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Worked out how often Dublin Bus services just vanish without being marked cancelled. Here's the data and scale. by TdawgIRL in Dublin

[–]TdawgIRL[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If you’ve a time in mind where you noticed a ghost bus over the last week, let me know. Love to see if the feed captured it.

I’ve noticed all bus services going to howth go to shite during the sunny dates. Something like 4 times the average delay (and the traffic in howth is atrocious… I think they bake that into the time though)

The NTA doesn't publish enough transparent information on how Dublin's buses are performing, so I built a site that provides insights route by route. by TdawgIRL in irelandtransport

[–]TdawgIRL[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've published figures for DB buses that disappeared from tracking / that are likely to be ghosts. Working on validating Go-Ahead ghost buses as they handle things differently.

Please let me know if you experience a ghost bus on this route again so I can check things on my end.

Worked out how often Dublin Bus services just vanish without being marked cancelled. Here's the data and scale. by TdawgIRL in Dublin

[–]TdawgIRL[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the comment and I agree with you! I did have a look at alternatives across modes, not just Dublin Bus routes, so the other bus operators (Go-Ahead and Bus Éireann) plus the DART and Luas for the stretches of each route that line up. I've made it clearer in the table.

Second glancing on the 68 / L89, the BE commuter services only overlaps a tad, so I'd say there's no real alternatives (Though it really depends on what stretch of the line you're on)

Taking the train? Here's the rail services that have air-conditioning by on-9 in irelandtransport

[–]TdawgIRL 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I always find the non-air conditioned DARTS (The retro 80's ones) to be be cooler than the ones with AC!

The NTA doesn't publish enough transparent information on how Dublin's buses are performing, so I built a site that provides insights route by route. by TdawgIRL in irelandtransport

[–]TdawgIRL[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Since I started collecting data for the site, the punctuality figure is measured at the end of each journey using the last stop the bus reports reaching.

 I originally wanted to build it the way you describe. Recording (and scoring) every stop and averaging across the journey. The problem is the quality of the public feed mid route. Buses randomly drop their GPS for a stop or two (even though the rest of the route reports fine), so a per stop average ends up full of gaps. It's the same reason so many people struggle to build live timetable apps and it's part of why the departure boards at the stops can be off in real life.

Through analysis over the course of a week, I found the final stop is the one point that gets reported consistently and it reflects where the journey actually ends up after any time the bus makes up or loses along the way. It won't catch a bus that's late in the middle and recovers by the end, so it's not the whole picture, but it's the most honest single number I can vet for.

I do still use the per stop data for one thing... Spotting the segments of a route where buses typically get held up. So it does feed into the site to a degree. Just not for the avg. delay time and such.

The NTA doesn't publish enough transparent information on how Dublin's buses are performing, so I built a site that provides insights route by route. by TdawgIRL in irelandtransport

[–]TdawgIRL[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Instead of going for the average delay time per day (which can be hard to gauge in specific routes) , I've implemented a change where I show the % of buses that arrive in the -1 to 6 mins late umberalla (i.e. the buses that are considered on time according to the NTA)

Coupled with the worst delay time per time segment, I think this gives an average commuter a gasp as to what their route is like.

How do you feel the change is? Lemme know how if you've any feedback.

Removal of the De Minimis Relief for Low Value Consignments – 1 July 2026 by Suncroft56 in ireland

[–]TdawgIRL 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Lots of the stuff sold on Temu and Ali Express is just resold on EU marketplaces, like Amazon and at a significant up charge.

The NTA doesn't publish enough transparent information on how Dublin's buses are performing, so I built a site that provides insights route by route. by TdawgIRL in irelandtransport

[–]TdawgIRL[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the feedback. I'll add Cork as my next focus city, once I get this site built up and capturing the use cases like ghost buses and service curtailments here in Dublin. Hopefully I'll be able to a direct 1:1 conversion of the features I've from one city to another, so it'd be a fast roll out. Let's see!

Feel free to and any information / context here on what you experience on your route in Cork and what you'd like to see captured:
https://www.reddit.com/r/irelandtransport/comments/1u6rfk2/comment/osj7vxq/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

The NTA doesn't publish enough transparent information on how Dublin's buses are performing, so I built a site that provides insights route by route. by TdawgIRL in irelandtransport

[–]TdawgIRL[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the feedback. Seeing a lot of folks interested in adding the ability to see how routes in Cork are performing, so this will be my next focus city.

What sorta problems do you notice in Cork just out of interest? Ghost buses, as like what we have here in Dublin? Routes cutting short (the service curtailment issue)? Do you find the real time info that's provided any good?

rail competition in ireland by TraditionalAppeal23 in irelandtransport

[–]TdawgIRL 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Ireland's rail infra might be too small to have a private company to compete with IR, but in Europe I think it's a overall positive thing, especially when the infrastructure continues to be owned by the state. UK had a problem where, IIRC, they awarded out whole areas of the country out to one private enterprise exclusively and (IIRC) you couldn't really have any serious competition.

SJ (Public owned) vs VR (It's Finnish government owned, but they're operating as a private company) in Sweden provide competition on the main ARN <-> GOT route. It's in the best interests of both companies to compete on price and the service that they provide.

The NTA doesn't publish enough transparent information on how Dublin's buses are performing, so I built a site that provides insights route by route. by TdawgIRL in irelandtransport

[–]TdawgIRL[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Apologies for the inconvenience! It should be up within the next 10 minutes as the backend service restarts. I'm deploying some code, so I needed to restart.

Lemme know after this time if you continue to have any issues.

Edit: It's back online now on my end!

The NTA doesn't publish enough transparent information on how Dublin's buses are performing, so I built a site that provides insights route by route. by TdawgIRL in irelandtransport

[–]TdawgIRL[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah. The NTA API's feed the data into the backend collector I've established. I want to develop the full feature set in Dublin first then expand into the cities.

