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THREAD: A huge number of people in the highly-populated Southeast Limerick suburbs of Monaleen/Castletroy around @UL are students or young professionals, many of whom don’t drive and/or can’t get their full licenses due to the pandemic. 1/11 https://twitter.com/cathalcrowetd/status/1361463230359601152
This area is served by a private bus company running two almost identical routes to the city centre, and two almost identical @Buseireann routes (304 & 304A) from Castletroy to the city to the Southwest Limerick suburb of Raheen. Castletroy’s bus service was gutted... 2/11
...in the early 2010s when Bus Eireann merged the UL-City 304 route with a City-Raheen route and we went from having a city route that departed UL every 15 minutes to a longer route that allegedly ran every 20 minutes but realistically ran every half hour 3/11
It took years of campaigning by @UL_StudentLife and local politicians like @ElenaSecas to get the 304A created, and more buses added to the 304 route. And even with that, there is still no Bus Eireann stop east of Monaleen... 4/11
...which means that the (by Limerick standards) highly-populated area of Newtown/Annacotty, containing Castletroy College (secondary school built 2000 serving students as far afield as Nenagh & Killaloe) & several large housing estates built since 2000 5/11
Further out, in Ahane/Castleconnell/Lisnagry, there are no buses at all, & I know people who would walk an hour from Ahane to the private 308 stop in Newtown to get a bus to town. Bus Eireann’s planning for the area seems stuck in the early 90’s 6/11
Case in point: me. I’m an asthmatic non-driver living in Castletroy, & I’m lucky enough to be within 10 minutes’ walk of bus stops serving every local route. Guess what I have to do to get to the Radisson safely without taking a pricey taxi up the motorway? 7/11
I have to catch a bus to town, walk to the bus station, catch the bus to Shannon, stay on it in Shannon and get off it at the Radisson on the route back to Limerick. That’s a multi-hour multi-bus journey to get somewhere the govt thinks is accessible bc it’s near a motorway 8/11
My girlfriend @theycallmecaitx, a Galwegian UL grad, didn’t know where the Radisson was & reckons it’d be easier for her to go home to Galway to get the vaccine. I only know where it is because I attended a UL Clubs & Societies ball there 9/11
Would @CathalCroweTD @DonnellyStephen and @HSELive like to comment on the decision to use such an inaccessible spot as a vaccine centre amid claims that UL, Thomond Park & city centre hotels all offered space? 10/11
While we’re at it, would @EamonRyan @1Hildegarde & @Buseireann like to comment on why in 2021 Ireland’s third-largest city has a large suburb containing a university & a technology park that has worse public transport links than Tallaght did when I lived there in 1996-1998? 11/11
