How are bus-services in Galway organised?


Regional Buses:
See the FAQ section for regional/national buses - coming soon.


City Buses:


Almost all city bus routes in Galway:
  • start at Eyre Square, 
  • travel from the city-centre to one or more suburbs
  • turn around (sometimes at a terminal or roundabout, or sometimes by doing a loop)
  • return to Eyre Square (sometimes along the same route, sometimes through different suburbs).
If a bus-route does a loop, passengers can get on to the bus at any point and stay on it, without paying another fare, until it reaches the city centre.



Some individual buses do a "through route":  they start at the end of one route, travel into the city along that route, pause at Eyre Square, and then do another route.  The most common through-route services are:

  • 1S/D (Salthill) and 8 (Mervue)
  • 2E (Lisbeg Lawn/Renmore) - 2W (Seacrest)
  • 4E (Merlin Park) - 4W (Newcastle)
  • 5E (Ballybane) - 5W (Rahoon)
When a bus is operating a through-route service like this, only one fare is paid for the whole trip.  However not every individual bus on these routes operates through to the other destination.

Some individual services also continue straight through to another location. Bus Éireann timetables show this with footnotes: eg the 7:40pm #3 service from Ballybrit is marked "continues to Newcastle".  There is no guarantee that the "continues to ..." marked on the timetable is still correct, as some have been changed for operational reasons. Passengers may need to to switch buses (and pay an additional fare) at Eyre Square.