A colleague passed away last week. She was a very special person and I miss her.
Laoise joined our team of transport planners in the National Transport Authority to work on Ireland’s national database of over 14,000 active bus stops. Nobody asked us but in parallel with our usual work, a few of us started trying to clean up this bus stop data. It seemed like an impossible task but we kept going, and before long we had made enough progress that we could make the case that (a) this was a worthwhile activity and (b) we could do with some help to make the impossible a little bit more possible. This was where Laoise joined our team.
I’ll be the first to admit that on the surface this wasn’t the most glamorous piece of work, but Laoise immediately and instinctively understood: people who use public transport deserve a public transport system that is designed and operated with care and attention. The bus should stop at the location where we say it’s going to stop. There shouldn’t be two or three bus stops at the same location. As we are required to display names in English and as Gaeilge, we should make sure they are the correct names.
Laoise had an interesting background, she went from working at a creche to entering Trinity as a mature student to do a Masters in Civil Engineering (and graduating with a first). Whip-smart, outrageously funny, and utterly disrespectful of unnecessary pomp and ceremony: she was a joy to work with. But most importantly she cared. We used to talk about the experience that people have when they take the bus: the paper cuts of bad information. And while good data alone doesn’t make a good public transport system, improving the data is also the first unglamorous step to making a better public transport system. Laoise was only with us for a year and a half but she did brilliant work and charmed everyone she met in the process.
I miss our chats about people and places and her chaotic cat; her ability to squeeze out the best of stories from anything and anyone.
Laoise passed away far too soon and far too young. My heart goes out to her family who she adored. It was a privilege to work with her. Laoise was the best engineer you could hope to have on your side and the side of the hundreds of thousands of people who take the bus every day: someone who cared.
