Our village will be bypassed by proposals
‘Hundreds of local people turned out to voice their opposition to the plan which will see our village lose six direct bus routes into the city centre. They’ll be replaced by a single bus route, the C14, which will operate every 30 minutes and every 15 minutes during peak times. Chapelizod will also lose direct routes to Lucan, Leixlip, Maynooth, Celbridge, Clondalkin and Tallaght.
Our village will effectively be bypassed by the proposals. I’ve been doing some research and currently, between six bus routes, 146 buses go between Chapelizod and the city centre on a daily basis.
Under Bus Connects proposals, we’re losing all of those routes. With a single route running from Liffey Valley to the city centre and onwards to Dundrum, there will be just 46 buses passing through the village daily.
That’s a massive reduction in service and it’s not just the low frequency that I’m worried about. A real concern is that the C14 bus will be full by the time it arrives in Chapelizod having loaded up at Liffey Valley which will be a hub for five or six different routes.
I live and work in Chapelizod to avoid commuting but I use the bus four or five times a week to attend meetings with clients. Buses to and from Chapelizod are already often overcrowded.
Chapelizod has a population of over 3,000 people but is due to expand. There are plans for a new housing development in the village which will add an additional 300 people to the population but that doesn’t seem to have been taken into account by the NTA. I had an accident last year in which I broke my pelvis and the bus was a lifesaver for me — without it I would have been stranded. My sister is worried about whether she’ll be able to get into work if the new plans materialise.
Chapelizod is around three miles from the city centre and a lot of people living in the village don’t have cars — there’s no access to any other form of public transport so they rely entirely on the bus. With the proposed new service it will be like living out in the sticks.
It’s a good hour’s walk to the city which is too much for people on their way to work so the proposed overhaul will put a lot of people back in their cars.
We don’t have any secondary schools in the village which means pupils travel to school in Lucan. Parents are worried about their children having to change bus on a busy dual carriageway. Also, students studying at Maynooth University will have to change bus for a journey that isn’t even crossing the city.
I’ve been talking to local bus drivers and they believe it’s all intentional, that Dublin Bus is being run into the ground to make way for more privatisation. They say capacity on our route has already been reduced.
I attended a Bus Connects meeting in Ballyfermot on Monday. One NTA rep talked about putting a ramp up Chapelizod hill so villagers can access routes along the bypass, that’s just not feasible. I was also told I should walk the ‘15 minutes’ uphill rto get a bus from Ballyfermot, that it would do me good and I’d be healthier for it. I felt as if they weren’t taking it seriously at all and it was like a joke to them.’