As a self-employed person I don’t really get to take holidays but whenever there is an opportunity to go abroad, the first thing I do is locate the nearest soccer game. On a recent trip to Bilbao, I discovered the closest match was in Vitoria-Gasteiz, a city of about 260,000 60 km to the south. That Monday Deportivo Alavés, recently promoted to La Liga, would play Sevilla, the current Europa League champions. It would mean missing the live stream of my beloved Cork City’s FAI Cup tie against Waterford – we won, which is a novelty – but you can’t beat catching a match while abroad.
There was a problem, however. To get there I would have to travel by bus and then take another bus. And then repeat the trip in reverse while taking care not to miss the last service back to Bilbao. On paper it looked straightforward. But like so many Irish people, I have been let down so often by public transport that I am reflexively incapable of trusting it. What if one of the buses didn’t turn up? Or if the driver took a break halfway through and pulled up in front of a newsagent? With public transport in Ireland if something can go wrong, then you can bet it will go wrong. It’s the one area in which the system is unfailingly consistent.
If you’ve commuted, you’ll be haunted by these experiences: of non-existent buses, broken-down trains and some drivers who appear to think they’re on a relaxing day-trip when you’re trying to get to work or college on time. Some of these experiences are merely inconveniencing, others veer towards Kafkaesque. In the latter category was the time when, while commuting from a Dublin suburb to the city centre, I turned a corner to see my bus puttering away seven minutes ahead of schedule (my stop was at the start of the route).
As I’d had challenges with the service before, I had the number of the depot so I called it and told the inspector that the bus had left ahead of the timetable. “There’s a funeral at the church next to the stop, so he’s had to go early,” he said. I was standing outside the church: it was empty. “There’s no funeral. I’m literally the only person here,” I said. “No, no,” said the inspector. “There’s a funeral and he’s had to leave early so that he doesn’t get caught up.” Welcome to the Irish public and semistate sector, where not only is the customer always wrong – so too is reality itself.
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It hasn’t improved since moving to commuter land. For more than a decade I used the bus before I bought a car. Cycling, as I see it, is a luxury for the gentrified upper-middle classes who can afford to live within gentle whizzing distance of central Dublin: a lifestyle humble-brag masquerading as mass transit.
Hell, as fellow commuters will know, is relying on an hourly bus service. To begin with, the bus may not turn up. If it does, it will be late. Five minutes late? Hah, try 35 (my route has, it must be pointed out, improved immeasurably since it was privatised – there’s nothing like quality time with Irish semistate services to turn you into a red-eyed Thatcherite).
What really gets to commuters is the feeling that the whole system is a joke at our expense. That if we had any sense, we’d already have a car because who expects the bus to be something you can rely on?
The funny thing is that just when you think it can’t get worse, it invariably does. There will be weeks or months when the service will become essentially non-functional, which can make maintaining any kind of professional life impossible. As I write this, I’m flashing back to the time I was supposed to interview crooner Harry Connick Jr at a Dublin hotel. I could have driven but I thought; “I’ll do the right thing and take the bus.”
The standard of soccer in Spain was obviously much higher than in Ireland. But the true gulf was between Spanish public transport’s punctuality, cleanliness and reliability and the shabby shenanigans we suffer here
To be prepared, I rang ahead and sought confirmation the bus was actually running and would be on time (the “real time” online updates were a work of surrealist fiction to be discounted). Yes, said the lady on the information line. It’s already departed and is en route.
You know how the story ends, or at least you will if you’ve ever had to use public transport. At the stop I waited and waited. As a cold sweat descended, I rang the helpline again. Erm ... remember that bus? The same person was speaking but explained no, actually there was no bus. Sorry about that. I ended up having to ring Connick Jr’s publicist and apologise and wondered if he might do it by phone. The next time I had to interview someone, you better believe I drove.
But I didn’t drive to see Deportivo Alavés. Instead, trusting the fates, I took a bus and, outside a well-maintained and drug-user-free Vitoria-Gasteiz bus station, caught a sort of road tram that took me to the stadium. Nervous about the return journey, I left the game with 20 minutes left – missing a goal – and ended up back at the station with 50 minutes to spare – the standard error time you allow for if you’re a commuter in Ireland.
There wasn’t any lesson in any of this – or at least not one with any application in Ireland. The standard of soccer in Spain was obviously much higher than in Ireland. But the true gulf was between Spanish public transport’s punctuality, cleanliness and reliability and the shabby shenanigans we suffer here. We can’t do much about the sporting situation. What’s depressing is how little interest there is in improving public transport either.
