In Garristown, two students campaign for better bus service

The bus stop on the northern outskirts of Garristown wasn’t giving away too much information about the service passengers could expect. 

It didn’t say which buses would come, or where they would go. There wasn’t a stop number to let people check its status on the Transport for Ireland real-time webpage.

It just said the word “bus”.

And at a quarter to two, a squat white local link carriage pulled up. It was the 195, the service which travels around rural Fingal, from the southern end of Ashbourne to Balbriggan’s train station.

It’s always a gamble waiting on a 195, because it operates on a fixed schedule, but doesn’t give live updates, says Rima Almare, who lives in Garristown, a village just south of the Meath border. “There’s been many times where it hasn’t shown up.”

Or, it will arrive, she says. “But it’s very late. Or it goes early.”

The 195 is the only bus service that passes through Garristown. The trouble is, it doesn’t come all that often.

On weekdays, it passes through every two or three hours on its way to Ashbourne, from 7.10am to 8.05pm. Headed towards Balbriggan, it runs a similarly infrequent schedule. 

It’s a mixed bag on the weekends. The last Saturday bus leaves Ashbourne at 9.45pm. But on Sundays, if you miss the 4.30pm, then you’ll need a taxi.

The infrequency of the 195 means that, for people using public transport in the likes of Garristown, Naul, or Ballyboughall, their daily lives are centred around long journeys, infrequent and inflexible timetables, and short windows for making bus transfers.

Even outside of work or studies, planning a day out of the village takes a lot of preparation, says Sarah Mpazimpaka, also a Garristown resident. “It’s hard just to tell your friends, I have to make it back for this bus at 7pm, because I don’t have the money for a taxi.”

She and others in Garristown hope Transport for Ireland, which runs the local link service in Fingal, will increase the frequency of the 195’s arrivals in their village, she says. “Or maybe extending a route. We were hoping maybe to Swords.”

One way the Almare and Mpazimpaka have tried to get the service improved was by surveying locals, asking if they wanted buses to come more often, and collecting 183 signatures.

A spokesperson for Transport For Ireland said on Tuesday that from 1 July, the 195’s timetable will be amended to improve hours of operation, “with later evening services”.

There aren't any plans to increase the frequency of buses, as the current rate of 32 departures per day is considered appropriate connectivity for the area, the TFI spokesperson said. But they are keeping this under review.

Catch-195

Almare and Mpazimpaka rise at 6am, Almare says, as the two grab a bench outside Fancy’s, a cafe in the heart of Garristown on Sunday afternoon.

Both are first-years in college. Mpazimpake is enrolled in University College of Dublin, and on a good day, she transfers from the 195 to the 103X directly to the college, she says. 

“But, I’ll be late. Sometimes I miss the first half an hour,” she says.

Almare’s journey is modest in comparison. She studies in Technological University Dublin over in Grangegorman, she says. 

It’s easy enough to get between there and Ashbourne, she says. But “One of the main issues is, sometimes I can’t make my [195] bus. So I have to resort to getting a taxi.”

From Ashbourne, it’s a 15-minute journey back to Garristown in a car or bus. But it’s an hour and 40 minutes on foot down winding, footpathless rural roads. 

So walking isn’t an option, Almare says. Some of her friends resort to hitchhiking, she says. “It’s very unsafe.”

The need to leave for home as soon as college ends, so as not to miss the last 195 from Ashbourne eats into their ability to socialise too, Mpazimpaka says. 

“Like, societies in college. They’ll meet at five or six, and it’s annoying,” she says. “You want to be with your friends, and either you can’t go, or you need to leave early.”

It also hinders their ability to make some money to rent a place nearer to the city, says Almare. “Because it limits the job opportunities for us.”

More bus users

There are two local link routes in the Louth-Meath-Fingal area, the 192 and the 195, with the former serving Naul, Oldtown and Ballyboughal.

Across the day on both routes, there are 32 departures, a spokesperson for Transport For Ireland said on Tuesday. “Currently, this is considered appropriate connectivity for this area, but we are keeping this under review.”

In an effort to change the 195’s sporadic schedule, Almare and Mpazimpaka decided to survey locals late last year, asking if Garristown residents wanted more frequent stops, Almare says. “It was great. A lot of people were on board.”

They managed to assemble a list of 183 signatures.

Most of the signatures were from young people, either trying to go to college or work, Mpazimpaka says. “I remember one person told us they tried it once, and they will never try it again.”

Between 2016 and 2022 censuses, Garristown’s population rose by 110 people to 619.

Just over 50 percent of the village’s residents – 310 people –are below the age of 34, while 11 percent are between the ages of 14 and 19.

During that same period, the number of bus users in the village more than doubled.

In 2016, 51 residents reported taking the bus to school or work. By 2022, that number had more than doubled to 122, according to the CSO.

Still, there aren’t any plans to add an extra bus route in the Garristown area, the TFI spokesperson said. From 1 July, however, the 195 route will be amended to improve its operational hours, with later evening services.

But a spokesperson for the Department of Transport said there is a commitment in the programme for the government to increase local link services in rural areas like this.

The Department has secured increased funding to improve rural transport services across the country, they said, with funding increasing from €12 million in 2016 to €76 million in 2025.

Co-ordination

If there were more frequent bus journeys, a lot of the difficulty would be taken out of the daily commute, Almare says. “It would be easier co-ordinating journeys.”

The 195 is the biggest challenge. It gets a lot more straightforward once she has got off in Ashbourne to grab a 103, which passes through the town every 30 minutes, she says. “I don’t mind all this once you get to Ashbourne.”

Where feasible, TFI has designed its 195 timetable to integrate with other bus and train services, like the 103 and 105, said a TFI spokesperson.

Still, there is a little way to go before all of this is smooth sailing.

The way to leave Garristown is to find the 195 bus stop. But there isn’t a sign. So for first-timers, they need to identify someone who has already found it.

On Sunday evening, the stand-in for the sign was a pair of teenage boys by the side of the road outside a trio of warehouses with round corrugated iron roofs.

They waited there for 10 minutes, or so, until the bus pulled up at 4.38pm, and then rumbled down the winding country road, passing a field with sheep, another with cows, and third with a pile of smashed watermelons.

Arriving in Ashbourne 12 minutes later, the driver broke at a stop outside the local Garda station, right next to the 103, which was pulling in too.

But, the two services weren’t exactly synchronised, and as soon as the doors to the 195 swung open, the doors to the 103 closed, and it lumbered off, city-bound.

The digital timetable at the stop said the next bus would be there in 29 minutes.