SIXMILEBRIDGE parents have been angered by the removal of the replacement of their school bus service and their mood won’t have been helped by an incident last week, in which one of the public buses introduced as a replacement, clipped the mirror of a truck.
It happened before 8am on last Friday morning and there was some minor damage according to parent Aoife Keogh.
“The bus was trying to avoid the overhanging trees before the Garda Station there on the left. It went out further than it should have and there was an oncoming truck then, and that’s when the tip happened,” she said.
“The HGV truck lost its wing mirror and the one on the bus was damaged. The drivers got out and they were arguing on the road. The bus then proceeded onto Shannon.”
She said there are still a number of children travelling to and from Shannon on buses without seatbelts, she added.
“They’re giving half the kids a seat belt and the other half aren’t entitled to one.”
Ms Keogh is also concerned about the use of city buses, which are supposed to be limited to maximum speeds of 65km per hour, but can have passengers standing and no seat belts.
“We’re not sure it really is calibrated to that level, but the other aspect that they’re not taking into account is that they’re travelling on a rural road where other traffic is travelling at 80km and more.
“If there is a collision with a vehicle travelling at 80km per hour, those kids are going to be seriously hurt.”
There are issues with the collection of children in Shannon, she claims.
“There’s a new bus stop that opened this week, it’s about 160 metres up from Caimin’s on the other side of the road. It’s chaotic there in the evening, because it’s not marked at all,”she said.
“You’re having buses trying to pull up and the cars of parents collecting their children on either side, because they don’t know that it’s a bus stop. There’s no marking at all.
“They’re just parking up on top of it.”
Ms Keogh said that although schools have already been open for a while, there is really no sign of solutions emerging.
“It’s still going on and I don’t know is there going to be any resolution of those issues in the immediate future.
“They seem to be doubling down on what they’re saying rather than trying to work with families and parents to make it the safest possible system we can have.”
Owen Ryan has been a journalist with the Clare Champion since 2007, having previously worked with a number of other publications in Limerick, Cork and Galway. His first book will be published in December 2024.