PROFILE

Irish CityLink acquired its rival GoBus earlier this year. Regional Director David Conway explains how CityLink has integrated the business, boosted the brand with a hefty investment programme, and developed services post-Covid - with further expansion in the pipeline.

Almost 20 years ago Irish CityLink was founded in Galway, offering 12 daily services to Dublin and back on its striking yellow and blue coaches. Since then, it has expanded the business and network of routes to over 100 daily direct, express, and multi-stop services across all routes. Over 150 people are employed by the firm in Galway, Dublin, Limerick, and Cork.

A big part of that expansion has been the acquisition of GoBus earlier this year, which was integrated into Irish CityLink seamlessly. The staff have all been retained, and GoBus services still operate as before, however the new corporate structure means customers now have access to a wider network as well as more frequent services. Regional Director David Conway explains that the GoBus brand remains intact, but there will be some harmonisation of branding.

“We’re working to unify the brand so that it is apparent to customers that the services are essentially all together,” he began. “We’ve chosen the slogan ‘stronger together’ to represent us.” David added that this was appropriate as it has a number of distinct brands in the business, for example its Eireagle service between Limerick and Dublin Airport, which is itself a subsidiary of Singapore-based Comfort DelGro, which is also reflected in the livery. CityLink also has specially liveried vehicles for the Connaught Rugby team, the Galway GAA team and a pink bus promoting Irish Cancer Society’s Care For Your Pair Campaign for Breast Cancer Awareness.

David mentioned that one of the main benefits of bringing GoBus into the company is the expansion of services. Irish Citylink operates a range of services in Galway, Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Clifden, Loughrea, Athlone, Ballinasloe, and other locations. The company currently carries over 28,000 passengers per week across all routes which is forecasted to surpass 35,000 by 2023.

“The specific benefits for customers between Galway and Dublin are that we now have a more comprehensive timetable, and our customers have the ability to interchange their ticket to travel on either a CityLink or a GoBus service. That now gives us a 30-minute frequency between Galway and Dublin City and Galway and Dublin Airport,” explained David.

In fact David said that as of April next year this frequency will be boosted further with services between the cities every 15 minutes at peak times.

But the GoBus acquisition has also meant expanding into new territory: “It has allowed us to now extend our network to two other routes that City

Link previously didn’t have within the portfolio, which is Cork to Dublin and Dublin Airport Express, and Ballina to Galway.”

The Cork to Dublin services will remain under the GoBus brand but David added: “We’ve created a very striking livery that is specific to Cork and features the colour red, which wasn’t a colour that we previously had in the brand in any major part. We have brought that red

very much to the fore.”

The livery is just the icing on the cake of the firm’s investment in its Cork service, as ten brand new Volvo 9900s have been supplied by Murphy’s Commercials, Galway. These are now based in Cork for the region’s Dublin City and Dublin Airport routes.

This forms part of a fleet of 65 vehicles, mainly kept in Galway, with the exception of the Cork-based vehicles, and five 9700 Volvos stationed in Ballina. The in-house fleet also includes five Mercedes-Benz Turismos based in Galway, which David said has given compelling fuel efficiency.

In general the fleet ranges from 2017 to 2019 models. David explained that the fleet replenishment plan is to replace vehicles after five years, but pointed out, “Of course, Covid will have put our fleet renewal times back a little bit as well because the vehicles just didn’t undertake the mileage.”

For three full months when Covid struck, IrishCityLink was completely off the road, but all operations are now up and running again. Since the takeover, Irish CityLink has reinstated all the services which GoBus had held back since Covid. In general David feels the business weathered the pandemic well. “Look, it was a challenging time, services got suspended,” he explained, but added that while the pandemic threw many plans in the air, it gave them a chance to focus on their strategy.

“There was a lot of focus on what the business might look like going into the future, and there were things that we needed to change or adapt which we did. As it turns out, a lot of changes were just small changes. So fundamentally, nothing majorly changed. Drivers were furloughed. But as soon as we started operating, we had drivers back in.”

“Even before any of the Government support kicked in, we took the choice to resume operations - albeit on a very much reduced level of service in line with the demand and the guidelines that were here at the time.” This was driven by the real danger of being left behind: “The longer you’re not operating the easier it is for people to forget about you.” To that end David is looking to the future, “There’s always opportunities,” and disclosed that Irish CityLink is in discussions with a number of suppliers about trialling an alternatively powered vehicle.

As yet the business has not made any major investment in alternatively powered vehicles as the technology is not currently up to the strains of the job, but they will be keen to be early adopters of any developments. “At the moment it would appear that electricity isn’t a viable option for us. Because of the distances and the weight and the turnaround we require of the vehicles... most of our vehicles that are on the Dublin route are doing two return trips a day, so at the moment we don’t think that there’s an electric option there, but it won’t put us off trialling one!”

There are plans for a new Galway depot, and when pushed, David also revealed that Irish CityLink also has plans to launch a brand-new route into its services for 2023. “We have a new route that has been planned for next year that will link another part of Ireland with both Dublin City and airport. I can’t go into the specifics on that at the moment, but we are planning to launch that new route by next April.”

So with new routes, more frequent services, and continued investment in fleet and facilities, the acquisition of GoBus is just one leg of Irish CityLink’s journey of growth.