Until Lee Ann comes over, I want to use the public transportation system, my feet, and my bike to get around. The Dublin double decker buses are everywhere (except when you need one). They are fun to ride. You can sit above the driver at the very front of the bus and get an incredible view of the city. But, it's kind of like a roller coaster. When these buses zip around those round-abouts or try to avoid the speed bumps, you get bounced around quite a bit.
You also cannot see what is right in front of the bus. Often it seems the bus just hot or swallowed a pedestrian or bicycle. Sometimes the bus stops for no apparent reason until you see a small car, that was right in front of the bus, pull ahead of the bus. You look down onto street signs and lights. It's strange to see the top of these things.
When I first got here, elections to replace the failed and hated government were in full swing. Every lamp and sign post in the city had political ads tied to them with plastic ties. When the buses pulled into a stop, they would often touch these posters which were right at eye level on the upper deck.
I like roller coasters, so I think this is fun and sit up and in front whenever possible. But, I can see that some people might not care for the experience at all.
I'm still trying to figure out the bus system. There is a nice web site that lets you plan a trip and tells you what buses to take. You can also get the timetable for each route. But there is no system wide map that lets you see which buses go where, and at what stations lines intersect. For each bus line you can get a nice online map of the route, but it doesn't show you any other routes. You can click on a bus stop and it will tell you what other buses stop there. Then you can look up their routes individually.
I think the time tables are for illustrative purposes only. They give you a rough idea how frequently a bus might come by at various times throughout the day; or not. Work and my apartment are on lines 39 and 39A. Weekday mornings, 39 is supposed to drive by the stop right in front of my apartment every twenty minutes. Consulting the timetable for 39A tells you that it also comes by every 20 minutes, nicely interleaved at ten-minute intervals. Except they usually show up in pairs, and if you miss them, you wait 20 or 30 minutes.
I can understand that with traffic and various passenger loads. You have to wave them down to stop. I was at one stop studying the timetable, when the bus blew past the stop right behind my back...
What I don't understand is why at the end points of a line they leave after the time the timetable says; or, sometimes, before!!! I have seen buses sitting at the terminus and then take off, race car like, five minutes before their time! When they are on one-hour intervals on weekends, count on plus/minus ten minutes around the time optimistically posted in the timetable ;-)
