Transport in the North West

nanook

I know that my knowledge of the transport system is not upto date but what are ppl's feelings on travel around the north west region.
Many aspects are to be considered such as Public transport (or lack their of), both on a rural and regional geographic, personal transport ie car, taxi, bike tractor etc.

I remember when i went to letterkenny to study, i relied on the CIE and i ahve to say that the service was rubbish, far to slow, if you were lucky you may be in letterkenny in under two hours, and then i found Feda O'Donnell.

My god what a service, good buses that never smelt of exhaust fumes, good staff (i remember once loosing my ticket and the collector telling me not to worry as they remembered me from the previous friday, quite nice of them) and excellent times, i remember once being from sligo to letterkenny in 1:35.

Any other travelers on the board

muffler

What transport

nanook

so muffler you using the aul black bike and its a long distance then it must be the pony and trap.

muffler

nanook wrote:

so muffler you using the aul black bike and its a long distance then it must be the pony and trap.

Shanks mare I think they call it locally

Paddy20

Public transport has improved beyond all recognition since I was young, hail and hearty.

CIE has improved beyond recognition, and there are now, even direct to Dublin Airport from Ballybofey, for those who want to make a quick getaway! , and there are now quite a number of private coach operators carrying the general public in competition with CIE.

When I was a lad, we had no such thing as a luxury Coach with air suspension, all we had were 'Bone rattlers' that kept breaking down.

You lot do not know just how well off you really are :rolleyes: .

However, I do miss the train service from Stranorlar station which was operated by Donegal Railway's, it was narrow gauge with steam engine's 'Those were the day's my friend' Song title Mary Hopkin's, written by Paul McCartney.

P.

muffler

Paddy20 wrote:

However, I do miss the train service from Stranorlar station which was operated by Donegal Railway's, it was narrow gauge with steam engine's 'Those were the day's my friend' Song title Mary Hopkin's, written by Paul McCartney.

P.

Have to agree.

It was a sad day and a day that a huge mistake was made when it was decided to decommision the railway system in Donegal

Lafortezza

If you don't have a car in donegal you're in trouble imho, there may be buses going between the bigger towns but not everybody lives near the actual bus stop!
I moved up to Inishowen about 3 months ago and my boss in Dublin was a Donegal man. He said i wouldn't need a car at all I could survive on lifts and the bus. I got a car just in case anyway.
If I didn't have the car I'd have a 20 mile bike trip to work. :eek:

Civilian_Target

The main roads are extremely well served - there's 9 busses a day Dublin-Letterkenny each way, more on Fridays and Sundays, and there's direct routes to Belfast and Galway too.
Rural's a lot more dodgy - a lot of the Gaeltacht areas are only connected to with 2 or 3 busses a day, and parts of Inishowen are worse again.

With the population density up here being as it is - if you don't live within distance of an R-class road, you're pretty screwed. Understandably so too I guess - population density's way too low to warrant the transport otherwise...