As a pedestrian, the Green Routes are useful. It is a lot easier to cross the road, footpaths have been upgraded etc. On the rare occasions that I cycle, they are helpful because there are few parked cars to go around. I’m not sure how much they really benefit buses. If you look at the number 6 Green Route, there are actually very few bus lanes on it. Although, they are beneficial in rush hour.

As for what is required, in the Developments in Cork thread, I said that the first priority has to be to get up to a 10 minute service on the city’s major bus routes – 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12. That is a simple matter of investing in a few more buses and training up the drivers. While we can look at light rail systems etc., we won’t realistically see one in place before the middle of the next decade. That kind of improvement to the bus service can be achieved by 2008

There are a few things I’d like to see done immediately

• No more buses waiting on Patrick St for 15 minutes – I used to commute from Douglas to St Luke’s every day and the period that the 7 was stuck on Patrick St drove me nuts. Just eliminating this waste could be the start of a more frequent service
• Clean the buses – they are a disgrace, covered in graffiti, vandalised and just generally dirty.

As for wish lists for the medium-term

• A separate Cork Bus company a la Dublin Bus. It’s clear that Bus Eireann have no clue about or interest in what is going on in Cork
• Through ticketing. Given a 10 minute frequency, it becomes practical to use two buses to a destination. It should be possible to buy a ticket that does this
• Consideration of transport hubs. For example, someone should be planning to divert/extend a few buses once Kilbarry station is open. The 1, 5A, 7 and 12 can all be easily be diverted/extended to link up with the railway there. If it happens it will surely be an afterthought 5 years after the station is constructed
• Town bus services to be considered in Mallow and Midleton

That’s all I really have time to post now. Just don’t get me started on cycle lanes…

The biggest problem is the danger of the LA’s getting too self regarding and self congratulatory for past achievements. LUTS is 30 years old and only then the private car aspect was delivered. The LA’s interact well in terms of transport planning, but should not get too complacent based on past successes.

CASP is OK but getting central government to get behind such initiaitves is vital. Having the Midelton line lobbed in with Transport 21 is a disgrace. Essentially there is nothing for Cork in Transport 21. The midelton line was already approved in concept. Serious lobbying is required.

It is unacceptable that the most car dependent community in Ireland (Carrigaline) is in such a supposedly well planned region of Ireland.

Developments in Cork

Am closing this thread….. mega threads like this are too unweildy

for future reference i’d like separate threads per area… ie a cork docklands, cork ring road, patricks street etc

over time i’ll split this thread and its predesscor into pieces

Hello Paul, you state that the discussion forum for Ireland is having an IT-Problem due heavy traffic on popular general threads. I share the same views stated on the Cork thread against fragmenting a general thread. A solution might be found by sub-dividing the Ireland discussion forum into regions such as South, Mid-West, Dublin etc, etc. Within these regions only specific threads should prevail like Docklands, Shopping-Centers, ……….?

Is this possible? There some 2800 threads dealing with Ireland!

http://www.boards.ie use the same software (Powered by vBulletin) as Archiseek and they use regions to organize their threads.

@jungle wrote:

As for wish lists for the medium-term

• A separate Cork Bus company a la Dublin Bus. It’s clear that Bus Eireann have no clue about or interest in what is going on in Cork
• Through ticketing. Given a 10 minute frequency, it becomes practical to use two buses to a destination. It should be possible to buy a ticket that does this

Totally agree on the bus issue; Bus Eireann place little enough attention to their National operations let alone commuter services; it would also be a great excuse to rebrand a distinctive Cork Transit encompasing commuter rail and the planned light rail system as well.

Integrated ticketing should also be looked at in line with international best practice

I have to do a project named place making
Actually its a project to bring human activities to a dead space.
The provided site is a religious monument which is now acting as a traffic island cause a road run round the site.
The first problem of the project was to provide a way to pedestrian whic I solved by changing some traffic routes and provinding a pedestrian path to connect the site.
Now the second problem I am facing is how to provide a reason to the people to visit the site.
The site is religiously important to some group of people so its now being a target to only those people for others its dead.
Since the site is on the major part of the city and monumental zone, its should be able to attract the rest of the people.
I just dont want to create a market space since its very near to a popular commercial zone.
Can any one suggest how I can attract people to my site.
Something innovative!
Sandeep.

Does anyone know what the story is with that yellow bus I’ve seen around that says it links the city’s hotels with the airport? How frequent is it? Is it only available to hotel guests?

One of my big gripes about public transport in Cork is that the bus from the airport only serves the bus station. Although, I’m not generally a fan of privatised public transport, if they can provide a service that Bus Eireann are missing, it’s brilliant.

With regard the the skylink service running between the city and airport; their website is http://www.skylinkcork.com, 5 euro one way according to the website.

anybody know what’s proposed for the south presentation now that it has closed as a school?

@arch-i-tech-ur wrote:

I have to do a project named place making
Actually its a project to bring human activities to a dead space.
The provided site is a religious monument which is now acting as a traffic island cause a road run round the site.
The first problem of the project was to provide a way to pedestrian whic I solved by changing some traffic routes and provinding a pedestrian path to connect the site.
Now the second problem I am facing is how to provide a reason to the people to visit the site.
The site is religiously important to some group of people so its now being a target to only those people for others its dead.
Since the site is on the major part of the city and monumental zone, its should be able to attract the rest of the people.
I just dont want to create a market space since its very near to a popular commercial zone.
Can any one suggest how I can attract people to my site.
Something innovative!
Sandeep.

Have you considered faking a miracle along the lines of the famous moving statue which put Ballinspittle on the map

Yes…. I know I haven’t been on in ages, but thought I would throw in my pennies worth. Firstly, I’m not a fan of closing down our main thread, but it’s still a good idea having threads related to specific topics. And secondly, just in case anyone didn’t know because I didn’t see it mentioned anywhere, Centralwings are starting flights from Cork to Krakow and Wroclaw in Poland. This, including flights already in operation to Katowice and Warsaw brings a total of 4 Polish destinations to Cork. This gives a total of 7 new routes to Cork for the month of June – Madrid, Lanzarote and Prague with Aer Lingus, Galway and Leeds-Bradford with Aer Arann and Wroclaw and Krakow with Centralwings. Not a bad start for our new terminal which opens July 10th.

If you ask me, the gridlcok in certain areas of cork is due to bad interchanges.

None is worse than the Dunkettle Interchange.

Instead of having a roundabout, why not have a complete set of sliproads ala the American system.

In fairness, the traffic lights at the Dunkettle Interchange have made a mighty difference.
The designers of the scheme deserve praise, which we are usually slow to give.

Yeah if Dunkettle/Glanmire interchanges were sorted properly, and the other two roundabout flyovers and associated slips were fixed, it would be pretty good.

The tunnel WILL be a nightmare again once the Kinsale Road one opens.

if traffic is increasing at such a rate then the only solution is to introduce tolling. The experience worldwide is unequivocal: you cannot build (roads) your way out of traffic congestion. You have to get people out of cars and into buses ,trams ,etc.

I have always noticed that cork has much better potential for introducing some proper public transport systems. But last time i was there is noticed that some proposed bus lane was in dispute. Putting these in place is what will improve your ring road (or reducing acces to the ringroad – not improving it ).

Given the right conditions, people would most likely use public transport as an alternative to car travel. The problem is public transport is so bad in Cork that it is in reality not a viable option. In the few instances where there is a good transport alternative (such as the much improved Cork-Cobh rail service), people will frequent the service. But to expect people to get out of their car and wait for an infrequent (and usually dirty) bus which may or may not come is to expect too much. Furthermore, and as Thomond Park has pointed out on a few occasions, through ticketing is not available thereby complicating matters and making the whole user experience less than satisfactory.
I agree that clogging the roads with more traffic makes no sense, but until there is a viable transport alternative for commuters living in Cork’s suburbs and satellite towns, then nothing will change.
Finally, Cork City Council are not exactly setting a precedent since their new office extension in City Hall includes 300 car park spaces for their own employees. Yet this is the organisation telling all and sundry that people should get out of their cars and take the bus/park & ride, train, etc. They also have the gall to limit car spaces in new developments in the city, but obviously only if it does not include them! With this kind of behaviour, one wonders how we can move forward.

A problem I experienced while trying to get to the marquee a few days ago was [Not being to used to using buses in the city] that there is two number two buses. One going north to Knocknaheeny and one going south to Mahon. What was worse was that the woman in the bus station gave me a timetable for the northbound bus. I can understand why tourists hate our public transport system [Ireland in general with the exception of the luas] when a city has two number two busses going in two different directions.

Jack Lynch Tunel: Apparently the tunnel is running well over the projected daily usage of 2012 [Somthing like that at least] which shows just how wrong the planners get it wrong. The most effective but most expensive solution, in my opinion at least, would be to build two tunnels parallell to the outsides of the current tunnel, go under the interchange and bring you up onto the N8. It would probably be very difficult to get it out given the rail track and road near the Ibis Hotel so its a bit of a dream. Or one could do the opposite and build a sunspension bridge which would be even more spectacular and farfetched. Ah well, I can dream cant I?

@PTB wrote:

A problem I experienced while trying to get to the marquee a few days ago was [Not being to used to using buses in the city] that there is two number two buses. One going north to Knocknaheeny and one going south to Mahon. What was worse was that the woman in the bus station gave me a timetable for the northbound bus. I can understand why tourists hate our public transport system [Ireland in general with the exception of the luas] when a city has two number two busses going in two different directions.

It is in theory a cross-city route, like the 3, 7, 8 and 10. However all of these wait on Patrick St for so long that they effectively become two separate routes.

They could massively improve frequency of service if they could just improve the utilization of the current buses.

@mickeydocs wrote:

anybody know what’s proposed for the south presentation now that it has closed as a school?

Would like to know that myself. Also on a similar note what is to become of St Finbarrs Seminary Farranferris. This school has also closed down recently. Looks destined to become apartments I suppose? It has several large pitches and green spaces that look ripe for development.

@PTB wrote:

A problem I experienced while trying to get to the marquee a few days ago was [Not being to used to using buses in the city] that there is two number two buses. One going north to Knocknaheeny and one going south to Mahon. What was worse was that the woman in the bus station gave me a timetable for the northbound bus. I can understand why tourists hate our public transport system [Ireland in general with the exception of the luas] when a city has two number two busses going in two different directions.

Jack Lynch Tunel: Apparently the tunnel is running well over the projected daily usage of 2012 [Somthing like that at least] which shows just how wrong the planners get it wrong. The most effective but most expensive solution, in my opinion at least, would be to build two tunnels parallell to the outsides of the current tunnel, go under the interchange and bring you up onto the N8. It would probably be very difficult to get it out given the rail track and road near the Ibis Hotel so its a bit of a dream. Or one could do the opposite and build a sunspension bridge which would be even more spectacular and farfetched. Ah well, I can dream cant I?

I’m no engineer, but I’ve thought a fair bit about how to make that roundabout freeflow without modifying the tunnel much.

All you have to do is take the current east-west N25 run and put THAT in a tunnel underneath the current roundabout. Then you could get rid of the roundabout and put freeflow slips everywhere to solve the current problems.

THe traffic lights were a stopgap.
It will get bad again.

Opening the Kinsale Road flyover will jam the tunnel up like mad.
Opening the 694 house development in Glanmire will make it worse.
Opening the north ring will make it even worse.

Yes, we’re talking Red Cow Of The South with that roundabout. I dont think people realise just how bad its going to be in a few years time.

Simple solution would appear to be restrict development around Glanmire; provide a proper light rail system for the South City and grade seperate Dunkettle to provide a direct connection from the N8 to the N25 Tunnel without entering the roundabout with all other routes using the existing roundabout with a dramatically reduced traffic flow.

@Thomond Park wrote:

Simple solution would appear to be restrict development around Glanmire.

It’s not as simple as that.

The traffic heading for the tunnel is not just generated by Glanmire, it is coming in from Fermoy and Midleton and all the settlements in between (Rathcormac Watergrasshill, Knockraha Glounthaune, Cobh, Carrigtwohill). People in Glanmire are not the only or even the main culprits. After all they have the option of avoiding the N8 interchange by going to the city via the old Dunkettle roundabout or over New Inn to Mayfield.

The problem is that the CASP strategy for 2021 puts most of the new development into the corridor of the Mallow to Midleton rail line, hoping that people will choose the train instead of the car. Perhaps they will eventually but the train service is not there yet and the development is already starting to build up. We don’t need short term knee-jerk solutions. We need cool heads and a sustainable long term strategy.

Trust the planners! They know what they’re doing!
.

What about having the Dublin-Tunnel road as the through road, raising the roundabout and putting on the Cork-Waterford road. Which road has higher traffic volumes?

The only way I can imagine a completely free-flowing junction is by creating the N25 portion of the junction east of the current site and having a number of long elevated sliproads connecting the roads.

i must repeat an earlier post. Upgrading roads is in general the worst thing you can do with your money.

Very simply if you upgrad a junction or whatever so that it can cope with an extra 100 cars per hour , you will end up with an extra 110 cars per hour.

Just look at corks histrory (or dublin’s ) as we have built more roads the traffic has gotten worse . It is mad but that is how it is. If you want fast roads you have to charge people to use them . plain and simple.

And you have to charge people a lot. Consider would you still have the same traffic jams if you charged a fiver through the tunnel ? People might object but have they considered the time they waste sitting in their cars .

Say you are paid 30 euros an hour . well if you spend an hour going to work , wouldn’t it be in your interest to pay a five euro toll and so only spend ten minutes commuting and work for fifty minutes ? You are up anyway ?

don’t follow dublin experience it is a bad bad experience. you need group transport group living and group working : a city

@a boyle wrote:

i must repeat an earlier post. Upgrading roads is in general the worst thing you can do with your money.

Very simply if you upgrad a junction or whatever so that it can cope with an extra 100 cars per hour , you will end up with an extra 110 cars per hour.

Just look at corks histrory (or dublin’s ) as we have built more roads the traffic has gotten worse . It is mad but that is how it is. If you want fast roads you have to charge people to use them . plain and simple.

And you have to charge people a lot. Consider would you still have the same traffic jams if you charged a fiver through the tunnel ? People might object but have they considered the time they waste sitting in their cars .

Say you are paid 30 euros an hour . well if you spend an hour going to work , wouldn’t it be in your interest to pay a five euro toll and so only spend ten minutes commuting and work for fifty minutes ? You are up anyway ?

don’t follow dublin experience it is a bad bad experience. you need group transport group living and group working : a city

I agree. The major investment in Cork needs to go towards public transport.

However, there are sometimes slight changed that can make a big difference. For people who know Cork, the right-hand turning lane at the bottom of Donnybrook Hill is an example,

Public Transport uses roads to and any bus stuck in a traffic jam is bad news

@Angry Rebel wrote:

Presumably as part of the work on the flyover, the lanes have been repainted on the Magic Roundabout and now make sense! They don’t disappear or merge anymore and should result in less crashes.

So simple….why couldn’t they have done it years ago?!

The local authorities in Cork have a unique approach to road lining. When one lane becomes two, one always has markings that emerge from the kerb rather than start in the middle of the road.

Much more interesting is Parnell Place, where if you go into the left hand lane and aren’t turning off, the markings will gracefully guide you into the footpath…

Originally Posted by THE_Chris
I’m no engineer, but I’ve thought a fair bit about how to make that roundabout freeflow without modifying the tunnel much.

All you have to do is take the current east-west N25 run and put THAT in a tunnel underneath the current roundabout. Then you could get rid of the roundabout and put freeflow slips everywhere to solve the current problems.

THe traffic lights were a stopgap.
It will get bad again.

Opening the Kinsale Road flyover will jam the tunnel up like mad.
Opening the 694 house development in Glanmire will make it worse.
Opening the north ring will make it even worse.

Yes, we’re talking Red Cow Of The South with that roundabout. I dont think people realise just how bad its going to be in a few years time.

Alternately you could tunnel under the roundabout north-south and not have to destroy the existing flyover. But like THE_Chris said I’m no engineer and would that destabilise the flyover above? Also the problem of lack of tunnel capacity would hardly be rectified. Then again that might not be so much of an issue as the delays at the interchange.

Low-cost airline Wizz Air have announced that it will start a service from Cork International Airport to Gdansk in Northern Poland from early December. The airline has recently started flights from Cork to Katowice. There is also a lot of talk over Ryanair’s decision to recruit extra staff in Cork. I wonder have they decided to increase their presence at the airport. :confused:

Has anyone heard any more about the water taxi service that was in “planning” stages at Christmas. I haven’t heard anything about it in ages. Is it still going ahead?

From what was being talked about a few months ago, it would be a commuter style service to be used by both locals and tourists with each boat capable of holding about 20 passengers, maybe more, I’m not sure. It sounded like a good idea but I haven’t heard anything since.

@A-ha wrote:

From what was being talked about a few months ago, it would be a commuter style service to be used by both locals and tourists with each boat capable of holding about 20 passengers, maybe more, I’m not sure. It sounded like a good idea but I haven’t heard anything since.

😎
Cork City Council’s Planning & Development Strategic Policy Committee met on Monday 26th June and recommended a motion from Cllr.Denis O’Flynn to be approved by CCC to provide a river bus service to serve Mahon and Blackrock as part of the “Blackrock Village Plan”, this follows a motion from Cllr.Chris O’Leary for a river bus service for the city centre.
A great idea if it ever becomes a reality.

@Angry Rebel wrote:

Does that mean that the City Council will provide the service or that they think it’s a good idea and that someone else should provide it?

I don’t see the need for it to be honest. The No 2 bus goes along the same route, and will do so faster. A ferry/taxi is restricted to 6 knots from Blackrock Castle up to the city centre. (Unless the operator can do some very fancy footwork with the Port of Cork). [6 knots = 7 mph!]

I think it’s all up in the air at the moment on who would provide the service Angry Rebel.
On the No 2 bus, the recent vote on the Blackrock Area Plan saw councillors from the area force city management to remove the “Green bus route” along the marina. Is this the No 2 route?, if so maybe the river would be a faster route rather then being stuck in traffic on a bus?

QBC is the only way to go in the short term but realistically an Airport of that size should have at least a light rail connection to the CC

New intercity rail fleet launched

10 July 2006 12:06
The new intercity rail fleet to run between Cork and Dublin has been launched by the Minister for Transport, Martin Cullen, with the promise of an hourly train service between the two cities from December next.

In all, 67 new carriages will see a capacity increase of over 80%, or 16,000 seats, available to customers every day.

The intercity trains were built in Spain and will replace 20-year-old rail stock.

Advertisement

The purchase of 217 carriages at a cost of €440 million will mean the transformation of the fleet from being the oldest in western Europe to the newest.

The renewal programme is funded by the Government under Transport 21 and will be completed by 2008.

An additional 150 intercity rail cars at a cost of €322 million will be delivered by companies in Japan and Korea.

These will come on track over the next two years and will serve routes from Dublin to Mayo, Galway, Limerick, Kerry, Sligo, Rosslare and Waterford.

How many times can one announce the same thing as new and exiting?

Maybe e-voting was pulled because the button kept repeating?

i am sorry thomond , but i cant agree. cork airport is has barely a few million , simply not enough to justify such an investment.

There is huge dishonesty on the part of all politicians as to what is needed and appropriate for ireland. I would argue forcefully that cork limercik and galway would be much better served by an eastern railway shuttle service and one single airport at shannon. cork has already burned sackfulls of money on a beautifull white elephant of an airport terminal , please don’t compound the problem!!

Closing cork airport and introducing a fast shuttle service to shannon would be overall a sustainable answer. Such a trainline could be built with a short travel time. cork to shannon is only 128 km.

Instead of squandering 180 million on this terminal , that would have gone some way to building a 200 km/h trainline from cork to shannon. Then the travel time would only be some 35 minutes or so .

@a boyle wrote:

i am sorry thomond , but i cant agree. cork airport is has barely a few million , simply not enough to justify such an investment.

There is huge dishonesty on the part of all politicians as to what is needed and appropriate for ireland. I would argue forcefully that cork limercik and galway would be much better served by an eastern railway shuttle service and one single airport at shannon. cork has already burned sackfulls of money on a beautifull white elephant of an airport terminal , please don’t compound the problem!!

Closing cork airport and introducing a fast shuttle service to shannon would be overall a sustainable answer. Such a trainline could be built with a short travel time. cork to shannon is only 128 km.

Instead of squandering 180 million on this terminal , that would have gone some way to building a 200 km/h trainline from cork to shannon. Then the travel time would only be some 35 minutes or so .

Just a quick question Boyle… why shut Cork and keep Shannon. Surely the logical idea would be to serve the area with the greater critical mass, which by far and away is Cork. Cork metropolitan area is 300k, the county is 440k. Proximity of Waterford, Limerick, Tipperary and Kerry quickly bring that closer to one million.

Why does Cork have to lose out?
At present there is no transatlantic service out of the city, this needs to be rectified.

I don’t think that the people in Cork would agree that their terminal was a sqaundering of money; I’d say that the continuance of Hanlon Bourke & Co in their politically motivated positions was the real squandering.

