New bus services from Local Link will provide public transport for many rural areas of east Galway that campaigners fought to save.
Bus Eireann changed the nature of its bus Route 20/20x service from Galway to Dublin earlier this year.
This involved dropping many rural stops in Galway to the chagrin of locals, many of whom relied on this bus service to travel.
The new Local Link bus route serves many of those areas including Kilconnell, Cappataggle, Kilreekil, bringing passengers to Loughrea and Ballinasloe.
Local Link is also has a bus route from Loughrea to Gort, the first service linking those towns.
Galway East TD Sean Canney said people need to be aware of the new services and make use of them if they want them to stay.
“These new Local Link services are demand responsive so it is important that people are aware of the services and use them.”
“Local Link is providing vital transport links all across County Galway, at a reasonable rate to service users and it is important that people make themselves aware of the full range of services available and make full use of the service,” he said.
The new Local Link bus route will run multiple times a day from Monday to Friday.
Bus Eireann said at the time that its decision to cut rural stops was made for economic reasons, as the expressway services are not state funded.
In July a protest was held in Kilrickle, where people gathered and blocked buses coming through the village in an effort to save their local stop.
image credit: rateradardetector.org
