Aidan Farrelly

Well, it depends.

If I know we're going to be in quite late and the last bus will have gone home, I'm driving because we just don't have that adequate bus transport.

But I do use it when I know I'll be able to make it.

A big time, you're probably talking about an hour and twenty, an hour and thirty.

Is that a good use of your time do you think?

No but the alternative is to spend two to two and a half hours in a journey that without congestion would probably take an hour and twenty in the car.

So what we're seeing is so many people are forced to do that and the nine to five is probably becoming a six to seven thirty with the time you leave early to beat the congestion and then if you can't get out early enough then you're staying behind in work.

to wait for that congestion to die down.

It has a real ripple effect.

And I just thought Professor Caulfield's research was so important.

I hope government sits up and reads it because it is that collective approach that's really, really important.

It won't be solved by one issue in itself, i.e.

more roads or more capacity on the M50.

We're going to need a real hybrid approach.

But that park and ride, for example, Matt,

We have a situation now where the NTA have told us in the Public Accounts Committee this week that there is a bus park and ride in Fasserow and Wicklow that is substantially complete and lying idle because the state hasn't backed the public service duty contract for the bus provider to run the route and that's the 199 in Wicklow.

So to be fair, there is some investment and that's just one site where we have it, but it's empty.

Yeah, so that's the thing.

It's all about a feeder network.

And that's what Bus Connect as an overall system has tried to do, to link up where possible service routes, because Professor Caulfield's research that you've seen, over 50% of respondents didn't have a viable alternative but to use the M50 to get from A to B.