Bourke was quoted in 2002 in the Brussels based Airports Council International as saying ‘Who else other than Aer Rianta would build a €120m terminal for Cork’ like Cork was some economic basket case. I did my own calculations using a copy of EF Spon and came to the conclusion that the real cost was about €80m

Sorry but I can’t see at all how cork airport doesn’t need this new terminal. Last night when I came back from Geneva (through Amsterdam) there were 9 planes parked there, 3 in front of the current terminal and the rest beside the new one. When we got inside it was absolutely jam packed at the luggage reclaim with around 4 times more people than what’s supposed to be there. I know I’m not quoting any figures or anything but from my arrival yesterday this new terminal look like plain common sense.

@malec wrote:

Sorry but I can’t see at all how cork airport doesn’t need this new terminal. Last night when I came back from Geneva (through Amsterdam) there were 9 planes parked there, 3 in front of the current terminal and the rest beside the new one. When we got inside it was absolutely jam packed at the luggage reclaim with around 4 times more people than what’s supposed to be there. I know I’m not quoting any figures or anything but from my arrival yesterday this new terminal look like plain common sense.

Cork airport has been a joke for a decade. The new terminal building was badly needed. Shannon’s a hole and was only created for political reasons and despite getting every break going would be losing bucketloads of money if it wasn’t for the US troop landings. The fact that one of them is stopping next year has left it in the proverbial creek without a paddle. DAA can’t relinquish control of it because it’s incapable of standing on its own two feet.

you need to look at this on a national basis. cork has enough to support a small airport . but if shannon was connected with a railway line to galway limerick and cork it could no doubt support 20 million people a year.

you would need to have two track the whole way between cork and galway. If you built them to 200 km/h spec. it would only take about 40 minutes. That is no skin off anyone’s nose. It take much longer to get to dublin airport from parts of dublin.

but if you had it in shannon it would be within reach of all the people on the eastern side of the country , a big number.

the reason i say that the hundred and eighty million (a number that appears to be in dispute , but even if it cost only 80 million it doesn’t matter). Yes say it cost eighty million. Well ryanair built on in germany with the same capacity for 18 million. I understand that what is built in cork has plummeted the airport in debt , which the ‘company’ is petrified of. So i think i can safely say the money was squandered.

If you wanted to spend 180 million on cork , having built a railway line to galway, you could build a short light rail route which passed by the busiest parts of cork. That would be better for everyone.

In is a bit obnoxious but germany did it and they have no traffic jams. You do not build roads trains airports where people are currently going or would like to go. You built these things where you want people to go. !! So if you look at a map of the german motorway system there are almost no direct motorway connection between cities. It is a tough idea to get your head around but it is the right way to do things (it just pisses off a lot of people until it is done —> of course that is how you know you are doing the right thing!!)

you need to look at this on a national basis. cork has enough to support a small airport . but if shannon was connected with a railway line to galway limerick and cork it could no doubt support 20 million people a year.

I have to say that I have never heard anything more narrow minded in my life. Local economies depend on services such as those offered at local airports. I would imagine that the economies of areas such as Galway, Sligo and Mayo that depend on Knock airport as a means of income would suffer if it were to be replaced by a train connecting the area to Shannon…… not to mention the economy in Cork where the pharmaceutical industries including Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline rely heavily on the airport for many reasons. Although overpriced, the airport has been money well spent, even if it did come at a cost, it had to be done. And really I can’t see Shannon airport coping with 20million passengers without getting a new terminal of it’s own, so it’s just as well the money was spent on Cork, as Shannon, whatever way you look at it, will always be “out of the way”. The Clare airport will have to come up with a plan soon though if it intends to stay economically viable. The Shannon Stopover that has for years dampened the transatlantic development out of both Dublin and Cork airports will end next year as well as the US military aircraft stopover which has decided that it will move to a base in Germany.

@a boyle wrote:

you need to look at this on a national basis. cork has enough to support a small airport . but if shannon was connected with a railway line to galway limerick and cork it could no doubt support 20 million people a year.

you would need to have two track the whole way between cork and galway. If you built them to 200 km/h spec. it would only take about 40 minutes. That is no skin off anyone’s nose. It take much longer to get to dublin airport from parts of dublin.

but if you had it in shannon it would be within reach of all the people on the eastern side of the country , a big number.

the reason i say that the hundred and eighty million (a number that appears to be in dispute , but even if it cost only 80 million it doesn’t matter). Yes say it cost eighty million. Well ryanair built on in germany with the same capacity for 18 million. I understand that what is built in cork has plummeted the airport in debt , which the ‘company’ is petrified of. So i think i can safely say the money was squandered.

If you wanted to spend 180 million on cork , having built a railway line to galway, you could build a short light rail route which passed by the busiest parts of cork. That would be better for everyone.

In is a bit obnoxious but germany did it and they have no traffic jams. You do not build roads trains airports where people are currently going or would like to go. You built these things where you want people to go. !! So if you look at a map of the german motorway system there are almost no direct motorway connection between cities. It is a tough idea to get your head around but it is the right way to do things (it just pisses off a lot of people until it is done —> of course that is how you know you are doing the right thing!!)

This misconception about the Cork/Hahn comparison is often introduced into debates about Cork airport. In fairness, it shows how effective Ryanair’s PR machine is, but the facts of the matter are different.

http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2003/06/22/story38861991.asp

Development plans for Cork Airport were formulated in consultation with airlines and their representatives, and their combined views significantly influenced the ultimate plan.

Many of the issues at Cork have their roots in its original 1950s design, which left it too small and constrained to handle the growing demand from new and existing airlines, and to cater adequately for the stringent safety and security measures required of international airports. We had proposed a less ambitious expansion at Cork, but the airline users vehemently objected and demanded a new building rather than the planned extension to the existing building. A consultation process resulted in a plan that met the airlines’ requirements as well as meeting all other associated demands for infrastructure, utilities etc.

But let me address Ryanair’s specific cost comparisons of the development at Frankfurt Hahn and at Cork.

Firstly, the new terminal at Cork will cost &#8364]

Then, regarding Shannon airport:

http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2006/06/25/story15278.asp

Shannon to lose €10m following US departure
Sunday, June 25, 2006 – By Niamh Connolly, Political Reporter
Politicians were warned last week that Shannon Airport’s viability was in doubt, and its separation from the Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) was unlikely to take place in the foreseeable future.

The largest carrier of US military personnel through Shannon, World Airways, will move its primary stopover for flights to Leipzig in Germany. GaryMcGann, chairman of the DAA, told an Oireachtas committee last week that Shannon’s ‘‘significant underlying losses’’ were masked by the impact of US military traffic. He said costs were too high and out of step with Dublin and Cork airports. McGann did not quantify the losses but said that the revenue from the US military flights was ‘‘shoring up’’ income at Shannon by between €7million and €9million a year.

The Sunday Business Post has learned that when military activity is stripped out, Shannon Airport’s losses amounted to €2.25 million for January and February of this year. The withdrawal of the Shannon stopover this November, which is expected to cost at least €4million a year in revenue, puts the airport on an even more insecure financial footing. The airport still needs money for capital expenditure on buildings, its airside ramp and runway. Maintenance costs are expected to run to €10million over the next six years. ‘‘Shannon is not viable; it’s losing money,” McGann told the committee last week. ‘‘In the last year or two, it has been supplemented in its income because of military traffic.

There’s no prospect of Shannon being viable at all in the next number of years; hence no prospect of separation.”

And I must also agree with A-ha above. One particular example: It is well known that a deciding factor for EMC to locate in Cork was the availability, proximity and convenience of Cork airport. EMC fly in customers to visit their plant on their own jets which are based in Cork. EMC employs around 1600 in Cork, I think.

the relative cost is not that important to my point . What is am trying to get at is that it is the interest of the whole western side of the country to have an airport that is in the middle , that way all three cities are within range.

As i said a good bit of money spent on a top notch rail link would mean the the airport was closer to all three cities than charles de gaul is to paris.

Having a large airport nearby means that there will be a greater variety of routes on offer. This is only a good thing. You gain from the demand from the three cities. You would expect a high frequency route to develop to london and a regular routing to america.

I have included two pictures which illustrate france and germanys approach to road building. The difference could not be starker. france built motorways where people currently wanted to go , while germany ignored current needs and decided where were allowed to go. You will notice that germanys grid approach means that more people can go more places faster. Paris in the mean time has ridiculous traffic problems .

I don’t really want to talk at length about all this because i reckon we will just disagree. So if there is a good retort then post it , otherwise let’s just agree to disagree.

A Boyle

Instead of pushing this Shannon idea ad nauseum why don’t you examine the millions being squandred on the regional airports such as the €500 subsidy on each seat to Knock as well as subsidies to Farranfore and Galway.

Lets face it Shannon is up the Creek because it is over staffed and poorly managed it also has no sizeable City to back it given that current policy is to get taxpayers to fund BAE model aircraft to ferry 3-4 business people to Dublin at a time from Galway. Who have their own ‘International Airport’ and have interest in joining with Limerick to try to make Shannon viable.

If the terminal at Cork cost €70-80m then it was worth it; the retail accomodation of 3500 sq m will generate €3-5m per year and I would hate to think what profits the parking will extract from regular users.

Re The rail idea for Shannon what is the status of the Beaux Walk rail spur that they undertook to provide as a planning condition of the shopping centre they built?

I just have a couple of points to address since I last saw this

Firstly, river buses… I agree that the idea of a river bus to Blackrock is dubious in terms of its viability. I’d be more interested in seeing a proposal related to the lower harbour. Given the population of Cobh and the number of jobs in Ringaskiddy, that could be a viable link. If consideration was being given to properly integrating public transport, it could also be used to link various lower harbour villages to the Cork-Cobh railway line.

As for the airport… The idea of a central airport with everyone having great transport links to it is nice in theory, but here’s what happens in practice. That airport gets a monopoly. It doesn’t worry about what it charges the airlines or about the level of passenger service it provides. Rather than providing an increased choice of routes, airlines gradually leave because of landing charges, I think we’ve seen that state monopolies are not the best at providing efficient or good service to the customer.

Furthermore, it’s great to talk about the link that Cork would get to the airport, but it would leave West Cork and South Kerry over three hours drive from Shannon and with no effective public transport option. That is the country’s premier tourist region after Dublin and it would effectively cut it off from international access. Cork Airport is not merely used by people from Cork City, but is the main airport for people from Mizen Head to the River Suir.

@mickeydocs wrote:

Use of Cork airport is not just limited to people from Cork, lots of people from Munster much prefer using Cork rather than go to Dublin.

It would be interesting to compare passenger figures for Cork and Shannon if transatlantic flights were also allowed for Cork (as they will be in the not too distant future).

Cork had more passengers than Shannon in 2004, however this trend was reversed in 2005 because of the huge increase in passenger numbers at Shannon due to US Military using the base as a stopover on their way to Iraq.

Twist there mickeydocs, are you done with the polishing….:D

I bet it would since Transatlantic was the main player for Shannon, and due to open skies, American routes going to Dublin, and September 11 (don’t know exact figures but transatlantic hold more than half of all in and outbound flights at Shannon) plummeted. Only for Ryanair it would have being a very bad year for Shannon. While Cork was busy opening new routes to Europe,and I will even say that they did well considering…

Yes I will agree about Millitary passing through, but its still was static due to less Americans flying, so either way it was balancing.

Shannon over the years and done better finacially than Cork, DDA was more sympathic to Cork If I can remember.

Also I must say, It’s a new phenomenon for shannon to have European flights into the airport.

I think it would be better in the long run for many reasons to scrapp Cork airport and merge it into shannon. I can see how threathned the cork people are, but you don’t want to see the positive.

@jdivision wrote:

Cork airport has been a joke for a decade. The new terminal building was badly needed. Shannon’s a hole and was only created for political reasons and despite getting every break going would be losing bucketloads of money if it wasn’t for the US troop landings. The fact that one of them is stopping next year has left it in the proverbial creek without a paddle. DAA can’t relinquish control of it because it’s incapable of standing on its own two feet.

LOL. Yeh it was Cork that was getting more money in the end, and CAUSED more debt for DAA not Shannon, ues shannon had debt but there were also a lot of money taken out of shannon at the same time, which causeed the monopoly at Dublin, which is why before EVER got into the equation Shannon wanted to run as a separate body, your right Cork airport is a joke….. US troop landings is getting a bit old. now since it’s leveling off, and threathned to be move elsewehere. Shannon had more problems going against it than Cork EVER had. Yet Shannon pulled through even with plummeting Transathlantic figues… In the end Shannon has it’s debts cleared.

Bottom line Shannon is overstaffed and badly managed furthermore it has no rail connection and has onlt Limerick to support it now that Galway is developing its own little airfield thanks to exchequer hand outs.

I agree that Shannon has in theory cleared its debts by a sharp accounting trick of shifting them onto the Dublin Airport Authority; it has been a very clever trick to have a grand terminal in Shannon that is overstaffed and empty most of the day whilst Cork has had airbridges removed from its badly needed and late new terminal and Dublin airport resembles the Long Mile Road Caravan centre and both cannot be resolved because the government has left Shannon debt free. Which I can only presume is so that it can accumulate another pile of debt in gauranteed operational losses.

@dave123 wrote:

LOL. Yeh it was Cork that was getting more money in the end, and CAUSED more debt for DAA not Shannon, ues shannon had debt but there were also a lot of money taken out of shannon at the same time, which causeed the monopoly at Dublin, which is why before EVER got into the equation Shannon wanted to run as a separate body, your right Cork airport is a joke….. US troop landings is getting a bit old. now since it’s leveling off, and threathned to be move elsewehere. Shannon had more problems going against it than Cork EVER had. Yet Shannon pulled through even with plummeting Transathlantic figues… In the end Shannon has it’s debts cleared.

Well Dave, I am glad that the powers that be (government, aer lingus, and others) didn’t bow to your unquestionable logic and have chosen instead to finally invest in Cork. Of course according to you it would make more sense to invest in an airport that covers Galway and Limerick, rather than to invest in an airport that serves a population hub that is well in excess of the combined populations of both those towns.

Open skies will finally reverse the years of excessive politiking that has forced everyone in the land to have to put up with the redundant Shannon stop over. Once again it takes a ruling made by someone rather than the Irish government to arrive at a decision that makes sense.

Thankfully Cork airport is here to stay, and will continue to help the states second population hub to thrive for the short, medium, and longterm future.

BTW, I flew into Cork at the weekend and was very impressed with the new terminal (from the outside of course). Was also very impressed by how large the Airport Business Park has grown. The second ariport hotel looks very impressive.

Just wondering how Irish Rails proposed once an hour scheduled rail service to Dublin will fare now that Ryanair are offering flights to Cork that amount to half the cost and one third of the travel time?

I think it would be better in the long run for many reasons to scrapp Cork airport and merge it into shannon. I can see how threathned the cork people are, but you don’t want to see the positive.

Lets see. Of two airports, you want to scrap the one with more traffic*, the bigger catchment area of the two in terms of population, and closer to the second biggest city in the state. And keep open the one that has only survived carrying large numbers of unnecssary staff because of political support. Nice plan there. In reality, the only thing that CNN has over Cork is that it has longer runways. Apart from that, its much easier to make a case for the inverse, close SNN and keep Cork. In reality, the state needs them both. Both Cork and Limerick need airports. There is no economic or regional development rationale for closing one. Knock, however, is a different matter.

*or will have as soon as open skies comes into effect, and the US troop numbers dwindle.

scrapping cork is the correct thing to do. instead of investing in cork airport , investing in a new direct rail link from cork to limerick and on to shannon is the best thing you could have done with the 180 million euro invested in cork airport.

That way you would have a rail link between cork and ennis (with a real chance of it continuing to galway) AND an airport with an catchment population comparable to dublin.

Intead you have a provincial airport which will never bring the same choice of destinations as shannon could.

However if shannon and cork can both survive then all the better , but if there is a choice it is quite clear that shannon is preferable.

@mickeydocs wrote:

Just wondering how Irish Rails proposed once an hour scheduled rail service to Dublin will fare now that Ryanair are offering flights to Cork that amount to half the cost and one third of the travel time?

Ryanair are actually cutting flights on Cork-Dublin in the winter, while Aer Arann and Irish Rail are increasing frequency.

The service has a number of flaws.

It doesn’t allow for connections in Dublin, which is one of the main reasons to fly to Dublin.

Unless you are heading to Dublin Airport or Swords, there is no time saving in going to Dublin. You will lose significant time if your destination is on the southside of Dublin.

Their last flight back in the evening is too early. You need to leave central Dublin around 4-4:15pm to make the flight, which is unacceptably early for business travellers or for people finishing up after a day working in Dublin.

There aren’t enough flights. If you need to change, Aer Arann can offer you a reasonable alternative flight. If you want to change your Ryanair flight, there will be a long wait, if there is a flight at all.

A standard train ticket still offers the flexibility of getting whichever train you want. Ryanair are going to hit you with a change charge.

Combined, these are killers for business travellers who have mostly stuck to the train and Aer Arann.

Ironically, given what I’ve said, the best way for Ryanair to make a go of the route would be to increase the frequency, not reduce it.

@a boyle wrote:

scrapping cork is the correct thing to do. instead of investing in cork airport , investing in a new direct rail link from cork to limerick and on to shannon is the best thing you could have done with the 180 million euro invested in cork airport.

That way you would have a rail link between cork and ennis (with a real chance of it continuing to galway) AND an airport with an catchment population comparable to dublin.

Intead you have a provincial airport which will never bring the same choice of destinations as shannon could.

However if shannon and cork can both survive then all the better , but if there is a choice it is quite clear that shannon is preferable.

preferrable to whom?

How about another option. Let’s scrap Dublin, Cork, Shannon, Galway, Farranfore, Knock. Let’s knock them down.
Let’s build an airport in the heart of the country that’s accessible to all areas of the country, let’s say we build this in Tipperary or Kilkenny, equidistant to Cork and Dublin, and quite close to Galway, Waterford and Limerick.
Let’s then build a railway network built around this airport. We could then have a rail network that makes all areas of the country accessible, and an airport that is within one hour of all main population hubs. The airport is now used by all four million citizens, and is thus able to provide a much better range of services than either Cork, Dublin or Shannon do right now (let’s face it, if we want to fly longhaul we always go via London, Paris, or Amsterdam).
This solution means that the majority of our citizens are no longe obliged to have to travel to go to Dublin so as to fly to the United States. The country gets an equitable transport infrastructure, and for much less than the proposed one billion that is to be spent on Dublin airport.

But the rub is that Ryanair had a DeBlacham & Meaghar proposal of very high quality for Dublin Airport that would have cost the taxpayer nothing

@mickeydocs wrote:

preferrable to whom?

How about another option. Let’s scrap Dublin, Cork, Shannon, Galway, Farranfore, Knock. Let’s knock them down.
Let’s build an airport in the heart of the country that’s accessible to all areas of the country, let’s say we build this in Tipperary or Kilkenny, equidistant to Cork and Dublin, and quite close to Galway, Waterford and Limerick.
Let’s then build a railway network built around this airport. We could then have a rail network that makes all areas of the country accessible, and an airport that is within one hour of all main population hubs. The airport is now used by all four million citizens, and is thus able to provide a much better range of services than either Cork, Dublin or Shannon do right now (let’s face it, if we want to fly longhaul we always go via London, Paris, or Amsterdam).
This solution means that the majority of our citizens are no longe obliged to have to travel to go to Dublin so as to fly to the United States. The country gets an equitable transport infrastructure, and for much less than the proposed one billion that is to be spent on Dublin airport.

Sounds like Zaventem (Brussels National) Airport in Belgium!

@witconor wrote:

Sounds like Zaventem (Brussels National) Airport in Belgium!

Sounds like Belgium full stop 😉

On a previously commented issue relating to Cork Airport, the airport website http://www.cork-airport.com/ is to be relaunched within the next week.The existing website is looking seriously dated, especially in comparison to those of Shannon and Dublin.

mickey docs is spot on. one single airport in the center of the country would be a great idea.

There are two things that might make the idea falter (possibly!).

One you are creating a monopoly. so we could all end up gouged. however if four terminal were built and indepentantly owned and operated then you could be onto .

The second reason why it is a good idea but a diificult one to implement is that it would require a huge amount a air traffic to pass over populated areas. in shannon and dublin are close to the sea.

Of course if a high speed rail connection existed between cork and shannon , then the logical next step would be to create a high speed dublin / shannon / limerick rail link . Then decommision the dublin to cork line.

@a boyle wrote:

mickey docs is spot on. one single airport in the center of the country would be a great idea.

There are two things that might make the idea falter (possibly!).

One you are creating a monopoly. so we could all end up gouged. however if four terminal were built and indepentantly owned and operated then you could be onto .

The second reason why it is a good idea but a diificult one to implement is that it would require a huge amount a air traffic to pass over populated areas. in shannon and dublin are close to the sea.

