John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

No, I am not finished.

I thought this could be an easy gain for the NTA. Ballycullen is one of the fastest growing areas in my constituency. There are BusConnects corridors proposed for Tallaght to Terenure and for Rathfarnham to Terenure with a huge road width available because there is a park. There is a quality bus corridor, QBC, on Firhouse Road that could very easily connect to the proposed Tallaght to Terenure corridor via the Spawell Bridge. The cost would be minimal and the guts of the infrastructure are there but it is important for connectivity.

There is a QBC on the Ballycullen Road which connects to the Firhouse Road. It is underutilised as a bus route serving an area that is starved of a bus service. I wrote to the NTA and my hand was smacked. I was told it was considering BusConnects and not to dare come near it with these proposals until it was done. I thought that was a good sign and that it would be included in BusConnects. This would connect two of the corridors. There are QBCs on Firhouse Road, which is fully segregated, and on Ballycullen Road, which is almost fully segregated. They connect at a T-junction. If they were joined, I guarantee that local people would oversubscribe the bus service on offer. The 15 does not serve them. Dublin Bus has been attempting to sweat the 15B to facilitate them. They need a dedicated service. I will write to the NTA again about this but if I was an engineer, I would say these are two very easy gains. Similarly, there is a bus corridor on Ballyboden Road. That area south of Knocklyon is developing. There are 3,000 or 4,000 housing units going up there and the residents will have nothing.

I am not a member of this committee; I am a casual interloper. We need a much more detailed conversation about Dublin Bus and its livery, its independence-----