'How ironic' - Questions asked over Translink's £277,000 spend on taxis

Northern Ireland's public transport provider has spent more than £270,000 on taxis in the past five years. The sum far exceeds taxi expenses at the Department for Infrastructure and its other arms length bodies, NI Water and Waterways Ireland, with a combined spend of just over £10,500.

DfI revealed Translink's taxi bills following an Assembly question from the TUV's Timothy Gaston. The figures provided show how the bus and train operator forked out £75,888 in the last year alone, rising from £68,228 in 2022-23 and £40,661; £34,212; £58,442 in the three years preceding that.,

The department released the taxi expenditure information with the proviso that Translink's costs were "incurred by both staff and customers".

READ MORE: Belfast taxi boss gives frank view as 2,000 fewer taxis on NI's roads since 2020

They added: "Staff taxi costs relate to journeys made to facilitate depot workings, transferring staff during the working day, and bus substitution work in the event of security alerts on rail network. Customer taxi costs relate to bus failures, cancellations, accidents and passenger transfers including disabled passenger assistance. Expenditure across the other areas relates to occasional use of taxis by staff."

Mr Gaston told Belfast Live: "While I note the caveat relating to the Translink figures, they do deserve much greater clarification. Just how does the company responsible for running our train and bus network manage to run up an annual taxi fare bill of almost £76,000?

"It is ironic that Translink should be urging people to travel with Translink over the festive period to avoid congestion and yet the company has run up such a large bill.

"I would like to see a breakdown of these costs by the categories outlined in the answer. Just how much of the £76,000 is due to staff costs, customer costs related to bus failures, bus cancellations and accidents? This is data which I hope to obtain via a series of questions in the New Year."

We also asked Translink how much of its taxi bill in the past five years was spent on customers and staff and if they could outline a reason as to why their taxi bill appears to be growing.

According to a Freedom of Information request from a member of the public - £17,500 of the £61,981 Translink spent on taxis in 20219-20 was paid out for:

The Northern Ireland Transport Holding Company also outlined a spend of £61,926 in 2015-16; £27,858 in 2016/17; £36,125 in 2017-18 and £46,401 in 2018-19. Including those bills, Translink taxi fares have cost the company £449,741 since 2015 with 2023-24 racking up the most taxi costs.

A Translink spokesperson said: "Taxis are used when necessary to transport operational staff to network locations to maintain scheduled timetables when services are impacted by factors including weather, mechanical issues, engineering works and road accidents or where people have taken ill on-board.

"This minimises disruption to our passengers. They are also used to provide disabled passenger assistance where appropriate."

Here's what DfI and each of its arms length bodies have spent on taxi since 2019-20:

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