Dublin – 16 and 41 Buses from Dublin Airport to the City Centre

Firstly, for those who are quite decadent there are the premium services offered by Dublin Express and Aircoach which take passengers from the airport to the city centre, and to other locations, quickly and efficiently. However, for the rest of us, there are local bus services which are more affordably priced. These can be reached by leaving the front of Terminal 1 and then walking through the car park, ignoring the signs for the more expensive coaches.

The only problem is that the service only takes coins and not notes or cards. In years gone by I’ve managed to buy a ticket via a machine at the bus stop in Dublin, but that’s now turned off. Fortunately, I had enough Euro coins for Liam and I to ensure that we could get on, but we didn’t have enough for the journey back. It seems that the Dublin transport authorities know that their payment options are some of the worst in modern European cities and the whole process is going to be modernised over the next couple of years. The current set-up really isn’t ideal…..

The bus driver was friendly and we positioned ourselves at the back of the coach into the city centre, which took around 45 minutes. It’s not the quickest option, but it is the cheapest at €3.30 each for a single journey, with the coach being clean. It didn’t get that busy and so remained comfortable.

And that’s the bus leaving O’Connell Street after it got us into the centre quickly….. Buying tickets really does need improving, at the moment for tourists there’s only the option of cash (coins only, no notes with no change being provided) or a Leap Card, which it is expected will be phased out over the next decade.

As an aside, we didn’t want to buy a Leap Card for the journey back, as that’s quite expensive for a single use, nor was it going to be easy to get my €10 note changed into coins to use on the bus. So we walked the 4.5 miles to the airport hotel the night before our flight…..