It feels like a very Irish thing to have done, to have a big, sad 2024 farewell party for a beloved bus route only for it to continue lumbering across Dublin well into the new year. Joe Duffy’s phone was hopping, Bagatelle got a boost in Spotify streams and there was much wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth when the demise of the 46A came to public knowledge last November.
It’s a bit like when you make a big song and dance about leaving a party and do a round of hugs and a scattershot of promises to meet up soon only to have to slink back into the sittingroom you so dramatically departed from to get your handbag. A month after we thought we were saying farewell for good, the poor 46A is still traversing Dublin city from the Phoenix Park to Dún Laoghaire and back, handbag in hand and mortified about all the fuss.
It’s tricky enough to parse the reasons behind scrapping the December 8th roll-out. The official line from the National Transport Authority was that the delay would avoid “confusion” among passengers during the busy festive period (surely a time when more efficient transport options would be welcomed). Other possible explanations ranged from a shortage of bus drivers to man the new routes to the uproar on the north side over plans to change the number 11 bus service. Throw in an election, government formation talks and the decimation of the Green Party and poor Bus Connects was left in limbo over Christmas. The bad, sad press around the scrapping of the 46A was surely the final nail in its 2024 launch plan.
[ Goodbye to the 46A: End of legendary Dublin bus route made famous in songOpens in new window ]
Bagatelle said they have no plans to change the lyrics from their 1980 hit Summer in Dublin. “When my hummin’ was smothered by a 46A and the scream of a low-flying jet” might not have the same ring if the bus number is substituted for “E2″, which is one of two new spine routes due in the next Bus Connects phase. Chatting to the Irish Sun over new year, Ken Doyle from the band said they’d been asked to take part in a celebration of the 46A this month but that those plans seem to have been pushed to March. Maybe there are a few more months of life in the old girl yet, although a spokesperson from the National Transport Authority did tell me that the rollout for the new routes is “currently planned to be implemented by the end of January”.
When the 46A ends I will say goodbye to those first feelings of freedom and adulthood
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My 46A nostalgia stems from the mid-1990s and transition year work experience. My two best friends and I had all secured placements in the Big Smoke and made plans to stay for the week with my pal Deirdre’s granny in Donnybrook. I was then a budding archaeologist/palaeontologist – heavily influenced by Jurassic Park and Junior Cert history questions about wattle and daub – and was to travel daily to the National Museum of Ireland on Kildare Street to shadow some poor unfortunate historian who just wanted to eat their lunch in peace.
Deirdre had us coached on how to get in and out of town: “Just get the 10 or the 46A.” I recited “10 or the 46A” to myself so many times that I suspect it may be imprinted in my DNA. Together we took either bus from Donnybrook into town each day and headed off to our respective placements. I was fully channelling Melanie Griffiths in Working Girl as I strode towards the museum, a busy and important career girl at just 15 in a pair of low-rise jeans and platform runners. At day’s end, I would take the 10 or the 46A back to Donnybrook and the three of us would attempt to cook a nutritious meal and dream of a future when we might take the 46A daily to our jobs for real.
The number 10 was retired in 2010 and its route was covered by the 46A and the 39A. When the 46A ceases to operate I will be saying a little personal goodbye to a precious teenage memory and those first feelings of freedom and adulthood. Yes, it’s just a bus but it’s iconic for a reason. I’m all for progress, particularly when it services the city, its people and our environment, but it’s okay to feel emotions for the idea of a thing. It’s okay too to feel anxiety at the prospect of change and to feel empathy for those whose situations we’re not familiar with and therefore cannot appreciate how an evolving bus route might affect their lives. Yes, it feels very Irish to have mourned the 46A too soon, but it also feels very Irish to mourn her at all. I for one will miss her.