Bus Éireann's Cork - Limerick - Galway service

embraer170

Anyone have any experience with Bus Eireann's Cork - Limerick - Shannon - Galways service (51)? Any experience of very heavy delays or frequent cancellations?

Have a 7.15pm flight from Shannon on Tuesday 9th and not in the mood to arrive 5 hours before but in the mood to miss my flight either. So thinking the bus arriving in Shannon at 4.55 (having left Cork at 2.30, and Limerick at 4.25) is a reasonably safe bet giving me an hour or so to play around with in case things go wrong.

Any experiences?

Chris_533976

I think that bus goes into the middle of Limerick so can get snarled up in traffic pretty badly. Dunno how bad tho, never been on it.

Amazotheamazing

Should be ok, the worst traffic is coming into Limerick, not on the way out.

embraer170

Thanks.
But the bus is coming into Limerick from Cork... traffic heavy inbound?

Mushy

As much as I can remember, there isnt too much traffic coming in that way from Cork. I've only been on that route once though(live in Wicklow sure). It goes straight into the train station in Limerick, so the worst of the traffic would possibly be going out of there. Although when I was on it, I was supposed to switch buses somewhere, waited for a while at bout three different stops before making the switch. It can be messy.

Cork

Citylink will soon be providing services on this route:

www.citylink.ie

Bus Eireann will hopefully improve in terms of quality of service and price.

1huge1

I was about to say that things will get better once the shannon tunnel opens but then I remembered it has to let people in limerick off...

Agreed the worst bit is coming into limerick course ive never gone past that...

Zoney

The EIS for the Southern Ring Road suggests that traffic movements at the Rossbrien Junction (this is currently a big roundabout at the end of the Southern Ring Road phase 1, and N20) won't include N20 to Childers Road - which would make it difficult for buses (or anyone else) getting into the city centre from the N20. They'll have to use the Dock Road junction, which will be a pathetic dumbell-type junction; in fact the roundabout on one side will be the existing cement factory roundabout but with two slips added to it. The roundabout on the Dock Road on the other side of the SRR will have the two slips, and the entrance to the Water Treatment plant.

All in all - quite a mess for traffic management in Limerick once the SRR phase 2 opens. The other movement that won't be allowed at Rossbrien (who knows why) will be the SRR phase 1 (i.e westbound N7) to Childers Road.

What will be good is when the new Bus Éireann station is opened on the opposite side of the train station, with buses accessing it directly from the Roxboro road (although this makes the missing N20-Childers Road movement even more mystifying).

Check out the SRR phase 2 EIS non-technical summary - the restricted movements at Rossbrien are detailed in section 3.2.1 on page 8.

D'Peoples Voice

Next month I hope to land in the brand spanking new Cork Airport (21.40pm)
and was hoping to catch the Cork equivalent of the 747/746(Dublin bus).
I'm told it's route number 249!
The timetable is quite impressive during the day, but after 1900hrs, it's not as regular as the 747/746
http://www.buseireann.ie/site/your_journey/printed_timetable_pdfs/local/249.pdf
Chris_533976 said before that it's commonplace for Bus Eireann in Cork to be late, sometimes not turn up. Does the route 249 suffer any such problems?

invincibleirish

the 249 is kinsale-cork via the airport

the 226 is airport-cork

if your flight is 9:40pm arriving into cork you might be just in time to see the 249 arrive into the airport at around 10:10pm,however dont get on it then as it'll be going to kinsale,instead wait till bout 11:10 when it'll be coming back from kinsale,i advise some time spent in the pub/subway/shop that the shiny new terminal 'boasts'.the 226 doesnt run after 9pm methinks,because of course who would want to go to an airport after then hum?