“The biggest challenge now is the buses not showing,” says Elaine Conry.
“My girls get the bus, and it is just dreadfully unreliable; some days they’ve had to get a taxi into school.”
Conry has lived in Sandyford in south Co Dublin for about 20 years and has watched as the local population has “exploded” along with numerous large apartment developments.
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Her family is among thousands in Dublin who have spent the past fortnight taking to the roads and rails around the capital again – and it seems her grind of the daily commute has returned with a vengeance.
“We don’t have a proper bus system,” she says. “We have a growing population, and we have no infrastructure. Everybody is in their cars.
“We’re going to work and leaving them off, hoping the bus will show up. But it’s just really unreliable. We’ve contacted local councillors and the bus operators [Go Ahead Ireland] – and it’s always the same thing you get back – drivers are ringing in sick, etc – it’s just really not good enough.”
Conry says when her children were attending primary school in Kilternan, 5km south of Sandyford Village, it was a similarly difficult morning run.
Building work meant it had become an hour-long round trip, she says. As they have transitioned to secondary school in Foxrock, the problems are of a different nature.
At times, she says, it can mean a very early start to ensure her children make it to school.
“We’re trying to drop them into school for 7.20 before we go to work – they’re bringing their coffees and breakfasts and stuff – it’s not ideal”.
Aisling Judge is a mother of three young children who lives in Ballinteer, also close to the M50 ring road around Dublin. She too is deeply frustrated by the performance of the local bus services.
“Up to now, all three of our kids were in primary school, and we could walk to school; you’d barely need a car living in Ballinteer,” she says.
“But now, with the oldest in secondary school, he has to get the bus, and there’s really no simple option of how to get there on the bus. It’s not straightforward.”
With her son travelling from the family home in Ballinteer to his new school 6km away near Stillorgan, the past fortnight has involved a difficult learning curve. His main bus service is also operated by Go Ahead Ireland under contract from the National Transport Authority (NTA).
“On the first day, the bus was 15 minutes late; the second day it was full and went past; the third day it was cancelled, and on the fourth day it was early, and he missed it,” says Judge.
“It’s trial and error every morning, and we still haven’t figured it out.
“The other bus – the [Dublin Bus operated] 116 – seems purely to exist to bring children to schools – but it leaves the terminus too late – and gets them in late – what is the point?”
In response, Go-Ahead said the service used by Aisling’s son had operated just over 96 per cent of its scheduled kilometres in September.
The company said the recent return of schools had “increased traffic volumes across the road network, resulting in additional congestion and impacting the punctuality of some services”. It said it had recorded three reports of buses on the route being full before 8am.
Its service through Sandyford, it said, had a completion rate of 99 per cent this month.
Dublin Bus said it couldn’t comment on the 116 service’s timing as that was designed by the NTA.
Herself a schoolteacher in Milltown, south Dublin, Judge chooses to cycle to work – a trip that would take much longer by car. She is hopeful that her son will soon also be able to take the bike.
“I’d say before the end of first year he’ll have started to cycle – and I reckon he’ll never go back to the bus when he sees how easy it is,” she says.
Cycling is certainly an option, but it comes with challenges.
A recent survey by Ireland Thinks revealed that 54 per cent of parents said their children didn’t cycle to school as the journey was simply too far.
“People think that in Dublin everything is just down the road – but it just isn’t,” says Fine Gael TD for Dublin Rathdown Maeve O’Connell.
She has been campaigning for a dedicated schoolbus plan for Dublin.
“When people in Dublin hear about rural bus schemes they ask why don’t we have that here,” she says. “For many kids it’s not possible to walk or cycle to school.”
She says there are real economic consequences to having so many children in cars in the morning.
“Apart from the commuter traffic – it puts pressure on some parents who have to consider whether both going to work and managing the school runs is possible for them,” she says.
O’Connell points to the likes of Ottawa in Canada as being a similarly sized city to Dublin that has a schoolbus service. Belfast and London also offer dedicated bus services to students.
“We are a bit of an outlier,” she says.
Traffic in and around Dublin has been increasing for several years and shows little sign of abating.
The total amount of traffic on the main ring road, the M50, has been edging up year-on-year since 2021.
A cursory look at the most recent figures available through Transport Infrastructure Ireland’s online database shows many increases again at the significant junctions.
Take the stretch between Junction 11 at Tallaght and Junction 12 at Firhouse as an example.
On Wednesday, the September daily average stood at 122,670, compared to 121,725 last year and 115,566 in 2023. Go back 10 years to 2016, the annual daily total on that part of the road was just over 110,000.
Similar increases can be seen at the other big junctions that skirt the city.
While not every school runner is going to be using the M50, the statistics gives a broad indication as to the amount of traffic now in and around these areas.
Sarah Rock, a transport planning specialist with TU Dublin’s school of architecture, building and environment, says: “September can be a shock to the system every year. After the quiet of the summer months, the sudden surge of activity in September pushes our already stretched transport system to its limits.”
Rock says the advent of Bus Connects has gone some way to addressing the needs of a growing population, but the investment has come from a “low base”.
“There’s lots of catch-up to do,” she says.
“There are parts of the network where the bus commute becomes incredibly frustrating and slow. This has to change.
“We need to send the message to the public that the roads cannot take any more individual cars, that we want you to take the bus whenever possible. And for your efforts, we will reward you with affordable fares; regular, clean and attractive buses; and crucially a fast journey.”
She sees signs, however, that general improvements around the Dublin school run are emerging.
“The amount of primary schoolchildren being driven to school has surged in recent decades and is a source of congestion, but there are early signs we may be finally past that peak.”
Rock describes investment in the Safe Routes to School programme as being a “game changer” in helping give confidence to parents to let their children walk the full distance to school.
Rolled out in 2021 and run by the NTA, it promotes better safety in front of schools along with better walking and cycling tracks.
Walking to school, she says, needs to be facilitated where possible.
This requires making that experience “safe and welcoming” by widening footpaths, adding trees and “critically make sure passing traffic is slow”.
In Ballinteer, however, where the bus is the only option at present, Aisling Judge feels little has changed over recent decades.
She says her husband made the same school trip 30 years ago that her son is now embarking on – and he too had to deal with “crazy traffic and ghost buses”.
“They’ve changed the name on the front of the bus, but not much else has changed in 30 years,” she says.