Traffic jams causing real time delays

Inaccurate time displays at bus stops have been blamed on the lack of bus lanes and traffic congestion around the city.

This emerged during a Cork City Council meeting after Fine Gael Cllr Deirdre Forde asked that the council invite a Bus Éireann official to explain how the signs at bus stops indicate buses are coming at a particular time but in reality no buses arrive.

The Bus Éireann official said that the punctual operation of bus services can be impacted by several factors including severe traffic congestion in the city and suburbs.

“The severe shortage of bus priority measures creates a very difficult operating environment for bus services in the Cork area with approximately 630kms of bus routes but only 14kms of bus lanes. Only two per cent of the bus network (is made up of) bus lanes,” said the spokesperson.

The Bus Éireann fleet is fitted with automatic vehicle location (AVL) which tracks the bus location using GPS, distances and length of travel time. The on-board AVL equipment calculates the predicted arrival time of the bus at the next bus stop and this information is sent to back office servers located in CIE which is then given to the technology partners of the NTA to be displayed on the realtime (RTPI) sign at the bus stop and on the Transport for Ireland app.

The spokesperson continued: “The RTPI system is predictive and the communication of these telegrams is done over GPRS so there can be a time lapse between on-street delays and changes in the message the sign shows. Traffic speeds vary significantly across the whole traffic network and whereas a bus may be making good progress for part of its journey it can then experience severe delays which will be difficult to predict accurately for RTPI information.”

Traffic congestion is “very challenging” with expected bus journey times of half an hour taking almost two hours to complete sometimes, said the spokesperson.

They added: “September, October, November and December are by far the most difficult operating months of the year as the return of schools and colleges brings with it severe traffic congestion across the traffic network. This is particularly difficult for bus services which must operate the route and cannot divert to avoid traffic congestion in particular areas.

“In the event of disruption to bus services, the Bus Éireann Cork AVL control centre supervisors will intervene to ensure that the most balanced service possible is provided to our customers. In such situations manual intervention is often required to update the RTPI system to accurately reflect the situation,” concluded the spokesperson.