Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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1600. To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport if he will consider opening up bus lanes to vehicles carrying people with disabilities; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [1410/17]

Shane Ross (Dublin Rathdown, Independent)
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Bus lanes were created, at some expense to the public, to provide on-street priority for bus-based transport. This is being done to make public transport more reliable and efficient, thereby attracting more people out of their cars and onto buses, and so reducing congestion and pollution. Aside from buses, we already allow cyclists to use bus lanes, as they are inherently vulnerable road-users, and a concession was made shortly after they were introduced to allow taxis to use them, as they are a form of transport available to the public for on-street hire. Finally, the emergency services may of course also use bus lanes. Since the introduction of bus lanes, there have been numerous requests to open them to other classes of traffic. These have included motorcycles, mutli-occupancy vehicles, limousines, hackneys, electric vehicles, and animal ambulances, among others. These requests are consistently rejected, both by my predecessors and by myself. The principal reason is the carrying capacity of the lanes. Any addition to the classes of traffic permitted to use them would inevitably reduce the efficiency of the lanes for their original purpose. While the case is sometimes made that one or other category of traffic would not add much to the volume in bus lanes, if the principle were conceded in one case it would be difficult to refuse other requests.

I therefore have no plans to extend access to bus lanes to any other classes of traffic at this time.