Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 12 December 2018

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport

BusConnects Bus Corridors Project: Discussion

1:30 pm

Photo of Dessie EllisDessie Ellis (Dublin North West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank Ms Graham and Mr. Creegan for being here today. BusConnects will impact hugely on the Swords, Finglas, Glasnevin and Ballymun to the city centre bus routes. While there are some complaints about services in these areas, in general they are good. The lack of feedback from the consultations concerns me. Like many other people, I made a number of submissions, but I have had no feedback.

The process has moved now to the corridors. I refer the witnesses to the metro north project, on which there were many meetings between the NTA and residents regarding the three proposed routes. We are continually told that metro north is progressing and that consultation in that regard will commence towards the end of this year or early next year. We are now faced with BusConnects on top of metro north. To my mind, it would have been wiser to complete the metro north project first as it will impact hugely on what is being proposed in terms of BusConnects.

I am concerned about the houses and gardens that will be affected and the likely repercussions at Hart's Corner where the Finglas-Glasnevin and Ballymun routes to the city centre meet. It is proposed to compulsorily acquire gardens. What will happen if people dig in their heels? I do not know how, if the NTA meets resistance, and it will, what is proposed can be progressed. In the case of metro north, much of the route will be underground. While this will cause some disruption it will be nothing like the disruption that will be caused by what is proposed in terms of the BusConnects corridors. We are moving ahead with the ambitious BusConnects project and, thus, moving in the direction of privatisation of Dublin Bus, with 10% of routes already withdrawn and more in the pipeline.

I will give an example. The 17A service was recently privatised. I have been hearing complaint after complaint about it, which I expected. It was inevitable that when services were privatised there would be problems. It is happening already in regard to the privatised 220 and 17A services, yet we are continuing with the BusConnects corridors. I believe it would have been wiser to get metro north over the line before implementing BusConnects. In January, there will be another series of debates on metro north. Coupled with that debate, we will have another round of consultation on BusConnects. This process is a mess. We all want improved bus services. I believe in a proper public transport system but I am confused at the manner in which we are going about achieving it. I am not convinced BusConnects will work. I am hearing too many complaints about it. We are opening debates on every front and that is a problem. We should have dealt first with metro north and then moved to BusConnects and dealt with it route by route. To my mind, the manner in which we are going about all of this is problematic.

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