Of course if a high speed rail connection existed between cork and shannon , then the logical next step would be to create a high speed dublin / shannon / limerick rail link . Then decommision the dublin to cork line.

CDG is further from the sea than Athlone (the furthest inland area in the country) and caters for approximately 35 million passengers per year. Orly in the same city caters for 20 million passengers.

Zaventem is also further from the sea than Athlone.

Brussels and Paris have greater populations in excess of the entire populations of Éire.

This centralised approach completely ignores the idea that our aiports cater for three types of movement, cargo, business travellers and leisure travellers. Our airports tend to cater for the first two types, more so than the latter. Cork, Shannon and Dublin are all expected to act as economic generation aids, and are all successful at doing that.

However, due to limitations of all three major airports, leisure travellers, especially those looking to fly to longhaul destinations will always favour using Heathrow, CDG, or other similar airports. As such, all of our main airports service much larger hubs. The economic reality will show that we will all choose to fly from these hubs because flights will always be cheaper as these areas cater for very large populations, and benefit from competition and economies of scale.

Last Saturday I arrived in Cork airport and went to collect my bag. Six airplanes had all arrived within the preceding 15 minutes. So I queued and waited, and waited, and waited. The facilities would make you ashamed. The general ambience would make you ashamed. This airport was built to cater for half a million passengers, and this year will carry approximately three million passengers. Luckily we have a new terminal to look forward to. Most importantly we will have an airport that will reflect the success of our economic region (second only to Dublin by some distance!!!!), but also the success of our country.

Begrudge us our airport all you want. It is built. Aer Lingus see the value of investing in over €150 million in services and destinations from our airport. The goverment sees the value in a similar investment.

It is much too late to stop the building of this new terminal (which has cost €80 million) and all of the ancillary buildings and services which will take the overall investment to approximately €180 million. In August these will be open and available to the public.

The people of Munster require this investment, not just the people of Cork. Time to accept, in whatever form you choose to.

@jungle wrote:

Ryanair are actually cutting flights on Cork-Dublin in the winter, while Aer Arann and Irish Rail are increasing frequency..

There is no point in flying to Cork if you live/work on the southside of Dublin. Ryanair know that, which is why they are pulling back, they obviously have profiled their customers. In the mornings allow 90 minutes to drive from southside to airport/parking (thro’ town, avoiding the M50) allow another 60 minutes check-in before departure (to prevent “bumping”) then add 30 minutes flight time, another 45 minutes to negotiate the exit, the infamous roundabout and the Cork traffic. Total – 3 hours 45mins. minimum. You’d drive it nearly as quick. The train is better, marginally, and one can work.
Aer Arann is a disgrace, its timekeeping and cancellation rate are atrocious (to Kerry at any rate, wouldn’t use them for Cork) and it has now opted for unlimited company status to prevent the public from seeing the HUGE subsidies it gets from the taxpayer.

The financial rating agencies are watching DAA, fully prepared with pens sharpened to downgrade their ratings if the debt ratios are not right. DAA are fully aware of this, hence the posturing over debt / asset transfer and the sale of the GSH. Shannon is a dinosaur, overstaffed, overweight,. If people wanted to use it they would. Excluding the troop movements, Kerry – and even Knock – often have more traffice due to charters.
Ar bhfaca tu mo bhicycle?
KB2

@a boyle wrote:

scrapping cork is the correct thing to do. instead of investing in cork airport , investing in a new direct rail link from cork to limerick and on to shannon is the best thing you could have done with the 180 million euro invested in cork airport.

That way you would have a rail link between cork and ennis (with a real chance of it continuing to galway) AND an airport with an catchment population comparable to dublin.

Intead you have a provincial airport which will never bring the same choice of destinations as shannon could.

However if shannon and cork can both survive then all the better , but if there is a choice it is quite clear that shannon is preferable.

First of all, if we lived in a first world country like our government leaders force us to believe, then we would already have a railway line all up the west coast, probably connecting five different airports along the way. Also a boyle, it’s easy to see that Cork Airport does offer a wider range of destinations than Shannon does (excluding the American destinations). Can I ask what airport people from Clare and Limerick must go to if they wish to go on a week-end break to places like Prague, Amsterdam, Budapest, Paris, Barcelona, Madrid, Nice….. the list goes on. And I mean Barcelona…. not Girona (about 120km away from Barcelona). Cork has the widest range of European flights when compared to Shannon. I would imagine that more people from Shannon-side have a need to use ORK than Lee-side people have a need to use SNN. But I have to agree a boyle, both airports must be kept open, Cork has a large population base and ORK caters for that population aswell as the surrounding counties. Shannon too must look after its own local regional area as all people should be as close to some form of airport as possible.

@dave123 wrote:

In the end Shannon has it’s debts cleared.

Cleared by “deals” with the American Military and Government subsidies for employing large amounts of unnecessary people. Also I cannot see Shannon being debt free for many years to come, which is possibly why the DAA must hold on to it. Shannon has a 60 year old runway that is in serious need of upgrading. Also, wasn’t it only this time last year that the Minister for Transport revealed that the state pays the €10m annual cost to air-traffic control due to US military aircraft in Irish airspace. Financial figures released in April 2005 show that the airport lost €2.5m, whilst the transport of US troops made an income of €18m for the airport (that’s €30.5m in debt from next year already). So, come 2007-2008 when the Military leave, the Open Skies agreement is in place, the Stopover will have ended and the airport will need total modernisation…..hmmmmm how many millions will Shannon be loosing annually then €40-50 million?… maybe more.

P.S. – I almost forgot… how’s that EU investigation going over the incentives given to Ryanair? I hear Brussels-Charleroi is supposed to pay millions in fines to the EU. You’d better all get rid of those brown envelopes before someone comes knocking.

you have mixed up does with could.

vis a vis other first world countries having good rail link. let us keep some perspective. have a look a france’s network and you will see that ours is a lot more comprehensive with regard to smaller towns.

Now to repeat if you closed cork and built a proper high speed rail connection shannon would have a much bigger catchment area , thus supporting more routes.

better again is infact closing all the airports and build a new one in the center of the country

Are you still plugging a single airport?

I know I know…. the airport bashing should stop. It’s gone on abit to long, but I can’t seem to stop. a boyle, that train idea is fine if you live in the city, but what if you live in the backs of beyonds. I doubt every town and villiage would have it’s own railway station. And don’t even try to defend our rail system, which is one of the worst in Europe. France has a much better system. You must have been looking at the high speed TGV map, which only covers major towns and cities. There are hundreds of villages in France that are connected to the normal regular SNCF network. And you can say it all you want, but I would think that most people would be aginst closing all the airports to open up a single new one. Talk about creating a monopoly…. something that has gone on far to long in this country.

@A-ha wrote:

a boyle, that train idea is fine if you live in the city, but what if you live in the backs of beyonds.

😡 Actually I want to change my view. That whole train idea to Shannon isn’t fine…….it’s actually incredibly stupid. Talk about going backwards. I don’t want to give the impression that Cork Airport is equivelant to London LHR, Paris CDG or Amsterdam AMS, but really, do you think Shannon is God’s gift to the aviation world? I mean, like, who would even consider closing three airports so a train line can be built to Shannon. I don’t think people from Douglas would be to happy when they found out that the ten minute car journey to the airport has turned into a twenty minute car journey into the city centre, followed by an hour and a half train journey (including stopping in numerous stations along the way…. that is if it’s supposed to be profitable and of use to people), only to find out that you must wait three hours in a manky old dilapidated airport. I don’t think so! I’m off to bed before I have a banger attack.

@A-ha wrote:

😡 I mean, like, who would even consider closing three airports so a train line can be built to Shannon.

The germans would . They would build a 200 km/h route between cork limerick shannon and galway, with four stops only. the trip time would be 38 minutes. Then they would build a 300 km/h train between dublin and shannon. They would close the lines between galway and dublin and cork and dublin. Every one would save time overall.

And yes in fact the best idea is to build one single airport in the center of the country with four independant terminals. Set up a seperate government owned company to auction of each time slot to each terminal, thus minimizing the monopoly.

The advantage of this is huge , you would no longer need to go through heathrow AT ALL to go to different places.

Of course people like thomond park run this country , thinking that you provide infrastructure where people want it. While this sounds nice it is in fact the worst thing you can do . It is why there are traffic jams on the m50.

Instead dublin cork and shannon will all remain provincial and the country will continue to suffer the expense and time of having to go through heathrow, in order to get to many destinations. But clearly you all know better. what we have at the moment obviously works so well .

@a boyle wrote:

The germans would . They would build a 200 km/h route between cork limerick shannon and galway, with four stops only. the trip time would be 38 minutes. Then they would build a 300 km/h train between dublin and shannon. They would close the lines between galway and dublin and cork and dublin. Every one would save time overall.

And yes in fact the best idea is to build one single airport in the center of the country with four independant terminals. Set up a seperate government owned company to auction of each time slot to each terminal, thus minimizing the monopoly.

The advantage of this is huge , you would no longer need to go through heathrow AT ALL to go to different places.

Of course people like thomond park run this country , thinking that you provide infrastructure where people want it. While this sounds nice it is in fact the worst thing you can do . It is why there are traffic jams on the m50.

Instead dublin cork and shannon will all remain provincial and the country will continue to suffer the expense and time of having to go through heathrow, in order to get to many destinations. But clearly you all know better. what we have at the moment obviously works so well .

God bless your youthfull enthuasism,idealism & keeping the “silly season” going with ever more hilarious posts.

Hmmm

Lets take the Rhein Valley from Koblenz to Mannheim which is about the distance from Cork Airport to Shannon airport;

1 Hahn a former US airbase now used as a low cost airport
2 Flughafen Frankfurt an International hub largest air freight centre in Europe
3 Mannheim Airport a regional airport like Belfast Aldergrove
4 Heidleburg Airport

Not to mention the rest of the airports on the list here

yer all thalking about a topic thats never going to happen in a million years and i dont get why ye would want Cork airport to shut anyway whatever yer reasons! I think the topic should be about Cork airport gettong a rail service to the city centre! The new terminal looks fairly impressive evan before opening and the council should really think about providing a light rail service here to complement it and i know one counciller with a bit of ambition is fighting for it! When you here all this talk about people arriving into Cork airport and heading out of the city straight away! One of the reasons for this has to be that there was no proper service to the city centre and I know that skylink have set up and fair play to tha fella and i hope cie dont force him out after providing a half ass service for years! But if you think of it, every modern city airport should have a rail service to the city centre and especially Cork as it is close to the city and I really think this would encourage more people to stay in the city for a break if there was a light rail service from the terminal to the city centre! Apart from this aside Cork shoul learn from Dublin and should get it in motion now rather than waiting for the traffic to just get worse and eventually just cost more in the end to get up and running anyway, a service to the airport could go trough maybe togher and out that way and there should really be a service to caragaline(the most car dependent town in the country, but how really a suburb of cork) which could go through the douglas area as well which has more than enough of a population to cater for this not to mention ringaskiddy!And I know the green party have vowed to provide a service for Cork if elected but thats never going to happen! I just dont think most of the city councillers think big enough when doing there job and always stick to the little topics like anti social behavior and the likes, and dont get me wrong i know this needs to be done but all im saying is they never seem to think outside the box. I think this is mainly down to the way socitey has gone in recent years and as a result the way cork has developed in recent years and I think the young people of today down the line in a couple of years when they are elected to be councillers will be thinking more like this and how to keep developing the city to be a modern european city and wont be hanging about on all the small topics every week making it look like there doing more more than they actually are!

yer all talking about a topic that’s never going to happen in a million years and i don’t get why ye would want Cork airport to shut anyway whatever yer reasons! I think the topic should be about Cork airport getting a rail service to the city centre! The new terminal looks fairly impressive even before opening and the council should really think about providing a light rail service here to complement it and i know one councillor with a bit of ambition is fighting for it! When you here all this talk about people arriving into Cork airport and heading out of the city straight away! One of the reasons for this has to be that there was no proper service to the city centre and I know that sky link have set up and fair play to the fella and i hope cie don’t force him out after providing a half ass service for years! But if you think of it, every modern city airport should have a rail service to the city centre and especially Cork as it is close to the city and I really think this would encourage more people to stay in the city for a break if there was a light rail service from the terminal to the city centre! Apart from this aside Cork should learn from Dublin and should get it in motion now rather than waiting for the traffic to just get worse and eventually just cost more in the end to get up and running anyway, a service to the airport could go trough maybe togher and out that way and there should really be a service to caragaline(the most car dependent town in the country, but how really a suburb of cork) which could go through the douglas area as well which has more than enough of a population to cater for this not to mention ringaskiddy! And I know the green party have vowed to provide a service for Cork if elected but that’s never going to happen! I just dont think most of the city councillors think big enough when doing there job and always stick to the little topics like anti social behaviour and the likes, and dont get me wrong i know this needs to be done but all im saying is they never seem to think outside the box. I think this is mainly down to the way society has gone in recent years and as a result the way cork has developed in recent years and I think the young people of today down the line in a couple of years when they are elected to be councillors will be thinking more like this and how to keep developing the city to be a modern European city and wont be hanging about on all the small topics every week making it look like there doing more than they actually are!

@daniel_7 wrote:

yer all talking about a topic that’s never going to happen in a million years and i don’t get why ye would want Cork airport to shut anyway whatever yer reasons!

Here here

@daniel_7 wrote:

I think the topic should be about Cork airport getting a rail service to the city centre!

I totally agree

@daniel_7 wrote:

The new terminal looks fairly impressive even before opening and the council should really think about providing a light rail service here to complement it and i know one councillor with a bit of ambition is fighting for it! When you here all this talk about people arriving into Cork airport and heading out of the city straight away! Apart from this aside Cork should learn from Dublin and should get it in motion now rather than waiting for the traffic to just get worse and eventually just cost more in the end to get up and running anyway, a service to the airport could go trough maybe togher and out that way and there should really be a service to caragaline(the most car dependent town in the country, but how really a suburb of cork) which could go through the douglas area as well which has more than enough of a population to cater for this not to mention ringaskiddy!

Well I wouldn’t take Dublin as a model at all as the delivery of two lines costing almost 3 times the original budget and not connecting is exactly what you would want to avoid. That said Luas has been received very well since it has come into operation and it has proven that where a sleek attractive public transport option is made available it will entice people away from their cars. I am sure that a similar system for Cork would enjoy better project management and deliver a similar quality project at an equal or lesser cost per kilometre. The key as Luas has proven is getting the initial spine in which in this case would be to the Airport and various extensions could then be delivered on a phased basis.

@daniel_7 wrote:

I think this is mainly down to the way society has gone in recent years and as a result the way cork has developed in recent years and I think the young people of today down the line in a couple of years when they are elected to be councillors will be thinking more like this and how to keep developing the city to be a modern European city and wont be hanging about on all the small topics every week making it look like there doing more than they actually are!

In fairness Cork already feels like a modern European City as it has some very impressive civic spaces such as Pana Emmett Place and a refurb for Grand Parade would be impressive. Having said that a focussed bunch of young turks could really deliver another level again.

fine no problem , build a tram (you don’t need it – a airconditioned bus network would be a better idea) , but don’t ask dublin to pay for it.

And moreover pay for your own airport terminal , thank you very much

I imagine that you are running the risk of being banned for trolling A Boyle;

In the interests of clarity I will however rubbish your nonsense.

Buses will not work for three reasons firstly motorists ignore them by clogging up bus lanes and clearways both parking and driving in them. Secondly speed for whatever reason in this country it is felt appropriate to place a bus stop every 100 yards and as such journey times are simply too slow. Thirdly from the demand side buses are stigmitised as the poor mans transport and even if you had coaches with 30 leather armchairs in them they do not attract people out of their cars in the same numbers.

Re Cork Airport; The new terminal and ancillary works have cost €160m the retail element will generate a rent roll of at least €3m per year with the car parking will probably generating a similar sum. The key issue here is that Cork Airport is viable and can make operational profits; in contrast the Ashbourne By-pass which serves a couple of thousand commuters living in Co Meath costing

N2 Ashbourne Bypass/M50 Junction The scheme involves the construction of approximately 3.5 km of a new dual three lane carriageway with hard shoulder, approximately 13.5 km of a new dual two lane carriageway with hard shoulder and 1.5 km of new dual two lane carriageway without hard shoulder. The scheme also includes 16 bridge structures, two grade separated interchanges, four at-grade roundabouts and approximately 6 km of minor road works. The scheme is being progressed as a Design & Build contract and construction by Jons Sisk JV commenced in May 2004. The scheme was officially opened by An Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern TD, on 25th May, 2006.

The N2 Ashbourne/M50 Junction provides for a new 17 km high quality dual carriageway extending from Finglas to north of Ashbourne, which will be bypassed. The construction contract is valued at ¤93.5m (inclusive of VAT). The Authority anticipates that the all-in cost of the scheme will be ¤207m when planning and design; land acquisition and other costs are included.

Mr. Malone said, “The scheme, which will effectively bypass Ashbourne, is welcome news to motorists who experience daily congestion along the N2. Off peak 10 minutes will be cut off journey times, with the time saving increasing significantly during peak periods. One of the most important aspects of this scheme is the increased safety for drivers. The predicted accident rate for the new dual carriageway is less than a quarter of the accident rate on the existing N2 between Finglas and Ashbourne. The bypass will also greatly enhance the quality of life not just for motorists but also for the residents of Ashbourne.

I wonder how much the residents of Ashbourne should pay?

for disagreeing with you thomond ? hardly .

The good people who use the new ashbourne road should pay for every penny spent , with a nice juicy toll .

regards buses , your defeatist attitude, while unsurprising , is depressing. Aircoach seems pretty popular to me. I think you have misconstrued ,current shoddy practise with potential.

With respect to a transport connection between cork airport and cork city.
Reserving the two central lanes on the south link road , and segregating them from the other lanes through the use of those little plastic bollards, would sort out any encroachment problems.

Regards comfort (stigma) the use of airconditioning would sort that out.

Regards capacity. have a look at http://busexplorer.com/PHP/MidPage.php?id=870
http://www.vanhool.com/products_bus_detail.asp?TabID=3&ID=13&ProductCategoryID=1

The second link shows a vehicle with potential for doorways on both sides of a bus.

This opens up the prospect of in effect building a service very close to that of a tram (with faster times , as buses are permitted to go faster). With stops in the center of the road and at the edge of the road.

I would also point out that much of the discontent that exists with any public transport is due to the lack of airconditioning (luas included).

Finally trying to maintain that buses don’t work because there are too many bus stops is retarded. Nothing works if there are too many stops , be it tram train or bus.

for disagreeing with you thomond ? hardly .

I hope for your sake that you are trolling and really do not think that you will get anywhere by telling people on a thread dedicated to a particular City that they must put their begging bowl away. I’m sure someone will coreect me on this but doesn’t Cork generate 31% of the Country’s GDP?

The good people who use the new ashbourne road should pay for every penny spent , with a nice juicy toll .

If the toll didn’t go in day 1 it isn’t going in ever unless a compuerised road pricing scheme is introduced nationwide.

regards buses , your defeatist attitude, while unsurprising , is depressing. Aircoach seems pretty popular to me. I think you have misconstrued ,current shoddy practise with potential.

I have not dismissed buses totally but it is a recognised fact that trains are more popular look at the user figures for the Luas Green Line and the predecessors on the Route such as the 44 48A etc. There is no way you would ever get people in formal wear to take the bus but it is a common sight on Luas and Dart in the evenings.

With respect to a transport connection between cork airport and cork city.
Reserving the two central lanes on the south link road , and segregating them from the other lanes through the use of those little plastic bollards, would sort out any encroachment problems.

Not going to happen the AA and chamber of Commerce would kick off wheras a Luas would have the enthusiatic backing of most if not all stakeholders.

Regards capacity. have a look at http://busexplorer.com/PHP/MidPage.php?id=870
http://www.vanhool.com/products_bus_…ctCategoryID=1

As stated above in relation to the 44/48A there was plenty of spare capacity on these buses at all but peak times having more empty buses or larger empty buses solves nothing.

Finally trying to maintain that buses don’t work because there are too many bus stops is retarded. Nothing works if there are too many stops , be it tram train or bus

Do a comparison of the number of stops between the 44/48A and Luas Green line and it becomes obvious why one reaches Sandyford in 22 minutes and the other takes 45 minutes to do the shorter journey to Ballinteer, the constant stop start drives the time up signifiacntly.

exactly how does the 48a route relate to what i propose ?

The 48a bus comes every twenty minutes, shares the same road space as cars vans trucks etc. etc. It also doesnt have priority at traffic lights. Because the prepaid tickets are difficult to get and unreliable , almost everyone pays when boarding.

Trying to compare this with a double articulated airconditioned bus which is segregated from traffic sitting in the center of a road, with bus stops in the center of the road (like a tram), and using the same ticketing system as the luas is beyond retarded . Dim in fact.

As the aircoach is successful, it points to you being tottally wrong about people refusing to use buses.

People will use what works .

