BRTuk is running a series of lunchtime Quality Bus Masterclasses, produced by Landor LINKS, with a wide variety of expert speakers covering topics that bus industry professionals will find interesting and 'of the moment'.

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Session 4: 18th November @ 12.30 -13.30

Chair: James Freeman, current Chair, BRTuk and formerly Managing Director at First West of England

Speaker: Tim Gaston, Director of Public Transport Services, National Transport Authority

Bus Connects – reimagining Bus Services in Ireland’s cities

In this short presentation I will expand on the reasoning and delivery challenges of implementing a series of interlocking projects which together will provide a hugely improved bus system to allow more people to go more places all day every day.

In 2017 Ireland’s economic woes following the crash were improving. NTA could see passenger demand rising across all service types and traffic congestion was thickening equally fast. It became increasingly clear to NTA that public transport in our cities needed significant focus to continue the growth in passenger trips and challenge the dominance of cars.

• Bus Connects was formed to address the deficit in all elements of urban bus services and a programme of 9 projects was launched in 2018 including:
• Complete revision of all bus routes to provide better coverage geographically and temporarily;
• Major upgrades of all radial routes to provide dedicated bus and cycle lanes;
• Replacement programme for all buses to low emission and more recently zero emission fleet;\
• Next Generation Ticketing to replace current time expired systems and equipment with a state of the art account based solution;
• Simplification of fares to remove the current penalty for multi-leg journeys;
• Significant improvement in roadside infrastructure with “TFI” (Transport For Ireland) poles, head-plates, carousels and shelters;
• A single brand – TFI – for buses with a new livery and consistent signage; and
• A network of Park and Ride facilities; and
• A much improved network of segregated cycle ways.

About Tim

Tim Gaston is the Director of Public Transport Services for Ireland working for the National Transport Authority – the NTA.  Tim started his working life in England after graduating in Mech Eng from Edinburgh University.

Tim worked in manufacturing and transport logistics in particular. Tim and family moved back to N Ireland and after 2 years in local industry joined Translink, the provider of almost all public transport in N Ireland. Tim’s role progressed to project managing the development and implementation of Smartlink and the Senior Smartpass, N Ireland’s smart ticketing solution.

Tim then moved in Dublin in 2003 to lead the development of what eventually became the Leap card scheme, Ireland’s equivalent to Oyster.  Leap is now the dominant means to pay for public transport across Ireland with over 5 million cards in circulation.

Register here