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• "The English and the Irish are very much alike, except that the Irish are more so," said James Dunne during the Irish Troubles. Much the same could have been said of the British and Irish bus scene, but while Britain opted for deregulation and privatisation, the Irish are taking a different line.
For years, Irish legislation mirrored the situation in Britain. Important licensing and vehicle fitness regulations were introduced in the 1930s, and nationalisation followed World War II. The formation of Coras Iortipair Eireann (CIE) brought the principal bus and rail operators into state control, and that situation held until February 1987 when three companies were set up under CIE as the holding company.
lanirod Eireann (Irish Rail) operates the national railway system, including Dublin's new DART electric rail system and road freight services. Bus Eireann (Irish Bus) runs the bus services other than those in Dublin City, which are operated by Bus Atha Chath (Dublin Bus).
The companies have operational autonomy, but the CIE board keeps financial control and has responsibility to prevent wasteful competition between the modes of transport.
The two state-owned bus operators' attitude to competition in Ireland is very different.
Bus Eireann and Dublin Bus are both exempt from licensing requirements, but cannot establish new services in competition with another licensed service. The • other operators of licensed bus services in Ireland usually provide services that are complementary to those of the stateowned companies, but there is a serious problem with unlicensed operators.
Bus Eireann suffers particularly from unlicensed operations around the Dublin area. "Dublin is the natural focus for the most attractive bus and coach routes," says Bus Eireann's Cyril McIntyre. "They operate sometimes in the guise of commuter clubs and the like, making an inward trip in the morning and a return trip in the evening, or they operate at weekends only, taking young Dublin office workers back to their homes in country areas."
But Bus Eireann has not sat back and complained. In recent years it has developed its Expressway services, and these have been significantly improved both to compete with unlicensed operators and to develop new business.
Now the Expressway network covers the majority of major routes from Dublin to the rest of Ireland, with an average of three journeys daily in each direction to principal centres such as Cork, Limerick, Derry and Rosslare. Good quality services combined with low fares have helped Bus Eireann to contain the growth and development of many of the unlicensed operators, and have helped to eliminate others.
The most recent Expressway service broke new ground with the first direct coach service between Dublin and Belfast, operated jointly with Ulsterbus. how could the bus operators reconcile this with the need to avoid wasteful competition, especially with the railways? Cyril McIntyre explains that the service was designed to create new markets, although Northern Ireland Railways had accused the bus operators of taking advantage of the disruptions that often affect the Dublin-Belfast line.
Conscious of its obligations to CIE, Bus Eireann has commissioned surveys on other Expressway services, and preliminary research indicates only 5-10% of bus passengers come from rail. Around the same percentage comes from private bus operators, but a substantial 30% did not travel previously, or travelled less frequently, the survey reveals.
The Expressway services have been upgraded over the past two years with new Leyland Tiger coaches with Alexander TE-type bodies, and Bus Eireann hopes to buy more new coaches for these services.
It is likely that these too will be Britishbuilt, marking a return to the situation that applied until the 1970s. For 50 years, British builders, principally Leyland, supplied the majority of new buses to CIE and its predecessors. In the 1970s a desire to establish an indigenous bus-builder in Ireland resulted in the development of a new breed of bus for the CIE fleet.
Hamburg-based consultancy FFG produced designs for a new double-deck bus, and new single-deck urban, express and rural buses, and these were produced by Bombardier and the GAC at a factory in Shannon between 1981 and 1987.
Bus Eireann inherited 385 of these buses — 26 KD class double-deckers for provincial city service, 52 KE class express single-deckers, 80 KC class urban twodoor single-deckers and 227 KR class rural buses. The Daf DF615-engined rural buses have been the most successful, but the Bombardier-built KD and KE types. with Detroit Diesel 6V71 engines and Allison automatic gearboxes, have had a less happy history.
Bus Eireann is a sizeable operation with more than 1,450 buses, and a full-time staff of 1,900. Many of its services in rural areas are recognised as socially necessary and the company receives a state subvention for providing these loss making routes. In 1988 this amounted to IRg2.7m of a total revenue of IR274.9m — only 3.6% of Bus Eireann's revenue. The rural services carried more than 11 million passengers in 1988, compared with 19 million-plus on the provincial city services and around 2 million on Ex 1 pressway coaches. Bus Eireann also administrates and operates the school transport scheme on behalf of the Department of Education.
In 1988 more than 153,000 children a day were carried throughout Ireland, using about 2,500 buses. Twothirds of these are operated by private contractors, mostly using minibuses, and the rest are operated directly by Bus Eireann, which has a substantial fleet of school buses, and employs part-time school bus drivers.
Dublin Bus's 800 buses provide 96 services in and around the city. In 1988 the company carried more than 163 million passengers, a 2% drop on the previous year, and while passenger receipts topped IRV74.2m, expenditure was IR291m, so Dublin Bus received substantial state grants of IR.£15m.
Dublin Bus has been beset by labour relations problems over one-person operation. And the slow progress in implementing OPO, absenteeism and Dublin's chronic traffic congestion, has meant DB's first two years a8 a separate company have been difficult.
Dublin Bus, like Bus Eireann, has inherited a large fleet of Irish-built Bombardier and GAC buses. The 340 KD class double-deckers dominate the fleet, and there are 122 KC class single-deck city buses. The rest are mainly older Leyland Atlanteans with Irish-built bodies. But these were never wholly successful, and many have been re-engined, principally with Daf engines.
The last of the KD class buses were built in 1983, and Dublin Bus has received no new double-deckers since then. Demonstrators were provided recently by Leyland, MCW and Scania, and orders for Leyland Olympians are likely to be placed soon. Examples of two recent single-deck city buses, the Leyland Lynx and Daf SB220/Optare Delta, have also been tried.
Urban minibuses are rare in Ireland. Dublin Bus uses five MCW Metroriders on Localink services in the suburbs of the city, and Bus Eireann's minibuses are used on school and other rural work.
Heavy levels of state subvention, an explicit acceptance of cross-subsidy means the situation in Ireland resembles that in Britain before deregulation. It seems unlikely that British-style deregulation will come to Ireland; with a high level of rural service and just two principal operators, it is not appropriate. But the Irish speak of "liberalisation", which would be a compromise between the present licensing system and deregulation.
The Irish are also conscious that the Single European Market from 1993 will affect route and vehicle licensing, and await EC guidance on this.
Privatisation is equally unlikely, following CIE's 1987 moves. The new companies set up at that time were intended to focus on ways to serve the customer better, to identify opportunities for business development and to generate revenue and profit growth. Against a background of problems that will be familiar to many bus operators, Bus Eireann and Dublin Bus appear to be moving in the right direction.
by Gavin Booth