The Dublin Community Blog

The National Archives of Ireland have released the 1911 census. This is a fascinating resource with scanned copies of the original forms filled in by households around Ireland available to download. Personally when I downloaded the form for my grandfathers family I discovered that my great-grandfather was born during the famine. My great-grandparents spoke both Irish and English, something I can not do and neither could their children.They had 10 children, 7 of which were still alive at the time of the census. My father remembers that another 2 died young sometime after the census. Those were harsh times in Ireland.

But my family came from outside Dublin, for Dublin people there is even more than just their family history. The website contains lots of information about the city in 1911.

There were, by 1911, 330 trams operating on lines which ran for 60 miles along the city’s roads, drawing the suburbs tightly to the city.

Those trams ran on 17 routes around the city. Today the Luas has 2 routes, covers 15 miles and has 40 trams. Maybe in some ways times were not so bad in 1911…

There’s a convenient new way to pay for parking in Dublin city centre. On the 21st of May, Dublin City Council started a new service that allows registered users to pay for street parking without having to dig under your car seats for change or worry about rushing back to your car before the time expires. You can register for free and even get €5 free credit if you register online (CLICK HERE).

When you register with your credit card or bank details, you get a parking tag with a bar code sent to you in the post to be placed on the windscreen of your car. Then when you park in designated “pay and display” areas of Dublin, you just call or text to pay for the parking.

Fathers-to-be will find this particularly helpful while pacing around in Holles Street maternity hospital awaiting the arrival of their child since there’s no designated parking for patients other than the “pay and display” parking around Merrion Square. (Speaking from personal experience here.)

So if you’re a bit disgruntled by the fact that you live in Dublin but there’s no reliable public transportation near you (and especially if you find yourself getting rather red in the face about all the talk of introducing congestion charges in the city centre), at least the council have made it a bit more convenient for you to take your car into the city centre.

The unofficial strike at Dublin Bus escalated this morning with pickets being places on 5 depots. Dublin Bus are claiming that windows on buses in one of the depots were broken and that drivers who are driving buses from unaffected depots are being intimidated. The drivers claim that the strike was called because there was no agreement on the new schedules.

I would list the affected bus routes but there are too many and they are changing regularly (now only 4 depots are listed as affected) so you should go to DublinBus.ie to check your bus route.

Personally I cannot understand how one driver can be allowed to cause disruption to 150,000 commuters on the affected routes. If trade unions cannot control their members then what good is negotiating with them? Why did Dublin Bus and the Labour Court sit down with the unions for weeks of talks, negotiations, agreements, votes and re-votes if at the end of the day the workers those unions claims to represent are still free to act how they want? Dublin Bus managers wouldn’t be allowed to turn around and announce to their workers that despite a company agreement they personally wont hold to the deal in their depot and half the drivers are fired.

Perhaps the only long term solution to this problem is to look at privatising Dublin Bus. Privatisation has it’s risks, the argument for keeping Dublin Bus in public ownership is that private companies would cut unprofitable routes but Dublin Bus are doing that anyway so now may be the time to address the privatization issue once and for all. If achieves nothing else, putting privatization back on the table might focus the minds of the drivers and bring them back under the control of their unions.

Update: The strike is over and the bus service is back to normal in time for the evening rush hour. At least some sanity has been restored to the situation.

It seems like theres a transport strike every second week these days – if its not taxis, its Dublin Bus. Its getting beyond annoying.  The current Dublin Bus strike caused traffic chaos across north Dublin this morning. And there is likely to be further traffic chaos this evening. What I want to know is how 1 employee can cause so much disruption. Note to Dublin Bus drivers, be grateful you have a job!

From RTE:

Commuters are facing further disruption this evening due to unofficial industrial action at Dublin Bus.

Two depots at Clontarf and Harristown have been affected by the action which led to the cancellation of 29 routes this morning.

A number of drivers returned to work this afternoon, however there are still no buses on 23 routes.

Services on a further 14 routes, mostly on the northside of the city, have been curtailed.

