1. The Green Party released a video and the document they submitted as part of the public consultation on the new Dublin City Council’s – Public Realm Strategy [PDF]. The green’s I think should be commended for the numerous videos they’ve released lately! Check it out:

2. Dublin Bus allowed people to travel for free (on some buses) after the collection system broke down on some buses

3. I did a quick write up on my experiences with Dublins Leapcard so far at Leapcard has still got some living up to do!

4. Vincent Browne, love him or hate him, he stuck it to the man like only he can. Vinne was featured on the Strong Towns Blog (a fantastic resource) in a fairly honest outside commentary on what happened Ireland.

5. The Ulster Rugby fans have something to cheer about, Ravenhill has been given planning permission to renovate the stadium for the first time and increase the capacity.

6. Inevitably, Bord Pleanala announced they have delayed making a decision on the National Children’s Hospital on the Mater site, due in part to the complexity of the application.

Keep in touch

Get your daily dose of me through my twitter @Rusty1052, your daily Irish Planning News courtesy the paper.li aggregator.

Not down with any of these new things? Or maybe you would like to offer me a job or use my services? Well sure just drop me an email at colinb@dt106ers.com. Will be great to hear from you! (Whoever you maybe).

Peace out planners!

No related posts.

Ok this post is all about blowing off some steam about some of the flaws in the current implementation of the leap card system. Let’s put this way, i’m not entirely sure what’s the point in it being “live” when these issues are present, as I consider them pretty much fundamental to the the usability of the system. So instead of just venting on this here blog I decided I would pop off a nice construcive email to the folks at leapcard.ie HQ.

Below is the email I sent this morning with added pictures for blogging posterity cus who likes to read just a bunch of text!

Leap Card Feedback

My name is Colin Broderick and I’ve recently purchased a leap card and have been mostly satisfied with its ease of use on Dublin Bus and Luas services. However there are a number of issues which detract considerably from what can be a fantastic product and are as follows.

Your website (leapcard.ie) is not user friendly in that it’s navigation structure is very difficult to navigate, this is especially evident when you login to the “My account area”.

When one is logged in it is not immediately apparent what services are available. The only difference that is apparent upon staring at the screen for a number of minutes is two extra items on the left navigation bar. Clicking the manage my profile link on the right, brings you to a page where the main body has information which is irrelevant for the main purpose of being logged in, such as what is a Leapcard, newsletter signup and info on getting your Irish rail /Luas card as a leap.

This is the screen you are presented with after login. Useless.

It is not immediately apparent where one can view their Leapcard balance, this is hidden in a sub menu only available when you click manage my profile, which frankly does not link to any sort of profile management either. Another issue is that when signed in and one returns to the root page/main page (leapcard.ie) the extra navigation options are not present in the left nav bar.

This is the page you get when you click "Manage my Profile" after login

This can be simply remedied through the sign in redirecting to the accounts page such as a user/account dashboard showing total money spent through leap or monthly money spent alongside a current balance and possibly a list of last three journeys. Navigation links for the actions available during login should be moved to the right hand navigation, where the login box was.

I like the majority (some 68%) of the population in Dublin use the Dublin Bus service for my public transport needs, I live in north county Dublin near the airport and as such do not live nor work near a Luas stop or Irish rail station. As such I cannot check the balance of my leap card without registering online, where I believe the details in which must be provided are onerous (i.e. having to provide a date of birth and full address). And if one does not have a credit card or laser card you cannot complete a registration as bank details must be provided. I do not understand why there is no facility to simply query the balance of a card online?

Top Up online is not topping up online as far as I can make out. Similar to the last point, what’s the point of providing this facility when I still have to visit a Payzone outlet or a Luas or Irish rail station in order to “activate” my top up. You already have the money, it just defeats the purpose of online top up. Surely the balance can be disseminated throughout the card reader system, including those on the buses.

As regards, buying a Leapcard, I had no issues as I ordered it online and it arrived two days later with a nice information leaflet on how to use the card. However another family member of mine purchased their card at a Payzone location in the Dublin 9 area and only received a card with no information leaflet. Is a customer meant to only receive a card or are they to receive a card and information leaflet exactly like those ordered from leapcard.ie?

