Cautious welcome for Cork city bus schedule changes

Changes to city bus services have been cautiously welcomed by the Cork Commuter Coalition, which has said an end date should be provided.

Last month Bus Éireann released the new timetables for the 202, 202a, 205, 208, and 220 routes. It will see buses that ran every 10 minutes running every 15, ones that ran every 15 minutes every 20 and those that ran every 20 minutes now every 30.

The changes will see 872 fewer bus journeys each week across Cork city, which the company says will “improve reliability and punctuality”.

Ciarán Meers from the Cork Commuter Coalition says that if the reduced services provides a more reliable service, it is progress.

Realistic

“Firstly, it is good that Bus Éireann have finally agreed to provide a more realistic timetable,” he told The Echo.

“A service that operates at a reduced, but more reliable schedule is still far less than ideal, but at least is a lot more honest with people who rely on buses to get to work, school, or leisure activities.

“This scenario is partially a result of the failure to properly invest in and support the delivery of higher capacity transportation such as the Cork Luas.”

He said the Cork Commuter Coalition “are sympathetic to the difficulties that are involved with hiring drivers”, noting “this is a medium term initiative that Bus Éireann have been working towards over the past year plus.”

Bus Éireann has previously explained that: “Just 2% of our service kilometres is delivered through bus lanes”, which negatively impacts reliability.

Initiatives

Mr Meers agreed with this: “Following the success of Open Streets and other initiatives that have reduced car presence in the city centre, it is also incumbent upon Cork City Council and other bodies to identify choke points where bus-only measures can be quickly implemented, in order to speed up bus services,” Mr Meers said. 

“If the bus users of Cork are being impacted by reduced services, it is only right to attempt to reduce journey times simultaneously.”

Finally, Mr Meers said Bus Éireann should also “provide a rough timeline of where and when services can expect to realistically return to normal — to ensure that temporary measures don’t end up becoming all too permanent.”

Bus Éireann has yet to produced a timeline for when this might happen, but stated: “Frequency will return to current level on the five impacted routes as driver headcount meets the required level.”