Belfast Council is pressing Translink for all year round late night buses across the city.
At the recent full meeting of Belfast City Council, elected representatives agreed to a motion by SDLP Councillor Donal Lyons for the authority to call on Translink to extend its Christmas night-time Metro and Glider bus services to a permanent basis. Translink currently have a special one-off late night service for buses and trains in Belfast and Derry, for the run up to Christmas.
However City Hall is calling for a permanent late night service across the city on the buses. Councillor Lyons told the chamber: “I think it’s important we re-emphasise the lack of late-night public transport for the vast majority of the year in Belfast and the surrounding areas.
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“It’s no joke when you look at the congestion and the number of people travelling into Belfast in the morning, and then look at how our streets become deserted after 6pm after work. It shows there is a willing population to come into Belfast, but for whatever reason they are not staying.
“It is starting to have an impact on our economy - people staying away from the city. The idea that we should all pile out at one time and be left with one mode of transport is having an inhibiting effect, especially on our cultural venues, and those smaller cultural venues.”
He added: “It is galling when you look at Belfast, with a metropolitan size of over half a million, and then consider Cork, a city with half the population, and see they have two 24 hour services - never mind Dublin, Glasgow, London. And it’s no joke to say it is easier to get to Dublin Airport than it is to Dunmurry.”
He said: “We have had repeated responses from Translink which are word perfect and identical, they are copied and pasted from previous calls from the business sector and the night-time economy. The response is brief and talks about investment, but there has been significant investment in sustainable buses.
“We need to stop looking at what suits them best, and emphasise that as a publicly-owned service, that they should be looking to what suits the people best, that they provide a regular and safe way home.”
He added: “If you look at social media in the last month, you can see people, particularly women, saying they are feeling unsafe or stranded in the city centre in the hours of night. Having a regular or safe public transport system is something we were due ten or 15 years ago - we need to play catch-up and get it as soon as possible.”
Alliance Councillor Michael Long tabled a friendly amendment for the council to also ask Translink for specialised free public transport days in the run up to Christmas. He said: “In some parts of the city the last bus is at 10pm, the glider is 11.30pm. If we are encouraging people to come into the city centre we need ways to get home, if people want a drink or are going to an event, for many (the buses) is the only way they can do it.”
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