Confused Reporting

[James Shields]

Originally Posted by Mark Gleeson

The boarding issue is down the fact the majority of passengers still elect to pay cash despite the fact every single passenger inbound to Heuston had the option to get the 90/Luas included, it is advertised.

I've long been convinced that we could speed up a lot of bus routes by making the busy city centre stops cashless, and putting TVMs at these stops. Would require some funding, of course, but by restricting it to the busy stops this could be kept within reason. Paying on board could still be allowed in the suburbs.

They have a similar system in London and it seems to work well (though I think most people have got Oyster cards by now).

[Ronald Binge]

Why Dublin didn't lift the Oyster system wholesale beats me. Then again, we do have a track record what with redundant bus centre doors, the complete misuse of the few bendy buses we had and the twenty plus years it took OPO to happen.

Who benefits from Dublin reinventing the wheel every time? Certainly not the commuter.

[Mark Gleeson]

Sadly the London system is not fully compatable with the ITSO standards, they are working to implment that but its taking time

London only works since there is lots of cash and a desire to make it work, not to mention they had a zonal system to start with

Dublin neither has the zonal system or the cash and lacks a figure head like Ken Livingston to push the change

[Garrett]

I think this post has gone quite off topic. I'm the first to admit that whenever possible I like to go on about little nitty gritty issues and whine about the need for a zonal system in Dublin. (see, I've just done it again )

To try and bring things back to the post's original topic, I'll ask a little question that has been bothering me. How usefull/accurate/important/damaging is it to compare a new public transport infrastructural element to its equivalent in the number of cars it takes (or will take) off the road?
I mean, I live in Paris where you're never more than 300 m from a metro/RER stop. There's also a quite decent bus network. RER's and regional buses cover the suburbs. Yet the city and its main road arteries are still jammed at rush hour. Then again, so are the metros and RERs.
Maybe I'm not comparing like with like, but I think there maybe a fundamental flaw in giving figures for the number of cars a train/metro will take of the road.
Maybe this has already being debated to death on this board?
Maybe I have too much free time on my hands to be thinking about such things and should start thinking about writing my fecking thesis instead!
Thoughts?

Edit:
Kind of got my answer, though in a completely different context, when I read the following post:
Cart before the horse - Derek Wheeler - 8/7/2007
Basically I asked a silly question with little real value. The real issue is how it fits into the bigger picture, how the whole transport network is organised and how much political meddling goes on. Feel free to ignore my post.