Bus Éireann Expressway Cut 3 Routes

Some comments from Wexford Bus at

https://www.independent.ie/regionals/wexford/news/absolute-dismay-at-bus-eireanns-cancellation-of-key-route-but-wexford-bus-will-fill-the-gaps/

“We already offer a really comprehensive service on Waterford, but if there are gaps, as a result of this, we will have a look at the gaps and we will certainly work with the NTA to fill those gaps,” Mr Crowley said, as he also acknowledged that the Expressway is “a commercial activity that just wasn’t working for them”.

"He explained that if Wexford Bus was to pick up on those withdrawn services, it would be at least September of this year before it would be operational as most of the service users would be students and they’d have finished this academic year by the end of May. Mr Crowley added that the service, if introduced, would commence from Wexford town, rather than in Rosslare Harbour as there’s a Local Link bus every hour from the Harbour into town, “but that’s something that would have to be looked at in more detail,” he continued.

I think that some of the comments above are perhaps a little bit harsh about BÉ Expressway.

The world was a different place back in the 1990s and early 2000s when commercial operators finally got the chance to operate services in competition with Bus Éireann. Until the NTA arrived in 2009, there was no proper process in place to manage the licensing of services - the Department of Transport had not got a clue and frankly the whole set up was grossly unfair to all of the operators and in many cases the passengers who weren't given the services that they deserved.

For the record, I certainly would not condone some of the behaviour of Bus Éireann and Dublin Bus in the face of some of the new commercial operators back in those days, when they tried to flood some of them out of business. That was disgraceful.

But I do think that it you could certainly argue that when Bus Éireann's routes were finally formally split between commercial and PSO, that some of the commercial routes really should have been designated as PSO from the word go - they were Expressway in name only, and I suspect were very difficult to operate on a commercial basis and that has been borne out by the changes over the years with the 5, 7, X8 and 21 all being replaced in full or part by PSO services.

Whether BÉ could have delivered the non-stop end-to-end services along the motorways as one poster suggested they should have done will remain a doubt in my mind.

• For one, I have always suspected that they just didn't have the internal finances to invest in the fleet of vehicles that would have been needed for non-stop services on the Cork, Limerick and Galway routes. Genuinely I just don't think that they had the money to do it (assuming that they were forced to maintain the existing services).
• Second is the reality that, until the NTA arrived in 2009, there was still significant political interference in the day-to-day operations of both Bus Éireann and Dublin Bus, even when it came to the commercial Expressway services. The political furore that would have happened had Bus Éireann then said that they were re-routing the X8 onto the motorway and abandoning the calls at the towns along the route would have been massive. I just think that it would not have been possible to do it - things were far more complicated then. The NTA took great care in setting up the 828 service that replaced the X8 serving the towns between Portlaoise and Cashel so that there were connections maintained when that first withdrawal by BÉ took place.

The arrival of the NTA at least has brought about a proper process for licensing bus services, and importantly the recognition that some of the routes that I mentioned above that Bus Éireann withdrew from or changed, were in part PSO in nature that needed subsidies to operate.

I think that in the short term you are already seeing Bus Éireann withdrawing from the rural once-a-week services (being replaced rightly by Local Link), and I think that we may well see further changes in the long term in the Expressway network, and that the company will focus on delivering the PSO services in cities and towns, commuter routes and the regional PSO network which they developed successfully as part of Connecting Ireland.

On the routes in question now, my guess is as follows:

I suspect that you will see PSO services being maintained on the 40, certainly between Waterford and Wexford, along with the 52 between Galway and Ballina, but I would think that both of these will be at a reduced frequency.

With regard to the 4, I suspect that some form of PSO service will cover the Carlow-Waterford section - with connections at Carlow for Dublin with JJK services. Again, I suspect frequency will reduce.

They will have to be put out to tender in the medium term, but in the meantime Bus Éireann will probably still operate the 40 and 52 while the Carlow-Waterford route would be more likely to be a Local Link service operated with an Evora bus.

If routes get converted to PSO, then PSO national fares will apply, which will be significantly lower than the commercial fares.