Some Belfast motorists have bemoaned traffic delays due to new bus lanes but the new Glider bus service, in the shape of the G2 route from Dundonald to Twinbrook and back through the city centre, surely represents something more noble.

Maybe I’ve been seduced by the ‘Come Glide With Me’ pre-service trip a few weeks back. It started with Prosecco in the Dundonald Park and Ride bus station, included on the bus music, poetry, canapés, dancing and dessert; a stop on the Falls Road for beef and Guinness stew washed down with wine. However, the most memorable aspect was the journey itself, from East to West Belfast.

I don’t know much about the city’s bus routes old or new but this joining of the two sides by Glider bus seems like something special. A recent Tweet mentioned two eighty-year-old ladies from Andersonstown gliding from their side of the city to Ballyhackamore for coffee – because they’d never been there before! There’s something uplifting, even poetic in that… and speaking about poetry…

 

The Belfast Glider

It snakes its way from west to east

This shining modern purple beast.

Futuristic and free to glide

Bringing people from either side.

 

They go to work and come home as a rule

While children go to and from school.

People ride to go in to the shops

Just getting on at different stops.

 

Some gossip together and some sit alone

Mask their aloneness by looking at the phone.

Others read the papers and young ones work on-line

While the driver ploughs on to finish on time.

 

There are different pictures on the gable walls

As you go through Ballyhackamore and then up the Falls.

From Twinbrook to Dundonald the flags are a different colour

And somewhere in the Centre is where they meet each other.

 

Going about their business the people look the same

Even though they may disagree about who it is to blame.

The Glider reaches out to them and reaches out to us

Divided as we are but brought together by a bus.