NTA’s plans to connect rural Ireland by public transport

By 2030 we need to reduce our national emissions by 50 per cent and, with seven out of 10 journeys made by car, it’s clear that ramping up public transport options is going to be a key driver of that.

However, there’s a problem and it’s specifically an Irish one – we’re still a nation that tends to live rurally, in stark contrast to our more urbanised European neighbours. According to World Bank figures, 35 per cent of Ireland’s population lives in rural areas; across the EU the figure is 25 per cent on average.

Nonetheless, the National Transport Authority (NTA) is rolling out its Connecting Ireland plan, which aims to give more and more rural dwellers an alternative to using a car for getting around. In fact, the overarching aim of the plan is to put 70 per cent of people in rural communities within reach of three return bus journeys each day, to and from the nearest large town.

Marian Wilson, the NTA’s head of service planning, says the roll-out is already running well and scoring big hits with local communities.

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“The stock response to any exhortations to ‘use more public transport’ is that ‘there isn’t any public transport’,” said Wilson. “So we took a bird’s-eye view of that, right across the country, away from urban areas. What we discovered was that there were actually quite a lot of places that simply didn’t have any public transport or that had public transport that was less than useful.”

By “less than useful”, Wilson means that many services would arrive in a given town and then turn around and head straight back out, giving the people using it no time to actually get anything done, such as popping to the post office, shopping or going to the bank.

So, the NTA began to make plans for proper, useful public transport services away from the main urban centres, linking in with other agencies – such as IDA Ireland, the Department of Education and Tourism Ireland – to make sure that their needs were also being taken into account.

All of this was just coming to fruition in the early months of 2020 – and we all know what happened then ...

“During the course of our consultation period, Covid hit, which was of course unhelpful, to say the least,” Wilson says. Even so, the time was useful as it allowed the NTA team to work on designs for timetables and on plans for rolling out expanded rural public transport services once the pandemic lifted.

“We tried out some new principles – bringing Sundays on stream, where people didn’t have Sunday levels of service, bringing Saturdays up to scratch in terms of the proportionate level of service relative to Monday to Friday – and we found that the patronage really started to build so we knew we were on the right track,” says Wilson.

It’s a question of, what’s the most important thing – get it to happen on the due date or get it to happen at all? I would always take the latter

—  Marian Wilson, NTA

The full five-year Connecting Ireland plan was launched in 2021 by Minister for Transport Eamon Ryan and the NTA more or less immediately began rolling out new services. According to Wilson, last year 38 new or improved rural public transport links were fired up and so far in 2023, 21 new services have been launched, with plans for another 40 before the end of the year.

That said, Wilson says it’s not about box-ticking dates for the commencement of these new services. “Some may slip in terms of timing, it’s true,” she admits. “But it’s a question of, what’s the most important thing – get it to happen on the due date or get it to happen at all? I would always take the latter, as opposed to knocking heads together over whether we slip a week or two in terms of roll-out.”

That roll-out, in its fullest sense, can’t come soon enough for many rural dwellers. Arran O’Driscoll is chief executive of the West Cork Development Partnership, a non-profit organisation that aims to promote and support rural community development. O’Driscoll says: “Rural transport is, in the broader sense, a challenge for people, whether it’s trying to get from A to B for an appointment or whatever. The main services are good but sometimes just getting to where those services connect and collect can be a challenge for many. We do have a fantastic resource in west Cork in the shape of Local Link, which does fill an awful lot of gaps, but transport is always an issue.”

It’s not just a matter of putting more bus services in place in rural areas, although that has been the focus until now as it’s the simplest and most effective way to provide local transport options. Beyond that, though, thought will have to be given to what kind of buses are used and also to the question of more on-demand services for those who need door-to-door transport.

“Zero-carbon public transportation spans a broader scope than just electric buses, trains and planes. To facilitate the wider adoption of electric public transport, considerations must extend beyond the vehicles themselves, encompassing the strategic supply of electricity, particularly the implementation of microgrid networks,” says Darren Kinsella, business development for new energy landscape at Schneider Electric.

“A notable recent illustration of this transformative potential comes from a collaborative effort involving Schneider Electric, which was instrumental in the conversion of a diesel bus depot in Montgomery County, Maryland, USA, into The Brookville Smart Energy Bus Depot. This innovative depot employs an intelligent microgrid solution, incorporating solar canopies designed to the height of buses, on-site generation of renewable natural gas and battery energy storage.

“By 2026, this facility is projected to host 70 electric transit buses, resulting in a remarkable 62 per cent reduction in overall emissions over its operational lifespan – equivalent to mitigating more than 160,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases over the forthcoming 25 years.”

Other solutions will involve car-sharing, with the likes of micro-rentals provider GoCar committing to expand its offering beyond its “legacy” urban areas and out into at least 24 counties by the end of this year, while the NTA already has a community car service pilot up and running in Mayo.

“The new Connecting Ireland services are coming on stream really quickly – and that’s impressive,” say Prof Brian Caulfield, head of department at the Centre for Transport Research at Trinity College Dublin.

“Once it’s all delivered, will it result in the death of the car in rural Ireland? Probably not. But will it result in more people using public transport? Yes. And this is the first stage. Once the connectivity to better broadband and 5G is there we can start to look at setting up more demand-responsive services, where we can be a lot smarter with our resources.”

“The single key success factor is an increased use of public transport,” says Wilson. “Whether that’s bus or rail or tram – or whatever is available. Maybe it will cost more to provide a good level of service in more remote areas but there’s an economic cost-benefit analysis to take into account too. Either the country is serious about sustainability and a shift away from the dominance of the car – and is prepared to pay for that – or it isn’t.”