Almost 200 bus drivers need to be recruited to bring services in Dublin back up to standard, city bus operators have told an Oireachtas transport committee.
The staff needed to return bus services to normal will not all be in place until next March, they warned.
The heads of Dublin Bus, private operator Go- Ahead and the National Transport Authority (NTA) on Tuesday issued apologies for the poor quality of bus services in the capital in recent months specifically the cancellation of buses and excessive delays.
TDs and senators outlined the difficulties their constituents faced with inaccurate timetables and real-time information, and being left at bus stops waiting for “phantom” services that are substantially delayed or never arrive.
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NTA chief executive Anne Graham told the committee companies had encountered difficulties in both recruiting and retaining drivers.
“This has resulted in a higher than normal cancellation of services, which has impacted greatly on public-transport customers as services have been cancelled at short notice,” she said. “I would like to apologise to those customers as the service has not been at the standard that we would all like to provide.”
Go-Ahead managing director Andrew Edwards said it was “absolutely accurate to say that Go-Ahead’s services have suffered along with those of other operators over the past number of months.”
The company was dealing with a resignation rate of 25 per cent, Mr Edwards said, or 100 drivers out of a staff of 500. However, 90 drivers were in the Go-Ahead training school and “100 are looking to join us”.
Go-Ahead was currently operating with about 45 fewer drivers than required to run its services, but hoped its recruitment programme would result in these gaps being filled in four to six weeks, Mr Edwards said. “By January we will be running all of our services… I can only apologise for the poor services you constituents have been experiencing.”
Dublin Bus also had difficulties in recruiting, acting chief executive Andrea Keane said.
“We have recruited almost 290 new drivers this year alone. We are constantly seeking new and innovative ways to increase our driver numbers. However, even with this number of new drivers we are not keeping pace with the rate of network expansion,” she said.
“We very much regret the impact this is having on customers and all our employees are working hard to minimise the effect of driver recruitment challenges.”
Dublin Bus had a significantly lower resignation rate than Go-Ahead with about 3 per cent of drivers leaving the company. However, Dublin Bus had “in excess of 150 vacancies” for drivers and did not expect to fill these positions until next March, Ms Keane said.
Recruitment difficulties also meant that some of the new BusConnects routes that were due to begin before the end of this year would not start until early next year, the NTA said.
The lack of drivers had also contributed to the “inaccuracy of the data on the on-street displays” at bus stops, Ms Graham said. An insufficient number of drivers meant some services could not operate yet remained on the timetable. However, it was also due to a technical fault which had been fixed, she said. “It is expected that the cancellation of services due to drivers not being available will also reduce the inaccuracies – ie ghost buses.”
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