Cork, Galway, Limerick and Waterford will each receive a share of a €14 million pot from the Department of Transport to create or improve bus priority routes and park & ride schemes.
The efforts aim to make public transport a more attractive choice, reducing pollution and congestion.
The funding was announced on Wednesday by Transport Minister Noel Dempsey.
“Reliability and quality of bus services that will be delivered by these bus priority measures, are a key element in reducing congestion,” he said.
“They are critical to increasing passengers numbers on bus transport and transforming the attractiveness of our cities.
“Experience internationally, and particularly in Dublin, shows that only Green Routes or quality bus corridors over complete routes achieve the step change in the level of service, which will encourage people to move to using bus transport.
“In that regard, I believe that we need to ensure that areas generating large volumes of traffic such as major areas of employment and major residential areas around our cities should be connected by complete Green Routes or quality bus corridors along the full corridors to city centres.”
Sam Bond