More than 6% of Cork City buses did not run as planned in the first half of year

Overall, 6.3% of planned bus kilometres were not travelled in the first half of this year, through buses being cancelled or not covering the whole route, and more than half of these cases were the fault of mechanical issues. File picture: Larry Cummins

More than 6% of Cork City buses did not run as planned in the first half of this year, with mechanical issues the main culprit.

Buses across Ireland calculate reliability using a metric called “lost kilometres”, which looks at how many buses actually operate compared to schedules, and data is calculated across 13 four-week periods, with data up to the end of mid-June currently available for 2026.

Overall, 6.3% of planned bus kilometres were not travelled in the first half of this year, through buses being cancelled or not covering the whole route, and more than half of these cases were the fault of mechanical issues.

Cork City cannot receive new buses as it does not have electric charging infrastructure, and will not until 2028. The National Transport Authority (NTA) has not been buying new diesel buses in recent years.

Cork has received about 50 second-hand buses from Limerick since 2020, as it has charging infrastructure in place, but in Cork, a temporary depot has had to be built to allow space for electric chargers to be installed in the main depot, a project which has seen many delays.

Staffing and traffic

The other two main reasons for buses not running were staffing, followed closely by traffic.

Of the main city bus routes, the worst performing was the 208 from Lotabeg to Curraheen, with 13% of scheduled trips not operating in the first half of this year, followed by the 202 from Hollyhill to Mahon Point at 9%, 207 from Donnybrook to Glenheights, and the 203 from Lehenaghmore to Parklands, both 7.5%.

The best-performing routes included the 226 and 225, which go to the airport and missed just 1% and 2% of trips, respectively.

The total percentage of bus routes not travelled marks a slight decrease in performance from 5.6% at the same time last year, while the latter half of 2025 was considerably worse, with 8.5% of planned bus trips not carried out.

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So far this year, performance has decreased from 5.4% of bus trips not running in the first four weeks of the year to 7.6% in the period covering mid-May to mid-June, suggesting the latter half of 2026 will also see even fewer buses running as planned.

Seven bus routes saw lost kilometres roughly double between period one and period six of the year.