One final issue I have is as regards the woolly statements provided as regards future functionality specifically travel rebates, the wording only suggests that changing between modes will be rebated, such as changing from bus to Luas or Luas to Dart, etc. There is no mention of rebates for multiple journeys on bus, such as getting a bus to town from the south-side like the 14 and then changing to an airport bus like the 41. I assume since the system appears to be modelled on that of London’s Oyster card, will there be a flat rate Bus charge introduced instead of multiple fares with a rebate after like 5 journeys?

While I understand the leap card is in its infancy and there will be teething problems and issues to iron out, however I cannot understand how the product was released across the city without these services being fully functioning.

To end on a positive note I really like the leap card and really hats off to you for finally getting some semblance of a combined transport card out into the open for Dublin. I hope this can seen as constructive feedback.

Kind Regards
Colin Broderick

If you have any gripes with the leap card, I would love to hear them! Comments below.

Keep in touch

Get your daily dose of me through my twitter @Rusty1052, your daily Irish Planning News courtesy the paper.li aggregator.

Not down with any of these new things? Or maybe you would like to offer me a job or use my services? Well sure just drop me an email at colinb@dt106ers.com. Will be great to hear from you! (Whoever you maybe).

Peace out planners!

Related posts:

1. [UPDATE] Dublin Transport Map v1.5
2. Dublin Bikes – Over 6000 sign up!
3. Dublin Rapid Transit Map – Feedback please!

The group took a very visual approach by producing a video instead of the norm, a powerpoint presentation, which i must say was highly polished, well thought out and professionally done. The video begins with an introduction to Utrecht followed by an overview of the question being posed; Utrecht a place for knowledge? Then revealing a complete spatial analysis and possible interventions which could be made.

Importantly the video illustrates the issue with scale and viewpoint  you use when analyzing any urban area, something which I think can be lost in Ireland through the predominate focus on major national projects as opposed to smaller, more local interventions. The video refers to

viewpoint and scale = resolution

I also believe this is very apt for Dublin given that we too are striving to be a knowledge city and looking to out compete other cities like Barcelona. Maybe we could learn a thing or two from the interventions proposed alongside how to better present how we came to these conclusions to the public.

Utrecht: a place for knowledge? from knowledgeinutrecht on Vimeo.

Keep in touch

Get your daily dose of me through my twitter @Rusty1052, your daily Irish Planning News courtesy the paper.li aggregator.

Not down with any of these new things? Or maybe you would like to offer me a job or use my services? Well sure just drop me an email at colinb@dt106ers.com. Will be great to hear from you! (Whoever you maybe).

Peace out planners!

No related posts.

I would also advise you to check out all the other entries, some fantastic ideas providing food for thought in the ideas section and some great apps!

UrbanRural – Built on Heritage

Given that everyone seems to be mad into searching their family trees and establishing their personal histories, I figured why wouldn’t they be interested in their local area also. There’s a lot of built heritage out there that most people may never of known existed right in there back garden. UrbanRural aims to change that! I would be grateful if you could check out my entry and like it, spread the word, whatever!

The problem with Irish Planning is….

We don’t have enough documents like this one kindly retweeted by Dominic Byrne.

Very interesting paper on Participation in #SpatialPlanning (for both content & presentation) ow.ly/8sGDg via @rusty1052

— Dominic Byrne (@Dominic__Byrne) January 14, 2012

My Dissertation is now available online

For those of you interested in transport may want to have a read of my undergraduate dissertation which is now available online at issuu. Long story short, it looks at the barriers that one would come up against establishing orbital bus rapid transit routes in Dublin.

DT106ers is now on Google+

So plus one us!

Dublin Rail Transport – What it might be

Well the guys over at the Mental Planners have put together a nice map of what the complete NTA 2030 Vision transport strategy would look like if all the rail projects are all implemented. It’s an interesting idea. I have mashed up their map with the population growth maps of the NTA strategy and the result is below. Interesting to note that while the strategy fails in many respects it actually deals with the growth areas by proposing rail projects quite well.