With respect to cork airports debt. If this new terminal is so rooted in economics sense and not a pure piece of government pork , then why oh why does my irish times repeatedly tell me that i will have to pay for cork airport debt, through higher landing charges ? Could you please explain that one to me in one sentence.

The aircoach has typical ridership figures of 8-10 per coach every 15 minutes; the aircoach from Cork to Dublin I was on was much more successful with 22 people on it leaving Cork there were 12 still on the bus when it left Mitchelstown and 4 further passengers boarded en route to Dublin journey time 4 hours 30 minutes vs 2 40 on the train which had 9 coaches and people standing from Thurles in bound.

A Boyle articulated buses have failed miserably in Dublin and have been replaced as the latest gizmo by tri-axle buses; Dublin is still a Medieval City and Cork is little different.

You have further failed to address the attraction of light rail and commuter trains as against the image of buses as being the poor mans transport.

In relation to Cork airport being a Pork barrell it is only perceived as such because when the change from the centralised Aer Rianta model to splitting into three independent airport Authorities some genius decided that Dublin would be lumped with all the debt.

That approach is plain wrong and it is clear to me that Cork should shoulder some of the outstanding debt and that the taxpayer will have to write off a large chunk in relation to Shannon which in my opinion should be sold off to either DHL, UPS, Fed Ex or Maersk as it is infrastructurally a very good airport but does not have the population base to support the staff numbers that exist there. Given that Cork is operationally viable I believe that a proportion of the car parking should be leased to NCP or an equivelent company and all the new commercial space should be sold to the National Pension Fund at an appropriate yield of say 4% once let and the proceeds should be used to pay down the costs of constructing the terminal.

I would also consider that the construction of a €900m terminal of questionable functionality and poor user experience quality will have a larger impact on landing charges at Dublin than the annual finance servicng costs of the Cork Airport Debt which if the airport fails to grow traffic on the basis of dodgy accesibility to the City and lets be honest buses are not the norm at most European airports then it will represent a certain medium term default risk.

@a boyle wrote:

With respect to cork airports debt. If this new terminal is so rooted in economics sense and not a pure piece of government pork , then why oh why does my irish times repeatedly tell me that i will have to pay for cork airport debt, through higher landing charges ? Could you please explain that one to me in one sentence.

It’s only fair, we paid for Shannons shady “incentives” long enough. Just because it isn’t classed as a form of debt doesn’t mean that we never forked out money to fund it’s development.

Anyways, moving on, has the new terminal been named “Cha & Miah Terminal” or is this just rumours spreading? I’m just glad they didn’t decide to call it after Roy Keane.

good point reargding shannon subsidies.

I still don’t think it is fair the debt be moved just because previously shannon received handouts.

It probably isn’t fair, but that is just the way our crazy country is run. What people should remember though is that Ireland only 30 years ago was as poor as Kosovo or Bolivia is today (there’s nothing wrong with my geography by the way…. I know they are both on opposite sides of the world). But, the government is still stuck in a fu*king time warp, which is why, with all the money the country has, we still lack the infrastructre that a modern European country should have. Take London for example, I know the city has a population five times the whole population of Ireland…. but they are spending absolute billions on public transport. The new Cross River Tram got planning permisson and funding with the blink of an eye. The DLR was built in the ’80’s for the East End and they are adding to it every day. Not to mention five international airports, the most extensive underground network in the world, high speed trains to Paris and Brussels and a new high speed train opening in time for the 2012 Olympics, appropriately called the Javelin to link one side of London with the other and then onto France and Belgium. When you see integrated transport like that in operation, you’d wonder what the hell the government are doing over here all day!

Opening off licences in Leitrim

ok yes they do spend a lot, but we should think carefully before we sink our money. The uk did run all parts of the world which have ever produced any wealth. That has allowed them to build up fantastic transport . (But note not as good as germany as they wasted a lot ).

We have only had money for twenty years (since we enter the eu). All things considered we are not doing to badly, the motorway network is moving full steam ahead. There are two tram lines built.
And a complete set of trains have been bought.

I would caution you corkonians to be wary of greeks bearing gifts! look over what i have suggested a dedicated ,segregated bus service could work. If decent buses (airconditioned) were bought they could be comfortable. As the roadway is in place all that is needed are some decent platforms with perhaps architect designed bus stops. After that some political will to remove roadway from other users.

Our tram cost 750 million. We took so long to build it that now it is already full all the time. as a result we are building a loony metro , instead of more trams to spread the load. We will sure find ourselves in a vat of debt , and no country to colonise , which all our european neighbour had the advantage of.

From a Cork perspective the motorway network is not moving full steam ahead it in fact stops at Watergrasshill and does not recommence until Portlaoise.

In the UK in general and London & Birmingham in particular public transport is taken as a given it must be of a sufficient standard to move millions of people around every day. Comparing Dublin to either is a joke; 2 tram lines that don’t meet and a single rail line that disects the City Centre.

What Cork needs to do is implement the CASP plan that their own planners drew up and has the benefit of local expertise and a vision for the City that has been developed in its authors minds over a long period of time.

Buses are effective if you want to serve urban sprawl infrequently; if Cork wishes to develop at a decent density then at least light rail will be required.

As regards, the airbridges in Cork airport, I seem to have lost track, but weren’t we told that at least one, if not two, of the initially proposed three were being scrapped? Because it looks like all three were built in this image…

And by the way, just noticed it in the background there, but anyone agree if I suggested the great southern hotel is the most boring building ever? Looks like a fecking barn, really crap if I might say so.

@phatman wrote:

As regards, the airbridges in Cork airport, I seem to have lost track, but weren’t we told that at least one, if not two, of the initially proposed three were being scrapped? Because it looks like all three were built in this image…

And by the way, just noticed it in the background there, but anyone agree if I suggested the great southern hotel is the most boring building ever? Looks like a fecking barn, really crap if I might say so.

There will be only 1No. Airbridge to the new terminal – thats the one nearest the existing terminal.However the walkways were constructed for all 3No. airbridges – Only in Ireland !

The G.S. Hotel is very poor and complete under utilisation of the site – It looks like a corporate design to suit any site anywhere.

B.T.W. It has been a concensus for a long time now that Merchants Quay Shopping centre is the most boring building ever.:)

@markpb wrote:

Buses, Irish style, are only useful for serving urban sprawl. There are lots of things that can be done to make them just as effective as a tram system with half the cost and much more flexibility.

A completely segregated bus network (not the bits of auld bus lanes that we have in Dublin) with articulated buses with three sets of doors (all of which actually open, unlike Dublin) can be built for almost nothing compared to a tram system. It’ll also carry vastly more people at the same speed as a tram.

finally someone agrees with me and sees sense .

thomond look at a map of dublin there are many routes which go through the city and do not require a bus to turn once. Thus the use of triaxle bus is indeed very possible.
The use of two axle bus down suffolk street is of course so thick that only a dublin bus person would have proposed it.

Regards convincing poeple to use them . Well If would have though that a bus that was airconditioned with nice cool air in the summer, heated in the winter , it would be an attractive option. Removing many of the stosp along the way so that their were a minimum of 800metres aparts would be a good improvement to. Moving the bus lanes into the center of the road and segregating the space with plastic bollards would help too. This would allow for proper express bus services.

Insisting on the use of prepaid tickets only would further speed up the bus.

Maybe it is just you .

@a boyle wrote:

finally someone agrees with me and sees sense .

Read the title of the thread and try to stick to it; Bus better than light rail I’m not going to repeat myself yet again on why your aassertion is groundless.

there are several routes through cork which are appropriate for a central median reserved bus system.

Buses are better because they can give relief immediately whereas light rail will take a minimum of 6 years.

They combined with the use of a smartcard allow us to analyse traffic patterns and find out where a light rail might be needed in the future.

They create the modal shift between car use and group transport, thus making it far easier to then build a tram network. It is much easier to close a lane on a road to proceed with utilities diversion/ track laying if people already have a alternative to the car.

Ha good idea come from me, negative comments come from you .

@a boyle wrote:

there are several routes through cork which are appropriate for a central median reserved bus system.

Buses are better because they can give relief immediately whereas light rail will take a minimum of 6 years.

Although, I’ve generally disagreed with a boyle’s posts, I do agree with this.

The immediate priority in Cork has to be sorting out the bus service. We can dream of light rail all we like, but between political will and implementation practicalities, we’re not going to see it before 2015.

Bringing a bus service up to a 6-10 minute frequency should also give a realistic measure of where light rail is likely to be successful.

With regards to the Airport debt, I don’t think that we got value for money with the new terminal and ancilliary works. Fundamemtal problems remain (runway too short, instrument landing system has not been upgraded to ILS 3 – this despite ORK consistently having the most inclement weather of all our airports, lack of airbridges so that pax still have to run for their dear life in the rain to a distant stand – getting soaked to the skin on an outward journey lasting approx 15 hours is not pleasant, trust me).
The debt issue is symtomatic of our government’s overall aviation policy (or lack thereof). The unions still see the airports (and our national airline) as their plaything and everyone else must do as they say. The cost structure at all Irish airports is still too high. Dublin is a shambles and Shannon is on life support thanks to US troops and such like. We presently have three seperate boards for each of the airports, but one management (the DAA). A complete joke would accurately describe our airport policy at present.
Finally, the funds generated by the sale of Great Southern Hotels will no doubt be funnelled back to the Dublin Airport Authority. I wonder would a third share of that be allocated to partially cover the expense of the new terminal at Cork! Also, I wonder does Shannon have to pay for its new terminal which was completed several years ago (and won an architectural award incidentally). Memories can be selective when neccessary and we can constantly feel sleighted at the treatment of each airport. Nevertheless, this country needs a viable and sustainable aviation infrastructure and it is the repsonsbility of the Department of Transport to ensure that the right framework is in place for this to happen. Sadly, their record is not impressive. As a paying passenger, I detest travelling through Irish airports as they are shoddy, dirty, cramped, inefficient, and with security that is more appropriate for Iraq than Ireland. Rant over!

I agree the 10-20kms was laughable given the fiscal set up since 1995 or so.

MHenness

The NDP stated that you would have a full motorway to Dublin by years end, you currently have a dual carriageway to Wattergrasshill which leaves a 100 kms plus gap to Portlaoise

thomond is of course selective in his information. The esri has previously warned us not to increase the rate of infrastructure provision because the economy is already so tilted towards building houses.

Indeed there is no denying (except thomond) that cork infrastructure is in much better shape now and moving forward .

As already point out the motorway round fermoy is nearing completion this year (early i think) and the michelstown relief road is done and of course the recently started chunk of motorway.

Corkonians should focus on my suggestion of canvassing for dual carriageways to have the central lanes segregated with plastic bollards , and the provision of comfortable buses, and bus stops in the center of the road , thus keeping other traffic seperated as much as possible. looking at the map of cork it seems ideally placed for a chicago styled central loop (on the central island) with offshoots in the different directions

there is no reason that a ten/ fifteen minute long journey between the airport and the city couldn’t be done.

If i have it wrong thomond , what exactly would you do ?

@Thomond Park wrote:

I agree the 10-20kms was laughable given the fiscal set up since 1995 or so.

MHenness

The NDP stated that you would have a full motorway to Dublin by years end, you currently have a dual carriageway to Wattergrasshill which leaves a 100 kms plus gap to Portlaoise

It’s been accepted by many for a long time that the original NDP timeframe was not going to be delivered on for roads. I’m not saying that this is acceptable but in fairness it is the first time a government in Ireland and our civil service have tried to plan such projects and it does take time to learn and get it right. I think they have this nailed now in relation to road projects. I would also like to see the records of other countries when they tried to deliver their road projects back in the 50’s and 60’s. Did they also have the same teething problems that our administrators have had?

@Angry Rebel wrote:

The Fermoy bypass will open in October.

The Cashel/Mitchelstown piece has been underway for over a month and will run from the Cork side of the Cashel bypass to a few mile the Dublin side of Mitchelstown.

Can anyone explain to me why we do new roads in 20 and 30 and 40 km sections. Would it not be more economical to tender for, say 150km? This would be a contract of sufficient size to attract large international groups who may be able to price more competitively on a large contract but wouldn’t be interested in the bitty pieces currently on offer (unless as a minority partner in a joint venture led by an Irish firm).

I suspect it’s partially to do with developers based in Ireland wanting it that way and maybe it was deemed way too difficult to get projects of the size you suggest through the planning process here since anyone on a whim can decide to object. :rolleyes: I do agree that we should have much larger projects.

i think too if you built the motorway from dublin to cork in one go , then you could not open it up in stages … . You would be talking about a 7 / 8 years build not a nice prospect for a government that has to look for a new job contract every five …

It is probably all in all much in a muchness. Since brennan redid the contracts the motorways have been progressively built quicker. look at the nra, site and you will see that they have a fair bit on their plate all over the country.

Now whether it was a good idea to build a motorway between dublin cork limerick and galway that is another discussion…

@Angry Rebel wrote:

Providing infrastructure is not the same thing as building houses, and in fact, given the high level of housing provided, there should be accelerated delivery of infrastructure to support these developments. This means roads, public transport, schools, medical facilities, public space and much more.

Dedicating central lanes is one of the more pointless ideas I’ve heard in a while. For a start, having an increased number of pedestrians in the centre of the road, who must cross lanes of traffic to access the central median to leave or enter buses is dangerous and disruptive to traffic flows. Furthermore, there is space to run buses in those lanes, but generally not enough to provide a safe and comfortable boarding area.

Re motorrways: 3 years of a delay in delivering a road of only 160 miles is laughable, and something you would not see in most other developed countries. You must wonder who was in charge of making sure we had the expertise, the knowledge and the gumption to put their hands up and say, “Hang on, we don’t know what we’re doing here, let’s talk to someone who’s done it before”.

Do you know for a fact that similar issues have not appeared in other developed countries when they were trying to role out their motorway network?

@Angry Rebel wrote:

Providing infrastructure is not the same thing as building houses, and in fact, given the high level of housing provided, there should be accelerated delivery of infrastructure to support these developments. This means roads, public transport, schools, medical facilities, public space and much more.

Dedicating central lanes is one of the more pointless ideas I’ve heard in a while. For a start, having an increased number of pedestrians in the centre of the road, who must cross lanes of traffic to access the central median to leave or enter buses is dangerous and disruptive to traffic flows. Furthermore, there is space to run buses in those lanes, but generally not enough to provide a safe and comfortable boarding area.

building houses is not the same as building roads. but roughly twice as many people are employed building things as is appropriate. And so the esri advised the government to ease of infrastructure till it has built all the houses it wants to .

No you are plain wrong about central lanes. they are a great idea. The disruption to other traffic is minimal because roads have to have pedestrian crossings anyway. The improvement is huge , because the bus is not blocked by anybody else so you get reliable journey times . The bus being segregated can drive consistenly fast (30/40 miles an hour). And the route can take a much higher frequency of buses no doubt 2 minutes between each bus is doable.

You also are able to do the whole city in one go instead of piecemeal. So it is entirely realistic to go from the shite you call public transport now , to four /five routes operating right across the city with very high frequency of service and huge increased capacity. Thus you force people out of there cars because it is in everyones interest. But you are able to force people out of their cars because from day one you have a full system.

Through the use of smart cards you can then start to analyse where people are going and coming so that you can plot where you will need to upgrade to a tram in the future.

for cork what would work very well would be to reserve south mall / lapps quay , merchants quay/lavitts quay, and corn market street grand parade. You put stops to the north west and south (the east stop is the current bus station) pick four five routes and have them lead on to this circular route, with the buses stopping at all four stops before returning where they came from. just like chicago.

Sorry but what could you do that is better?

@a boyle wrote:

one single airport in the center of the country would be a great idea.
.

Welcome to a recession. :rolleyes: Do you genuinely think a multinational would locate in Ireland if that happened. We have enough trouble getting them to locate here when they travel by car into the city centre after landing at Dublin Airport.

@Angry Rebel wrote:

Do you?! Sorry, my mother always told me not to answer a questions with a question. However, whether the mistakes were made in other countries is exactly the point!!

1 – If no mistakes were made then clearly those countries really had their sh*t together and we should have spoken to and learnt from them.
2 – If the mistakes were made,I don’t care that France or Italy wasted their own money (or the EUs) but it means that people/agencies were out there to consult on lessons learned on similar projects.

Check out this website:

http://www.iht.org/motorway/page1.htm

It is an archive which contains quite a lot of information about the development of the UK motorway network. As you read through it you begin to see a certain resemblance to what is going on today in Ireland in terms of what it takes to get a motorway developed. Keep in mind that Ireland has only recently had the resources to develop such a network and a lot of resources are needed to bring in the expertise you talk about. Even the M25 was built in a piecemeal fashion and took ages to complete. Remind you of the M50?

@Angry Rebel wrote:

What are you talking about?

I am talking about an ESRI report which came out last year i think . The basic jist was (is) we have twice as many people in the construction industry as we ought to. Accelerating spending on infrastructure would exacerbate this. They wanted the government to wait until construction of houses naturally degins to decrease before cranking up the spending on infrastructure. Thus to try to keep a lid on the number of construction worker.

@Angry Rebel wrote:

Nonsense. There are more bus stops on a route than existing pedestrian crossings! Think about it.

Yes but there are also crossroads all over the place. So there is always a point when cars are stopped to allow other cars to move. during these times pedestrians can cross roads without affecting the flow of traffic. One very good example of this is the mad cow roundabout in dublin where the tram crosses lanes but does not hold up cars anywhere. Think about it. Besides you would not just be providing a little bit of bus capacity , you would provide space for half , two thirds? of commuters , drastically reducing the number of cars.

@Angry Rebel wrote:

There’s no reason why it couldn’t be opened in stages! They could build sections sequentially and open as they go or build in parallel and allocate resources in decreasing proportion as they reach the centre.

ie Apply 30% resources to the 60 miles out of Dublin (the busiest and containing the busiest bottlenecks of Kildare/Monasterevin/Abbeyleix)
30% to the 60 miles out of Cork (next busiest and containing the bottlenecks of Fermoy, Mitchelstown and Cashel)
40% evenly across the quieter sections in the middle.

Well if you open it up in stages then surely your are defeating the purpose of building in one go? are we not building in stages ?

Unfortunately with transport , people get the impression that there are different solutions to the problem. Often they think that there own ideas are so fantastic that everyone elses are just ridiculous. i would not fall into such a category, no no.

having been to scores of cities , those that work do things similar to what i am proposing , and those that don’t do things the way dublin has done.

It is more a case of i am right, it is obvious and when you agree we can set up do it. As opposed to i have a solution, you disagree and we will continue to muddle through. Then maybe in twenty years when there are three tram lines in cork we will think about making it harder to drive around.

Not impressed

While potential light rail and other developments are hugely important to the future of the city, I’d like to hear a few ideas for what can be done to improve the situation immediately. Essentially, these are things that cost very little to implement and can be in place rapidly. Even bus lanes take time to build and I’m talking about measures that could be in place within 6 months if the will was there.

So, here are a few starters

• Pana for public transport only – This was the plan anyway, but with the building works on Grand Parade, it’s even more relevant. Traffic is queuing back onto Merchant’s Quay and Parnell Place and snarling up the city centre. Buses are getting stuck in huge delays making them less attractive as an opttion and also meaning that frequency isn’t what it might be
• Buses not to remain idle in the city centre – Again, a bus that’s sitting on Patrick St waiting is one that could be used to increase the frequency of the bus service. It makes a mockery of the idea of cross-city routes.
• Extend the 6 – When it goes into town, it should go to MacCurtain St and the train station too. On the other side, it could servce the industrial estates by Musgraves, but more importantly could link Douglas and Grange to the airport. Regardless of airport passengers, there are a large number of people who commute from the Grange are to the business park daily.

The last of these might require investment in extra buses, but overall, I reckon there could be significant benefit derived for little investment. More importantly, they could be achieved quickly.

@jungle wrote:

While potential light rail and other developments are hugely important to the future of the city, I’d like to hear a few ideas for what can be done to improve the situation immediately.

6 Route in Grange should also go the other way, i.e. an express bus from Grange that goes down towards Kinsale Rd roundabout and in to town that way, the amount of people that get passed on the 6 route in the mornings makes the route ridiculous as the bus is full already. (The 6 did go to McCurtain St I thought once upon a time but had the weird situation that it stopped outside easons for about 10 mins so you ended up walking up there quicker).

Green route on Donnybrook hill needs to be continued in to the village (and the village made one way) rather than the very pointless curent situation where the bus then blocks all the traffic behind it at the school.

Pana traffic free definitely but the only route from say douglas to blackpool /mallow rd is through the city unless you go up silversprings and around that way, so cars have no option. Also removal of most of the bus office will get rid of huge coaches pulling out on to a main rd and maybe leave the bus office as a hub while the core goes to horgans quay (hurry up CIE).

There should be queues of buses to pick people up from the airport, I thought it would be fundamental.

