A bus collided with an overhead canopy at Cork’s main railway station late last night – it’s understood there were no serious injuries, but there were a few passengers on board, including four on the top deck.
The bus hit the roof outside one of the main passenger entrances to Kent Station and became jammed under the canopy. It sustained serious damage to the front upper windscreen and roof and was wedged tight under the Victorian Era cast iron beams that support the roof.
CorkBeo has been told it was the 11.15pm 214 towards Glanmire and there were a few passengers on board. One passenger told local photographer Ryan de La Cour, who got photographs of the incident: “I saw the bus coming down the road and picked up my pace to catch it at the stop, in hindsight, probably should have let it pass, but I needed to get home. I got on and sat upstairs at the very front right seat.”
“Then the bus pulled into the train station and instead of staying left, in the bus lane, the bus drove forward towards the covered roof of the station. I saw the spiked wooden trim of the roof getting closer and thought, “There’s no way, right, buses never drive under here”. Then a second later we hit the roof and i was covered in glass. Instead of stopping instantly, the bus drove forward another few meters as the roof of the bus began falling apart.”
“Once I gathered myself, I looked behind and saw the inner wall of the bus had collapsed, there were metal bars sticking out everywhere and a brown liquid was flowing from a burst pipe in the ceiling. All four of us who were upstairs quickly got off the bus.
Once we had checked that everyone was okay, we had a bit of a laugh about it. Some Monday that was to be fair.”
Bus Eireann crew arrives to extrac the bus from where it was jammed under the canopy(Image: Ryan De La Cour / rdlcphotos)
Once the passengers were clear – Irish Rail staff and a recovery crew from Bus Éireann dealt with the situation. They were able to move it by releasing air from the tyres to lower the bus so that it could be pulled out and the way made clear for this morning’s passengers.
It’s not understood exactly how the bus got jammed there, but it seems the driver may have taken a path under the canopy over the pedestrian entrance to the station that is not normally used by double-decker buses. It was only a matter of centimetres but the front of the bus was badly damaged. These types of buses are 3.4 metres high, which appears to be a few centimetres more than the clearance there, as at least one Cork city bus driver now knows.
Letting the air out of the tyres to free the bus from its jam(Image: Ryan De La Cour / rdlcphotos)
This was, technically, a roof strike – but bridge strikes by buses and other tall vehicles in Cork are not uncommon. There is a low railway bridge on tDublin Hill on the northside of the city which is a notorious spot for buses and HGVs getting stuck.
In 2023, CorkBeo reported on a city bus that got very badly jammed under the bridge there and ended up at a crazy angle. Bus Éireann later said the bus had been empty but had strayed onto a route it should not have been on.
recovery crew at work after bridge strike at Dublin Hill
And in 2020, another bus got completely jammed under a bridge in Douglas on the south side of the city – that was a major job to get that one extracted.
The joke at the time was that this particular bus had had way too much to eat at the famous KC’s chipper.
Bus jammed under a bridge in Douglas in 2020
CorkBeo has asked both Bus Éireann and Irish Rail for information on this latest incident, and we will update this story as we get more.