Other Stuff

• My Dublin Rapid Transport map final version will be available for printing soon! So watch this space.
• The Irish Planning Institute is on twitter, Follow them @IrishPlanInst
• I’m planning on setting up some planning podcasts, if anyone is interested in being part of that, get in touch with me!
• Since their is bugger all planning work out there, we may aswell start our own businesses. That’s what the Dublin StartUp weekend is for! Build a business in 54 hours, more at – dublin.startupweekend.org

Keep in touch

Get your daily dose of me through my twitter @Rusty1052, your daily Irish Planning News courtesy the paper.li aggregator.

Not down with any of these new things? Or maybe you would like to offer me a job or use my services? Well sure just drop me an email at colinb@dt106ers.com. Will be great to hear from you! (Whoever you maybe).

Peace out planners!

Related posts:

1. Metro North – What’s the story like?
2. Links I liked 30/01/2012

13, 194 Hits in 2011

That’s a 23% increase in traffic compared to the year before and I guess that reflected the at least 23% more effort I put in this year. Once again thanks a million to all of you who have read the blog, you’re great! Would be lovely if I could generate more debate in the comments though, that’s my new years resolution, to figure out how to do that!

So on we go to the top 10 posts of 2011.

Top 10 posts of 2011

The most popular post of 2011 were wide and varied in their depth of content and the downright failure of Ireland in 2011 in terms of withdrawing from many capital (bog boys) projects. For now enjoy and let us hope 2012 will bring much more cheer in that department.

#10 Westmeath CoCo gives the go ahead for Chinese Trade Centre

#9 CILT Transport 21 Mid-term Review

#8 [Guest Post] The need for transportation planning and urban development to be closely aligned

#7 Bikes on the DART, what about in Europe?

#6 ‘Ghost’ estates to get €5m to deal with safety issues

#5 Metro North – What’s the story like?

#4 [UPDATED] Sunday Rant: Dublin Bus putting up prices again!

Yet again we get a great Happy New Year from Dublin Bus with 15% increase in all prices, and to think they wanted 30% !!!

#3 Census 2011 by the county and Fusion Tables, mapping the data.

#2 Dublin Rapid Transit Map – Feedback please!

#1 Pictures Dublin Bus Realtime Information (RTPI)

RTPI sign and waiting Dublin Bus on Eden Key (Photo: Colin Broderick)

As always!

Comments are welcome, you can follow me on the tweet machine @Rusty1052. Only want the blog? Subscribe to the RSS Feed with your favorite reader!

Do you like what you have just read? Maybe you are interested in being a guest writer too. Email me at colinb@dt106ers.com

Related posts:

1. Bag’o Links “Independence Day”, Chinese ghost estates and more…
2. 6,649 Visitors to DT106ers last year! Cheers folks!
3. Things to look out for in 2011

Spare a thought, we can get the bus to the shop . Take it easy and C’mon Leinster!

Related posts:

1. Happy Christmas from Dt106ers.com
2. The great experiment by our planners to copy the European tradition of having middle income families live in apartments has largely failed

Any who that aside it was announced that the National Transport Authority had made one of their datasets available fo public consumption. This particular dataset is that of all the transport stops in the country, and for those transport planners/traffic engineers among us will know theses are the same nodes used in the Greater Dublin Area Saturn Model for travel and transport. [Update] As per Peter’s comment below: “The transit access nodes used in the NTA Saturn Model are not the bus stops in NaPTAN, but rather access to public transport is generalised to road junction nodes.”

So basically to break it down the data is a rather large xml file which contains all the points (the individual stops and stop areas) and a .mbd file containing what i presume is service information. Unfortunately I can’t open that one as I don’t have microsoft access on the mac. So if someone can open it I would love to hear what is in the file.

Right long long story short I parsed the xml file into a csv file and uploaded it to the great fusion tables and below is the result. There are a few problems with the data in that if you zoom out you will see stops are mapped all over the world! This I reckon is a result of a portion of the co-ordinates not being projected in WSG84 as they are probably in Irish Grid form.

