Public transport in the Munster region
By MEANSCOIL PHADRAIG NAOFA, CASTLEISLAND
Published 2024-05-22 10:45
![Munster train. Photo: Pixabay](https://mobilestories.com/sites/default/files/render/tri_meta_25666_1716375123/field_puffbild/limerick-junction-751487_1280_0.jpg)
Many say that the public transport in the Munster region is quite bad. But maybe that is just how they see it ?
The public transport in Munster has multiple parts: the trains and the busses in cities and also locally. All of it is part of TFI (transport for Ireland). there is a rail network that connects all of Ireland. The bigger cities also have their own busses for example Limerick .
The Limerick greater/metro area has a population of 162,000 and is covered mainly by bus and suburban rail networks.
There are a total of 9 City-bus routes, serving areas such as Raheen , Dooradoyl, Ballivumin, University of limerick, O'malley park, Monaleen, Caherdarvin and catletroy.
Commuter rail services are also important and there are three train lines in the Limerick suburban rail network.
-Limerick railway station – Ennis (25,000)
-Limerick railway station – Nenagh (9,000)
-Limerick railway station – Tipperary (5,000)
In rural areas there are the so-called ¨ local link ¨ and ¨bus Eireann¨ busses, that connect smaller towns. In most of the busses you are able to pay with the leap card. That is a card that you can load up with money so you only have to tap it against a terminal in the bus in order to pay. While all of that sounds good in theory, people are complaining about busses being late. the national transport authority put out a report on the punctuality of bus Eireann in which they showed the percentages of busses on time. Over the time of 2020 to 2021 only 60% of busses in Cork city were on time. In Limerick it was 65% and in Galway it was 75%. Those are obviously not too good numbers if you think that all busses that are 1 minute early or 5 minutes late are considered on time. Even if there are busses going to nearly all of the bigger towns in the area, the fact that at times 40% of all busses are at least 5 minutes late overshadows it all. But hopefully that will all change: like as an example in Cork where there are already improvements planned, the official Cork city website says:
"As part of the National Development Plan a fund of €200 million is available to Cork to invest in public transport to:
-Improve bus frequency
-Improve capacity
-Improve journey time
-Move towards the introduction of a rapid transit system"
Hopefully all the issues with the public transport will be fixed in the future not just in cork but in the whole region.
References: (1) the irish roadtrip, (2) TFI, (3) Irish rail, (4) punctuality report, (5) cork bus improvement
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