Gardaí have advised motorists that all outbound bus lanes in north Dublin will be open to all traffic from 4.30pm until 7pm.

Limited service: 27 – 29a – 31 – 32/b – 37x – 38/a – 38b/c – 39 – 39x – 41 – 41x – 42/a/b – 103 – 130.

Cancelled routes: 4/4a – 13/13a – 17a – 27b – 27x – 31b – 32a – 32x – 33b – 40/a/b/c/d – 42 – 42a – 43 – 53 – 53a – 83 – 102 – 104 – 128 – 140 – 142 – 237 – 238 – 239 – 270.

The dispute follows the suspension of one driver who refused to work a new schedule on the 128 route.

Further information:
Dublin Bus
AA Roadwatch

UPDATE: 29/04/09 at 11:00
Service disruption has escalated to Conyngham Road depot. Further details on services can be found here.

Buried in the coverage of yesterdays emergency Budget was a interesting little statement from Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey. Capital expenditure on public transport is being cut and this will cause delays in some planned projects. When talking about the Metro the Minister said “he is no longer in a position to guarantee a time-scale on these developments”.

Personally I’ve never been a fan of the Metro, thinking the money could be better spent building Luas lines to other parts of Dublin, building up an interconnected tram system that serves more parts of the community and reusing the proven technology we already have.

Dublin Bus drivers yesterday rejected Labour Court recommendations aimed at solving the dispute over driver redundancies and the withdrawal of 120 buses. The threat of a strike is now on the cards again for this weekend which I suspect is more likely than before since the Labour Court is usually the last chance saloon before a strike. Prepare for some travel chaos this Easter.

Update: It’s back to the Labour Court for Dublin Bus so no changes to the fleet and no strikes over the weekend. Apparently the drivers want clarification on what the effect the “implementation of legal limits on driving times will have on overtime earnings”. What the hell? The effect on overtime earnings of legal limits on driving time? I’ll go out on a limb here and say probably a lower effect than the effect of a Dublin bus driven by a tired driver hitting a car. No offense to Dublin Bus drivers but seriously guys if you are going on strike you need a better reason than “I’m loosing money by not being allowed drive a 14 ton vehicle while tired”.

It’s a bit late for anyone trying to get a taxi in Dublin this morning but there is a 24 hour nation wide taxi strike from 4am to 4am today.  This strike is a organised by Taxi Drivers for Change, a non union organisation but the action appears to have the support of NTDU and SIPTU drivers. The areas affected include Dublin Airport, however the strike there is an official SIPTU strike and only runs from 7am to 11 am so there should be some taxis available at the airport after that.

I’ve been on holidays for 1,5 weeks, and after I was back online/read some news this week I was shocked by all the terrible things that happened – the horrible shootings in the North, the two killing sprees in the States and Germany and finally the collapse of the Historical Archive of my hometown Cologne, killing two people. The collapse of this building was seemingly caused by the construction of an underground railway. And even though experts carried out examinations of ground- and building-structure of the areas where the tunnel is build, it still collapsed out of the blue.

The new Dublin Metro North tunnels will be constructed beneath such historic landmarks as the GPO and the Rotunda Hospital/Ambassador Theatre – I hope that the ground examinations in Dublin are more exact than the ones made in Germany, especially as both cities share the same type of subsoil, a quite unstable type called “Loess” which is prevailing on river banks.

All quite fitting for Friday the 13th.

The planned NBRU and Siptu bus strikes originally scheduled for Saturday and Monday have been called off. This should make things much easier for anyone planning on travelling to Dublin for the 6-Nations rugby game.

Dublin city centre will come to a standstill this afternoon while the Irish Congress of Trade Unions march is in progress. The march sets off from Parnell Square at 2pm travelling to Merrion Square via O’Connell St, Westmoreland St, College Green and Nassau St. By all news accounts a massive crowd is expected. Thats no surprise really. People are not happy.

Dublin Bus have changed some routes. Full details can be found here.

Keep and eye on AA Roadwatch and news bulletins for up-to-date information.