Shane Ross (Dublin Rathdown, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Under the Dublin Transport Authority Act 2008 it is a statutory function of the National Transport Authority, NTA, to determine the appropriate mix of directly awarded and competitively tendered bus services.  Arising from this, it is the NTA's role to conduct the public procurement process relating to its decision to tender out of 10% of the PSO bus network.  In this regard, the NTA has been undertaking a number of competitive procurement processes and, in August, announced its decision that it had selected Go-Ahead as the preferred bidder in the competition to operate 24 routes - 23 existing plus one new route - in the Dublin metropolitan area.

The NTA intends to ensure that customers will experience improved service levels across all of the routes in question, and it will achieve this through a variety of means. The quality of service is measurable and therefore the NTA is setting out in the contract with the new operator the customer service levels that are expected.  It will use the contract terms to drive up levels of customer service. All services operated under the contract will continue to be regulated by the NTA as they are today.  This means that Leap, the free travel pass, real time information, and the national journey planner, etc., will all continue to operate on these services. The contracts will provide for enhanced frequencies and strengthened punctuality targets and result in improved bus services for the travelling public. There will also be the introduction of one new additional route from Citywest to UCD. The NTA has the statutory powers to determine fare levels, and the NTA will continue using its fares determination process to rationalise and improve the fare structure across all the different operators in the regulated bus market, including the new operator.

Additional information not given on the floor of the House

Public transport passenger journeys are growing, with Dublin Bus experiencing strong growth which is forecast to continue. That growth will allow Dublin Bus continue to expand its services in tandem with the roll-out of Go-Ahead's routes. It is well recognised that good public transport is a key enabler of both social inclusion and economic progress and this announcement forms part of this Government's commitment to improving our public transport system and services.

We are always looking for ways to improve our public transport services and the NTA's selection of a preferred bidder in the Dublin metropolitan competition forms part of that process.

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