Transport Bulletin September 2021

Public Transport Volumes

Source: National Transport Authority

The number of passenger journeys on public transport has dropped dramatically since the start of the COVID-19 crisis. Since the start of this year public transport journeys have been increasing gradually but public transport journeys remain below pre-pandemic levels as onboard public service capacity continued to operate at reduced levels.

Data relating to bus and rail journeys is presented in table 3.1 and figure 3.1. The latest data shows that for the week commencing 29 August, the total number of rail and bus journeys is 58.3% of those taken in early March 2020 (pre COVID-19). The number of bus journeys outside of Dublin in the same week is 65.4% of pre COVID-19 levels. The corresponding level for bus journeys within Dublin is 58.6% of pre-COVID levels.

The data indicates that rail was the mode of transport that was most severely hit since the onset of the crisis. In the week commencing 05 April 2020 the number of journeys undertaken by rail was 97.2% lower than it was in the first week of March of 2020. For the latest week under consideration (week commencing 29 August) the number of journeys by rail was 48.8% lower than pre COVID-19 levels. Please note that rail data includes passenger journeys on Intercity and DART services.

Data on Luas journeys taken is presented in table 3.2 and illustrated in figure 3.2. Latest data for week 35 shows that journeys increased by 25.3% on the red line when compared with week 35 in 2020 but are still 47.9% lower than the same week in 2019.

For the green line in the same week, data shows that journeys have increased by 58,157 journeys compared with the corresponding period in 2020 but are still 50.2% lower than the same period in 2019.  This is to be expected as onboard public service capacity remained operating at reduced capacity in August 2021.