Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail)
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819. To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport his plans to allow holders of limousine licences to use bus lanes when carrying paying passengers in view of the significant role such services play to those considering foreign direct investment here and in light of the fact that taxis can under certain circumstances use bus lanes. [22056/16]

Shane Ross (Dublin Rathdown, Independent)
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​Bus lanes were introduced, at considerable public expense, to provide on-street priority for bus-based public transport.

In addition to buses, cyclists are allowed in bus lanes because they are inherently vulnerable road users and are safer in those lanes, and emergency services are also allowed to use the lanes. Taxis are permitted to use them because they are a public transport service available for on-street hire.

Since the creation of bus lanes, there have been numerous requests to my Department to allow other classes of road users into the lanes. These include multi-occupancy vehicles, electric vehicles, motorcyclists, animal ambulances and others, as well as hackneys and limousines. 

These requests have been rejected down the years as to allow additional categories of road users into bus lanes would undermine the efficiency of the lanes for the purpose for which they were originally intended. It would also be difficult to allow any one of these many requests without allowing the others, thereby further undermining the working of the lanes as bus priority measures. I therefore do not propose to extend the use of bus lanes to any other categories of road users.