Rural routes booming as local link ridership surges

More and more people in Offaly and Laois are hopping aboard the Local Link bus service and they’ve plenty of reasons to do so.

In 2023, a total of 218,459 passengers used the service. Fast forward to 2024, and that number has jumped to an impressive 297,500. The biggest surge was seen in regular rural services, which leapt from 126,548 passengers last year to a whopping 199,649 this year.

For Ellen Gavin from Ballycumber, the service is part of her daily routine. She takes the Local Link into Tullamore five days a week to get to her job at the day service at Kilbeggan Bridge.

''Before that I used to get the Flagline coach from Athlone,'' she says. Now, she catches the 6pm back home in the evenings. ''It’s very handy.''

Eileen Purcell from Tullamore is another happy passenger. She uses the bus once or twice a week. ''I go to Portlaoise or Mountmellick to shop,'' she says. ''Before the bus came along I used to take the town link,I was working in the school in Killeigh, it used to cost me a fortune.''

Then there’s Reneto, originally from Brazil, who’s made Tullamore home. Every Monday, he’s on the bus to Portlaoise, returning around 5pm. ''I find it very handy,'' he says.

It’s not just the regular routes seeing an uptake. Door-to-door services are also growing steadily. 97,851 people used them in 2024, up from 91,911 the previous year.

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Nationally, 3.2 million passengers took a Local Link journey last year. Add in the wider Connecting Ireland programme, and that number climbs to nearly 8 million.

Not bad for a service that so many now call “very handy.”