Ms Anne Graham:

I thank the Chairman for the invitation to attend the committee.

Prior to the crisis, the National Transport Authority, NTA, had been recording a significant growth in public transport usage in our cities and towns and in rural Ireland thanks to increased investment by the NTA in new and enhanced services. However, the Covid-19 crisis and the Government’s response, including school closures from 13 March followed by the requirement to stay at home which applied from 23 March, had a profound and ongoing impact on the demand for public transport. Daily demand is now typically between 10% and 20% of what it was prior to mid-March. Weekly demand in early March was approximately 5.6 million passengers. By mid-April this figure had declined to 500,000 passengers, which is less than 9% of normal demand levels. Although demand remains very low, some recovery in passenger numbers has been apparent in recent weeks.

Throughout this crisis, the NTA and the public transport operators have closely followed the public health advices. In line with those advices, we have implemented a number of measures across the public transport system for enhanced cleaning regimes and to facilitate appropriate social distancing. The NTA worked with public service obligation, PSO, public transport operators to provide consistent signage on board all bus, rail and Luas services to encourage physical distancing by passengers and to reduce the risk of close passenger contact with drivers. These measures were rolled out in early April. The impact of these measures has been to reduce dramatically the passenger-carrying capacity of each vehicle to around 20% of its former level in the case of buses, with a larger reduction in the case of rail. The reduced demand for travel, however, was such that this social distancing was easily achieved on all services.

Prior to Covid-19, each public transport vehicle was cleaned internally and externally each night before entering service the next morning. From early March onwards, this cleaning regime was progressively enhanced by more intensive night-time cleaning measures, focusing in particular on passenger touch points such as grab rails and seat handles. These cleaning measures were later supplemented by on-board cleaning of passenger touch points during the service day.

On revised timetables, we put in place Saturday plus timetables on bus and rail services. This reflected the huge decrease in travel demand that had taken place but we maintained sufficient services to meet residual demand by essential travellers at all times, especially in the early morning when many healthcare staff required public transport services. Luas and regular rural services continue to maintain normal schedules. The demand responsive services provided by LocalLink supported local communities in delivering supplies, particularly to those who were cocooning. Throughout the crisis, the dedication of operator staff and drivers in particular in continuing to provide public transport services to those who still need to travel has been remarkable, and I would like to record that here today.

The NTA is aware that the commercial bus and small public service vehicle sector, like all businesses, has been severely impacted during this crisis. The Government has put in place a number of supports for businesses and the NTA is continuing to work with these sectors and other stakeholders to do all within our powers to support them.

In planning for reopening phases, the pattern of travel on public transport has changed radically and is likely not to immediately return to the same patterns that were in place prior to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The planning of the public transport response to the Government's roadmap is challenging as there are now new norms. The authority has made extensive contacts with employer, industry and retail bodies as well as larger third level institutions to ascertain the manner in which various sectors expect to phase their reopening in line with the Government roadmap. At a high level, the response to the various reopening phases is as follows. In phase 1, commencing 18 May, we have maintained the reduced weekday timetable. We lengthened trains where required and provided additional services at peak times as required. We will introduce normal Monday to Friday timetables for commuters on bus and DART for phase 2. During phases 3 to 5 we will continue to monitor travel demand and work with operators on providing additional services where needed, subject to availability of fleet, drivers and funding. The resultant travel demand in response to phase 1 of the easing of restrictions has been higher than expected. We believe that there is a large percentage of non-essential travel being made on public transport, which is using up the capacity that we had planned for phase 2. Public transport capacity with social distancing will be significantly challenged without a number of other supporting measures. These include encouraging organisations to continue to facilitate working from home, remote learning, online shopping and online appointments where possible; discouraging use of public transport at peak times except for essential travel; and encouraging staggered start times and longer opening hours to spread demand out of peak.

The NTA is working with local authorities to introduce mobility plans in cities, starting with Dublin city centre, to manage travel demand to urban centres, to protect space for public transport and provide additional space to meet increased cycling and walking demand. We will fund the emergency infrastructure identified by local authorities; encourage people to keep their journeys short and local wherever possible; and promote cycling and walking instead of public transport or car wherever possible. There is no doubt that there needs to be a radical shift in the use of active travel modes over the next few months in our towns and cities.