For a capital city striving to meet climate targets, reduce traffic congestion, and provide equitable access to transport, Dublin’s bus network remains a daily frustration for many commuters. Buses are the backbone of public transport in not just Dublin but in cities and towns all around the country, carrying hundreds of thousands of passengers each day, yet too often they fall short of expectations. Unreliable arrivals, long travel times, overcrowded routes, and a stop-start experience plague a service that should be the backbone of urban mobility. But it doesn’t have to be this way. With targeted, pragmatic improvements using resources already within Ireland’s reach, Dublin’s local bus services could go from bad to better.

Dublin Bus 

The Problems on the Ground

Dublin’s bus network is one of the most extensive in Western Europe without the backing of a major underground rail system, but quantity doesn’t always mean quality. While the city has made efforts to improve public transport through initiatives like Busconnects, there are still key structural and operational flaws that prevent the bus network from being truly reliable and efficient.

Unreliable Service

Despite advancements like the Real Time Passenger Information (RTPI) system, buses still often fail to show up or vanish from bus signs altogether. This leaves passengers waiting indefinitely or scrambling for alternative transport. Although this can be chalked up to issues such as driver and mechanic shortages, this still exposes layers of bad planning throughout the decades in that these issues weren’t foreseen or solved earlier.

Infrequent Service on Some Routes

While central corridors like those through Drumcondra or Rathmines see near-constant buses, outer and less populated areas and routes such as the 54A, and 33 just to name a couple, suffer massively in terms of service frequency. The 54A serves the vastly car dependent suburb of Templeogue with just 30-minute frequencies on weekdays and hourly on weekends. The 33 (and 33X) serves the transit deprived town of Rush (as well as Lusk, Skerries and Balbriggan), which despite the existence of Rush and Lusk train station, gets little to no service since the station is kilometres away from the town for some reason. Additionally, the 33 comes not even every hour on both weekdays and weekends and isn’t even synced with the Irish Rail timetable, leaving residents of Rush without even a simple and basic way of getting to Dublin city centre easily. The 33X comes only during peak hours and allocates about ten buses per direction per day.

Slow Journey Times

Traveling by bus in Dublin can feel like a test of patience. Between frequent red lights, traffic congestion, and overly frequent stops, buses often crawl along at walking pace through key stretches of the city. Even routes that are only a few kilometres long can take 40 minutes or more during peak times. This inefficiency not only affects passengers but also increases operating costs for the transport provider. Time lost in traffic is money lost in fuel, driver hours, and scheduling disruptions. As it stands, slow journeys are one of the biggest deterrents for people that would gladly take the bus instead of driving but simply don’t have time to spare

Too Many Stops

In some parts of Dublin, bus stops are spaced less than 200 metres apart. While this might seem like a convenience for passengers, it actually has the opposite effect when it comes to journey quality. Buses that are forced to stop constantly cause delays, discomfort, and increased wear on the vehicles. This constant stop-start motion also increases emissions, especially for older diesel buses. In practice, having so many stops within short distances does not significantly improve accessibility and severely compromises the efficiency of the service. It’s a classic case of good intentions leading to poor outcomes.

How to Make It Better without Reinventing the Wheel

Improving Dublin’s bus service doesn’t necessarily require building whole new metro or rail lines (although that would be the cherry in top). It starts with smarter use of the tools already available. Here’s how we can make meaningful, cost-effective improvements to Dublin’s bus network given the layout of the city.

Expand and Enforce Bus Lanes

Dedicated bus lanes are essential for ensuring consistent and swift journey times. However, in Dublin, these lanes are still sparse and often ignored by private motorists during operational hours. Expanding the bus lane network to cover more areas, especially congested corridors, and strictly enforcing their use with traffic cameras and fines would go a long way in giving buses the priority they need. Longer stretches of uninterrupted bus lanes reduce variability in travel times, make scheduling more reliable, and ultimately increase public confidence in the system. While the Busconnects programme aims to help with this problem, its implementation is taking far too long (2030 completion goal!), isn’t ambitious enough and needs to be fast-tracked.

Trim Down Excess Bus Stops

Reducing the number of bus stops in overserved areas could shave precious minutes off journey times. Having stops every 300–500 metres apart, a standard in many European cities, strikes a balance between accessibility and efficiency. Dublin’s density supports this change, especially in the inner suburbs. Rathmines is the best example I know of unnecessarily close stop spacing which is inconsistent with the rest of the network. In the photo below, I’ve put a red X over every stop I feel should be removed as people can still easily walk from other stops. Furthermore, this would make bus stops in Rathmines around every 300m instead of every 100-200m.

However, I understand that this would mean some people would have to walk slightly farther to their bus stop. While this can be an issue for elderly people and those with mobility issues, they’d still only be walking an extra 100m or so to get to their bus stop which I don’t believe is impractical. If some people walking slightly farther to their bus stops means faster journey times for everyone, this is a worthwhile trade-off.

Add Buses to Underserved Routes

Investing in additional buses, particularly on routes that currently run at 30 or 60-minute intervals, would significantly improve service quality for those outside the central areas. This doesn’t mean simply throwing more buses on the road during rush hour, but rather strategically allocating resources to areas that are growing rapidly in population yet remain underserved. When people know that a bus will come every 10 or 15 minutes or even less, they're more likely to use it regularly, plan their day around it, and lessen the use of the car (assuming this service is consistently reliable).

Increasing frequency makes the entire system more usable, especially for spontaneous, non-commute travel. As I said previously, investing in more buses for routes such as the 54A and 33 will not only improve frequency but also distribute demand more evenly across the network. Increasing the frequency on these routes and others would not only make service more convenient for existing passengers but also encourage more people to use the routes instead of driving due to induced demand. Long gaps between services, particularly outside peak hours or on weekends discourages regular use of important routes.

Implement Traffic Signal Priority

Installing technology that gives buses a green light more often at key junctions can save considerable time. Signal priority is already used in cities like London and Zurich with great success. When buses move more efficiently, so does the traffic behind them. The idea is that traffic lights would stay green for buses that are approaching so they don’t have to stop for no reason and add to journey times (there aren’t many more frustrating things than your bus just barely missing the lights when you’re in a rush!). Additionally, priority would be given to roads with more car traffic to keep everyone moving quickly.

Create Better Connections to Railway and Luas Stations

Beyond the issues of capacity and congestion, Dublin’s bus network also falls short in terms of seamless integration with rail and tram systems. While many bus routes stop near key stations like Skerries (Irish Rail), Clondalkin Fonthill (Kildare Line), Tallaght Luas, and Dundrum Luas, they often fail to provide a direct, sheltered, or clearly signposted connection. This disjointedness makes transferring between modes of transport inefficient and inconvenient—especially during poor weather or for those with limited mobility. In contrast, cities like Toronto have long understood the value of high-quality bus terminals built directly into subway stations. There, passengers can transfer between bus and rail services within a single, weather-protected hub, with clear signage and minimal walking distances. If Dublin is serious about encouraging public transport use, it must move beyond merely running buses nearby stations and instead focus on truly integrated multimodal hubs.

Making Dublin buses great(er) again isn’t about unrealistic utopian ideas or massive infrastructure overhauls, it’s about smart, evidence-based improvements that maximise what we already have. By enforcing and extending bus lanes, reducing the number of unnecessary stops, improving frequencies on underserved routes, and using technology to prioritise buses at signals, Dublin can vastly improve the efficiency, reliability, and attractiveness of its bus network. These changes would not only ease the daily grind for commuters but also advance Dublin’s sustainability goals and support a more inclusive city. Public transport should be a solution, not a struggle. It’s time to build a bus system that works for everyone.