Jerry Buttimer (Cork South-Central, Fine Gael)

I thank the Deputy for her question and for her ongoing engagement on the matter of Dublin Bus services. Like her, I am eager to see improvements in real-time tracking, not just of Dublin Bus services, but nationwide across the whole public service obligation, PSO, fleet. The Dublin Bus automatic vehicle location system feeds information to the bus operator's control room, TFI Live app and on-street signs. It dates from 2009. A new automatic vehicle location system is due to be rolled out initially on Dublin Bus and Go-Ahead Ireland Dublin city buses. I expect this will lead to significant performance improvements and improved quality of information for bus passengers.

The NTA is currently in the system-testing phase of the project. As the system is very large and complex, this activity will continue and will be repeated as necessary until the NTA is satisfied that features work as intended and that all major defects are resolved, in order for the NTA to be confident that the solution is fully functional and sufficiently robust to be installed on buses. Subject to the systems successfully passing the detailed testing phases that are under way, a pilot implementation is scheduled to commence early next year. Assuming no issues are found during the pilot, full roll-out on buses in Dublin and other cities will commence next year. The roll-out should be complete in early 2027. In total, approximately 1,800 buses nationwide will have to have the new system installed on them. This is part of a wider effort to update vehicle tracking infrastructure across the PSO fleet and to improve public bus systems through BusConnects in our cities, which will improve both the accessibility and reliability of our bus system, particularly through the construction of core bus corridors.

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