Commuters deserve better

Sir, – On January 19th, 2026, Dublin Bus launched the Dublin Bus Innovation seed funding challenge with a total fund of €60,000 under the slogan, “Your idea could change everything”.

The press release mentioned an objective to “accelerate practical innovation across the organisation and improve how public transport works for customers”. More than nine months later, there continues to be no official update on the progress of this much-needed initiative.

The bus service continues to be poor, with too many cancelled buses resulting in extended waiting times and slow journey times caused by uncomfortably full buses. Somewhat annoyingly, in my experience of most E1 journeys, there is a change of driver outside Donnybrook bus garage which lengthens the bus journey time.

There appears to be little to suggest the service will improve, with the quiet scaling back of BusConnects mentioned in Eamon Ryan’s recent opinion piece. The article mentions that only three of the 12 Dublin bus corridors will start construction before 2030.