NTA NaPTAN Data Mapped

Just for a small bit of brevity if you’re wondering what the hell a Stop Type of BCT means check out this handy reference from the Department for Transport, UK.

NaPTAN Stop Types

Source: http://www.dft.gov.uk/naptan/stopTypes.htm

As always!

Comments are welcome, you can follow me on the tweet machine @Rusty1052. Only want the blog? Subscribe to the RSS Feed with your favorite reader!

Do you like what you have just read? Maybe you are interested in being a guest writer too. Email me at colinb@dt106ers.com

Related posts:

1. Open Data – Ever wondered where all the applications are?
2. Census 2011 by the county and Fusion Tables, mapping the data.
3. News Roundup – Technology, Technology and DATA

Background

My dissertation in college focused on this idea of the network effect in public transport with study on the north eastern area of Dublin (Santry across to Howth), while also critiquing the differences in spatial land use policy and transport policy. That is a post for another day though.

There is no map of Dublin that shows the Dublin Bus, Luas and Rail networks on one sheet of paper. The closest representation is by Aris but also includes other possible modifications.

What really spawned this map was that I have been working on a geographically accurate map of all Dublin’s Transport in a similar style to the maps produced of Paris. But this map would also show the frequency of routes simply by varying the thickness of the lines. It is showing the frequency part that is the major challenge using illustrator as any minor changes are much more difficult than using a grid like with the map below.

Also as has been pointed out by a number of tweets such as this one:

@rusty1052 But Rusty, about 13% of the region’s population live north of the airport and another 8% live in Dublin 15

— Fingal Data Hub (@Fingal_Data_Hub) December4, 2011

As such there is also a slightly loaded message behind this map in that it can’t address a large proportion of the Dublin population lives in both Swords and the Dublin 15 area, where rapid services are very limited. It is also a shame that no orbital services like the 17A lack frequencies to allow seamless transfers. Instead most transfers have to made within the city centre.

Finally the current cash fare system penalizes people who need to make transfers to complete a trip by charging full fares twice. Hopefully the National Transport Authority will soon fix this as they are they have the power to set fares as part of the Public Transport Licensing process.

Objectives

• Only services which operate at 15 minute of less frequency Monday – Friday off-peak will be represented on the map.
• To show all transport modes, Bus, Light Rail (Luas) and Heavy Rail (DART & Commuter)
• To illustrate the frequent network of transport routes that are available in Dublin.
• To show the places which are possible to transfer as part of your journey.
• To create the first multi-modal map of Dublin.

Map v 1.5

Why version 1.5? The map is still in development and I have not implemented the full array of suggestion that people were so kind to make in the comments on the last post.

The Future

I hope to refine the map into a usable product with the ultimate goal of pitching it to the National Transport Authority for use in Dublin.

I’m considering the addition of some combined routes, including the number 41′s which operate to Swords and beyond, which when combined roughly have an off-peak frequency of 15 mins. The 25′s and 26 to Lucan are similar in that combined they will be of sufficient frequency. Another feature which no one noticed was that Docklands Rail station is also missing and it will be added in a future release.

As I mentioned earlier I have been working on a complete Dublin Transport map which shows all services in the Dublin Region. This is a huge job! Unfortunately that is on the back burner as I have lost my enthusiasm it due to the difficulties of representing each and every route in the inner city. It is a nightmare as almost every Dublin Bus service stops on either D’Olier Street or Westmoreland Street. This map will take many months to complete to the same standard as the Frequent Map above. If someone has a GIS solution that they could put forward as alternative solution to hand drawing the map I would be over the moon! Here is a preview of that map in its current work in progress state:

http://zoom.it/hXh4

Draft Geographic Dublin Area Transport Map

As always!

Comments are welcome, you can follow me on the tweet machine @Rusty1052. Only want the blog? Subscribe to the RSS Feed with your favorite reader!

