I am not surprised that Bus Eireann Expressways are in the crisis they are in.
For years I have had an interest in public transport, and our national bus service provider. They have never listened to their customer’s needs. It is sad to think that a national bus service will no longer exist in Ireland, especially with Britain about to depart from Europe.
It saddens me to say as a person born in Co. Donegal that the British provided a better transport service in Donegal over one hundred years ago. A network of railways and companies built a structured network to most parts of our remote county.
The only positive thing that anyone seems to say about Bus Eireann Expressway as we head into this strike, is that it provided a great service to the Airport in Dublin and that it is also cheaper than driving your car to Dublin and parking there.
Losses are not new to transport services. We only need to look at the early days of the Lough Swilly railway when it was extending the line from Burnfoot or Tobin Junction to Letterkenny. The company was in difficultly before it even got the rail line section finished as far as Letterkenny. The government at the time stepped in to support the completion of the line.
A friend and neighbour of mine Mick Gallen in Glencar who drove the CDR railcar told me of the re-laying of the line between Ballindrait and Lifford in the late 50s. At the time it looked so good for the future of the Letterkenny to Strabane railway line which in turn at that time could take you on to Dublin. In less than a year the railways were closed for good in Co. Donegal, and the new line was lifted less than a year after it was put down.
So since then you had to be in Letterkenny or Donegal Town or any connecting town in between them to be able to get an express bus to Dublin and that was it. Lough Swilly Bus Company were the service provider for the less profitable routes in the north west of the county.
Lough Swilly was in the transport business for 164 years in Co Donegal. A similar time as Co.Donegal Railway, CIE started in 1945 and Bus Eireann was formed in 1987. With the Lough Swilly Bus Company closing in 2014 and the chiefs in Bus Eireann saying that the National Service is about to go if the workers don’t reconsider their demands. Donegal and the rest of rural Ireland is about to be left with out a national bus network.
There are positives from this outcome in Donegal. Because of the demand in and out of Donegal over the years which Bus Eireann either
over looked or didn’t think mattered private bus companies all local in our county have covered millions of miles in and out of Donegal to Dublin, Galway, Belfast and even Glasgow since the time Bus Eireann was set up in 1987. These companies, some of which started off in taxis then progressed to mini busses. These were the poor relations on the roads for the last 30 years, these were the ones that were listening to its passengers, went that extra mile.
For years they were look down on by the national service provider, they lifted their passengers along the road side and stopped short of the big transport hubs in the cities they provided service to. Over the years paying passengers have made the slow move across to the private bus service in and out of Co. Donegal.
Donegal people look back in sadness at the demise of the railway in Donegal, the sad truth about the railway in Donegal was that it wasn’t supported by the people of the county. It could be simply that they couldn’t afford it or had their own way of getting from A to B that the might have considered the train a luxury to travel by in those years.
Donegal, never in its history had a better private bus service up and running than it has at the moment. For all these companies that built up these service over the years which have provided work in Co Donegal, now is the time to support them, now is the time to look for support for these local companies. Proper bus stops to accommodate the numbers of passengers that use these services. Proper Time tables for Co.Donegal that include and recognise all these route service providers. Proper online booking providers that these companies can avail of.
The Single Bus stop in Letterkenny that caters for all the private bus companies that operate in Co Donegal that is located near Michael Murphy Sports. Photo Brian McDaid
What we don’t want to see in Donegal now is negativity to these bus services. If a strike goes ahead with Bus Eireann which looks very likely to happen, there will be loads of bus companies looking to long hall routes like Dublin and Galway to Donegal to come in with a view of tendering for these route if Bus Eireann is to fail.
If you were a student studying in Galway or Dublin over recent years, you know your local Donegal bus company was the one most students use to get home.
And finally
It was about a month ago two Japanese tourists stopped me outside O’Boyce’s at the Station Roundabout. They were obviously on google maps or something but were looking for the bus station, I pointed them in the direction of the Bus Eireann Bus station.
Photo Brian McDaid
They then showed me their map on the phone which was showing a second bus station. What was shown was the bus stop for private busses in Letterkenny, just out side Michael Murphy’s Sports Shop. I pointed to the small Bus Stop along the road side and had bother convincing them that this is one of the main stops for every bus in Donegal that is not Bus Eireann.
