Frank O'Rourke (Kildare North, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I wish to start by thanking my colleague, Deputy Troy, for tabling this motion on the BusConnects proposal. I wish to speak to the Minister of State about how the proposal affects my constituency of Kildare North, especially the areas of Celbridge, Leixlip and Maynooth. Before getting into discussion of the proposal, I acknowledge the positive engagement I have had with both the NTA and Dublin Bus, which have been very helpful in explaining the document, saying what the proposed changes are and listening to the feedback I am giving them based on the reaction of the people in those three towns. I should say the population of the three towns combined is in the region of 65,000. They are very heavy users of the public transport system that is there but it needs to be expanded and improved upon.

I wish to identify positives in the additional bus services and routes proposed in the BusConnects proposal. I have been campaigning for some of these routes for some time as both a councillor and now as a national politician, and it is nice to see them included. One is the proposed W8 route, which would connect Celbridge, Maynooth and Tallaght. This would have a massively positive impact because it would connect two colleges, one being a university, a hospital, the Luas and a number of train stations along the route. There is also the proposed 259 service, which would connect Celbridge and Leixlip, two towns with a combined population of 40,000 that have never had a public transport service connecting them directly before. What is important is that when this process in respect of the positive additional routes suggested in BusConnects is completed, the Department, the Minister and the NTA would act immediately to implement those routes, connecting up locations with services that they have never had. This would be a positive outcome. It should be remembered that Dublin at present is really a no-go zone to bring a car into. What we are trying to do is encourage people to use public transport, but they are not able to use buses or trains if the capacity or the service is not there. Right now all those modes of transport are at capacity.

One of the negatives I wish to touch on briefly is the proposed removal of the direct services to Dublin from Celbridge, which has a population of nearly 22,500, from Leixlip, which has a population of 15,000, and from Maynooth, which has a population of 15,000 and a further university population of 12,000. Those are the kinds of figures we are dealing with. I will pick just two examples as I am conscious of my time. The current 67X services Celbridge to Dublin, and there are nine express services from Celbridge to Dublin at peak times from 7 a.m. It is now proposed to reduce this to three services. If one looks at the statistics of each of those buses in the morning, one will see they are all at capacity. Four of the nine buses most mornings are three-axle buses, so, to get technical about it, they have 30% more capacity, which can bring 125 people, and they are all full. They are driving by bus stops leaving people behind them. The other buses carry approximately 90 passengers and are also all full at that time.

What we need is to maintain the services we have and to support them by increasing capacity because the figures, which Dublin Bus can give the Minister any day of the week he wants, show that these buses are at full capacity, can take no more and are leaving people behind them. We need additional services and additional capacity to help people commute from Celbridge, Maynooth and Leixlip for work, college or whatever. That is not currently the case. We need to address that now. A way of dealing with that would be to put on extra buses.

If we were to look at Leixlip as an example, River Forest is an estate of nearly 725 houses in the Captain's Hill area. There is one direct service hourly from that location to Dublin. It is now being proposed to remove that completely and to replace with it one direct service a day and to bring in orbital services, which will obviously not work in that particular area. The engagement and feedback I am getting from Dublin Bus, and from the NTA in particular, is that they are going to take this on board. I hope when that when they redraft this proposal, they will include the positives and will listen to us as public representatives and, more importantly, listen to the public transport users. I hope they will maintain the existing services and put on additional services to complement them. That is what we need. We cannot afford to lose any of the direct services we have coming in from satellite towns on the periphery of Dublin, such as Celbridge, Leixlip and Maynooth.

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