Re: Re: Cork Transport
Sorry, Carrigaline is closer to 13,000
http://www.cso.ie/census/census2006results/volume_2/census_2006_vol_2_tables_14_15.pdf
As for Bus Eireann, its the same with all aspects of that group of companies – a strong national transport regulator is required to kick them into shape – they don’t listen to anyone (elected or not) because there is no clearly legal or political defined basis on which their performance can be judged, or on which they can be made answerable for their actions.
The thing is that there may well be a case for Light Rail in Cork – as I’ve said before here, the City Council were arguing strongly for it as far back as the 1980s (before it was suggested as a real option in Dublin, in fact). Given the size and density of the city, and the likely future development, it is and will be of an appropriate scale for a focussed investment of this type. Clearly, heavy rail would be excessive, and bus may not offer the long term solution – so there’s an initial case, clearly. Thing is, an investment in a much larger bus fleet, and in getting the ‘Green Routes’ established properly, might deal with a lot of these problems for the next 10-15 years.
However, and this harks back to a related thread on boards, the parish pump nature of politics here is such that there will be a marked reluctance in a number of quarters to even consider this type of investment on the basis that once Cork ‘gets it’, Limerick and Galway will feel that they ‘deserve it’ also, despite the fact that Cork is significantly larger than both of those put together (see table above). In other words, the net political outcome would be perceived to be negative, on the basis that the negative reaction from the Wes(h)t would be much stronger than the mild positive reaction from Cork.
The honest and fair solution is to do one tender for 3 feasability studies into light rail, have the same company do the analysis, on the same basis, for all three cities, and then treat the results fairly and rationally.
I was under the impression that all the bridges were to be built to allow double-tracks to be installed later if the situation arose.
That was certainly the case – in fact the designs that were around in the 2001 timeframe were that all of the infrastructure was to be constructed to allow for electrification, desipite the fact that there was no likely way that this would ever be required on that line, but I gather from anecdotal evidence, that the final plans may not be quite so well considered.
