****** Submission Deadline for Bus Connects Fri Sept 28th ******
Make a postal submission. Do not use the online survey as it can be manipulated and ignored !

The plan to re-organise the entire Dublin Bus network known as Bus Connects but really should be called Bus Disconnects has a submission deadline of Fri 28th Sept. This plan is a very thinly disguised plan to privatise the service. Already the NTA has given away 10% of the routes to a UK company which last year in the UK was voted the worst rail operator and whose CEO receives €2 million in salary.

The Dublin bus system needs to be greatly improved to be more like something you will find in mainland Europe and this would require most importantly more investment to buy more buses, new routes and increased frequency. It also needs more routes in a series of rings around the city. This plan is not doing any of this. It is NOT increasing any of these factors DESPITE the SPIN in the confusing information form Bus Connects. They say things like there will be a bus every 4 minutes on the A routes. On closer inspection the A routes each go to different areas completely, so 4 A routes means, the frequency for your A bus since you won't be using all 4, is actually 16 mins. But these times are quoted at peak hour. It disguises how they are stretching an under resourced system to do more than it can. The information is purposely mis-leading in order to spin it so that the public thinks what they are being offered is better than it is.

Additionally any area with a Dart or Luas will have significant reductions. The focus will be to serve these but total journey times will be longer and it will force more people on already over-crowded arteries at peak. For lots of people, they will need to take 2 bus or "connections" to get anywhere -even to the city centre especially from further out. This connection into a high speed backbone might work in a place like Netherlands or Switzerland where they have real and proper public transport systems, but will lead to much longer journeys at higher costs in the case of Ireland considering they don't plan to add anything into it and their only interest is to privatise it so that someone can milk the system rather than either a national or non-profit entity that might have public service as its objective. And just to be clear the NTA intends to put all these routes out to tender in the next few years.

Details for Postal Submission to National Transport Authority (NTA)
BusConnects Dublin Area Bus Network Redesign
National Transport Authority
Dun Sceine, Harcourt Lane
Dublin 2
D02 WT20
Note: The cost is the price of a stamp.