Kilcullen loses another bus service

Kilcullen is losing another bus service from next Monday, writes Brian Byrne. The JJ Kavanagh 717 service from Clonmel to Dublin will no longer come through the town.

Kilcullen is one of three County Kildare stops to be removed from the service along with Athy and Naas. In all, eight stops are being eliminated across three counties and the northbound service will be non-stop from Kilkenny City to Red Cow Dublin and afterwards to Dublin City and Dublin Airport.

The company says they are making the changes to 'deliver a faster, more consistent and altogether more extra-ordinary journey for the vast majority of our passengers'.

In a statement about 'optimising our network' the company say that a review of service performance showed that 'certain bus stops had significantly low passenger numbers, making it difficult to justify their continued operation'.

Since 2011, bus services through Kilcullen have been severely cut back by both private operators and Bus Eireann. This was despite commitments given in 2009 by both groups that services through Kilcullen would be retained after the opening of further sections of the M9 motorway.

In 2015 a 'Save our Buses' campaign was set up after service cutbacks affecting Castledermot, Castlecomer, Athy and Kilcullen. At one public meeting the bosses of Bus Eireann and the National Transport Authority were told bluntly that they were effectively 'abandoning' rural Ireland. There was no representative there from JJ Kavanagh, the other primary, and private operator on the affected routes.

In 2017, JJ Kavanagh made further changes to their schedules which meant that one morning and two evening services bypassed Kilcullen and other villages between Kilkenny and Dublin.

JJ Kavanagh exited the 129 route between Kilcullen and Newbridge in July 2022 in a series of post-Covid cutbacks due to 'low patronage' and the cessation of a temporary Covid-measure subsidy. After a temporary service for more than a year a permanent Dunlavin-Newbridge was established under the Connecting Ireland Rural Mobility Plan.

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