Late Night Luas 2008

[chris]

You're right. What was the figure for how much a road death costs the Irish economy? I've seen it quoted before, and it would be interesting to see how many public transport trips home it would subsidise.

[undo]

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/...408550768.html

€3 million per death; that's a lot of trips on the Luas.

[chris]

Originally Posted by undo

€3 million per death; that's a lot of trips on the Luas.

Ok, so maximum fare home from the city centre is €2.20 during the day.
€5-2.20 = €2.80 which I'm calling the nighttime surcharge - what LUAS needs per passenger from the government to run a night time service at daytime prices

€3 million / €2.80 = 1,071,000 people safely home on the LUAS for the cost of one road death.

120 deaths due to alcohol every year on the roads, so I'm pretty sure you save one life for every 1,071,000 people you safely get home. (I have figures, but there's too much of a margin of error to put them up here.)

I'm really tempted to push the case for this when I get back to Ireland.

[undo]

Running the Luas at daytime prices may actually have the nice knock-on effect for Veolia of more people switching from buses to the tram. So, Veolia would not just get reimbursed for the loss due to lower ticket prices but could make an extra buck from the additional people taking the Luas. And maybe at that point, DB get envious and decide to lower prices as well?

[Mark Gleeson]

The Luas fare is 4 euro not 5 euro

Smartcard fare is 3.80

[chris]

Originally Posted by Mark Gleeson

The Luas fare is 4 euro not 5 euro

Smartcard fare is 3.80

Great, that makes it even less hard to justify not funding. I'm just thinking big, but thanks for correcting the facts.

[on the move]

Originally Posted by luasuser

Your right Mark, LUAS drivers or ticket collectors are not obliged to work on the night luas, this is voluntary & based on a first come, first used basis. There is a special rate paid by Veolia to the staff but very few take up the offer & those that do are usually desperate to boost their meagre wages (which is close to the minimum wage).

Secondly staff are physically & verbally abused by drunken louts who ruin what should be an efficient means of getting home after a good night out. therefore security has to be paid for and that cost is added to the other costs of providing the service (the drivers, the ticket inspectors, the control room staff, & the energy costs)

thirdly, the trams have to be inspected & cleaned every night ready for service the following day. this takes several hours between cleaning & servicing, not to mention the fact that overtime would have to be paid to the maintainance staff to work later than normal.

so if passengers who live close to or within walking distance of either luas lines find the cost of a nightluas ticket too much, i would ask them, would they rather stand in a queue with aggressive drunken louts, for over two hours, then probably be told by the taxi driver that they are'nt heading that direction or have a fight over who skipped the queue to even get in a taxi.

I think the nightluas service provides an excellent service taking all of these costs into consideration.

In every job, there are occupational hazards, and coping with alcos on public transport is one of them. That should not ruin civilised people's evenings who just want to get home without any dramas. There is enough security on those trams, and when I'm on the Luas, they're usually staring at passengers, rather than easing your journey.

All Friday and Saturday nights should be late night Luas on all routes, not just the city centre. Dublin is a party city now, and it's very depressing to know that apart from December, you must leave the pub/club/restaurant by 12.30 in order to avoid getting a taxi and paying through the nose for it.

You can use Nitelinks but they only go from town, and don't serve all of the city either.

[Mark Hennessy]

I was on the last tram (Green Line) on Tuesday night of this week.

Very well patronised, with almost all seats taken, good to see that when public transport is available beyond CIE's magical end time of 11:20pm, there is a demand.

There was no visible security presence but there were no unruly people about really.