“I WOULD GENUINELY prefer to take the bus, but I’m going to have to get a car,” Ryan Kelly admitted when outlining the long waits and chaotic schedules facing commuters in his estate in Hollywoodrath near Blanchardstown.

Aside from the need for more buses, Kelly added, the area also suffers from the old problem of ‘ghost buses’, where they simply fail to show up.

The 26-year-old started renting in the area last June but has found it a struggle to get around, particularly to family spread across north Dublin.

I have seen a lot of us stranded after a bus doesn’t show, and then getting taxis into town. We don’t really know each other so they’re hopping into one car at a time.

Some 1,400 homes have been built in this part of north-west Dublin in the past decade – but locals complain that public transport has not kept up with the population boom.

The area is about a 40-minute drive by car from Dublin city centre.

These latest complaints come amid mounting complaints over gridlock affecting the M50 and other key routes across Dublin, issues that have seen the capital named the third most congested city in the world and the sixth-slowest city for traffic in newly published data this week.

Green Party leader and local TD Roderic O’Gorman has appealed to the National Transport Authority for additional buses to be allocated to Hollywoodrath and neighbouring estates in Hollystown and Tyrrelstown to resolve the struggles.

He pointed to the delayed rollout of BusConnects, which promises to greatly increase buses to the area, but may not be operational for at least another year at the earliest.

“It’s all pushed people back into cars, increasing traffic in the area which has a knock-on effect for bus punctuality and reliability,” O’Gorman told The Journal.

Green Party leader Roderic O'Gorman Alamy Alamy

The Dublin West TD said that the area is “currently massively underserved” as he called for intermediate steps for extra capacity as soon as possible.

BusConnects proposes a service every 15 minutes to Blanchardstown and the city centre, with the continuation of a direct Broombridge service to meet the Luas Green Line every 30 minutes. At present, the Blanchardstown route sees an hourly service.

Similar problems were raised by Jack Walsh, who moved to the area with his parents in 2018. The 22-year-old has seen how the 40E service began to buckle due to the increasing population when he tries to hop on to get to his job in Dublin city centre.

“It wasn’t an issue at the start, but now it absolutely is,” Walsh told The Journal.

“The area has just grown rapidly in the last few years so now you sometimes can’t get a seat, or you can be left waiting for another half an hour at the Broombridge stop.”

Remote work

Walsh and Kelly both spend most of their weeks in the office and avoid the gridlock when they work from home.

“We’re rightly trying to get people onto buses and bikes, but it’s really frustrating when the public transport isn’t there,” Kelly said.

The other battle to try and ease congestion focuses on remote work, with the Labour Party seeking to have a motion in the Dáil this week to address a right to work from home for office staff.

Labour TD for Kildare South Mark Wall, who brought the unsuccessful motion, said the party opened a consultation this month on flexible work which saw approximately 850 people responding with stories of “losing hours of precious family time” due to commuting.

He added that he himself was delayed for the start of the Dáil debate despite leaving his home in Kildare at 6.30am.

“It’s no way to live for people, and it simply does not have to be the way,” Wall said.

“Our roads are chock-a-block, public transport services like trains are infrequent, buses are stuck on the quays, something has to give. Many people moved away from the city centre during the pandemic thanks to the benefits of remote work. Now, more and more employers are imposing blanket return-to-the-office diktats, and the government is failing to stand up for them.”