Delivering an efficient and accessible public transport system is essential to the daily lives of working people across Dublin city and to meeting our climate objectives. The case for public transport speaks for itself. Every single full bus takes 80 cars off the roads, reducing emissions by over 90% and freeing up 300 m of roadway. Week after week, however, I hear from northsiders that they have simply given up taking the bus, not because they do not want to use it but because they cannot afford to trust it. They cannot rely on it daily. Citizens are experiencing frequent no-shows, last-minute cancellations and long gaps between buses. We still hear on an ongoing basis of ghost buses, services that appear as due on the TFI Live app and on the displays but never arrive. How can we expect commuters to shift to public transport when they are plagued by issues every day?
I have spoken about this in the Chamber before, but this situation has become so commonplace in Baile Átha Cliath that a website called buscancellationsdublin.eu has started pulling together the data on cancelled buses. In any other sector or walk of life, this would not be acceptable. Northsiders are just trying to get on with their daily lives, yet they are being let down time and again by Dublin Bus and the National Transport Authority, NTA. The delays cause real distress. People are missing work and medical appointments and struggling to get to childcare commitments. I understand from the CEO of Dublin Bus, Billy Hann, that a new next generation automatic vehicle location, NGAVL, system will be piloted in September. This cannot come soon enough, and I really welcome it. As Mr. Hann has acknowledged, the title “real-time passenger information” is effectively misleading, as the system now is just a countdown from when the bus leaves the depot, with no ability to respond to what happens en route to the bus stop. The next generation AVL system must provide passengers with the reassurance they need and deserve while waiting for a public transport service.
The long list of issues I hear concerning the 73, 130 and 15 bus routes in my constituency are underpinned by the simple fact that commuters cannot trust that their bus will even show up. When a service is delayed or full, that is frustrating, but when it does not show up at all, with no explanation and no update, that really undermines public confidence in the system and in public transport as a whole.
We cannot settle for this standard of service that people have been forced to tolerate in the last few years. This is even more relevant in the current climate and in the current energy crisis, with the pressure on fuels. It is an opportunity, at one level, to get people out of cars and onto public transport. If we are serious about our climate targets and about building a country where an carr a fhágáil sa bhaile is a genuine choice rather than a gamble, then public transport must be reliable enough from the first minute in the morning to the last minute at night.