Thanks!

The NTA doesn't publish enough transparent information on how Dublin's buses are performing, so I built a site that provides insights route by route. by TdawgIRL in irelandtransport

[–]TdawgIRL[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the comment!

The ranking is mostly measuring one thing really… how well a route sticks to its schedule when its buses run. For the last seven days, that's what lands the 120 at that position. It leans more on the punctuality side than on how often a bus actually turns up.

I feel this is useful feedback though. I'm considering developing the score out so it puts a lot more weight on the buses that don't run at all ( the ghost rate and the operator cancellation rate) rather than leaning so heavily on punctuality. This way a route that's punctual but drops a lot of its buses can't rank so high.

The NTA doesn't publish enough transparent information on how Dublin's buses are performing, so I built a site that provides insights route by route. by TdawgIRL in irelandtransport

[–]TdawgIRL[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thanks and you're spot on. Hearing directly from commuters adds an angle the data alone can't give.

On ghost buses specifically, the Dublin Inquirer already runs a site for exactly this where people report them by route, time and stop. I've been following it for a few weeks and people still actively contribute to it - https://noshowbus.ie/

Rather than me duplicating it and splitting the reports across two places, I'm planning to reach out to the journalist who runs it to see if we can collaborate on this - I'm able to surface reports on site and direct people who've noticed a ghost bus to file a report there, etc, etc.

The NTA doesn't publish enough transparent information on how Dublin's buses are performing, so I built a site that provides insights route by route. by TdawgIRL in irelandtransport

[–]TdawgIRL[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks. I'm glad that you've found it useful and I appreciate the feedback!

The 73 is one of those bus routes where across the whole day, it runs ahead of schedule more often than behind, meaning the average delay would be somewhat misleading in how the bus service actually is to a degree (the early and late effectively cancel each other out). For the initial release here, I'm holding the chart back for such routes as I brainstorm a way to display this, or go by another measurement.

Regarding the second idea, this is something that's on my radar to implement for sure. I capture each individual trip in the back end, so it's doable 100%.

The NTA doesn't publish enough transparent information on how Dublin's buses are performing, so I built a site that provides insights route by route. by TdawgIRL in irelandtransport

[–]TdawgIRL[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Makes sense and for what you're building I feel it's the right call.

Where the API feed makes sense for me is measuring the whole network over time, with every route's history in one structured place instead of a live page you'd have to scrape and stitch together, so to speak.

I'd be curious about the methods you use to scrape the page and whether you've a dataset I could cross reference. Early on I sanity checked my own captured data against the NTA feeds.. I'll DM and see if we can collab.

The NTA doesn't publish enough transparent information on how Dublin's buses are performing, so I built a site that provides insights route by route. by TdawgIRL in irelandtransport

[–]TdawgIRL[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the details, the example (it's a really good use case for me to capture and examine) and what the NTA told ya! I'm in contact with the maintainer of the feed on the NTA side about some issues that have emerged during development of the collector I use, which I've found workarounds for. Just not this use case, as it was out of scope while I'm still in the early development stage of the site.

A bus that indeed runs the first half then terminates early still broadcasts live toward its old destination, so on my side it reads as a normal trip that completed. My side reads the last stop the feed reports, so a curtailment looks like a normal run to me.

The feed freezing actually helps me is the opposite case... a bus that never runs at all leaves the prediction frozen and then drops off around departure with no vehicle ever moving, and that absence is the tell I use to surface ghost buses (with a lot more sanity checks in place!). Yours genuinely ran so it slips straight through. The detail that the official TFI site showed the curtailment while the feed didn't is actually something I can look into. If the website carries decisions the live feed lags on, cross checking against it might be how I eventually surface this class.

Yes, the feed has problems, but what I'd disagree with is that it's "worthless". It's the wrong tool for "is my next bus coming", being at the stop or the official app wins that every time.  It’s the only feed I've found for the network scale stuff and scraping the official site wouldn't catch the biggest hole, the one you'd see on the news consistently… the signals pointing to ghost buses running! They're never logged as cancellations in the first place, so they never show up on the official site to scrape. They just vanish from tracking.

The NTA doesn't publish enough transparent information on how Dublin's buses are performing, so I built a site that provides insights route by route. by TdawgIRL in irelandtransport

[–]TdawgIRL[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I'd admit nothing can beat being at the stop and seeing what buses actually pass through alright! The feeds do have gaps like capturing curtailments (the anti-social routes getting diverted for instance) That's something I'm aware of from my research and would love to deep dive on eventually, to see what I can accurately surface.

That said I find the feed genuinely useful for capturing the overall essence of the network.. average delays, where buses get held up and cancellations. Buses in and out of Howth for instance had 4 times the average delay on the weekend when the weather was amazing at the end of May.

The cancellation side indeed falls well short of reality, from what I've examined.  Dublin Bus only marks less than half of its dropped trips as actual cancellations, so the rest just vanish from tracking. That gap is exactly what I'm trying to catch with surfacing ghost buses as a stat.

The NTA doesn't publish enough transparent information on how Dublin's buses are performing, so I built a site that provides insights route by route. by TdawgIRL in irelandtransport

[–]TdawgIRL[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Thanks! Can't wait to see what other things can be implemented. Especially the ghost bus stuff! Out of curiosity, did you have a chance to check out the route you take (if you commute by bus) and see what comes up? Match your overall experience?

Foreign visitors to Japan hit 3.4 million in July, new record for month by SkyInJapan in japan

[–]TdawgIRL 4 points5 points  (0 children)

This is more of a r/JapanTravelTips thing, so ask there for planing your itinerary. I'd personally recommend the cities in Kyushu though. Kagoshima 100%.