There is a definite bus bias here, given that I would be stunned if light rail appears in the next 10 years. I thought Cork was due to get a fleet of smaller shuttle buses at some stage, like the IMPs in Dublin, more frequent and more of them would be perfect for Corks size. You cant even get a bus after 11.30 at night to major suburbs i.e. nightlink which is a complete joke as you have to get a taxi which is €3.50 just to sit in to (and they are on strike for more money – fair play).

Check out these pictures of the new terminal. Excellent shots. Check ’em out.
http://www.flyinginirelandmagazine.com/photo/displayimage.php?album=12&pos=0

Will someone please tell me what the story is about all these rumours to do with Ryanair buying land in Killeagh where the Old Aerodrome used to be? I’ve heard talk about it everywhere, but nobody seems to know the full story. From what I hear so far, they are planning to use it as an airport. Without laughing, can someone gimme some more info. It sounds so crazy I can’t believe it, but I’ve it heard from lots of different people. (I’ve posted this in both the Developments and Transport threads…… I really want to find out as much as possible).

I heard recently that the Mitchelstown Bypass, which was due to begin construction sometime at the start of 2007 has been put off for two years or so due to difficulties related to funding. Great.

@PTB wrote:

I heard recently that the Mitchelstown Bypass, which was due to begin construction sometime at the start of 2007 has been put off for two years or so due to difficulties related to funding. Great.

Where did you hear that exactly? If this section of the N8 is held up I very much doubt it has to do with funding since from 2007 money is coming on stream from Transport 21. Even so, there is a guaranteed funding envelope for roads from the Dept. of Finance. Given that big projects are being completed this year such as the Port Tunnel, this should see more resources available to start new projects. As far as I’m aware this piece of new roadway is already through the planning stages at this point so I don’t see why it should be held up. The only thing I can think of is that because the Mitchelstown Relief road is complete that the NRA might want to prioritize other projects since this bottleneck has been improved. Saying all that, if the project begins in mid 2008 like you suggest, I don’t think it would be impossible to have it completed by the end of 2010 which is when the government claim the entire inter-urban network will be finished.

Regarding the earlier debate about cork airport:

The suggestion that Cork should close in favour of a rail link to Shannon is so far fetched that it’s almost madness. That’s simply not how air travel works. People want to go from point to point. Cork’s a seriously large area with catchement that includes the Cork/Kerry tourism region which sees something like 4 million visitors a year. On top of that it has easy access by car to the southeast (waterford etc) and the south midlands via the N7/N8 AND it has a rail link via Kent station + bus feeding in a whole load of potential passengers who live along the high-speed Cork Dublin rail line.

If anything shannon’s the one that’s not viable in the long term. I think shannon may well shrink down to being a much smaller airport as time goes on.

As for building a Cork-Shannon high speed rail shuttle service. Have you ANY idea how much that would cost?! If you were to build a service that could actually link it quickly in a way that would replace the airport you’d be talking about building a TGV line.. and spending probabally a figure more like 1 billion euro.

Cork Airport will rapidly reach capacity.. just watch this space!

I read today in the Echo that easyJet are pulling out of the Irish market. From September 30th, all flights from Cork, Shannon and Knock will cease. The airline said that Cork was their best Irish route with the highest amount of passengers, but the airline couldn’t compete with Ryanair who flies to both London’s Gatwick and Stansted airports as well as Aer Lingus’ flights to Heathrow.

who were these people crowing about corks sizeable population , supporting a local airport ?

You need a single airport for the eastern side of ireland. not two half proper ones plus 3/4 subsidized joke ones.

Your money would be better spent on decent rail links to and from shannon and much improved bus links.

What is the point of a cork airport , convenient as it is to kerry and the local industry , if few companies will fly there ?

Remember a proper rail link to shannon would put it at a 40 minute trip . From dublins point of view that is a stones throw .

clearly i am wrong . a small airport serving london that is ten minutes away is much much better that a large airport fourty minutes away serving all the destinations that dublin airport does and more .

Risible.

@a boyle wrote:

who were these people crowing about corks sizeable population , supporting a local airport ?

You need a single airport for the eastern side of ireland. not two half proper ones plus 3/4 subsidized joke ones.

Your money would be better spent on decent rail links to and from shannon and much improved bus links.

What is the point of a cork airport , convenient as it is to kerry and the local industry , if few companies will fly there ?

Remember a proper rail link to shannon would put it at a 40 minute trip . From dublins point of view that is a stones throw .

clearly i am wrong . a small airport serving london that is ten minutes away is much much better that a large airport fourty minutes away serving all the destinations that dublin airport does and more .

Risible.

I cant see your argument about population size at all.If you were to base an airports viability on population alone then shannon would be the one to close in the morning.

I also seriously doubt that Shannon serves more destinations than Dublin,and im pretty sure that Cork actually serves more destinations than Shannon but correct me if im wrong

no hoggy you missed the point entirely . Shannon is near to both galway limerick and cork. So if you spend money on decent rail infrastructure linking the three towns to shannon then shannon has a much bigger catchement population . You stop subsidises such jokes as knock and kerry international airport, and close cork , because if you can get shannon dealing with a sufficient number of poeple then it becomes economical to open routes to many new places. If you spend money on top notch trains and buses feeding into shannon then everyone ends up at least a little bit better off, but most poeple end up a lot better off.

Cork is simply too far from galway and galway is simply to far from cork .shannon is bang in the middle .

It is the same as dunnes stores on the southern ring road compared to the spar/centre round the corner. dunnes is much bigger , and further away from most than the local spar , but every one is willing to drive to it.

Not rocket science ,common sence.

Trully risible that a new terminal is opening up and a company is pulling out of cork.

Don’t forget that they are pulling out of Shannon aswell. And please a boyle, end the whole “make Shannon a super airport” thing, because really, I’m not the only one that is sick and tired of your opinions. You say Shannon is bang in the middle, but what airport is more central if you live in Kerry, Tipperary, Kilkenny or Waterford…. I would imagine that it’s Cork. I’m not for airport bashing…. but when you carry on for so long about such a ridiculous idea, then someone must put a stop to it. We’ve heard your views on Shannon since the forum began, now if you could just manage to start talking about some other area of CORK transport, then I’m sure we would all get along fine.

no problem .

As i alluded to in another thread. how is it possible that cork city has lost population in this new census.

What hope is there of ever getting improvements in transport if people are ever moving further to the suburbs , where it is fiercesomely hard to provide for them? reversing that trend ought to be the top priority of cork galway ,limerick and dublin.

There is no chance of things like a light rail happening in cork without addressing this .

@a boyle wrote:

As i alluded to in another thread. how is it possible that cork city has lost population in this new census.

It happened the same way it did in Limerick, out-dated boundaries. a boyle, you make it sound as if emigration from the city to the suburbs is unique to Cork. I believe it goes on in most cities]There is no chance of things like a light rail happening in cork without addressing this .[/QUOTE]

Maybe not light rail as in a tram, which I would be strongly opposed to if it were a Luas style system, but the Cork Suburban Rail is being extended into the suburbs and satellite towns right now. I believe it’s called planning ahead. For the fun of it, let me call out the suburbs of Cork that by 2008 will all be connected by suburban rail. Starting off – to the east we have Dunkettle, Little Island, Glounthaune, Fota, Carrigaloe, Ballynoe, Rushbrooke and Cobh with a branch of at Glounthaune to Carrigtwohill and Midleton. To the North, from Kent station we have Kilbarry, Monard, Blarney and Mallow. It’s not highly extensive, but it’s relied on by the thousands that come into Cork every day by train, whether it be for school, work or shopping.

no what ireland is experiencing is not a normal course of events.

It is one thing to have suburbs spreading like mad , but normally these would occur because you would have such an increase in demand for housing in the city itself.

So in taking the census you would hope that while the suburbs might grow by 40000 , the city would grow by 150000. and when doing it in percentage , based on the population in situ you would hope the city would increase in population by 10 percent while the suburbs grow by 5 percent.

What we have is what is happening in old american cities like detroit that are in perpetually decline. It is something that is completely against any normal healthy growth in a country.

Argueing that the city boundaries are now outdated is only accepting defeat, and doens’t acheive much. We have a situation in dublin and undoubtedly in cork limerick and galway, where city schools are closing, due to lack of numbers and whole blank areas in meath kildare louth wicklow have not half enough schools , hospitals etc.

The whole point of a planning system is to put people where you can cope with them . We seem to have gone for putting the masses in the countryside instead of the city , which is ruly thick way of managing the growth in the country. It is the single reason for so much traffic on your lovely ring road. Because believe it or not we have relatively few cars per person in this country.

A Boyle, do you ever look at facts before starting your rant.

Facts, Cork City and Limerick City both declined in population during the period 2002 to 2006. Dublin City grew by just 2%. Galway grew by 9%.

Does this mean that Galway’s growth is outpacing the rest of the country?
Look again at the facts. Areas around Cork, Dublin and Limerick are growing by ridiculous amounts, in someplaces by up to 30%. The population of Co. Cork grew to just under half a million in this census with a growth rate of over 11%. The Dublin region grew by just 5.6%.

Surely a growth rate such as this undermines a need for a metro in Dublin???

Now let’s take your point that Cork and Limerick are in perpetual decline similar to Detroit. Once again I presume you didn’t take a close look at the figures, just the summary headlines.

If you look at page 11 on the CSO Report you will see a paragraph that states that decline in population in areas such as Cork, Waterford and Dublin is attributed to “a combination of factors including adult children leaving the family home, urban renewal schemes and regeneration projecs involving the demolition of older housing. In addition many of the infill developments in city areas consisted of apartment blocks in which individual units catered for only one or two persons”.

Other factors cited are “relatively low level of new housing and an ageing population”.

So what we are seeing in the traditional city areas are changing demographics. Traditional working class areas are experiencing steady population decline due to an ageing population, children leaving the family home, and smaller family units.

Ballinlough has seen a population decline of 51%. Hmmm, why is that. Obviously terminal decline of a city… no, in fact this represents students leaving a traditional student area to live in accomodation provided by colleges.

Blackpool – 27%… maybe the fact that the whole of Blackpool is a construction site has something to do with this.

Togher – 17%… ageing working class area, children moving on.

However, if we look at the towns surrounding Cork, for example Midleton, Carrigaline, Douglas, Ballincollig, etc,
we see growth rates of approximately 15%, in towns that are alreay quite populous. So are the inhabitants of this town partaking of too much viagra leading to huge baby booms, well I’m sure that quite a few of these new inhabitants are from Ballinlough, Togher, and Blackpool.

Probably best to just look at the summary headline and reach conclusions though.

Please move on to a new topic A Boyle, you are a very tiresome contributor.

i cannot understand you. are have backed up my point , and yet dispute it with me . all the cities are sufferring from decline or relative decline while the suburbs are thriving .

You confirm this. I merely point out that this type development is seen in the cities of america which are either in decline (detroit)/or might as well be they are so horrid (los angeles)

I don’t care if every body is getting on in age in cork, they point blank should not be moving to the suburbs. , you have an entire swathes of land in or at least close to the city ripe for housing . cork has seen the opening of several out of town centres , after dublin conprehensively tested them in tallaght liffey and blanch . Each one is more depressing and shite than the next.

Again that is a pattern of development we have borrowed from the americans.

Now having said all this , go to an american city (not new york) have a look at how transport works . It is dire.

This entire discussion on cork transport is completely irrelevent unless you begin to look at the basics. sure you had a wonderfull ring road with tunnel. now only a few years in operation it is jammed.

I note with some scorn that while all this cork lads are happy to knock my ramblings , not a single counter suggestion .

Serving the entire western seaboard with a single ‘super’ airport, as sustainable or clever as it lmight look to some people on paper, is simply not feasible. First of all to close Cork airport would prove detrimental to the economy of the region. Secondly, and more practically, you simply cannot change peoples travel patterns so easily. Those who travel by car to Cork airport would most likely travel to Shannon by car, regardless of the possibility of a rail link. By merging the existing airports into one airport, you are obviously expanding hugely the rural hinterland being served, the majority of people being car dependant and much too far removed from the rail network to even consider using it. So, with the exception of your jet setting young urban professionals, a rail link to an airport so far removed would do nothing to justify such a move. The lack of an airport in Cork would further rule out the possibility of air-commuting between Cork and Dublin, and for that matter between Cork and the U.K. Cork is a city of such a size, and is such an important contributor to the Irish economy, as well as being an important toutism gateway, that people want to fly directly there, not have to travel half way across the country to get there. Cities much smaller than Cork support their own airports. And as for the whole argument of the range of destinations being unsatisfactory, the airport is not purporting to be anything more than it is, and obviously the supply is there to simply meet the demand, in which case it is fulfilling its purpose. Save a US route, I can’t see any problems, and if there is a deficiency somewhere, I’m sure the new terminal will allow for increased service where necessary, and suceed in attracting new airlines.

Cork (and Limerick) cities have seriously tight boundries, much more so than Dublin. The fact that there’s development land close to the city centre wouldn’t actually improve the population statistics. There is practically no land available for development within the city council area that isn’t in some other sort of use. Even relatively close parts of the outskirts of Douglas are in County Cork.

The population decline’s purely a misrepresentation of raw statistics by news outlets.

As for Cork being near Shannon airport ? Where did you get that idea? There’s NO WAY you could link Cork to Shannon in 40 mins, even with 125 mph trians you’d be looking at over an hour.

It’s 75 miles / 120 KM suggesting that using Shannon would be even remotely accessible from Cork is a stretch of the imagination.

Shannon’s 86.6KM from Glaway (an hours drive) and only 20KM from Limerick. So, yes those two places do fall within its catchement area, although Galway’s highly marginal.

Also, Cork doesn’t just serve London… it has a huge range of direct destinations. All that shannon has is a couple of artificially created transatlantic routes which, when open skies happen may well disappear anyway with the end of the Stopover.

Directly serves:
Amsterdam Aer Lingus
Alicante Aer Lingus
Barcelona Aer Lingus
Belfast Aer Arann
Birmingham Aer Arann
Birmingham bmi baby
Bristol Aer Arann
Budapest Malev
Cardiff bmi baby
Dublin Aer Arann
Durham Tees Valley bmi baby
Edinburgh Aer Arann
Glasgow Loganair
Leeds Bradford Aer Arann
Liverpool Ryanair
London Gatwick Easyjet
London Heathrow Aer Lingus
London Stansted Ryanair
Malaga Aer Lingus
Manchester bmi baby
Munich Aer Lingus
Newcastle Jet2.com
Nice Aer Lingus
Paris Aer Lingus
Prague Czech Airlines
Rome Aer Lingus
Southampton Aer Arann
Warsaw Aer Lingus

And just added:

Gdansk – Wizz Air
Krakow – Central Wings
Wroclaw – Centarl Wings
Galway – Aer Arran
Leeds – Aer Arran
Birmingham – Aer Lingus
Berlin – Aer Lingus
Madrid – Aer Lingus
Prague – Aer Lingus
Lanzorate – Aer Lingus
Tenerife – Aer Lingus
Katwice – Wizz Air
Nantes – Aer Arran
Lorient – Aer Arran

Easy Transatlatnic access via : LHR, Gatwick, Paris Charles de Gaul and Amsterdam — it takes less time than going via Dublin or Shannon over land!

As for the Cork population, it’s got a metro area approaching 300,000 people.

You’ll see the city’s core population starting to grow a little I think when some of these new docklands developments take off. The simple fact is that Cork city has very limited housing stock within the city bounds itself and what is there is either very mature corporation estates or extremely pricy inner suburbs that are out of the reach of your average first time buyer by a long shot.

@MrX wrote:

Cork (and Limerick) cities have seriously tight boundries, much more so than Dublin. The fact that there’s development land close to the city centre wouldn’t actually improve the population statistics. There is practically no land available for development within the city council area that isn’t in some other sort of use. Even relatively close parts of the outskirts of Douglas are in County Cork.

The population decline’s purely a misrepresentation of raw statistics by news outlets.

As for Cork being near Shannon airport ? Where did you get that idea? There’s NO WAY you could link Cork to Shannon in 40 mins, even with 125 mph trians you’d be looking at over an hour.

It’s 75 miles / 120 KM suggesting that using Shannon would be even remotely accessible from Cork is a stretch of the imagination.

Shannon’s 86.6KM from Glaway (an hours drive) and only 20KM from Limerick. So, yes those two places do fall within its catchement area, although Galway’s highly marginal.

Also, Cork doesn’t just serve London… it has a huge range of direct destinations. All that shannon has is a couple of artificially created transatlantic routes which, when open skies happen may well disappear anyway with the end of the Stopover.

Directly serves:
Amsterdam Aer Lingus
Alicante Aer Lingus
Barcelona Aer Lingus
Belfast Aer Arann
Birmingham Aer Arann
Birmingham bmi baby
Bristol Aer Arann
Budapest Malev
Cardiff bmi baby
Dublin Aer Arann
Durham Tees Valley bmi baby
Edinburgh Aer Arann
Glasgow Loganair
Leeds Bradford Aer Arann
Liverpool Ryanair
London Gatwick Easyjet
London Heathrow Aer Lingus
London Stansted Ryanair
Malaga Aer Lingus
Manchester bmi baby
Munich Aer Lingus
Newcastle Jet2.com
Nice Aer Lingus
Paris Aer Lingus
Prague Czech Airlines
Rome Aer Lingus
Southampton Aer Arann
Warsaw Aer Lingus

And just added:

Gdansk – Wizz Air
Krakow – Central Wings
Wroclaw – Centarl Wings
Galway – Aer Arran
Leeds – Aer Arran
Birmingham – Aer Lingus
Berlin – Aer Lingus
Madrid – Aer Lingus
Prague – Aer Lingus
Lanzorate – Aer Lingus
Tenerife – Aer Lingus
Katwice – Wizz Air
Nantes – Aer Arran
Lorient – Aer Arran

Easy Transatlatnic access via : LHR, Gatwick, Paris Charles de Gaul and Amsterdam — it takes less time than going via Dublin or Shannon over land!

As for the Cork population, it’s got a metro area approaching 300,000 people.

You’ll see the city’s core population starting to grow a little I think when some of these new docklands developments take off. The simple fact is that Cork city has very limited housing stock within the city bounds itself and what is there is either very mature corporation estates or extremely pricy inner suburbs that are out of the reach of your average first time buyer by a long shot.

I am not getting into the debate that Cork should lose its airport… Nevertheless, Shannon does seem to be more economically located than say, Cork due to greater access to the regions… It is a superb location between all the major centres, to be fair,

Aha mentioned that Tipperary commuters would op for Cork rather than Shannon, I highly doubt that. I would say 99.5% percent of North Tipperary people would use Shannon Airport, for the obvious reason it is closer and is bigger. Likewise, same way that south Tipperary would probably op for Cork as it’s to do with location, so it attracts more numbers from S.T. However, places like Clonmel and Waterford could easily choose to travel en route – Dublin or Shannon. There is not a big difference in mileage for the southeast to travel to any of the main Airports= Shannon, Cork and Dublin, if anything would be more direct going straight up the N24 imo. Alternatively, go to Dublin,
Overall, Shannon is in easy reach to all major centres, Cork is peripheral (edged) to urban centres. On the other hand, Cork does have a large Metro area to have an airport in its own right…, which is a good argument for Cork. Therefore, I think it would be a huge loss to the Cork region if it were to lose its airbase; I would be surprised if it ever happened.
The reality is it won’t happen; Don’t think it would occur to any one’s mind of the likelihood, even if Shannon had a super Airport connected with high speed lines to the cities.
Though, Speaking of Metro regions
Suburban population sprawl between the catchments of either Cork or Shannon airport… If we, take the example of where the most of the growth is happening. Which is Shannon. My reasons.
Look at the population explosion between Limerick and Galway in the last few years,
The population around the periphery of Shannon airport will be served by the local demands easily competing Cork, even when the stopover is axed, so to put it into another perspective. Population is growing faster within an hours drive from Shannon, than let’s say an hour’s drive from Cork and this trend will continue.

Southern Galway population is in the catchments of Shannon Airport. Moreover, is growing quite fast and in the direction Of Shannon. In addition, swallowing up towns like Gort. The sprawl is just 35 minutes from Shannon. As we know, Limerick/Shannon is a hub with Shannon Airport located, so we know the Airport is part of the Metro. . So technically, you have two Metros that are approaching Shannon, though Galway on a lesser scale, as its region in its own right.

Cork Airport is closer to Cork, which is a plus, but in recent demography’s of the region, Cork is expanding in a northerly and easterly direction in recent years, more so than south where growth always concentrated around Bishopstown, Douglas, and Carrigaline etc. though there are growing, I’m just pointing out an aspect of change. With the recent upgrades like the Lee tunnel, and N8 upgrades etc, are partly the blame I’d imagine.

Therefore, Movement of Population would also determine the location of an airport.

It would be disastrous if Cork was given authority and status over Shannon IMO, if it came down to one airport. I.e. Cork being favoured as number 1, which I would strongly disagree.
You will have all the large urban centres travelling down to the far south. This would create more congestion and more problems, and wouldn’t make economical sense, so I can see some of Boyle Ideas.

