Patrick Costello (Dublin South Central, Green Party)
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I will cut out a lot of my questions given the shortness of the time. The G spine is something that I want to focus on. I have been working on this with Ms Lauren Tuite who is a Green Party representative in the area. It promised an improvement of about 20% for Ballyfermot and Cherry Orchard. We have seen the same problems that everyone has highlighted: a decline in service, ghost buses and full buses driving past bus stops. We have talked a lot about the lack of drivers but I want to dig more into the running times of the routes. I understand that drivers say now, and had warned before, that running times were inadequate. That leads to poor service and also indicates poor planning. One knock-on is that services are being redirected so that a bus will bypass a large chunk of its route, or will bypass Ballyfermot, so that it can be on time at the G spine terminus in Spencer Dock. That leads to ghost buses and the RTPI being inaccurate. All the problems we are discussing are deeper than just a lack of drivers. How are the running times calculated? Who decides them and how? What feeds into them? Were the drivers, the people who actually know these routes, consulted? If things like congestion are impacting on running times, what can be done now to improve bus priority? If running times are too short, are we adequately accounting for driver welfare when we come up with these running times? Are we giving the drivers enough time at the end to find a toilet and to stretch their legs? We know that sitting for too long is a problem. Is driver welfare adequately factored into the running times?