Dublin Bus have announced a city wide reworking of their entire route net work. Under the guise of providing a more efficient and easier to use bus service, the company are actually implimenting yet another round of savage cuts to the citys bus services.
Last year they cut over 120 buses from their fleet and laid off hundreds of bus workers. At the time the company claimed the cuts would not affect services as less traffic congestion meant less buses were needed to provide the same level of services. In reality, as pubic transport campaigners and busworkers pointed out, the city needed MORE buses, not less, with whole areas and new estates left with no public transport service at all.
The complete bankruptcy of the Greens in Government was shown clearly when they uttered not a word of protest at those cuts, which saved the company the paltry sum of 21 million euro.

Little over a year later and the company are again preparing to savage the bus service in the city. They are peddleing the lie that the "network review" is an attempt to provide an more efficient service. In fact almost 100 more buses will be lost and routes that were not cut last year now face servere reductions in their bus numbers. The company are attempting to dress up the cuts as attempt to improve the service by almagamating routes from the south side of the city with routes from the north side.For example the 40 route to Finglas will be combined with the 78 route to Ballyfermot to create a new "Super route" across the city. Whatever merits such moves might have are negated by the fact that in total the new "super routes "will have far less buses operating them than the previous two routes would have had. Across the city the picture is the same. In some areas Routes that have always serviced particular estates are now being withdrawn from these areas, forcing people to walk 10 to 20 minutes to main roads to get the bus. The justification from the company is that this will allow them to provide more high frequency services on the main roads. In fact it is designed to cut the routes journey times and thus reduce the number of buses the company operate on that route. If anything such moves may discourage people , esspecially old people or those with restricted mobility from using the service.

In some areas the agenda is clear and no amount of PR can obscure it. Last year the company cut services in Ballymun on the 13 route and from the 7 route on the southside. But they claimed that the 4 and 4a would be unaffected and provided an excellent alternative servive in the same areas. Now they are scapping the 4a and cutting up to 14 duties from the remaining route. On Sunday passengers are left with one bus every hour servicing a route that goes throught some of the most populated areas in the city.

Side by side with this savage attack on public transport comes the attempt by some private, non union bus operators to use the courts to force Dublin Bus out of certain profitable routes. The Swords Express recently won a high court case that could force Dublin Bus to stop operating some services in Swords and elsewhere.Other companys are now threatening to take similar cases and are hoping the courts will interpret European competition laws in such a way as to stop subsidised states services competing with non subsidised private operators.The effect, if unchallenged, would be to allow effective privatisation of services in some areas. Already, Dublin Bus management are trying to use the case to justify withdrawing from some areas.

Transport Unions and the public need to fight now to retain every bus and service that Dublin Bus operate. A campaign by bus workers and passengers could stop these cuts and highlight the hypocracy of the Greens in Government who are allowing the citys bus service to be decimated. Instead of funding projects like Metro north, (which has more to do with the needs of Fianna Fails friends in developers Tresuary Holdings than public transport,) the Government could be forced to fund the transport system that most people actually use at the moment; the bus. If the Greens are serious about saving the Planet from global warming they must explain how scrapping 200 of Dublin city buses in a year is going to reduce our Co2 emmisions.