Athlone students 'will get pneumonia' due to lack of bus shelter at TUS

Local councillor John Dolan said there's a need for greater urgency in providing bus shelters for students who are currently waiting for transport at uncovered stops beside TUS in Athlone.

"I hope that we will find a solution to this very shortly, before all of the students are gone home with pneumonia," he told the January meeting of the Athlone Moate Municipal District.

Bus stops for students at the Athlone campus were moved to the Dublin Road in recent times, with new stops being provided outside Smyth's Toys and the technological university's east campus.

The meeting heard concerns being voiced about the absence of any shelter for the large numbers of students waiting at these stops during the winter months.

"I pass by on numerous occasions and it's awful to see people out there in the rain, getting drowned, waiting for the bus," said Cllr Dolan.

"Going forward, if there is a new bus stop going in, a shelter should be provided straight away. There's no point in putting in a bus stop in Ireland without a shelter. It doesn't make any sense."

He said former Westmeath County Councillor Tom Allen had been "ten years trying to get a bus shelter in Moate" and he hoped something similar wouldn't happen in this case.

The written reply from council management to Cllr Dolan's motion said the local authority was examining the provision of bus shelters at TUS "in the context of the delivery of active travel measures on this route".

Barry Kehoe, the council's director of services, said the council would try to implement a solution to this issue for "the very large volume" of TUS students who use public transport.

"We'll talk to the active travel team about that. There may be an issue around the infrastructure - we don't want to do something out there that we would then need to change as part of the overall road layout, so we need to be careful about that," he said.

He said that the council would be in a position to install bus shelters at particular stops provided they meet certain criteria in terms of the number of bus services and the number of passengers using them.

"We need to be able to bring power and communications to (a new bus shelter) because, in time, there will be real-time information going up for bus users, and those facilities need to be put in now rather than adding them later," he said.

Cllr Dolan's call for bus shelters at TUS received unanimous support from his fellow councillors, with Cllr Frankie Keena saying he had put down a very similar motion at a meeting last September.

"The number of people using our buses around town has increased significantly. That's a positive sign, but we need to respond to it accordingly," said Cllr Keena.

Cllr Aengus O'Rourke said the absence of bus shelters at TUS "stuck out like a sore thumb" and called for a bus shelter at the new stop near Ericsson among other locations.