Look at the N18 corridor and you will see. The population distribution is obviously going to back up keeping Shannon in the long run. Now with the proposed rail link to the new Limerick to Ennis Line (eventually linking up with Galway by 2011- 2015) and the plans to upgrade the N18, this furthers that Shannon Airport is sustainable.

What ‘s your point?

A Boyle is full of it, and right now he’s just stirring trouble.
Cork contributes one third of the states gdp and represents one eight of the population.
The Greater Cork region is the fastest growing region in Munster (almost 12%).
There has been a significant investment in Cork because it is by far and away the state’s second most populous area. The greater Cork area is now an area of 300,000 people and growing. This is far in excess of the combined greater areas of Galway, Limerick, Ennis, and Shannon combined.

One airport serving the Western sea board is not going to happen. Open skies will reverse the disproportionate state aid that has been propping Shannon up for the past fifty years. Cork will have transatlatic routes in the next 24 months, and another significant slice of the population that keeps Shannon going will have been removed.

I believe that Cork is now deserving of a tax free area similar to the tax free zone that has served Shannon. Time for a bit of a level playing field for all regions equal to its contribution to the state.

dave123->I don’t think anyone in Cork would wish to see Shannon closed down. Somewhere further back in this debate I made a point that closing Cork down would give Shannon a monopoly, which would be bad for customers. The same applies in reverse.

Following this logic, it is best not to view the airports as having unique catchment areas. Although people in close proximity to the airport will probably chose to fly from their local airport and probably connect, for people who lie between the airports, a number of factors will be taken into account. For example, I have a large number of relatives in Waterford. If a direct flight is available from Waterford, they will use it. After that, Cork is their airport of choice. However, they will use Shannon and Dublin too. A number of factors, including route availability and price will be taken into account and a choice made as a result. The fact that people like them have a choice is a good way of keeping the airports on their toes, even if a properly competitive situation is still pending.

Anyway, I’m considering requesting that all this talk of a single West Coast airport be put into a thread of its own. It is not entirely pertinent to the question of transport in Cork and serious points about public transport and the road network are getting drowned in the constant arguing on this point. Any opinions?

I agree with jungle and mickeydocs. Common sense should be at the forefront of this thread to put an end to time wasting. Talking about Cork airport is fine, but obviously in moderation. Forgot to say it, but I read that the Kinsale Road flyover will be finished in the next few weeks, a whole 7 months ahead of schedule. Good news or what!

It is good news the junction created chaos on the route at peak times and completion when it happens must be welcomed.

In relation to the comments re Cork Airport I totally agree and have started another thread for that discussion i.e. Shannon vs Cork and Aberdeen

There are much more pressing matters in hand such as the road network and the state of public transport not to mention the new terminal which should not be obscured by going too far off topic.

I read on last night’s Echo that a proposed route for the North Ring road is being announced. Does anyone have any details, or better still, a map?

Funny that as Transport 21 has no record of it whatsoever. Although I believe that the N25 is due to be upgraded.

Whilst a route may be unveiled there is no money in the pot for it to be built for at least another decade

could we please stop refering to transport 21.

giving the government’s top twenty pork chops for the country a name gives the list a veneer of thought and competence.

a list does not constitute a plan.

I think it was presented to city/county? councillors this morning and will be displayed to the public this afternoon in the Commons Inn and some other hotel tomorrow. If someone has a copy of yesterday’s Echo lying around, the article is on the bottom of page 2!

It will be many years before this is built (if ever) but I’m curious about any proposed route due to the hilly nature of the terrain out there.

Pre-election stunt
There are bigger priorities as far as I’m concerned such as keeping debt at a realistic level at the airport and improving public transport

Two observations

There have been some roadworks recently on Leitrim St and Hardwicke St. The standard of repair done afterwards is apalling. I’ve long noticed that contractors in Cork seem to leave the road in a terrible state compared to what I’ve seen in Dublin or the UK. Is this because they are allowed to do this, but that contractors in other locations are more considerate or is there a serious enforcement problem in Cork City Council.

And on the subject of enforcement… On a quick trip through the city centre today, I came across cars and trucks that were parked on double yellow lines on South Main St and Barrack St. As the city council is so determined to clamp and tow people who overstay in legitimate spaces, why are they allowing these vehicles, which are serious obstructions and possibly even a road safety problem to remain.

Air Baltic are operating flights from Cork to Riga for the August bank holiday week-end to provide an insight into the viability of the route. Also a new airline based in Gibraltar called FlyGibraltar has plans to start flights from the British Overseas Territorty to both Dublin and Cork from April 2007, although booking should be available by October. As far as I know, these would be the first flights from Gibraltar to any destination in Ireland.

@A-ha wrote:

Air Baltic are operating flights from Cork to Riga for the August bank holiday week-end to provide an insight into the viability of the route. Also a new airline based in Gibraltar called FlyGibraltar has plans to start flights from the British Overseas Territorty to both Dublin and Cork from April 2007, although booking should be available by October. As far as I know, these would be the first flights from Gibraltar to any destination in Ireland.

Seeing as to land a plane in Gribraltar the main road from Spain has to be closed, one might appreciate that it’s not the busiest airport! So I’m surprised at this move. 😀

@A-ha wrote:

Air Baltic are operating flights from Cork to Riga for the August bank holiday week-end to provide an insight into the viability of the route. Also a new airline based in Gibraltar called FlyGibraltar has plans to start flights from the British Overseas Territorty to both Dublin and Cork from April 2007, although booking should be available by October. As far as I know, these would be the first flights from Gibraltar to any destination in Ireland.

That sounds great. Just wondering where you heard it though as I logged on to their web site a moment ago where there was no mention. Any idea how you would book it?

@phatman wrote:

Seeing as to land a plane in Gribraltar the main road from Spain has to be closed, one might appreciate that it’s not the busiest airport! So I’m surprised at this move. 😀

Thats awesome, and nuts 😀

@shanks wrote:

I read on last night’s Echo that a proposed route for the North Ring road is being announced. Does anyone have any details, or better still, a map?

I think the yellow route was chosen as the preffered route,this is the one furthest from the city which makes the most sense really.

The other route,not sure what colour it was,came very close to where I live so im happy they chose the most logical option…now when construction will start is another matter entirely!

@browser wrote:

That sounds great. Just wondering where you heard it though as I logged on to their web site a moment ago where there was no mention. Any idea how you would book it?

I read it in the newspaper last week, and saw it again on Wikipedia (not the most reliable, I know). You seem to have done more than I did as I can’t find a website at all. They are operating no routes yet, as they are a new airline, but they will start flights to Manchester and a few other UK destinations aswell. I forget where though. Give me the website that you logged onto…. I can’t find any. Booking won’t be available until October, so I presume you will have to wait until then. 😉

Also, from October 31, Ryanair will increase it’s frequency on Cork-Dublin flights to 4 a day.

http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=1080812006

@Hoggy wrote:

I think the yellow route was chosen as the preffered route,this is the one furthest from the city which makes the most sense really.

The other route,not sure what colour it was,came very close to where I live so im happy they chose the most logical option…now when construction will start is another matter entirely!

http://www.corkcoco.ie/co/pdf/734326387.pdf

Heres a PDF with the route options. Not very big file.

Yellow one has the tunnel, will be interesting to see if they stuff a toll on it.

Cork City Council is in talks with Irish Rail about opening a railway station in Kilnap, near Farranree on the Cork-Mallow line. It is hoped the station will be open in 2008 to coincide with the opening of three other stations on the Mallow line and the re-opening of the Midleton line as part of the Cork Suburban Rail.

@A-ha wrote:

Cork City Council is in talks with Irish Rail about opening a railway station in Kilnap, near Farranree on the Cork-Mallow line. It is hoped the station will be open in 2008 to coincide with the opening of three other stations on the Mallow line and the re-opening of the Midleton line as part of the Cork Suburban Rail.

I’ve expected that station to open as one of the features that the new Goverment Offices were looking for was access to a rail connection (according to Lexington many many moons ago).

This is a very positive move for the area.

Oh sorry, lol, I would imagine through a travel agent because I couldn’t see it on their site either, but I really can’t see why they would bother for one weekend, seen as there is no point forking out money for a few days advertising. You should ring the travel agent asap before all the tickets are gone, I’d say Riga would be a very popular route.

@mickeydocs wrote:

I’ve expected that station to open as one of the features that the new Goverment Offices were looking for was access to a rail connection (according to Lexington many many moons ago).

This is a very positive move for the area.

Agreed, anything that will take the cars of the road must be good, but what Government Offices are going there, it’s the first I’ve heard of it. Where’s kite by the way? He hasn’t been here for ages.

Revenue Commissioners relocating from Sullivans Quay?

Ya, construction should be under way, I think!

Both options for the Cork Northern Ring Road had a tunnel on the Glanmire end to preserve the “natural look of the area”.

Anyways, I’m fairly interested as to what sort of a junction will be used where the North Ring Road meets the N8 north of Glanmire. To my mind, it has to be a similar slip road system as being used where the Ringaskiddy road meets the South Ring Road in Rochestown.

Sadly such foresight doesn’t form part of the NRA mindset and I wouldn’t be suprised if they went for some ludicrous roundabout laden mash of a thing being integrated with the Glanmire flyover junction.

Hopefully they will realise their stupidity before, and make the entire north ring totally freeflow.

I’ll make sure to send them an email asking this.

Hi,

I was home in Cork last weekend. I drove back up to Dublin Sunday afternoon and I used the Mitchelstown by-pass for the 1st time. To be honest I didn’t time it or anything but it didn’t seem like I was saving time. Way too many roundabouts! The next time I go down to Cork I’ll time it using the old way and then the new way. Traffic wasn’t bad when I left Cork so it was hard to judge but I presume it has made a great difference to the town itself. I heard the Fermoy bypass will be a motorway! Excellent if it is! Does anyone know how long the journey from Crok – Dublin should take when the by-pass is completed?

As regards the airport, I rang Aer Rianta last week and was told the arrivals are opening tomorrow, then the charter flight arrivals/depts and all depts will be up and running around Aug.15th! I can’t wait – I’m going to fly down when it’s open!

Is there a new control tower being built??

A friend landed in Cork while ago from Dublin and texted me and said there are 4 airbridges in the new terminal!!

At night-time it would definitely be quicker to drive through the town. As well as the roundabouts, the relief road swings out in a very wide arc around the town. It must be 5 or 6 Kms in length.

Yeah the relief road seems excessively ’roundabout’, literally and figuratively. Should be renamed “Mitchelstown Scenic Route”. Still, it’s better to have it there of course.

@rebel_city wrote:

Hi,

I heard the Fermoy bypass will be a motorway! Excellent if it is!

it will be excellent, pity about the toll, looks very small at the toll bridge, hope it doesnt cause blockages.

I think the toll booths you are talking about are the one’s which you see at the 2 small roundabouts before Fermoy – on the city side. I noted this too. If you’re driving up from the Dunkellte roundabout after the “pink bridge” you can get a glimpse of the bigger toll booth. i think the small one is for those cars coming onto the new bypass from fermoy and the bigger booth is for those coming from the city. That’s what I think – may be wrong. There’s definately a bigger toll booth in place – multiple lanes I reckon. The motorway on the N4 I think from Dublin the “the west” has multiple lanes at the toll booth area.

Just found a siter called http://www.cork-spotters.com and on it there are excellent pics of the inside of the new terminal! It looks really well. The food court and seating area are hard to judge because of the shot taken.

Check out the pics on this link:

http://cork-spotters.com/photo/displayimage.php?pos=-289

@rebel_city wrote:

I heard the Fermoy bypass will be a motorway! Excellent if it is! Does anyone know how long the journey from Crok – Dublin should take when the by-pass is completed?

A friend landed in Cork while ago from Dublin and texted me and said there are 4 airbridges in the new terminal!!

The NRA says that the new M8 Fermoy Motorway should cut up to 45 minutes off the Cork-Dublin journey during peak times….. which is probably likely seen as traffic in Fermoy seems to go on for ages at rush hour. It’s really good to see that Cork will be the first county down south to get a motorway…. even if it will be tolled. I think it’s supposed to be completed early 2007.
As for the airbridges….. only 1 has been fully installed, but the remaining 3 are “half installed” and therefore not useable for the time being.

Any images of the new Cork airport terminal?

http://www.corkairport.com/index.asp

New website with photos of the new terminal.

As well as the opening of the new terminal at Cork airport today, the official Cork Airport website has been updated too! Check it out at /www.corkairport.com/.There are a lot of internal photos on the site as well.It looks great!:)

Check out the pics oof the new airport on this link:

http://cork-spotters.com/photo/displ…e.php?pos=-289

check out the new cork airport website: http://www.corkairport.com/index.asp

I was out at the airport over lunch. Seems very good though not everything was open. Obviously I couldn’t see the “behind security” stuff in duty free areas either. In general the Terminal seemed a little smaller than I imagined but nonetheless a huge step up from the present Irish airport terminals.

I also just looked at the airport website. Again it is a huge improvement but it could be padded out. For instance, the link to info about short breaks gives a 3 line summary of the city and then links to about 5 attractions, including Mahon Point! (no offence but Mahon Point is like EVERY shopping centre everywhere in the world. Your average international traveller would hardly travel to see that). Worse still the link to the English Market is to a one page “directory listing” giving things like phone numbers, opening hours but no idea what the market actually is, no details of its history and no pictures. Hopefully this will be sorted out in time.

Finally, and on a slightly diff note, I see on the web site that there is no longer a Cork – Munich Aer Lingus route. Anyone any idea when this stopped and if there are other Aer Lingus destinations that have been ditched in recent times. You always hear of new routes opening but not about closures….

@browser wrote:

Finally, and on a slightly diff note, I see on the web site that there is no longer a Cork – Munich Aer Lingus route. Anyone any idea when this stopped and if there are other Aer Lingus destinations that have been ditched in recent times. You always hear of new routes opening but not about closures….

Milan was ditched a while ago. Faro was off the Winter timetable, but came back for the summer. Nice stops at the end of next October, but again that may be a Winter/Summer thing.

Anyone know if the Motorway designation will be extended from Watergrasshill to the top of Glanmire.

The road is of equal quality as the stretch of Motorway presently being built, a centre divider has recently been put up and there is an optional route for L drivers and tractors to take.

Not sure about the stretch to Glanmire…. I think it’s just the Fermoy section, which I said yesterday wasn’t opening until early 2007….. I read in the Echo today that it is opening in October 2006. As for the airport, it is absolutely stunning. Was out there today and the place is gleaming. I’ll fly to London for the day in a few weeks to get a look at the Departures area. The new website is brilliant aswell. I’m so glad to see that manky old Aer Rianta website gone out the window. Hope a few new destinations are added sometime soon.

@jungle wrote:

Milan was ditched a while ago. Faro was off the Winter timetable, but came back for the summer. Nice stops at the end of next October, but again that may be a Winter/Summer thing.

Munich was cancelled awhile back. Bloody madenning, it was so useful. Now it involves doing a trip to DUBLIN, no thanks, or going Kerry – Frankfurt Hahn and driving on the Autobahn for 7 hours.

By the way, does anyone else want to strangle the idiots closing off one half of the tunnel for 3 weeks?

@THE_Chris wrote:

Munich was cancelled awhile back. Bloody madenning, it was so useful. Now it involves doing a trip to DUBLIN, no thanks, or going Kerry – Frankfurt Hahn and driving on the Autobahn for 7 hours.

If you need to do it, your best bet is a connecting flight. I know someone who had to fly it recently and got it for E260 with a connection in Amsterdam. It does require booking a fair while in advance to get a price like that, but by booking it as a through flight, you get your bags taken care of etc.

For Munich, you can check out http://www.klm.ie (The KLM site can be fiddly, so make sure you look for all flights rather than just the cheapest) or http://www.britishairways.com . Czech Airlines and Malev can be worth looking at for other destinations.

Thanks. Yeah we looked into flying to Prague or to Linz in Austria. Linz was terribly expensive. Prague was cheap enough but there are issues with hire cars between Germany and Czech.

Connecting flights are probobly the best way to go, yeah. Still quite expensive though 🙁 Munich was a great link, and everytime I used it it was full. Cant imagine why they got rid of it.

@THE_Chris wrote:

Still quite expensive though 🙁 Munich was a great link, and everytime I used it it was full. Cant imagine why they got rid of it.

Honestly, I think the A320 is too big an aircraft for a lot of routes. I suspect there are a number of routes out of Cork that could work with an aircraft the size of a Fokker 100 or an Embraer 190, but unfortnately the incumbent airlines at Cork Airport are either using A320/B737 size aircraft or turbo-props, which don’t have the range.

Jet Magic was a tragic loss

@Thomond Park wrote:

Jet Magic was a tragic loss

It really was a tragic loss. Their prices were high, but they got you from Cork to wherever direct. The leather seats and complimentary champagne went down well too. Remember that purple London bus that used to go around the city centre.

Yes, quite devastating…sob, sob. No seriously, you’re right though, first easyjet and now jet magic…and when I checked out the destinations map on Cork Airport website, it struck me how few flights/destinations there actually are! Obviously the airport is of phenomenol strategical importance to the region, and not wanting to open that silly Shannon v Cork debate again…but anyway hopefully the new terminal will serve to attract a few new operators and increase frequency. As is the case with all new infrastructural projects though, at least in this country, one can be sure the airport will be overloaded before long, we never seem to be able to accurately assess predicted demand v capacity. Such developments generate significantly increased traffic on their own, be it novelty factors or whatever, with people going out of their way to use them.

more roads should be built to motorway standards in cork in my view as accessibility would be a big factor when companys are locating in the country and the government really needs companys to stop locating in dublin if there serious about cork being a counter balance! on the airport theres another indication that companies dont look at cork the same as dublin or evan the other citys when decideing where to locate as the airport does look like a really good place to do business and in the short term will have 5 mill passengers a year passing through it but yet theres no presence of a mcdonalds or burger king ect located there!same situation as ballincollig sc!guaranteed if this was in limerick, Galway or Dublin this would not be the case and i just dont understand this?whatever happened to lennoxs opening there aswell, that would of been good and unique for cork!

@daniel_7 wrote:

more roads should be built to motorway standards in cork in my view …

which ones ?

Who wants another McDonalds / Burger King?? What’s the point of having one in the airport – it’s not at all unique! There’s a Subway & Starbucks there now sure – that’s bound to make the international travellers feel at home! There’s a food market in the dept.lounge – so it sounds like it’s a very unique airport all in all! Which certainly isn’t a bad thing in my mind!

@a boyle wrote:

which ones ?

Cork – Carrigtwohill is built to motorway standard as far as I am aware. I know thats not much, but its something 😀

@THE_Chris wrote:

Cork – Carrigtwohill is built to motorway standard as far as I am aware. I know thats not much, but its something 😀

How does the Ballincollig bypass fall short of it?

That would probobly count, but with the roundabouts there isnt much point. Maybe after they’re all done (including freeflow Dunkettle) it might be worth reclassifying it. But I reckon it would make more sense to reclassify N8, N25 etc, where speeds of 120kmh might be sustainable, unlike a potentially Dublin-M50-esque South Ring 🙂

I would imagine that some time in the future, the N25 from Cork to Midleton will be reclassified as a Motorway seen as much of it is of that standard anyway. It has been upgraded to three lanes in some parts and an alternative route is available (which is needed if a road wants to attain “M” status). What will the toll be to use the Fermoy Motorway….. it’s €5.20 for lorries, what is it for cars?

Oh, and as we are on the subject of roads….. try and avoid the tunnel if you can, I was stuck there for just short of an hour today.They are doing maintenance works and there is only one lane open in each direction.The traffic was well beyond Mahon Point and was bumper to bumper in the tunnel.

The at-grade junctions are due to be replaced with flyovers within 5 years as far as I know. That said, theres still a lot of local access so I doubt that section will be motorway anytime soon.

It’ll be a moot point if they upgrade to 120kmh, but I cant see them doing that to the Carrigtwohill-Midleton stretch,

Id rather they build a new road somewhere else though than upgrade that. Its passable at the moment, but I’d rather a more needy town is bypassed than a fairly ok DC upgraded.

I seriously think that the Glanmire – Watergrasshill section of road should be upgraded to motorway aswell as Cork to Carrigtohill. Ballincollig Bypass could easily be upgraded too.

Nice to see that the Kinsale Roundabout Flyover opened up yesterday.

Most annoying though is that you can’t access the flyover from the Pouladuff road exit.

@Angry Rebel wrote:

From Wednesdays NRA announcement about the “Longest New Road Project in Ireland to be Built”

“The NRA announced today that the longest new motorway project to be built in Ireland will commence work this October. At 40 km in length the M8/N8 Cullahill-Cashel Project will take the inter-urban connection between Dublin and Cork one giant step forward.”

Longest motorway eh? Sounds impressive….but wait…..

