Public transport 'not meeting need in rural areas'

The town of Enniskillen in County Fermanagh lies at the end of one of the “spokes” served by the new Belfast Central Station transport hub, but what difference will it make to people in rural areas?

“That’s great for the folks of Belfast, and the people that want to get to Belfast and need to get to Belfast, but for the people that we serve it has little relevance.”

That is the view of Jason Donaghy, the manager of Fermanagh Community Transport.

It is one of 11 organisations across Northern Ireland that deliver a dial-a-lift service through Rural Community Transport Partnerships.

They make about 200,000 journeys a year, transporting people for things like shopping, medical appointments, and senior citizen clubs.

Mr Donaghy believes there is a “fixation on the hub and spoke model” that fails to meet the needs of people in rural areas.

“When are we going to see sufficient equity in rural areas to meet the needs of those people who can’t get to the bus stop?” he asks.

“We’re often told, well you know there’s concessionary passes available but people aren’t using them.

“That’s because there’s no public transport to use them that actually meets the needs of those people.”

While the Grand Central Station cost £340m, community transport services receive government funding of £2.3m each year but recently they have been at risk of closure due to budget uncertainty.

“We have no certainty, we are operating from year to year,” Mr Donaghy said.

“The funding is effectively set at the level that we had last year, which is still in excess of 40% less than we had in 2017.

“With the rise in costs of everything, our operational capacity has obviously declined within that fixed and ever declining budget, when that ageing category and that disability is rising exponentially.”

Paddy and Breda Murphy live in Ederney and rely on Fermanagh Community Transport.

Paddy said it does a “tremendous job” and “takes up the slack” in an area where public transport provision is “very poor”.

Breda says so many pensioners are isolated and using community transport means they would meet neighbours and look out for each other.

“If services are cut, so many people will be isolated, it’s not fair,” she said.

The couple can no longer travel on a minibus so drivers like Tony Harte now collect them from their home in a car and take them to where they need to go.

“Everyday that I lift someone from Belleek, Ederney, Roslea, Tempo. It doesn’t matter where you’re lifting them, they all have the same story,” Mr Harte said.

“They just love the service, appreciate the service.

“They’ve no back-up whatsoever, their family possibly working during the day when they need appointments, so it’s a really important thing for them.”

For journeys to and from Belfast, passengers travel on the 261 Goldliner bus service.

It makes the journey up to 15 times each weekday from Belfast with 13 buses travelling in the opposite direction.

At weekends the service is less frequent, dropping to five or six buses on a Sunday and sometimes requiring a change in Dungannon, County Tyrone.

It takes between two hours and two hours and 20 minutes - the same journey by car would take about one hour and 30 minutes.

The adult single fare is £14.50 and a day return ticket costs £23.00.

While passengers in Belfast could be waiting another few weeks for train services to leave the new station, travelling by rail to Fermanagh is a remote possibility.

The last trains in the county ran on 30 September 1957.

The recent All Island Strategic Rail Review concluded that it would not be financially viable or self-sustaining to restore the line to Enniskillen.

Derek Johnston, who lives about three miles from Ederney, said public transport “is pretty poor and it hasn’t changed in my lifetime”.

“I remember the train, I’m old enough for that, I remember the train going though Kesh on the way to Bundoran but I think it would be asking too much to reinvent the train again," he said.

“I don’t think that’s viable, we haven’t the population.”

Another Ederney resident, Donna Nugent, thinks “it’s an absolute disgrace that Fermanagh is the only county not included in the rail scheme”.

She is not impressed with how much money has been spent on building Grand Central Station.

“I believe that the money should be spent more widely throughout the whole of the country giving a better bus service to all of the rural areas," she said.

“We don’t all live in Belfast and we don’t all want to be in Belfast.”