(Dublin) Donnybrook’s New GTs on 11 & 54A [25Aug2013]

Donnybrook Garage has taken delivery of the first twenty of the eighty Volvo B9TL / Wright Gemini buses on order for Dublin Bus this year.  Further deliveries are now in progress to Ringsend.

Here we see some of the Donnybrook batch in action on routes 11 and 54A.

 

Above: GT88 seen from the front and rear in Suffolk Street, Dublin, on Saturday 24 August 2013.

The buses are built to Wright’s Gemini II specification, however Dublin Bus has requested that they have the older style of Gemini I front panelling for commonality of spares with their earlier Wright deckers.

Route 11 switched over to GT operation from Friday 23rd August.

Above: GT84 is seen at Fortfield Drive, near Kimmage, heading outbound.

Originally the 54A was a cross-city route and came south just as far as this point, however over the years it has lost its northside section, while being continually extended to the south, the extensions allowing it to remain viable while the main 54 service was discontinued.

GT82 is seen at the same spot, heading inbound.

The buses are the first in the fleet to carry the new Irish style of registration with a three digit year prefix rather than two – so instead of being 13-D, these buses are 132-D to signify that they were delivered in the second half of the year.

As of 2009, the company no longer pays for registration numbers to coincide with fleet numbers.

MONDAY MORNING CLASSIC – Last New Green Bus (Dublin, 1997)

AllAboutBuses invites you to banish the Monday morning back-to-work blues with a spot of time travel . .

This week we jump back in time to spring 1997, when, 16 years after it was introduced, the last new vehicle was delivered in the two-tone green livery which Dublin Bus had inherited from CIE City Services.

Above: Two shots of Volvo Olympian/Alexander RV327 in its first week in service in 1997.

This was part of a 60-strong Olympian order for that year, of which only the first two (RV326, 327) were in standard green livery, the remainder being in either CitySwift colours (for QBC workings) or other special colours.

The first five buses of the order, RV326-330 were allocated to Donnybrook Garage for route 14/14A, and were the first new buses to be allocated directly to this route (as opposed to midlife cascades) since 1969, when Atlanteans D265-280, 289-294 and 306-308 arrived new as a shared allocation for the 14, 14A and 18. These buses  had formed the core allocation of this cross-city service (Churchtown/Meadow Grove to Phoenix Park) until the early 1980s, following which the route was operated by several series of more recent Atlanteans, and eventually Bombardiers, cast off from other routes.

By the time the new Olympians above were allocated to the 14/14A in 1997, the route had declined considerably in size, being extended at the southern end to Ballinteer, but losing its cross city status, with the Phoenix Park end vanishing sometime in the late 1980s.  The 14 had also been realigned in 1990 to run via Rathgar and Orwell Road, leaving the 14A to cover the original routing of Dartry and Lower Churchtown Road, the 14 reversing its direction of travel along Braemor Road (the old terminus) and joining the 14A at The Bottle Tower (top picture) to follow the old 14A routing to Meadow Grove, and then both running on to Ballinteer.

Eventually the routes were to be extended again, to Dundrum, on the southside, and regained cross-city status with a considerable boost to PVR in 2012 by taking over the former 20 route from city to Beaumont on the northside.

Of the RV326-330 batch which went onto the 14/14A in 1997 (only enough to convert half the route, and topped up by more new Olympians in 1999) only the first two were green, with 328 and 329 being in Wedding livery, and 330 in colours for Coastal Tours.

Below we see RV328, on its first day in service, at Lower Churchtown Road. It has the base colours for wedding livery, but has not yet got the special ad boards. Note that despite the destination display, the bus is actually outbound to Ballinteer.

Strike Grounds Dublin Bus Fleet [05Aug2013]

(Dublin) Soon To Be Sold [29June2013]

With a further 80 new double-deckers due to arrive into the fleet from mid-July 2013, Dublin Bus will be making further inroads into the originally 648 strong fleet of ALX400 bodied Volvo B7TLs.  A handful were sold last year after the final Olympians were culled, but this year will see a cull of more than 60 members of the AV class, being taken from those 00-registered vehicles which have not had LED destination indicators refitted, and retain the older, harder to read dot matrix displays.

Donnybrook will be the first garage to get new buses, so the days are numbered for AV137, see here at the Ticknock terminus of route 114 on Saturday 29th June 2013.

Contrast this picture to that of the terminus of London route 114 a couple of posts earlier – the Dublin version is somewhat more scenic!buses

Last 53A runs, but dockland service improves [21April2012]

It was the end of an era today (21st April 2012) as the long-established 53A bus service ran for the final time in Dublin’s docklands,  bringing to a close a once frequent service which had dwindled in recent years to just a handful of isolated journeys. However daytime service in the North Wall area is set to improve, with the introduction of an all day projection of sister route 53 into the area, rather than a handful of extended trips operated at present.

