"The actual song Summer in Dublin was conceived on it." Farewell to the 46A on Liveline

A long time ago, Bagatelle sang about how their humming was drowned out by a 46A (and a low-flying jet). On Liveline, Joe Duffy spoke to Ken Doyle of Bagatelle about how a bus route made it into their most famous song and about how he'll get to Dun Laoghaire once the 46A is sunsetted. And Ken wasn’t the only one who wanted to talk about the end of the bus immortalised in song.

Running for almost a century, Dublin’s most well-known bus route travels between the Phoenix Park and Dun Laoghaire as often as every 8 minutes, according to the route’s operator Dublin Bus (although frequent commuters may dispute that figure). Craig Berry gave Joe a brief history of the 46A:

"The 46A is a very historical route started by the Dublin United Tramways Company in May 1926 on the current route and it’s as you say, most famous for that song. It’s kinda had a bus lane, a fairly good bus lane for the last 20 years and has seen significant investment. So it’s really provided the people of Dun Laoghaire and Stillorgan a great service over the last whatever – nearly a hundred years."

The bus from the song will be replaced by a new service named the E2, but it won’t be a like-for-like switch, particularly when it comes to the route it takes. The E2 will go from Dun Laoghaire to Ikea in Ballymun, instead of the Phoenix Park, and the frequency of the service will also change, Craig says:

"So, if you look at the Stillorgan Village, say, on the main Stillorgan Road, it’s going from seventeen buses an hour down to twelve. So it’s about a thirty percent reduction. And then when they would have run the simulations on a lot of this stuff back in 2018, 2017, the 46A and the 145 had 120-seater buses, or 120-capacity buses and that’s now down to buses that are about 80."

Bagatelle’s Ken Doyle told Joe that he and his fellow band members are sad at the news that the bus the late Liam Reilly wrote about is being withdrawn from service:

"It’s a very sad time. We’ve been aware of this for the last while and also our fans, our supporters are heartbroken over it too because the actual song Summer in Dublin was conceived on the 46A."

Cue Joe quipping that "it wasn’t the only thing conceived on the 46A over the years." It turns out, Ken tells us, that many of the events depicted in the song Summer in Dublin happened to Liam Reilly and he assembled what would become Bagatelle’s best-known tune as he travelled from the city centre to Dun Laoghaire. Having literally had his humming drowned out by a 46A at the bottom of Grafton Street, Liam headed for the tranquillity of his flat in Monkstown, Co Dublin:

"He gets onto the bus with his bag and his guitar heading out to Longford Terrace, where he’d just moved fairly recently, out near the Purty Kitchen and next thing, he sees a dishevelled drunk coming down and he’s thinking, 'God, I hope he’s not coming down towards me.’ And he comes down and he says, ‘Do you know how you’ll make a fortune with that music?’ and that sort of thing and that’s why he was saying, I was glad we weren’t going too far."

From December 8th onwards, if you’re singing at the bottom of Grafton Street, you won’t be drowned out by a 46A, but by an E2. Which doesn’t scan at all at all. On the upside, the E2 – unlike the 46A – will operate 24 hours a day, which will allow many more people to learn how to get rich from inebriated individuals.

You can hear Joe’s full conversation with Ken, Craig and others by clicking above.