Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Smith. Deputy Smith mentioned Jarrett Walker. I remember meeting him with other councillors back in 2016. There has been an extensive period of consultation to try to figure out how we make a better bus route. Many of the bus routes in Ireland are based on the original tram routes, and not electric trams but horse-drawn trams. They even have the same route numbers and stops. The stages on the bus routes were stages where the horses could get some water. We have a very traditional set of bus routes in Dublin which do not reflect population densities and the new communities that have grown up. We needed to organise the bus routes and Deputy Smith probably accepts this.

Deputy Smith understand that when we change around the bus routes, even when we add extra services, there will be people who are inconvenienced and who will not have a direct route where they had one before. We want to make sure does happen is that far more people get a better service. On orbital routes to and from UCD, the peak levels with routes 17 and 175 had five services an hour in each direction, but now, with the introduction of the S4 and the S6, these have doubled to approximately ten services per hour. It should also be noted that communities will benefit from a direct connection to UCD for the first time. With the S4 these include the Long Mile Road, Crumlin Hospital, Ballyfermot, Cherry Orchard, Rathgar and Milltown.

On the S6, these new communities include Firhouse Road, Cherryfield and Templeogue. Areas that up to now had a direct connection to UCD and will require an interchange from 26 November include Citywest, Ballyboden, Knocklyon and parts of Firhouse.

As the Deputy points out, there is a problem with traffic congestion and infrastructure changes, which are the second part of this project, are needed and certainly have to happen. The real-world performance of the project has to continue to be monitored. It is not enough to say there are so many services per hour on the timetable. They have only recently been deployed, but we need to watch their performance data to see that the services are delivering what they are meant to.

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