Sir, – As a rural dweller and someone who avails regularly of the public transport system (buses) to access the capital, I have witnessed in the past few years a decline in services due to the increase in unemployment and the subsequent fall in demand on routes. It is an understandable outcome of the downturn.
Now that things are reportedly on the rise again, the suggestion that further reductions of routes and services is shortsighted and elitist. It presupposes that as jobs become available and employment increases that the newly employed will be financially placed to purchase and run a car and will no longer need public transport.
It’s quite simple – lack of public transport and isolation ruins individuals and communities. To avail of a job you need to be close to its location or have a means of getting to it. If you do not own a personal means of transport, you will be relying on public transport. Chicken and egg!
All we have to do to appreciate the devastation caused to communities and society in general by the continued reduction in rural transport services is to look at the towns that were denied a rail service in the 1950s and 1960s.
Can we afford not to invest in a rural public transport service? If we are to prevent more towns, communities and individuals from being denied a future, public transport as a necessity must be retained and protected and indeed invested in. – Yours, etc,
RAY O’TOOLE,
Baltinglass,
Co Wicklow.