{"id":159548,"date":"2025-11-25T22:06:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T22:06:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/159548\/"},"modified":"2025-11-25T22:06:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T22:06:07","slug":"ghost-buses-simply-not-acceptable-minister-for-transport-says-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/159548\/","title":{"rendered":"Ghost buses \u2018simply not acceptable\u2019, Minister for Transport says \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The \u201cphenomenon\u201d of ghost buses on certain routes is \u201csimply not acceptable\u201d, the Minister for Transport Darragh O\u2019Brien<\/a> has told the D\u00e1il. <\/p>\n

Mr O\u2019Brien said a \u201cgreat frustration\u201d of his was \u201cunreliability\u201d in public transport. <\/p>\n

\u201cFrom time to time, things happen, drivers can be sick. That can happen, people will understand now and again if this happens but the increased prevalence [of ghost buses] on certain routes is of grave concern,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cGhost\u201d or \u201cdisappearing\u201d buses refer to services listed by on-street screens and the Transport for Ireland phone app as being due to arrive at a set time, only for them to then vanish from the screen or app or suddenly appear as having been cancelled.<\/p>\n

The phenomenon has been a persistent passenger complaint on routes all across the city, with previous reports covering commuting difficulties<\/a> for people in the city\u2019s suburbs.<\/p>\n

The Minister was responding to Fianna F\u00e1il TD Naoise \u00d3 Cear\u00fail on Tuesday, who said the N4 and N7 national roads are \u201cessentially like car parks at the moment\u201d. <\/p>\n

The Kildare North TD said he believed part of the problem was due to the unreliability of certain bus routes, such as the C4 and W6, despite \u201chuge investment\u201d as a result of the BusConnects project. <\/p>\n

Mr \u00d3 Cear\u00fail said there were \u201cpersistent cancellations and ghost buses and severe overcrowding\u201d on the C4 route, which travels between Maynooth and Ringsend. <\/p>\n

He also said the removal of evening services on the W6 route, which travels between Maynooth and Tallaght, was impacting students and commuters along with \u201crepeated delays and cancellations\u201d. <\/p>\n

The TD proposed two solutions \u2212 staggering the timetable of both routes, which he said currently \u201crun in convoy\u201d. Mr \u00d3 Cear\u00fail also said the frequency of the C4 route should be increased from every half hour to every 20 minutes, particularly in areas where \u201cwe have huge population growth and huge populations\u201d. <\/p>\n

Mr O\u2019Brien said he would speak directly with the National Transport Authority<\/a> and Transport Infrastructure Ireland<\/a> on the TD\u2019s behalf and put forward his suggestions. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The \u201cphenomenon\u201d of ghost buses on certain routes is \u201csimply not acceptable\u201d, the Minister for Transport Darragh O\u2019Brien…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":159549,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,15049,15910,61,60,7942,29094],"class_list":["post-159548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-dail-eireann","tag-darragh-o-brien","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-national-transport-authority","tag-transport-infrastructure-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159548\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}