Route licencing and emergencies / road closures

Mrs OBumble

Here's an interesting question:

Public transport operators are legally required to have route-licences for their services (or some kind of approval which isn't quite a licence if they're state-owned companies).

The things that need to be specified include the exact route and stopping points.

Does the law have any provision for operators to vary these, without prior approval, when roads are closed (eg due to floods, car-crashes, construction work, etc).

Over the last couple of days on the Galway-Dublin trip, private operators have found routes to keep their services running (albeit with delays), while BE simply hung up their boots and cancelled all services. Am just wondering if the latter are the ones who operated legally?

corktina

thats the Private Sector vs the Public for you....i applaud their ingenuity , there surely would be no question of proscecution.

Victor

I imagine the diversions are effectively at the direction of the Garda.

antoinolachtnai

They are required to keep their services operating. The state bus company is in breach of its notification if it cancels services without approval from the Department of Transport, where it is still possible to run those services.

AlekSmart

I believe this very issue arose in the UK in recent times (no link unfortunately).
AFAIR two operators had some form of difficulties in seperate locations,each one overseen by a different Traffic Commissioner.

It appears that following an investigation,one of the companies got a warning from the TC for an unapproved departure from route whilst the other recieved praise for use of initiative......

I`m open to correction on this but I believe Bus Éireann management were acting on the advice of Garda Authorities in relation to it`s services on the Galway road.

Last years heavy snowfalls produced a similar situation in London,when acting on the advice of the Metropolitan Police,Transport for London suspended ALL London Bus services,even though substantial numbers of staff had battled in to work and were prepared to leave their garages.

The Met line was that the risk of a major Bus related traffic incident was unacceptably high due to the sudden and uncatered for snowfall which saw few roads gritted.

Many Londoners were highly critical of that decision citing how,even in the midst of the WW2 German Blitz,the City`s Bus services continued to operate.

However,other observers felt the withdrawal had more to do with overzealous "Health & Safety" management,whose minds were far more concerned with the "Potential" for accidents and resultant claims than with actually providing a public service.

I think the Law`s can only be varied in response to Acts of God (!!) and it`s argueable that the current climactic changes are largely the result of acts of Man !!

Either way I suspect that we could tender for vast numbers of Barristers to dance on the head of this particular pin.