A Fine Gael TD has called for large bus depots to have a driver on standby, following complaints about ‘ghost buses’ that never turn up.
Dún Laoghaire TD Barry Ward said that public transport is “great” when it works well.
However, he added that some of the bus routes in his constituency are “quite unreliable”.
“People are then late for work and you can't expect people to want to use public transport if they can't count on its reliability,” he told Newstalk Breakfast.
“So, one of the things I've raised with the Minister in the Dáil is the notion that they would have standby drivers.
“If somebody doesn't turn up - and obviously that happens - there would be a standby driver so that that bus doesn't drop off the service for the day, because that has a knock-on effect on the rest of the service.”
Bus Éireann buses outside the main terminal Busáras. Picture by: PA.Deputy Ward added that it is a “bit frustrating” that officials sometimes downplay how much of a problem it has become in Dún Laoghaire and north Wicklow.
“My office gets so many emails from people in the Dún Laoghaire area and the Bray area and Shankill area, for example, for the E1, for buses that just don't turn up, even at rush hour,” he said.
“Which is, of course, a crucial time, because if your bus at half past seven doesn't turn up, the next one is full.”
The solution, Deputy Ward believes, is for the Dublin Bus and Bus Éireann to have a spare driver on hand at rush hour who can step up if needed.
“If you talk about something like Busáras or Dún Laoghaire Dart Station, hubs where bus routes start, you should have a spare driver there because it's entirely foreseeable that somebody won't be able to drive,” he said.
“The notion that at a bus depot, essentially, you would have a spare driver, I don't think is actually too much to ask.”
While Deputy Ward said recruiting the staff needed would not be “easy”, he believes it is “something we should be striving for”.
Main image: A Dublin Bus in the city centre. Picture by: Alamy.com.
