FG launches Dublin transport policy

Dublin Bus has developed quality corridors for which it does not have buses, resulting in a waste of critical road space, Fine Gael claimed yesterday.

However, launching a new policy on transport in the capital, party transport spokeswoman Olivia Mitchell said the problem was not caused by Dublin Bus, but by Government which had not given the company sufficient extra buses to cope.

She said Fine Gael was now proposing the immediate privatisation of 25 per cent of the bus network, with competitive tendering for routes, to be supervised by a transport regulator.

Ms Mitchell said the lack of sufficient bus numbers was making quality bus networks, bus priority measures - "which are like bits of bus lanes" - and quality bus corridors worse instead of better. She instanced a number of routes where she said critical road space was reserved even if there were only enough buses to run a service occasionally, if at all.

These included the Nangor Road in Clondalkin, where reservation had been made for buses only, "but nobody has ever seen a bus on the road there".

She also instanced the Sandyford Industrial Estate where, she said, road space had been given over as part of a bus network, a factor which regularly led to long queues of other traffic, but again she insisted there were "very few if any" bus services.

Ms Mitchell also decried the 15 bus service along Ballyboden Road where, she said, a bus corridor remained vacant and unused while other vehicular traffic queued.

"In future," she said "bus corridors should only be allowed where they can demonstrate that they have the buses, and the resulting capacity would be at least equal to that which went before".