HAVE AN OPINION on buses, from cleanliness to ticketing?

The National Transport Authority (NTA) is now inviting members of the public to submit their views on bus services as part of a public consultation process on the 2014 public bus service contracts.

On 1 December 2009, the Authority awarded Public Service Obligation (PSO) direct award contracts to Dublin Bus and Bus Éireann for an initial period of 5 years.

The new contracts are required to commence from 1 December 2014, and the NTA has said it is interested in hearing views on the matter from members of the public and interested parties.

It wants to hear these opinions before making a decision on the approach to be adopted with these new contracts.

The NTA said that following this “exploratory consultation”, it may consider undertaking one or more procurement competitions for the award of part or all of these contracts. Alternatively, it may decide to directly award part or all of these contracts to the existing contracted parties.

The consultation document asks for people’s opinions on topics such as:

• Quality of service – such as reliability, punctuality, cleanliness
• Ingegration – such as ticketing, Leap cards
• Value for money
• How can the public service contracts best ensure a good quality of service for passengers
• What benefits are there in introducing separate contracts for different bus market segments

If you would like to have your say, the public consultation document and questionnaire is available to download here (click for link) and when completed must be emailed to 2014busconsult@nationaltransport.ie

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