Quarter of Cork city of buses ran late by six minutes or more

More than a quarter of Cork city buses were late by six minutes or more in the first half of this year, data from the National Transport Authority shows.

The figures show 27% of buses departed six or more minutes late and a further 9% one minute or more early in the first six months of this year.

The least punctual buses were the 220C from Crosshaven to MTU via Carrigaline; the 207 from Donnybrook to Glenheights via Patrick Street, and the 219 from MTU to Mahon Point via Douglas.

The percentage-based punctuality data, provided to The Echo by the National Transport Authority (NTA) on foot of a freedom of information request, is only used for routes which operate fewer than four times an hour, classified as low frequency.

High frequency routes

On high-frequency routes, passengers are more likely to just turn up at the stop and wait for the next bus to arrive rather than planning their journey by a specific bus, so a metric called ‘excess wait time’ is used to measure punctuality.

It looks at the average time a passenger must wait for the next bus, and how much more it is than the wait time expected according to the schedule. For example, if someone must wait 15 minutes for a bus meant to run every 10 minutes.

Data shows that the 208 from Lotabeg to Bishopstown to Curraheen had the longest excess wait time at nearly four minutes longer than planned. The 208 is the city’s most frequent bus route and is meant to run every 10 minutes.

The 205 from Kent train station to Patrick St to MTU; the 206 from Grange to Douglas to South Mall, and 220 from Ballincollig to Douglas to Carrigaline all had wait times around two minutes in excess of scheduled. Only the 213, which runs from between the Black Ash Park and Ride to the city centre, had an excess wait time of less than a minute in the first half of this year.

Positive news

However, there was some more positive news on the horizon for bus users, with 67 new bus stops set to be rolled out by the NTA on Sunday.

The new stops have been put in place on 21 existing bus routes across the city and county, and will also serve the new bus network that will be implemented as part of the BusConnects Cork programme.

A further 11 other stops have been repositioned to more suitable and more accessible locations. A list of all changes can be found at https://eclv.ie/busstops.

The changes will address large gaps between stops, while several city centre locations will now have a ‘split stop’ arrangement to reduce footpath crowding and make it clearer where buses will stop.