Six passengers per trip on rural night buses in Co Cork

Special evening and night-time door-to-door transport services set up to serve rural parts of Cork last summer are attracting an average of six passengers per journey.

New figures from the National Transport Authority (NTA) show the four routes in Cork attracted a total of 570 passengers on 89 trips over a four-month period.

The services, which need to be pre-booked by passengers, are Glash-Rathcoole, Newmarket-Kanturk, Rockchapel-Newmarket, and Nadd-Roskeen. Another route — an extension of an existing daytime route with fixed stops and timetables —between Kinsale and Clonakilty attracts a weekly average of 16 passengers on its evening services which operate six trips each week.

Services run on average from 6pm until 11pm typically on Friday and Saturday evenings.

Figures show seven evening door-to-door services in Co Kerry averaged 11 passengers per journey, one of the highest in the country.

In contrast, the only service in Tipperary, which operates in rural areas around Clonmel, attracted an average of just one passenger per trip.

The door-to-door service in Waterford, which operates in the Ballyduff area, had an average of four passengers per journey.

The Local Link evening services were introduced by the Government last summer to win support for drink-driving legislation which provided for an automatic ban of at least three months for all motorists caught over the legal drink driving limit.

It has spent more than €530,000 in funding 65 new routes over a six-month period. Figures suggest passengers on the door-to-door services are subsidised by around €17 per trip.

Transport Minister Shane Ross announced earlier this week that the scheme will be extended until the end of March.

However, three of the services have not resumed since Christmas due to what the NTA said were “poor patronage levels”. The routes were Bunclody-Carlow, Fethard-on-Sea-New Ross, and one serving the area around Listowel, Co Kerry.

Another proposed route serving Glencar, Co Kerry, never became operational due to difficulties in finding someone to run the service.

The most used late night route in rural areas was the 363 service which operates between Tallow and Dungarvan every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday with an average of 70 passengers per week, which still only equates to six passengers per trip.

A review by the NTA of the 41 door-to-door services and 23 extensions to existing rural bus services claimed the majority of routes were “performing well”.