“The M8/N8 Cullahill to Cashel Road Improvement Scheme comprises 30 km of two-lane dual carriageway and 10 km of motorway, with associated grade separated junctions, underbridges, overbridges and accommodation works through primarily a green field site. “

Why the F&*K are we building bits of motorway and bits of dual carriageway on the same route. We were promised motorway between the major urban centres and now they’re sticking bits of dual carriageway in between sections of motorway?!?! 😮

The total cost still works out at €10m per km……

there is no difference between them (almost). It has to do with designation. dual carriage ways can accomodate farming equipment. Not a big deal. Motorways also have to follow very strict criteria which are considerably looser for dual carriage ways.

because the decision to build a motorway system was entirely political.

The motorway system we need is built: that is a motorway to portlaoise and one to belfast. The routes the rest of the way only need relief road (with lots of roundabout in some case and flyovers in others).

You might not believe it but we actually very low ownership of cars in europe. We just have such trully atrocious other forms of transport that it forces us onto the roads.

You can see this by the fact that some people actually fly between cork and dublin which is just mad.

With respect to the dublin/cork road. Very simply none of the train tracks between dublin and cork have been changed since originally built. The metal used has been replaced with new improved track, but none of the bends of turns have been removed so the time takes the same. Also none of the train stations have been improved to allow a train to bypass a station. If this was done you could have a journey between dublin and cork of less than 2 hours. While this might not stop you driving it would stop a lot of other people.

You would be able to drive at a hundred kilometres between cork and portlaoise and 120 km/h to dublin.

Now while you probably think that you deserve to drive at 120 or 160 km/h(as i want to) , you would have to agree that if you were sitting taking the decisions with 10 billion in your pockets to spend that you would not have proceeded as we have.

Have to agree with Angry Rebel,

I think its madness to be building all these dual carriageways up to Motorway standard and yet not classify them as Motorways.

Every single new stretch of road being built has an alternative route.

Glanmire to Watergrashill has an alternative route. As does Cork to Carrigtohill. As does Ballincollig bypass etc etc.

Cork to Dublin should have been built entirely to Motorway standard. Not doing it from the start is just bizarre.

no i don’t think rail should take priority over other forms of transport , i think it has it’s place.

with regard to the volume of traffic. what is it ? do you know ?

fine don’t put in any roundabouts , no problem. The main point remains valid. building a single two plus one road that is fully seperated from other roads is more than sufficient between portaoise and fermoy.

With respectto flying . these flights are subsized to the tune of 300 400 500euros per person per flight. It is a plain waste of money by comparison with a decent rail link.

I repeat such savings would allow for a rail link between dublin and cork with a journey time of less than one and a half hours. I put it to you that such an investment would radically reduce the demand for road space. (and incidentally air space too). This is the appropriate investment. Already the whole motorway concept has fallen flat on it’s face with the tremendous build up on the m50 . And although some of that is attributable to the poor interchanges , the new free flow interchanges are expected to improve things by 10 percent when they are built .

You are confusing what is needed with what appears to be needed.

If you don’t improve the trains and don’t give any priority to buses then motorways will seem vital (and flying).

Bluntly what is the point of building a motorway between the two towns , allowing ten of thousands of cars to drive on it, when either end cannot cope and never ever will because both cities were designed centuries ago.

It is a question of getting the most for your money . we are getting very little. Now go travel and look how other countries service towns of comparable size to dublin and cork . look at the availability of public transport and road network.

In relation to aviation subsidies these do not feature on any route out of Cork or Dublin that goes to any major population centre.

Subsidies are limited to

Knock
Galway Less than one hours drive from Shannon
Sligo Less than 30 minutes drive from Knock
Donegal In the absolute middle of nowhere and L’Kenny is a mere 30 minutes from Derry Int Airport
Kerry Ryanair is doing the Biz here without any subsidies whatsoever

But this should be discussed on Airports see here

Re Roundabouts see here

Boyle, 2+1 isn’t good enough for Cork Dublin and recently has been shown that it will not even be good enough for the Cork to Galway western corridor.

In fact the NRA are now even reviewing the usage of 2+1 roads and their the possibility that 2+1 roads may not be used at all.

Cork to Dublin needs a full motorway. Not the the mish mash that we are getting, while the Dubs are getting motorways EVERYWHERE.

And the last thing this country needs is another roundabout.

You mightn’t, but I have to go through the Dunkettle Interchange each day. The roundabout is a joke. Traffic lights and roundabouts is a uniquely Irish phenomenon. If the NRA had done it right from day one, then the Tunnel roundabout would have been nothing but slip roads.

Same goes for the M50. the reason the M50 is blocked up is due to the poor usage of roundabouts in the M50’s interchanges. If the the road building authorities had any idea at all, the M50 would have been built with no roundabouts at its junctions.

Boyle, you also do realise that Irish Rail have announced that the Cork – Dublin trains will be travelling at 200k/h once all the track upgrades will be completed by around October ?

I also have to agree with Angry Rebel that there is no subsidy on the Aer Arann Cork Dublin flight route. Why would you actually want to go by train if you could fly for half the price ?

By the way, the M7/M8 interchange near Portlaoise will be 120kmh motorway. The N8 dual carriageways being built will not be motorway officially, but will probobly be 120kmh under the new rules. Its just a change of label for the farmers, as they cant drive on motorways.

Yes its totally stupid, but it makes little difference in the end.

@Angry Rebel wrote:

Yes. You see I’m willing to obtain facts instead of making them up. For June 2006

Mitchelstown 14k per day
New Inn 11k per day
Urlingford 12k per day
Abbeyleix 14k per day

what proportion of these drivers need to use the road ?

Of course the road is busy when it is the only thing you invest in .

@Micko wrote:

Boyle, 2+1 isn’t good enough for Cork Dublin and recently has been shown that it will not even be good enough for the Cork to Galway western corridor.

… while the Dubs are getting motorways EVERYWHERE.

Same goes for the M50. the reason the M50 is blocked up is due to the poor usage of roundabouts in the M50’s interchanges. If the the road building authorities had any idea at all, the M50 would have been built with no roundabouts at its junctions.

Boyle, you also do realise that Irish Rail have announced that the Cork – Dublin trains will be travelling at 200k/h once all the track upgrades will be completed by around October ?

1Again the two+ one is not good enough because there is no alternative to the car.

2the dubs get motorways everywhere because a few hundred thousand people moved here and now 40 per cent of ireland lives here.

3.

4. is this is true the improvement will be nill as there are no direct services between dublin and cork (except a sunday)

@Angry Rebel wrote:

No direct services?! Yes, now that you say it, I remember my train stopping in Castlebar the last time I went to Dublin from Cork……it was most inconvenient.

I like your blank answer to Mickos point no 3. Does this mean you agree with him?! Shocker.

Could you point to a direct non stop service from dublin to cork ? here is the timetable http://www.iarnrodeireann.ie/your_journey/printed_timetable_pdfs/2006/dublincork.pdf

point no 3 i am trying to find the environmental impact statement.

I don’t think there can be any argument on building a DC between Cork & Dublin if the traffic flows are currently 11000 at Cahirp.a. and 15,000 plus close to Portlaoise they will be close to 20,000 per day within 10 years.

I do however feel that the rationale for the N9 and M3 are crocks in comparison

Turnapin is motorway

@Thomond Park wrote:

I don’t think there can be any argument on building a DC between Cork & Dublin if the traffic flows are currently 11000 at Cahirp.a. and 15,000 plus close to Portlaoise they will be close to 20,000 per day within 10 years.

I do however feel that the rationale for the N9 and M3 are crocks in comparison

How can you be sure. we have no idea what business these travellers have and where they are going . what fraction say are going to the city centre ? what fraction are tranporting goods.

All we can say is that some 15000 people move between cork and dublin each day. These people have no choice but to travel by road.

Would they drive if the train took half the time ? As minister he gets to decide what service to provide. He does not have to respond to demand , but can decide what the demand will be.

The question is what is the right balance. Thomond why build a motorway when you know as well as i do that the naas road is chock a block . All the improvements going into the m50 and the naas road will only keep the situation from deteriorating not improve it.

I accept that roundabout are not ideal , so fine don’t build them.
I accept that i am mistaken regarding the subsidy for flying.

But it still does not change the main idea of my arguement .

It is a waste of time and energy to accomodate 20000 thousand people on a dual carriageway from cork to dublin , when there is no room to accomodate these cars on arrival.

You should only build for what you can cope with .

If a two + one road can only cope with 6500 and more are going to try to use it , then toll it till they don’t.

build them something else like a train or a hugely improved bus service.

The percentages of HGVs are marked and at some times up to 70% are HGVs

@Thomond Park wrote:

The percentages of HGVs are marked and at some times up to 70% are HGVs

its possible.where is the report.

@Angry Rebel wrote:

You didn’t say anything about nonstop? I’m sure if they can manage to bring in 200km/h trains they can manage to do nonstop services. Are you saying that timetable is the one that will apply then? Go away.:p

The 100,000 odd poor buggers who sit in the M50 car park every day don’t give a toss what the EIS said back in the day when that ill conceived thing was designed and built. Look, they got it wrong, and are only now trying to fix it. but don’t try and hold it up as an example of why motorways are “bad”.

On the M3, there are currently 18k per day using the N3 by Tara. That’s heavy enough. Agree the N9 now would be another story….

a
Heavy enough for a DC but certainly not motoway or anything close to it. The solution to the M3 in my opinion is to continue the N2 DC from Ashbourne to a point north of Navan with the N51 upgraded to serve Navan

BTW

The cost of 200 kph trains is a lot less than you think as the line needs to be relaid anyway as it was last done between 1983-4 and the only requirement is that a higher specification track be used although from what I understand 200 kph would not be possible on much of the Mallow Cork section as there are too many bends but 140 kph would with tilting diesel trains

@Thomond Park wrote:

a
Heavy enough for a DC but certainly not motoway or anything close to it. The solution to the M3 in my opinion is to continue the N2 DC from Ashbourne to a point north of Navan with the N51 upgraded to serve Navan

surely the solution is to reopen broadstone and create a new dart line between navan and broadstone. supplemented by an arcing tram line passing blanch/ liffey and square.

the m3 IS mad. the m50 has more dual carriage way leading onto it than it can cope with , and the m3 can only make this worse ? should be not be turfing the people onto rail ? i may be over optimistic regarding rail’s effectiveness between cork and dublin by why should any attempt be made to accomodate meath ?

Relaying the existing freight only line between Navan and Drogheda could be done in a year with three trains a day in each peak period without redesigning the timetable at a cost of €90m all in is possible with capacity for 3600 commuters is the perfect scenario given that the slots exist but the object of government appears to be to give NTR another cash cow.

But that is a discussion for another thread as this is a Cork thread and unless the €800m going down the tubes on the M3 can be proven to deprive cork of a decent public transport system through opportunity cost it is irrelevent.

@Thomond Park wrote:

…But that is a discussion for another thread as this is a Cork thread and unless the €800m going down the tubes on the M3 can be proven to deprive cork of a decent public transport system through opportunity cost it is irrelevent.

that is exactly why the M3 is relevant. this is 800million that could be spend on a light rail system for cork. or more a better use might be to be a thousand odd buses for cork limerick and galway .

@kite wrote:

:rolleyes: I’m booked on ryanair next Wens. 9th Aug. to Dublin, FR9844 @ 9.15 returning on FR9847 @ 17.15, the cost 163.34 !!
Are the 1 cent flights advertised elsewhere?:confused:

mr kite would you be flying if the train went direct in an hour and a half ?

@a boyle wrote:

mr kite would you be flying if the train went direct in an hour and a half ?

😮 Nope, point taken.

@kite wrote:

:rolleyes: I’m booked on ryanair next Wens. 9th Aug. to Dublin, FR9844 @ 9.15 returning on FR9847 @ 17.15, the cost 163.34 !!
Are the 1 cent flights advertised elsewhere?:confused:

How did you manage that? I flew up two weeks ago for €19.68. For the price you are paying, I think I would prefer to take the bus 😉 . As for the trains a boyle, I have to agree with you. I’ve actually seen foreigners laughing at them they are so bad. I think that our railway system needs serious funding and improvement, but I don’t think that it should be at the expense of the roads. At the very least our railways should be electrified. Transport 21…. yeah right, not with manky Soviet diesel engines. Is there any other country in Europe that doesn’t have electrified railways? I can’t think of any….. Albania maybe? I feel so embaressed when tourists come here, because they have to suffer at the hands of our transportation system. Even the Motorways in Dublin aren’t Motorways by European standards…. the vast majority of them anyway. I could drive through Germany, France or the UK in roads with 5 or 6 lanes in each direction. Our roads are a joke….. a few scraps of dual carriageway and 2+1 roads Sellotaped together does not make a Motorway. Even the roads in Northern Ireland are far better than ours. It just gets me mad thinking of how backwards our country is. Oh well…… maybe one day.

the point is that those who are flying are only flying because the train network is so poor.

@A-ha wrote:

How did you manage that? I At the very least our railways should be electrified. Transport 21…. yeah right, not with manky Soviet diesel engines. Is there any other country in Europe that doesn’t have electrified railways? I can’t think of any…..

Surprisingly most of the intercity routes in the UK aren’t electrified for example London Edinburgh is run on diesel trains but the journey time is a mere 4 hours 40 minutes to 5 hours]0942 [/URL]

the point is that the train service is so poor that there is no option other than to drive or fly . if the intercity service was of some decent standard the numbers using the roads would drop dramatically and as for flying …

@Angry Rebel wrote:

Eh, not quite. First train leaves Mallow at 07:00 and arrives in Cork at 07:24. They leave Mallow every half an hour after that until 09:11. Then it jumps to roughly hourly.

Suspect you may have been looking at the intercity schedule rather than the commuter schedule.

Thats quite amazing a search on the journey planner on the IE website missed those services completely which is a bit of joke considering that the same site lists a DART realtime section.

They are their own worst enemies a lot of the time; I worked (voluntarily) with someone on the interconnector proposal for Dublin between 2004 and late 2005 he was all for Irish Rail and their projects but over time he came to the conclusion that they are not capable project managers. I disagree but when you see examples like the above you can understand how he reached that conclusion.

mr angry rebel yesterday you pointed out that dublin has motorways everywhere. Yet dublin has the worst traffic in the country. At which point will you begin to realise that building roads as a means of solving congestion is completely useless, and that other alternatives namely road management (tolling) buses and train are used.

I put it to you than most people on the dublin to cork road are there out of nessecity not choice.

@Micko wrote:

Anyone know if the Motorway designation will be extended from Watergrasshill to the top of Glanmire.

The road is of equal quality as the stretch of Motorway presently being built, a centre divider has recently been put up and there is an optional route for L drivers and tractors to take.

Driving from Fermoy today, just at the start of the Watergrasshill bypass, I notices a roadsign in motorway blue facing me, pointing to Watergrasshill.
This would seem to suggest that at least part of the road from Watergrasshill back to Cork is going to be a motorway.

After just getting home and driving home from the match in Dublin, I am even more against Boyle’s point of view with the road network.

The stretch of road between Cashel and Portlaoise is a disgrace and only a standard motorway/dual carriageway would be sufficient.

if you were in the traffic that we were in coming into Abbeyleix you’d know about it too. And seemingly this is the same situation every Friday too.

@Micko wrote:

After just getting home and driving home from the match in Dublin, I am even more against Boyle’s point of view with the road network.

The stretch of road between Cashel and Portlaoise is a disgrace and only a standard motorway/dual carriageway would be sufficient.

if you were in the traffic that we were in coming into Abbeyleix you’d know about it too. And seemingly this is the same situation every Friday too.

You have just reinforced my point about wrong investment. No road will ever be able to cope with all the supporters driving up to dublin. It is not surprising that there was traffic problems on the way back.

What i am saying is that you did not need to be on that road. That a train should have been provided to move the thrity thousand people up to dublin and back home again . That is what trains are good at .

Yes the road is not of good quality. But you and others are confused as to what we need. We need a 2+1 road which is fully seperated from other roads like a motorway. that is more than enough road space. Alongside that we need a direct train link running on the hour direct (no stops or one max at limerick junction) and then another running on the half hour servicing the other stations.

Just because there are too many people on the road at the moment does not mean you should build a motorway. This is for two reasons :
1. car drivers currently have no choice but to drive, since the train stops at so many places that taking it is a waste of time. The bus is even worse because it is held up in every single town. (serious consideration needs to be given to providing a dedicated route through even town and village for buses , it would saves hours.)
2. car owners actually have an incentive to drive as much as possible . The huge amount of vrt , road tax , and high insurance are a once off payment. This has the effect of an all you can eat restaurant. You have no incentive to stop using your car once you have got it because you spent so bloody much on it in the first place.

In NO other part of our lives do we run things so badly.

NOW it have been argued that this is result of poor planning . But i would say it is just the way thing pan out when you start building motorways.

EVEN if we could reverse it , this is what we would need to do. 2 lane motorway between cashel and portloaise, then 4 lane motorway between portloaise and dublin (for the limerick boys), then the m50 would need at least 6 lanes at certain points. NOW even if we could afford to build such a ring road , the plain fact is that it is pointless because there simple ISN’T the space to let so many cars into the city and there never will.
This is at both ends cork and dublin, as both cities are some thousand years old.

Because of this we have pretty much built as much capacity as our cities can cope with. (that means number of lanes, we could and should build bypasses)

Inside each city we need to focus on freeing up space by booting commuters out of their cars and onto buses that actually work. This will allow more space for those who actually need to use a car, like people doing their groceries, bying furniture, vans , delivery trucks.

Rerouting these trains to Drumcoundra via the Phoenix Park Tunnel on match days would be a great help to make the option attractive with free surface parking offered on any derelict lands in the main rail stations at point of origin

does that mean you can see some logic to my argument

I see the logic that no road building decisions can be predicated on match day flows but still strongly assert that a DC is warranted between the two major population centres in the state

I think you are wrong.

There was no traffic at all from Dublin down to Portlaoise due to the quality of the roads.

If you had 2+1 you would have madness everywhere, especially where the road would reconverge into 1 lane. It would be complete madness on a day like yesterday. Just imagine the backlog caused by 2 lanes of slow traffic merging into 1 every 2 to 3 miles. Crazy. if their was all dual carriage way to Cork, there would be no heavy traffic whatsoever. none at all.

The cost of 2+1 isn’t that much cheaper.

BTW, there is only so much capacity on the Cork to Dublin line, with only a limited number of trains. You would need 10 times the amount of trains to make a dent in yesterdays traffic.

How do you
1. Deal with all the trains when they wouldn’t be in usage for 99% of the year and justify their cost and
2. Deal with the fact that their is only one line going into Dublin from kildare onwards. no way could it handle the train traffic.

Boyle, do you even Drive ? your arguements are bizarre.

micko forget abou yesterday. no road well ever be able to cope.

Regarding the use of trains . well current our trains are not being used very well.

in terms of capacity , there is (almost) no limit. Trains can run up to frequencies for 90 seconds. now that is a bit over kill for dublin to cork, but there is no problem on capacity on the line.

At the end stations , well dublin has space (some) at heuston , but more importantly dublin has a complete spare station at broadstone. Cork is not so busy , so i don’t see why a train arriving could not pull in before continuing on towards cobh where an additional side track could be provided ,if needed.

Regarding the number of trains , I am confused as to what your point is. 15000 odd people use the road every day so provide a service for ten thousand say or fifteen.

For things like match days would it not be better to spend some million on a few spare trains than a spare road. the road is subtantially more expensive.

If you are right about a 2+1 being a disaster , when cars a pilling back into the one lane , then you have only confirmed what i have being saying all along . building a dual carriage way to cork and limerick is only forcing four lanes in at naas. Then those four lanes have to share the m50 with all the other people who live in the vicinity of the m50 . so you need to upgrade the m50 to a 6 lane or maybe even an 8 lane motorway.
But then you get back to the most important point which is that dublin does not have the space inside it to cope with ANY more cars. the same applies to cork

Why accomodate cars in abbeyleix if they are only going to sit in a traffic jam in cork and dublin. If you really want a dual carriage way to cork then you have to do two things : stop other traffic getting to the m50 and corks ring road , and building a dualcarriage way the WHOLE way through cork and dublin .

yes i do drive , a lot, and have driven all over europe and america.

If you want to see how to do things right skip back on this thread and look at a map of germany and compare it to the map of france. then go and drive in both countries , and then come back and tell me which has worse traffic.

@a boyle wrote:

yes i do drive , a lot, and have driven all over europe and america.

If you want to see how to do things right skip back on this thread and look at a map of germany and compare it to the map of france. then go and drive in both countries , and then come back and tell me which has worse traffic.

The last time I checked the routd au soleil didn’t pass through Germany.
The French make very significant investments in public transport, Paris has a greater population of 12 million people and most of her traffic problems occur during Summer months when very large portions of Northern Europe and the British Isles decide to drive through France en route to holiday destinations.

As a student I spent a year and a half in Paris and was very impressed by how cheap, comprehensive and efficient the public transport network is. My only issue with the public transport was the fact that workers had a tendency to go on lightening strikes. I once spent half an hour stuck in a metro in the bowels of Paris on a very hot Summer’s day.

smashing points in the last few pages folks, keep it going. I’ve travelled a bit so Irelands transport is a bit of a pet hate of mine. All govt officials in dept of transport should be sent to germany for a week.

