AS I SEE IT
BY MARIANNE HERON
The holiday season is set to begin and you know that familiar feeling; you have decided on the sunshine trip secured your flight, booked accommodation and any extra treats …. And then comes that sinking feeling. How are you going to get to Dublin Airport?
It may boil down to a choice between using public transport in which case getting there is probably going to take longer than your flight time between catching the bus or the train and then possibly catching other transport from Dublin city centre. Or you might drive and park and then you have to factor in a hefty parking charge and allow plenty of time for a shuttle to ferry you from parking spot in a long term car park or one of the park and ride spots to the terminal.
You may be lucky and have a friend or family where you can arrange to park and then take a taxi from there. While cabs can save stress and time, so they certainly won’t save you money. A 45km trip taxi from home to airport sometimes costs me more than a bargain flight at an eye-watering €100plus where fares here are almost twice their London counterparts. Why? Blame high insurance and licence costs apparently, but not the driver.
The Air Coach, which used to be a life saver, although it only ran once an hour and took a circuitous route, have dropped the service from my area.
That’s when leaving but what about arriving? On Saturday May 24 Dublin Airport had a record breaking 127,000 passengers through its terminals. While the good news is that things apparently went reasonably smoothly inside the terminal buildings what about the chaos outside?
New visitors are confronted with fact that, amazingly for a city which is the fifth biggest connectivity hub in Europe, we still don’t have a convenient rail link to the city centre. Nor is there any hope of one in the foreseeable future.Mooted as long ago as 2001 the promised Metro hasn’t even been started yet and is unlikely to become a reality until 2035. That’s if Trump’s tariff wars don’t put paid to the State affording the ever-escalating cost caused by failure to engage in forward planning.
Alternatively a spur line could be run from the existing Dart route to the airport which is something Iarnrod Eireann have suggested or even from main rail lines line….. some chance.
New arrivals can of course go in search of a bus, but which bus? More than 1,000 buses come and go daily at the airport with everything from the Express service linking to the main city stations to the excellent city link service to destinations like Kilkenny, Galway or Cork. But finding the right bus can be confusing and there may be a long, sometimes wet, wait in a queue for an empty shuttle to your parking spot when things are busy.The same applies for taxis although there is shelter for at least part of the queue. Negative experiences with taxi drivers and unclear pick of points are among traveller complaints according to Trip Advisor.
Picking up an arrival at Dublin airport? Fetching a friend or relative is not for the faint-hearted as the short term car parks may be full at peak travel times. Friends have been known to park in the car park of a nearby hotel and dash to Arrivals hopefully in time to meet and greet. Thankfully car hire prices have come down from the post–Covid high, but there are gripes about unexpected additional charges.
Experiences on arrival can do a good deal to shape a visitor’s impression of a country. More could be done to make onward travel from the airport pleasant. Investment in infrastructure outside the terminal wouldn’t go amiss, with better signage, improved shuttle services, even a covered bus station. And how about a complimentary service to the city centre to compensate for the lack of a Metro?
On a couple of my recent holidays short scenic rail journeys from the airport to the cities of Bordeaux and Trieste for instance, were part of the pleasure of the whole trip.
I can’t say the same of the transport experience from Dublin Airport.
