Maintaining and developing rural passenger transport services is one of the objectives of my Department. It is therefore vitally important that the resources available for rural transport are utilised as cost effectively as possible and that best possible service is achieved from these resources. In that regard, earlier this year, I asked Bus Éireann to work with Pobal to explore the potential for achieving better rural transport service delivery through closer working and better resource utilisation between the various service providers. Arising from this, a number of pilot initiatives have been instigated to explore how the various transport services in rural areas might be jointly developed so as to enhance their coverage and take up.
In addition to Bus Éireann, the initiatives involve the Health Service Executive in its capacity for providing transport to access health services; the Department of Education and Science in respect of school transport services; Pobal in respect of Rural Transport Programme services; and voluntary bodies such as the Irish Wheelchair Association.
Pilot projects are being developed in the North West and North East to explore how existing transport providers might make more effective use of their individual resources by working in closer cooperation with each other. The types of pilots envisaged for collaborative action include "collect and connect" type services; hospital feeder services; co-ordination of disability services; ticketing integration; co-ordinated information provision and journey planning; increased synchronisation of partner systems and processes. It is expected to be at least 12 months before an integration model incorporating results from the various pilots will be sufficiently developed to allow it to be applied more widely across the country.
Bus Éireann has established a central steering group to provide advice and guidance on strategic, regulatory and legislative issues to the working groups which oversee the two pilots. The other members of the steering group are officials from my Department, the Department of Education and Science and Pobal.
