Traffic flow hindering Bus Éireann’s plans for efficient bus service in Cork City
Capwell bus depot in Turner's Cross, Cork city is home to the inner workings and central control room of Cork’s Bus Éireann network of city and national services. Picture: Chani Anderson
The frustration of waiting for a bus to arrive or not to come at all has become an all-too familiar occurrence for weary commuters, students, and older people in Cork city in recent months.
For a country that plans a massive shift to public transport in the coming decades, the problems that beset its second city should sound a warning that sound planning, politically difficult decisions, and huge investment are going to be needed.
Bus Éireann’s Cork depot in Capwell is home to 210 vehicles that serve 25 city and 17 provincial routes spanning 246,000km per week.
Some 505 drivers, 60 engineers and 40 managers, supervisory and clerical roles are employed by Bus Éireann to serve Cork city.
With some 505 drivers and 210 buses, the question is, why are buses late so often?
According to Bus Éireann, Cork city lacks clear core bus corridors and forces buses to merge with the traffic, which causes congestion and service disruption.
Aled Williams, Bus Éireann senior operations manager south, says there are many issues at play that can cause a delay.
“Behind every decision that gets made here there are real life people making those decisions, and a huge amount of pride is taken by everybody here to offer the highest level of service consistently.
“We all want to keep the city moving and we all put a lot of effort to ensure that happens every day and this is a business that is about people from people,” Mr Williams said.
The Bus Éireann Cork control centre also located in Capwell and the automatic vehicle location team monitor the traffic flow in the city, control the electric signs and the TFI app for Cork city as well as communicating with drivers.
Willie O’Callaghan served as a bus driver for over a decade before moving to the control centre.
He said Douglas village plays a massive factor if popular bus routes from the southside to the northside of the city are on time or not.
The 220 route runs from Ovens via Ballincollig, the city centre, Douglas and Carrigaline to Fort Camden for 24 hours a day, is over 43kms long and served more than 3.1 million passengers last year.
However, the route only has approximately 5km of core bus corridors.
“Douglas affects the 220, 206, 207, 216 and the 203 (bus routes). The 220 has nine schools on their route and every one of them gets caught in traffic. There’s little to no bus priority in Douglas and cars park in bus lanes,” Mr O’Callaghan said.
A general rule of thumb is to remove a service from the electric sign at a bus stop or amend the TFI app if it is running over 20 minutes late, according to Bus Éireann.
“You might have GPS issues with a bus, it may show as a ‘scheduled’ time. If the bus is running on time, it will show up at that scheduled time,” Mr O’Callaghan said.
Mr Williams says decisions made in the control centre are made to “inconvenience as few people as possible”.
“We may have to cancel a service and put that bus somewhere more suitable to get it on time. It is not good for the customer, but it is not good for us to run a bus 40 minutes late for the rest of the day.
“We would much rather take it out of service, put it back on time, inconvenience a small number of people to fit a greater number of people,” Mr Williams said.
Bus Éireann has not had a “fair crack of the whip” at maintaining a functioning bus service, according to independent councillor for Carrigaline Marcia D’alton.
Ms D’alton believes Bus Éireann must be able to make decisions that impact Cork instead of the National Transport Authority (NTA) main office in Dublin.
“Ireland, although it is a tiny country, every city and every town has its own nuances.
“For example, Cork has big hills and the bus service’s needs may differ to Limerick, which is mostly flat. Nobody knows the bus routes like Bus Éireann,” she said.
The NTA oversees many aspects of Bus Éireann’s daily operations including fleet management and potential route changes or alterations, which can cause frustration for commuters and elected representatives who have queries that Bus Éireann cannot answer.
“As a councillor, it is frustrating because it makes it very difficult to work with Bus Éíreann, and that is not its fault,” Ms D’alton added.
Bus Éireann believes the BusConnects plans for Cork city will improve the frequency and punctuality of the buses in the coming years.
Bus Éireann chief customer officer Allen Parker believes that inserting priority bus lanes is a challenge because it requires taking space from the footpath or someone’s driveway.
“Ultimately, we have to look at what we are trying to achieve here, and that is achieving more reliable public transport getting more people using the bus and out of the car.
“There has to be a priority given and road space would be reduced for bus lanes.”
The €600m programme aims to deliver 91km of new bus lanes and bus priorities as well as approximately 98km of cycling infrastructure.
A spokesperson for the NTA told the the dedicated bus corridors will improve the infrastructure already in place in Cork city.
“By reserving these lanes exclusively for buses, they can bypass traffic congestion in the city and move freely to their designated route, making taking public transport a more desirable option for consumers and will ultimately lead to increased ridership and a more sustainable transportation system for the city along with other modes of public transport,” the spokesperson said.
Bus Éireann will run over 150 additional buses with cashless ticketing once BusConnects is completed and 250 jobs will be created with a low to zero emissions fleet.
According to the NTA, BusConnects in Cork will lead to two 24-hour bus services with route one running east-west via Ovens/ Ballincollig to the city centre to Mahon and route 3A running north to south serving Carrigaline to the city centre to Hollyhill.
Shorter waits and more direct routes are also promised including seven all-day high frequency bus routes running every 15 minutes or less during peak times.
It is expected that areas without a bus route such as Upper Glanmire, Waterfall and Kerry Pike, to name a few, will receive a route under the current BusConnects plan.
According to figures obtained by Labour candidate Peter Horgan via parliamentary questioning, there were 17 million trips on Bus Éireann services in Cork last year, which is over five million more than 2022.
“We have a congestion crisis in Cork city and in the suburbs. It's great to see votes of confidence in our public transport bus network but we need to do more. And we need to do more faster. Digital next-gen ticketing is here and it shouldn’t take a year for the fleet to be fitted with the capability that is second nature in most European public transport hubs,” Mr Horgan added.
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