Do you like what you have just read? Maybe you are interested in being a guest writer too. Email me at colinb@dt106ers.com

Related posts:

1. Dublin Rapid Transit Map – Feedback please!
2. [UPDATED] Sunday Rant: Dublin Bus putting up prices again!
3. Leapcard has still got some living up to do!

Not sure if you remember but last year a Aris Venetikidis completed a future fantasy (with a lot of fact) complete transport map for Dublin as part of his design masters at NCAD, you can view his work on his website ventikidis.com. It was fantastic to finally see someone produce something well thought out and could actually work, except for there was one problem it didn’t reflect what is on the ground now!

We all know Dublin’s public transport network is not the best but hey it works (most of the time). So I figured we don’t have a map showing the most frequent routes in the city, so why not make one? Here is what I have come up with, it include Dublin Bus, Luas and Irish Rail/DART:

The Map

(Click for Full Image)
Please I would love to hear feedback from you regarding the above map, any and all feedback is welcome via twitter email or the comments below!

So what is Rapid Transit?

There is a pretty standard definition the world offer that most will agree on and that is:

A Rapid Transit Route is one in which a service operates at frequency of 15 minutes or less

You might be wondering why there are some routes missing off the above map. Well I shall explain, I conducted an extensive audit of all the Dublin Bus timetables for all bus routes. I got an average peak frequency for the buses and then found there average off-peak frequency for Monday – Friday buses only. All routes shown above operate Monday – Sunday however Saturday and Sunday frequencies can vary substantially from weekday frequency. So you can view the spreadsheet below which is the data I was working from:

As always!

Comments are welcome, you can follow me on the tweet machine @Rusty1052. Only want the blog? Subscribe to the RSS Feed with your favorite reader!

Do you like what you have just read? Maybe you are interested in being a guest writer too. Email me at colinb@dt106ers.com

Related posts:

1. [UPDATE] Dublin Transport Map v1.5
2. Dublin Bus releases Network Direct – Phase1
3. Bikes on the DART, what about in Europe?

Decision Map

DecisionMap.ie - Is  new online resource which maps census data on a number of levels including the electoral distrcts and provides one of those cool percentage box type things on the right hand side like they had on WhereDoesMyMoneyGo. First impressions are it’s pretty cool, it would be great if it went all the way down to the enumerator areas while also being able to compare data across census periods, but sure maybe that will happen in the future!

Keep up with the News

The Mental Planners of DIT have a great worldwide urbanism and planning resource pulling from some 300 odd twitter accounts and blogs – The Mental Planners Daily I encourage you to check it out subscribe and you’ll be amazed what ya find out!

Of course I also have a paper.li account running which you should also check out for your daily spatial planning fix around 9am  The Irish Planning News

Open DATA

Dublinked the Open Data initiative between the 5 Dublin based city and council councils has two events coming up this month which if you have an interest in using the data you should definitely check out.

08 December 9.30 – 12.00 Planning Themed Workshop in IBM Research Lab, Damastown.
There are a couple of speakers including the very engaging and entertaining Conor Skehan of DIT. MORE DETAILS

15 December 2.30PM Dublinked Technical Workshop John Hume Building, NUIM.
To explore & discuss the various technology issues that underpin a data sharing platform including interoperability, architectures, semantic web, search engines and real-time data streaming. The main aim of the workshop is to draw up a roadmap that sets out the technology topics, challenges & priorities that are relevant to the successful operation of this Dublinked initiative. MORE DETAILS

Dublin City Council

Dublin CIty Council has published it’s Draft Public Realm Strategy and they are looking for your views regarding it, so pop on over to the DCC Planning Department Page and submit your criticism or positive comments!

As always!

Comments are welcome, you can follow me on the tweet machine @Rusty1052. Only want the blog? Subscribe to the RSS Feed with your favorite reader!

Do you like what you have just read? Maybe you are interested in being a guest writer too. Email me at colinb@dt106ers.com

Related posts:

1. [OPEN DATA] NTA NaPTAN Mapped
2. Open Data – Ever wondered where all the applications are?
3. Census 2011 by the county and Fusion Tables, mapping the data.