Donnelly grills Dublin Bus bosses on Ongar ghost buses

SINN Féin TD Paul Donnelly raised the issue of the vanishing 37, 39 and 39A buses in West Dublin.

Speaking during a Dáil Joint Committee on Transport Donnelly asserted that the issue of buses skipping stops has been “particularly bad” in the Ongar area.

Donnelly said he rang Dublin Bus and said that a representative told him that when traffic is bad, the 39A bus starts in Hartstown and does not serve the Ongar loop.

The representative said that by not serving the Ongar loop, it allows the bus to catch up to the original timetable by leaving out half the stops.

They noted that it was a one-off, but it has developed into a major issue for commuters in the area.

Donnelly noted another occasion where he stood on the Ongar route in Allendale and four buses did not show up, and two weeks before that, five 39As passed which were out of service.

“I waited 40 minutes on Saturday evening for the 39 from town. When one was due, it changed to a 39A. Why does it seem to be more important to be seen to be on time than to pick up people who are standing at bus stops along the entire Ongar loop?”

“It seems to be that is the most affected part. Bus drivers are being told to ignore and leave all those people at the bus stops, who need to go down towards either St. Joseph’s or, if it is the 39A, in towards the Hartstown area. Why are we leaving people at bus stops? Why is it more important to be on time?”

“I am sick of it; it is bitterly cold out,” he told the Committee and looked for answers.

Billy Hann, CEO of Dublin Bus said “whether it is Ongar or any other area, when it comes to the question of trying to keep on schedule or skip some stops to get on schedule, those decisions are never made lightly and are always made in the context of the bigger picture.”

“We would seldom ask a bus driver to pass by stops if those stops were not going to be served by other buses behind that one, or buses coming from another area. Generally, those bus stops will be served by other buses and we are trying to get those buses back on schedule to serve the rest of the customers downstream.”

Area manager Gareth Quinn told Donnelly that 24 buses go out on the 39A in the morning and go up and down all day. If one goes out of sequence, a gap is created.

“Somewhere along the line, you have to get it back on sequence, no matter what. Everybody else after that then benefits from it all the way through. It is a 24-hour service, so that bus could be out for the next 21 hours. You need to get it back on track.”

“If something happens to a plain 39, because it is a half-hour service and you do not cover that departure, you are leaving an hour’s gap for people down Shelerin Road or Clonsilla Road,” and reiterated that decision is “never made lightly.”

“Someone somewhere has to make a decision. It is not about leaving people on the side of the road; it is for the betterment of the vast majority of people.”

Donnelly said that the consequence of gaps is people being left on the side of the road, which Quinn refuted.

“The customer always comes first, no matter what. It is an easy take to say that we will leave people on the side of the road and we do not care. However, we do care. Decisions are made and people have to make decisions based on what is best for the majority of customers.”

The Dublin Bus representatives said they were happy to continue working with Donnelly in an attempt to solve the issue that has been plaguing commuters in Dublin West.