport Express, the original brand when it was launched with the KC's way way back in time.

From new stops to snazzy add on side panels, the route becomes more taxi & less express when it reaches the Pale, with more stops n starts, designed to drop n pick at the various hotels, just like ....Hotel Link, now where's the old 61A timetable gone.

The biggest improvement of the revamp will see the 747 travel along the Dame Street corridor with its numerous Temple Bar hotels along the side streets, Airport sweeper perhaps.

Alas the number 748 will be engulfed into the new 747, but lets face it the number 748 was always slightly annoying, having no association with a Boeing plane.

Times are tough & air fares even tougher still, less people are flying these days, two routes were really duplicating themselves, so something had to give. All eyes are now on Aircoach, the sight of tri-axle coaches, also duplicating themselves & empty leather seating cannot be sustainable.

Its time to tighten the belt, or at least fasten it before take off.

Turning over a new leaf

noreply@blogger.com (irishbuses.com) — Tue, 10 May 2011 19:06:00 +0000

As Dualway still reels from the fire that swept through its fleet less than two weeks ago, a positive note, this time their livery turning that little bit greener, not for the environment, but the colours themselves.
The shamrock logo on the offside has transformed from into a fully sprouting green, discarding the half red effort, its quite subtle, but a welcome improvement.
As time goes on, it seems by a process of elimination that the multi lingual fleet of East Lancs/ Darwin double deckers bore the brunt of the fire, with five of the open toppers being destroyed along with other vehicles.

Tickety Boo

noreply@blogger.com (irishbuses.com) — Sun, 01 May 2011 22:29:00 +0000

Just as we mourned the loss of the ticket bus, along comes this little blue number for the weekend clash between Leinster & Toulouse - fantastique !!!
This ticketmaster box office van wasn't so busy prior to the match, but then again, this is Ireland, everything & everybody until the last minute.
Memories of the original ticket buses to hit the streets in the wee hours, when some KC type single deckers had some of their nearside windows modified to flip up emergency exits, then a perspex plate was fitted over the window area to form a hatch, it was an inspired & indeed cheap solution. Along came the minibus, the ticket sales bus as they were known, another inspired idea was to turn the slider windows on their head, allowing the air vent to now become the hatch, thus providing enough space for the cash & tickets to exchange, while providing cover & security for the man in the van. The mark III version was to be the conversion of some withdrawn WV class midibuses, while a tad overkill for such a limited nightly role, then came the seizure of the economy & indeed the queues of nitelinkers.
It seems are O2 vans will carry on the mantle for the moment, " would you like a flake in that ? "

Buses for sale

noreply@blogger.com (irishbuses.com) — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 13:39:00 +0000

Two large bus industry changes seem to have gone well under the radar this month, or should that be AVL ( automatic vehicle location ).
In sightseeing news, Ensignbus have sold off their worldwide citysightseeing franchise bar some operations in Australia & the US, while Wallace Arnold/ Shearings is up for sale by its banking owners.
Its surprising that neither news made much headlines in the media, nor even in bus industry circles, at a time when buses & their passenger numbers are in the slow lane.

Czech Leader's Pen Grab Goes Viral on YouTube

noreply@blogger.com (irishbuses.com) — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 21:38:00 +0000

We've come along way

noreply@blogger.com (irishbuses.com) — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 11:18:00 +0000

Sometimes is takes the summer sunshine & a quite moment to appreciate how far we have come. A snapshot of a typical bus stop with the new real time passenger information ( RTPI ) displays at Ballsbridge yesterday. Its a long way from the old days of a rusty black pole with CIE headplate, usually neglected & certainly lacking any information as to exactly what it was. The roll out of the new RTPI system will have an amazing influence on bus customers, the doubt will be removed & even if a bus is 10, 20 or in 30 minutes time, at least its reassurance, so time to rest the weary bod in the shelter without having to glance every 10 seconds in the hope of transport coming yer way. This is rugby country, but its also bus country, coming to a stop near you soon.

April fools

noreply@blogger.com (irishbuses.com) — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 23:28:00 +0000

Newsflash

There's no need for a wreath, save the flowers for Mothers Day, it was all just a hoax, nothing like a bit of publicity on the home page.

So brush off the cobwebs, or indeed dandruff as above, irishbuses.com is alive & back to BUSiness.

Retro blog

noreply@blogger.com (irishbuses.com) — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 22:55:00 +0000

Can we talk about an airBUS on a bus blog, stay with me for this slight diversion. While snapping the latest addition to the Aer Lingus fleet this evening, rolled out from the production line in a " retro " Aer Lingus livery dating from the 1960's, as part of its 75th birthday celebrations, the notion that this could be rolled out in CIE's extensive fleet was wishful thinking. Despite the downturn, we should be proud of the group & indeed the daily deliverance of public transport to the nation. It doesn't take a birthday celebration to celebrate, so here's a thought, an EV in tan livery, a VG in cream n blue & finally a VT in two tone green. I can dream cant I, even if its not my birthday.

Life after the apprentice

noreply@blogger.com (irishbuses.com) — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 21:25:00 +0000

There really is life after a high profile tv show aka The Apprentice.
Poor oul Panos who featured in the Irish version of a Greek tradegy " The Apprentice " has now found a new role...on the side of bus. It seems all of Bill's tasks has Pano's reaching for the drill, just as well its cordless or he could hang himself.

Pat's day...by invitation only

noreply@blogger.com (irishbuses.com) — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 22:14:00 +0000

The usual diversions, curtailments & oddball bus workings today amid the amazing Saint Patricks Day festivities in the capital, but image of the day must go to the stranger goings on at the salt n pepper canisters at Wood Quay, for the underground car park, the scene of brutal butchery of our ancestors when the buildings were erected, had the most bizarre of movements, its car park was open, but by " invitation only ". So how did the population of car lovin Dubliners acquire one of these " invitation only " passes to the most viking of car parking spaces in the city walls...literally.

Saint Patrick may have banished the snakes, but there appears to be a few rattlers still in the civic offices.

fotoend for fotopic

noreply@blogger.com (irishbuses.com) — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 12:09:00 +0000

Whats that saying....never put your eggs in one basket.
It seems the end has finally come for fotopic, with the service being entirely withdrawn over the last few days, with rumours of liquidation & cessation around the various Internet chat rooms.
A similar outage last year which on for over a week should have been an alarm bell for its users that something was up, the service has been patchy for months now.
A morphed "pikfu" site is promised to take over from the mortally wounded beast, but its been very slow to set up & there was serious concerns about migration, you just cant bang down the doors of fotopic & ask for your files to be transferred.
In busworld, there are numerous bus sites affected, hours, days, months & even years of cultivating photos have been lost, with chances of retrieval unlikely.
Those users affected are going to be deeply nervous with new photo sites, fearing it happening again.
Its back to the START, or a flickr over to someone else.