Anger over axed city school and factory bus routes

Three bus routes – ferrying the children from the Westside to school and carrying workers across the city into one of the worst traffic blackspots – are to be axed in a restructuring of services by Bus Éireann.

The four daily services running between the Westside and Claddagh National School and a route from Scoil Einde to the Westside are to end after the Halloween midterm break.

And a return daily service running between Knocknacarra and the Ballybrit Business Park – known as ‘the Compaq bus’ and transporting workers to the industrial heartlands of Hewlett Packard, Boston Scientific and APC/Schneider – is also to be discontinued. Details of this service no longer appear on the Bus Éireann website.

Claddagh National School principal Michael Gallagher said he has been inundated with calls from distraught parents following the announcement by Bus Éireann.

“We have 70 families and approximately 100 children who depend on this service. I’ve had at least ten parents onto me this morning and there’s disbelief. They’re just gutted. To do this going into November – the darkest, most dangerous time of the year – is so harsh,” he exclaimed.

“We are constantly preaching to the kids about public transport and here we are putting an extra 50/60 cars into the Claddagh every day at peak times. It will cause traffic chaos – it will back up to Fr Griffin Road, Claddagh Quay. The residents’ association will be up in arms.”

There are currently 12 children using the service from the Eglinton Hotel, the direct provision centre for asylum seekers.

A spokesman for Bus Éireann in Galway described the three routes as “anomalies” which had grown over the years but were not making money.

Neither the National Transport Authority nor the School Transport Scheme had agreed to take over the routes and the organisation was left with no option but to cut them as they were tying up buses for the day which could otherwise be used on routes with more passengers, he insisted.

For more on the cancelled bus routes, see this week’s Galway City Tribune