CIE tries again on o-m-o
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YET ANOTHER effort is being made to introduce one-man operated double-deckers to Dublin's city services, but there is no sign of an early solution to this 16-year-old problem.
Cores lompair Eireann wants to introduce o-m-o on 70 per cent of its Dublin services over a four-year period and is offering a 27.5 per cent pay rise, with no enforced redundancies, as a carrot to the trades unions representing its crews.
The unions, who have resisted CIE's overtures since the mid Sixties, have been pressing lately for a formula in which drivers would get 80 per cent of the savings resulting from the introduction of o-m-o.
The present round of negotiations began in June last year, and is still continuing.
CIE wants to use Almex E ticket machines and to give change on Dublin o-m-o doubledeck services, but it would encourage off bus sales and issue 10-journey tickets which could be processed through ticket cancellors on buses.
It has been buying doubledeckers suitable for o-m-o since 1966, and most of its initial de livery of Leyland Atlanteans — ironically, a source of cost-generating engineering troubles — has already been scrapped without ever having been operated without conductors.
Some quieter city services are one-man operated with Leyland Leopard 30ft single-deckers.