Under the new regime route 53 will run through Alexandra Road in North Wall hourly from 7am to 7pm, and for the first time will be projected eastwards to provide a link to the Irish Ferries Terminal, which until now has only been serviced by premium-priced special buses (numbered 53B) timed to connect to ferry arrivals and departures.

Overall the 53 is losing half its daytime frequency and its evening service, but gaining the extension to the Ferry Terminal and will now have a standard hourly clockface timetable whereas before departures were timed at different random intervals.

Route 53A, which ran via North Wall Quay (rather than via the East Wall 53 route) ran for the last time with the 1305 departure from Alexandra Road, and a number of transport enthusiasts and local residents were there to commemorate the passing of this little piece of local history.

Volvo B7TL / ALX400 AV37 operated the final journey, and is pictured above.

Below, from an earlier era, we see KC138, one of the Irish built GAC single-deckers used on the route from 1984 to the turn of the century.

Quick-Pic: AV1

Dublin Bus AV1 is seen in the south city docklands. The company bought 185 of these buses in 2000,.

NEWS: Prepaid Fare Increase For Dublin Bus Gets NTA Approval (03/Feb/2012)

 

The National Transport Authority has today approved Dublin Bus’ application to increase prices on its range of pre-paid tickets (eg Travel 90, Rambler), by an average of 5.6%.

These price rises will be effective from February 19

Fare Glitch Hits Some Dublin Buses 27/01/2012

DUBLIN BUS reported this morning that due to a software glitch on their ticketing system, some buses operating from Donnybrook and Ringsend depots were unable to accept cash fares this morning, Friday 27th Jan 2012.

Passengers affected by the problem, which followed an overnight software upgrade, are being allowed to travel for free, and the company says it is working to resolve the problem.

The two depots between them amount to around a third of the overall fleet of just under 1,000 buses operated by DB, however not all buses were affected by the problem, and a company spokesman has confirmed that in total less than 50 buses were affected.

The affected systems were resolved by the end of the day.

View from the 59

For more than 60 years, route 59 was a wholly single-deck service, however more recently double-decks have started to feature.

Here we can watch from the upper deck as AV80 negociates the narrow and leafy roads around Killiney Hill, including the very tight turn at the former terminus.

Well Done, Dublin Bus!

Customer information on diversions at Hawkins Street

Dublin Bus has often let us down with poor quality or non-existent information on changes, but they have done themselves proud this St. Patricks Day with well-produced, professional looking, and easy to understand information on services diverted or curtailed due to the parade.

Well done Dublin Bus, this is the standard we want to see in the future!

Happy St. Patricks Day everyone.

Buses at Beaumont Hospital

Volvo B6RLE / Wright WV41 on orbital route 104 at Beaumont Hospital

Volvo B9TL/ADL Enviro 400 EV37 loads at Beaumont Hospital on its way to Harristown.

AV238, unable to properly access the stop at the hospital due to illegally parked cars.

Throughout most of the day motorists can be seen blocking the bus stops at the hospital and preventing wheelchair accessible buses from accessing the stops, but little action seems to be taken by the hospital authorities.

Dublin Bus battles on through snow

A Dublin Bus at Cherrywood, in South County Dublin, on Tue 3rd Feb 2009

DUBLIN BUS is continuing to run most services despite sub-zero tempratures and blizzard conditions in south and west Dublin this evening, although traffic and weather conditions are playing havoc with journey times and schedules.

Some services to outlying areas have had to be curtailed, including the 44 to Enniskerry (stopping at Kilternan) the 44B (not running to Glencullen), the 15B (curtailed at Anne Devlin Park) 16 (not serving Grange Road or Ballinteer), the 65 (curtailed at Tallaght) and buses along the N4 which are not calling in to Lucan Village.

Buses keep rolling in cold snap

Dublin Bus largely kept services running despite snowy conditions on Monday

Ringsend Changes

The new 74/74A terminus at Britian Quay - the stop in the foreground is the pick up stop, with the set-down one visible in the background.

Ringsend is currently in the process of swapping its 2003 batch of AVs for 2006 AXs from Phibsboro. AV317 is seen on the 10 in O'Connell Street.

09 deckers hit the streets

New 09-reg Volvo B9TL/Wright Eclipse VG34

2009 registered cars may be thin on the ground, but thanks to an ongoing delivery of buses originally ordered way back at the end of 2007, Dublin Bus has a number of smart new 09-reg double-deckers on the streets in the first month of the year.

The new buses have seen the end of the 44-year practice of matching fleet and registration numbers, making identification of buses difficult for both enthusiasts and staff alike.

The company bas started to introduce new larger fleet number transfers front and rear, but as seen in this view of Summerhill’s new VG34, not all buses have received these yet.