Bus Eireann Routes

veryangryman

Noticed some changes in the past couple of years (if not further back).

Since the Motorways have opened, getting a bus to and from an intermediate town on the routes is next to impossible. Example on the X8 where you may want to do Fermoy to Portlaoise. Now impossible.

Why don't they do multi-stop options. Surely between all the areas on the route, there is a market for this? Also (and i know im tal;king Dublin-Cork again here), why are there no private operators competing for the multi-stops?

Can anyone recall back in day where the bus did stop at all these areas? Surely it was full to bursting at the time

L1011

The private operators don't do the multi-stops as they don't make money. The NTA has subsidised a (very) small number of replacement services.

bk

L1011 wrote: »

The private operators don't do the multi-stops as they don't make money.

Well that is not true. Citylink operate a stopping service to Galway, in parallel to their non stop service. Plenty of other privately run stopping services like J.J. Kavangh, etc.

Private operators will generally be happy to run any type of service, stopping or direct, as long as their is enough demand there and money to be made.

The Cork-Dublin route has a bit of history behind it OP. Before the motorways, there were two stopping stopping services, BE X8 and Aircoach had a stopping service.

When the motorway opened, Aircoach saw that there was an opportunity and big demand for a non stop direct service. Unfortunately this was during the recession, when Aircoach was losing millions every year and didn't have the money to buy new coaches for a new service, so instead they moved their coaches from the stopping service to the direct service and cancelled the stopping service.

The direct service was an incredible success, they got way more passengers and it helped save the company and they were soon making profit again.

I did hope that when things improved, they would restart the stopping service like Citylink has, but they have not shown much interest in doing that.

BE were slow to the party and now there were already too late to get a direct route license, so instead they cut a lot of stops from the X8 to make it faster and try and compete with Aircoach/GoBE, but it is almost the worst of both worlds, still much slower then the direct services, but now they aren't serving all the towns along the way!

I do agree with you OP that there is probably market for most of the stopping services, the issue is that the privates are currently more focused on getting and developing the more profitable direct and semi-direct (e.g. Cork - Limerick - Galway and Cork - Waterford - Kilkenny - Dublin routes) services. There has been an absolutely massive expansion in coach services over the last 10 years. But unfortunately some small towns have been left behind, hopefully that get rectified in time. Either by market interest or by NTA subsidy.

As an aside, there is also the issue of different utilisation between routes and how that effects profit.