Bigbro's foray into the scary world of blogging
02 09 2006
After my rant on the crappiness of Dublin public transport, my mood was greatly improved by finding a really fine public house just across the road from Heuston Station. (I've forgotten the name - mental note to look at the sign over the door as I leave.) The next Limerick train was, as I suspected, two hours later, so I had about an hour and forty five minutes to kill.
With both food and a drink ordered within 5 minutes of entering the premises, thanks to a friendly barman and a most attentive Slovakian waitress, I relaxed and discovered an open wireless network nearby. Arthur, a local of these parts was in having a few scoops and regaling everyone who entered the pub with his friendly, if slightly over the top, Irish friendliness. An American property agent, her aunt and a guy working in cooling for computers and electronic devices were later joined by a pair of Australians and a Cork girl. I really should have got the American guy's name and contact details since my brother works in the same field - but I was too entertained by the banter bouncing back and forth from the local Dubliners. Fitzer and Bobby made up the remaining complement of Dubliners, interspersing shouting at random people on their mobile phones with shouting in a friendly way at the other occupants of the pub.
I've missed having this kind of atmosphere in pubs. It's something that's extremely rare in the UK. I'm not going to make any comment on the crazy 80's-esque music they had playing, mostly because it was largely ignored and irrelevant to the other, far more comedy, goings on.
Apart from the woefully crap public transport system foisted on us by government after government of blissfully ignorant politicians, I'm very much enjoying my move back to Ireland nad specifically to Dublin. It's a wonderful place, provided you can afford to relax and don't need to get anywhere in a hurry :-)
posted at: 16:37 | path: | permanent link to this entry
...or, how to leave my house in Balbriggan at 1pm and still miss a 3pm train from Heuston. Where was the 1:35pm train from Balbriggan, for example? I didn't see it. Neither did any of the other people waiting on the platform. There was no notice or announcement that this service would be late or cancelled. I guess it's more fun to just play public-transport-roulette.
The 1:50pm train arrived promptly, but decided to park for 15 minutes just outside Connelly station, rendering it now even less likely I was going to be able to get to Heuston by 3pm.
The final straw was missing the Luas due to the ticket machines being so slow and the queues being so large. It's a major f**king station people! Maybe more than 2 ticket machines might be an idea. Alternatively, there's huge ptoentials for reducing transaction time per customer. If anyone dealing with the Luas ticketting system is reading this, I'm happy to consult. I know SFA about ticketting systems, but I'm pretty sure I could do a less crap job.
It's now 3pm and I've made it as far as the Jervis shopping centre. 2 hours to get to the city centre. That's impressively poor, even by Irish standards I think.
I'm probably not going to get a Limerick train for another 2 hours, resulting in me spending approximately 7 hours getting from Dublin to Limerick, including waiting times. Wow! Sucky!
There is no excuse for a level of service this poor. Ireland is a small country. The infrastructure could easily be made to link up better and work more reliably. I'll certainly be pointing this out to politicians who want my vote. Why don't you do the same and maybe I won't have to emigrate again to enjoy a level of public transport that exceeds my moderate expectations of competence.
</rant>
posted at: 15:07 | path: /rants | permanent link to this entry
