Fridays 15:30 Rail/Bus service Dublin-Galway

[Eurochild]

It appears that this service - which on other weekdays splits in Athlone with one car going to Westport and the other going to Galway - is now permanently a bus service from Athlone to Galway on Fridays, when oversubscription means that both cars have to go to Westport from Athlone. Its even advertised as such on the Irish Rail website:



Interestingly they have the bus arriving in Galway at the same time as the scheduled train service, even though its down to leave Athlone two minutes later. I'd love to know how they plan to achieve this in Friday rush hour traffic.

My attempts to confirm that bus is now a permanent fixture on Fridays (and indeed other days of high demand such as Holy Thursday) have not met much success so far. I had a brief conversation with one of the staff at Athlone station the second week that buses appeared on a Friday, which went something along the lines of the following:

Me: "There's no train?!"
Him: "No"

Me: "Is this going to situation every Friday now?"
Him: "Looks that way, yeah"

Me: "This is ridiculous, I'm not paying 2 grand a year for an annual rail ticket to take the bus!?"
Him: "You'd better take it up with the management then".

Subsequently (8th March) I wrote to Customer Relations Southern and Western to see if I could establish what their plans for this service are. To date I have not received any reply. I am planning to write again but if anyone has any information I would be grateful if they could post.