Dublin Bus

It's kind of hard to have sympathy for Dublin Bus drivers when you're a passenger on their (ahem) regular services.

To date:

• I've stood waiting in the sleet for 45 minutes, because a bus driver decided he wasn't finishing the route and threw all the passengers off the bus.
• I've been told by a driver that Dublin Bus couldn't run regular services because of the Ireland vs Georgia match in Croke Park and therefore services were terminating on Burgh Quay rather than continuing to the southside, despite the fact that there were no blockages on the southside.
• I've stood outside buses in the morning, watching the driver having a snooze instead of loading passengers and departing on time.
• Additionally I can't buy a weekly ticket or smart card that caters to my needs. No option currently available from Dublin Bus allows me to save money.

Stand at any main bus stop in town and try to figure out the frequency of a bus - you know what you'll learn? That Dublin Bus is probably more random than the lotto. At least in the lotto there are a maximum of 45 numbers, so something is bound to start repeating eventually. Not so with Dublin Bus.

In fairness, drivers aren't fully to blame for the financial mess that Dublin Bus is in, but they are the public face of the bus company, and unfortunately you are more likely to remember the bad ones than the good ones.

I don't care whether Dublin Bus runs at a profit or a loss, it is a public service after all. But I would like it to be run in an efficient manner with proper timetabling and a service that actively caters to the needs of the public. Bus shelters that give the departure time from the shelter rather than the departure time from the depot would be nice too.

We had many years of surplus cash that we could have used to improve public transport, make it more efficient and suited to the needs of a modern Ireland. But of course, we didn't.