1. Irish rail is a joke – pandering to unions, poor customer service, slow trains (its almost as quick to drive from Cork to Dublin, how sad is that), no direct rail links to other towns like waterford, wexford,galway. Martin Cullen should just resign in shame for that alone.
2. I agree that the rubbish other forms of transport make over reliance on the roads, which are only now beiong made into what they should be. I know we only have the money in the country over last few years but its ridiculous.
3. Cork needs a fleet of the smaller IMP-like buses at more frequent times that run until at LEAST 2.30 am. Last bus at 11.30pm is beyond all stupidity.

My overall point is that Irelands politicos have no will to improve this. Even though the local powerless councillors tuck away a nice €86k a year to do sweet FA. Its very frustrating. The kinsale flyover was finished allegedly a few months ahead and the response from 2 local politicians, one a councillor and 1 a european MP for gods sake is to congratulate the builders. the flyover is 10 YEARS LATE. Thats the low benchmarking right there. And now the NRA pulled the funding for the sarsfield and bandon roundabout so where will the traffic move from?? Yep, the badly laned kinsale roundabout. Idiotic isnt the word.

small point but i flew in to the new terminal last week. I’m told its aer aranns fault ( i hold my hand up there if I am wrong) in that they wont pay for the more expensive parking in front of the new terminal but the plane was parked at the old terminal and we had to walk all the way up to the new one and climb 3 flights of stairs to get in. Escalator anyone? Think of that in the winter in the wind and rain. Welcome to Ireland in the 21st century.

@Angry Rebel wrote:

You keep harping on about Cork and Dublin not being able to take the traffic. That’s a good point, but it’s not a reason to not build DC/motorway between the two biggest population centres in the state. DC all the way could save drivers probably 3/4 hour, an hour or more at peak times.

You and the others are still not actually listening to what i am saying. It is pointless to build 2 dual carriage ways from limerick and cork and then join them together into one three lane dual carriage way. And then it is further pointless to bring all that traffic to the three lane m50 in order to join it up with all the other traffic.

Yes we want bypasses

Yes we want those bypasses to have slip roads on and off them , so that you don’t have to stop everywhere.

But no it is not a good idea to have two lanes of traffic between the edges of the two cities, on the WHOLE.

If you built a 2+one road WITH slip roads on and off you would have a much higher capacity than a normal 2+1 road . given that earlier it was quoted that a dual carriagway can cope with 20000 and a 2+1 6500 then a conservative number for a two+1 with slip roads on and off is 9000. Now this bring BIG savings . If you have been to america you will have noticed that on many of the motorways they use much smaller slip roads which are designed for 30mph /50kph. This is the kind of thing that could be put in place .

WHY is my idea so good ? 1 every bridge is halved , 2 each road is halved. 3 the slip roads do not have to be half as elaborate.

WHY Half the project ? becase then you could build a completely new 2+1 with slip roads somewhere else. With respect to cork a very good place to do this would be to build a road starting near mallow and heading due east ,clipping clonmel, and passing in between kilkenny and waterford berfore curling up to the south of wicklow.

This is much better because you provide that nice freeflow driving for more people to more places.

The new motorway/dual carriage way section just anounced is costing 450 million , and the minute it is finished you will save half an hour only to waste it again gettting into dublin . WE are not getting value for money .

@Pug wrote:

small point but i flew in to the new terminal last week. I’m told its aer aranns fault ( i hold my hand up there if I am wrong) in that they wont pay for the more expensive parking in front of the new terminal but the plane was parked at the old terminal and we had to walk all the way up to the new one and climb 3 flights of stairs to get in. Escalator anyone? Think of that in the winter in the wind and rain. Welcome to Ireland in the 21st century.

I agree with almost all of the rest of your posts, but I’ll just try to answer this one.

Some of the stands (1-5) in Cork Airport are not capable of accommodating a 737-800 (Ryanair) or A320 (Aer Lingus. These aircraft will consequently end up occupying most of the stands in front of the new terminal. This is especially true in summer when there are charter airlines bringing in even more similarly large aircraft, Because Aer Arann aircraft are able to fit on these stands, they are likely to be put there so that they don’t occupy a stand that could be needed by a larger aircraft.

@jungle wrote:

Because Aer Arann aircraft are able to fit on these stands, they are likely to be put there so that they don’t occupy a stand that could be needed by a larger aircraft.

absolutely fair point and i take it “on board” if you pardon the pun. Why then wasnt a travelator within a corridor, i.e. not out in the wind and or some sort of shuttle bus type vehicle built in to the budget to cater for this? This sort of stuff is what makes me wonder who plans these things.

Thats a complete joke we have a company receiving up to €500 subsidy per passenger from the government who deliberately provide a yellow pack service on other routes

@Pug wrote:

absolutely fair point and i take it “on board” if you pardon the pun. Why then wasnt a travelator within a corridor, i.e. not out in the wind and or some sort of shuttle bus type vehicle built in to the budget to cater for this? This sort of stuff is what makes me wonder who plans these things.

The bus situation in Cork is crazy. In Edinburgh and Rotterdam I have been bussed to the terminal from less than 50m away, With the old terminal in Cork, you could walk from stand 16 to the terminal, which must have been a distance of several hundred metres. Having all those pedestrians wandering around is not condusive to smooth airfield operations anyway. The new terminal is at least a little more central to the stands, but a bus system should definitely be put in place.

Scary stats from the City itself re roads and transport in general.

1) It is considered that a target of 5% of all trips to
work, school and college by cycling is achievable
by 2010. Cork Cycle Strategy, City Plan 2004.

2) From the draft Bishopstown/Wilton Area Action Plan
There is a growing dependence on the usage of the private car in the Plan area. The
Cork Area Strategic Plan (CASP) predicts that without intervention traffic will double in the city within 20 years, peak hour travel speeds to be 8kph (currently 19kph for me) , and travel to work times will increase by 5 times (for me that will mean a 7 mile journey to be just over 3 hours). . Annual growth in traffic volumes are already above that predicted in 2002 by CASP

Results from the 2002 Census showed continued decline in travel by green modes of
transport. Almost half of people in the south-west area travel to work and school /
college by car, resulting in increased problems of congestion, rat-running, parking.
More students and schoolchildren are now being transported by private car than ever
before while there have also been significant increases in car ownership levels.

While in city-wide terms the area is relatively well served by public transport at present only 8% of the people in the plan area use public transport to get to work, school or college.

this rather dire prediction can only reinforce the message that cork already has enough roads. A complete turn to other means of transport needs to take place.

Using the money pegged for the north ring road and the improvement of the last 2 roundabout on the south ring road would be much better spent on a light rail through the city. Consideration could be given to creating a heavy rail connection to the south of the city.

There needs to be a complete change in emphasis. We need to be trying to reduce the number of cars on the roads by some margin , not building more things in order to simply thread water.

@jungle wrote:

The bus situation in Cork is crazy. In Edinburgh and Rotterdam I have been bussed to the terminal from less than 50m away, With the old terminal in Cork, you could walk from stand 16 to the terminal, which must have been a distance of several hundred metres. Having all those pedestrians wandering around is not condusive to smooth airfield operations anyway. The new terminal is at least a little more central to the stands, but a bus system should definitely be put in place.

Appalling as had to walk from an Aer Aerann flight which I just arrived in on from Nantes yesterday which parked at the far end of the old terminal and had to walk all the way to the new terminal up 3 flights of stairs,a Ryanair flight just landed and ground staff were trying to steward people on such a long distance past hazards etc.The signage in the new terminal was not complete either and after getting our luggage we had to use the crappy old luggage trollies.Felt sorry for families with lots of kids who had to trek so far whilst lugging hand luggage as their kids tried to run up to the planes that had just landed.Whats the point of spending 160 million if you have to walk such distances ? Have our great unions scuppered the bus idea ? Just wait until the bad weather arrives.The new terminal is fine but when I travel by air I just want to get in and out of airports as quick as possible so how about spending a few euros on a few buses ?

I dont know why they didnt delay the opening of the new terminal until it was ready for both departures and arrivals.

Flew in from Barcelona Thursday night, there werent enough trolleys, the baggage took over half an hour to come up. There is only 1 extra baggage carousel and one for oversized bags. Give me the old terminal anyday.

@Spinal Tap wrote:

Whats the point of spending 160 million if you have to walk such distances ? Have our great unions scuppered the bus idea ? Just wait until the bad weather arrives.The new terminal is fine but when I travel by air I just want to get in and out of airports as quick as possible so how about spending a few euros on a few buses ?

As I understand it, buses are the responsibility of the ground-handling companies (Aer Lingus, Servisair, Sky) rather than the airport itself. At present none of the handling companies provide the service. Even if they did it is probable that a number of the airlines would refuse to pay for it. So, the handling companies don’t provide it…

If Cork Airport expands further, it will need to put in place stands that are across one of the runways from the current terminal. In these circumstances a bus is the only feasible solution to transport passengers to stand.

Although, if this was done, they would probably use the remote stands for freight and leave the ones on the terminal side for passengers, so there would still be some level of wait for buses…

@a boyle wrote:

A complete turn to other means of transport needs to take place.

There needs to be a complete change in emphasis. We need to be trying to reduce the number of cars on the roads by some margin , not building more things in order to simply thread water.

change will only come from progressive political will and as i mentioned before, when a local td congratulates a flyover for being 10 years late – we are doomed. Railways are joke, light rail in Cork between all the major suburbs wont happen within 10 years so I argue that more frequent smaller buses on QBC’s, with an integrated bus/rail ticket system, to designated transport hubs at the edge of the city is the only option left. For cycling etc, companies would have to buy into it to put in showers etc and car pooling would be hugely beneficial and very do-able with a bit of push from the govt and a tax credit or something for the company but with someone like Dick Roche at the helm (he who wouldnt have an incinerator in his constituency but doesnt mind one in ours), not a hope.

We need it all really.

Cork needs those other 2 flyovers done. It also needs the patchwork of Dunkettle sorted out, and possibly the north ring, but not quite yet for that.

The Bus service needs a compete and utter overhaul.

We need a LUAS type system, running from the train station, to the bus station, down Patricks Street, out to UCC, to CIT and other spurs as needed.

@THE_Chris wrote:

We need it all really.

Cork needs those other 2 flyovers done. It also needs the patchwork of Dunkettle sorted out, and possibly the north ring, but not quite yet for that.

The Bus service needs a compete and utter overhaul.

We need a LUAS type system, running from the train station, to the bus station, down Patricks Street, out to UCC, to CIT and other spurs as needed.

I totally agree with you and each mode of transport needs to be integrated so it can have the effect of creating an efficient and easy system to use. I can see the possibility of developers becoming involved in paying for a LUAS type system in Cork just like it is beginning to happen in Dublin. It may be up to the government to install a central line as you suggested but other spurs to new and existing population centres could be paid for (at least partially) by developers who would also benefit.

@Pug wrote:

change will only come from progressive political will and as i mentioned before, when a local td congratulates a flyover for being 10 years late – we are doomed. Railways are joke, light rail in Cork between all the major suburbs wont happen within 10 years so I argue that more frequent smaller buses on QBC’s, with an integrated bus/rail ticket system, to designated transport hubs at the edge of the city is the only option left. For cycling etc, companies would have to buy into it to put in showers etc and car pooling would be hugely beneficial and very do-able with a bit of push from the govt and a tax credit or something for the company but with someone like Dick Roche at the helm (he who wouldnt have an incinerator in his constituency but doesnt mind one in ours), not a hope.

😮
For a city to ADMIT in it’s City Development Plan that, “Green Bus Routes shall be dedicated traffic lanes where feasible” speaks volumes for the brains behind planning public transport in Cork. God help us one and all.

and maybe those dedicated bus lanes wouldnt be full of wankers who park in it a la McCurtain street.

All cars that park in bus lanes should be towed.

@THE_Chris wrote:

We need it all really.

Cork needs those other 2 flyovers done. It also needs the patchwork of Dunkettle sorted out, and possibly the north ring, but not quite yet for that.

The Bus service needs a compete and utter overhaul.

We need a LUAS type system, running from the train station, to the bus station, down Patricks Street, out to UCC, to CIT and other spurs as needed.

that is exactly why i butted into this thread. you cant have it all . not now anyway. over twenty/thirty years sure.

That is why you need to step back look at what you have built , see what impact it has had , and decide what to do next.

@a boyle wrote:

that is exactly why i butted into this thread. you cant have it all . not now anyway. over twenty/thirty years sure.

That is why you need to step back look at what you have built , see what impact it has had , and decide what to do next.

I disagree. Assuming things stay on track economically, (and even if there is a downturn), I don’t see why we couldn’t have most of this infrastructure built in under 10 years. It just takes the political will and the ability to deliver. With Dublin being a kind of test bed for many new projects it should be easier to do these things in Cork and other parts of the country using the experience gained. We should be more ambitious in my opinion. If we set our sights low then we will get very little.

@a boyle wrote:

that is exactly why i butted into this thread. you cant have it all . not now anyway. over twenty/thirty years sure.

That is why you need to step back look at what you have built , see what impact it has had , and decide what to do next.

Thats partly what I was saying though. I wouldnt build the north ring, bit of a waste IMO, but I’d invest in light rail.

Those roundabouts have to be sorted though. Sarsfield, Bandon Rd and Dunkettle all have to be fixed, no matter what way you look at it.

Sure, they should have been built right in the first place, but this is Ireland.

Light rail is VERY expensive though. €50 mil to fix Kinsale Rd, about €90mil to fix the other two. Then say €60 mil to fix up Dunkettle. Thats €200mil.

Dublins LUAS cost about €750mil. Even if you only built one line, it would cost Cork say €350mil.

The €200mil to sort the roundabouts is a MUCH better investment right now IMO. Do them, then do light rail, then do the North Ring. But doing Light Rail IN CORK CITY would not be as much benefit as fixing up ACCESS TO Cork city for the huge number of commuters, which is what fixing the roundabouts will do.

I fully agree that light rail is needed pretty urgently, but sorting the 3 remaining roundabouts is even more urgent, I think.

stop building all these houses in Ballincollig & CarrAIGALINE that will cut down on all these commuters using the roads! They should all live in high rise apartments in the Docklands.! Yeah, like that’s going to happen!

@anto wrote:

stop building all these houses in Ballincollig & CarrAIGALINE that will cut down on all these commuters using the roads! They should all live in high rise apartments in the Docklands.! Yeah, like that’s going to happen!

IF the Docklands is designed and planned properly, something that seems to be back on track now that the City Manager is once again focused on Cork people will jump at the chance to live there. However allowing only a select few developers the inside track with the planners will lead to a planning disaster in the Docklands…a level playing field please CCC ?

@THE_Chris wrote:

and maybe those dedicated bus lanes wouldnt be full of wankers who park in it a la McCurtain street.

All cars that park in bus lanes should be towed.

The problem is that they are allowed to. The city’s bus lanes only operate for a few hours a day.

However, I would have expected that all bus lanes would be clearways for the hours that they are not operating as bus lanes.

We also have a problem of lack of continuity at bus lanes. Effectively, the current bus lanes were put in to guide buses around the worst traffic blackspots. But there were many other places on the so called green routes that they could have been introduced. Summerhill South is broad enough to accommodate inbound and outbound bus lanes. It’s on the Number 6 green route and is also used by the Number 3 and airport buses as well as buses accessing the Capwell Bus Depot. You’d have to ask why it wasn’t included in the places where bus lanes were put in place.

@anto wrote:

stop building all these houses in Ballincollig & CarrAIGALINE that will cut down on all these commuters using the roads!

absolutely. And at the same time you have groups like those committed to stop any building over three storeys trying to get motions passes in the local authority for exactly that. Thats the scary part.

I will reserve judgement on the Kinsale roundabout, there is still one lane to the city that is unavailable so my journey time wasnt reduced at all. Good thing is that its all been resurfaced so the hugely dangerous and incorrect lanes have disappeared!!. Only thing now is there are no lanes at all.Hilarious.

The test will come when the schools are back. I tried it this morning given that in someones infinite wisdom, the Jack Lynch tunnel is one lane, Grand Parade is closed off and one of the main roads from Douglas is blocked off all at the same time.

The light rail will cost a fortune so apart from the nippier smaller buses there is no option other than roads. And thats a shame.

Light rail would be expensive but when you compare the South West Dublin Luas planned for Lucan to Dublin 2 the figures would stand up very well I think and it would be a long term investment that would provide a platform for the planners to ensure its operational viability prior to completion via development contributions.

It breaks your heart when you think of the infrastructure that existed 50 years ago – for example the Passage Railway… imagine a light railway coming in from Carrigaline and joining up with that line, which served Passage, Rochestown, Mahon, Blackrock and the docklands!

Out of curiosity, on the Ballincollig side, are there any even remotely feasible routing options? The Straight Road??

X B

@X Boil wrote:

It breaks your heart when you think of the infrastructure that existed 50 years ago – for example the Passage Railway… imagine a light railway coming in from Carrigaline and joining up with that line, which served Passage, Rochestown, Mahon, Blackrock and the docklands!

Out of curiosity, on the Ballincollig side, are there any even remotely feasible routing options? The Straight Road??

X B

Not to mention the Tram network which even kept maintained as it was would be a tourist attraction in itself like Lisbon’s ,San Francisco’s and many former Soviet block eastern European states.

Now they are going to have to re-build it as a modern system in the next 10 – 15 years and all in the super efficient hands of our politicians.

@X Boil wrote:

It breaks your heart when you think of the infrastructure that existed 50 years ago – for example the Passage Railway… imagine a light railway coming in from Carrigaline and joining up with that line, which served Passage, Rochestown, Mahon, Blackrock and the docklands!

Out of curiosity, on the Ballincollig side, are there any even remotely feasible routing options? The Straight Road??

X B

The Ballincollig side is probably the most depressing. The Cork-Macroom railway line left from next to City Hall and went through Turner’s Cross, Togher, Wilton, Bishopstown and Ballincollig before going to Macroom. Even if only the Cork-Ballincollig section was open, it would be fantastic for the city.

I’m not sure whether the old tram network was viable in the long-term. It was a narrow gauge network and would have probably have to have been changed to standard gauge in the long run anyway.

Incidentally, seeing reports of the LUAS extension to Bray today, surely light rail in Cork is more feasible than a LUAS extension to Bray. Population densities in that part of Dublin are not exactly the highest and Bray itself already has a heavy rail link to Dublin.

surely angry rebel is missing the whole point – a 2+1 system would be entirely adequate alongside a viable train option – if the train was guaranteed in 2 hours less drivers would use the road and therefore motorway standard would not be required?

@bazarrus wrote:

surely angry rebel is missing the whole point – a 2+1 system would be entirely adequate alongside a viable train option – if the train was guaranteed in 2 hours less drivers would use the road and therefore motorway standard would not be required?

For the sake of only another 60 miles of road to be completed on the Dublin to Cork road, wouldn’t it be sensible to build all of this in dual carriage and hence far more future proof than 2+1.

Anyways, the NRA recently came out saying that 2+1 mightn’t be as safe as they thought and it mightn’t be used at all now.

well a 2+1 with slip roads on and off would certainly be much safer than other roads. And building such a road would a lot cheaper.

The reason i started this was to at least get somebody thinking . a easy billion is being spent building the road to cork. what other things might that have paid for ?

if the train had a very large capacity and was substantially faster than the road , how many would be left driving ?

Duilding a dualcarriage way does not future proof much at all, as i have repeatedly tried to explain. What it does is fuel the city sprawl, generating useless commuter traffic. I am not trying to blame the people who do live in the outer suburbs. They are caught in the difficult position of having no options.

As a country one ought to be putting in place group transport before individual transport.

Now were are stuck with trying to entice a quarter of a million people into cork and dublin, because it will never be possible to service them adequately whereever they are, or at least at any reasonable cost.

@a boyle wrote:

well a 2+1 with slip roads on and off would certainly be much safer than other roads. And building such a road would a lot cheaper.

The reason i started this was to at least get somebody thinking . a easy billion is being spent building the road to cork. what other things might that have paid for ?

if the train had a very large capacity and was substantially faster than the road , how many would be left driving ?

Duilding a dualcarriage way does not future proof much at all, as i have repeatedly tried to explain. What it does is fuel the city sprawl, generating useless commuter traffic. I am not trying to blame the people who do live in the outer suburbs. They are caught in the difficult position of having no options.

As a country one ought to be putting in place group transport before individual transport.

Now were are stuck with trying to entice a quarter of a million people into cork and dublin, because it will never be possible to service them adequately whereever they are, or at least at any reasonable cost.

IIRC, 2+1 is only used in Sweden in Europe. Take a look at Denmark which is of a similar size to Ireland. They have a sizeable motorway network coupled with a decent rail network.

I’m not saying that 2+1 shouldn’t be used on other routes, but Ireland must be the only country in Western Europe not to have a motorway between its 2 largest cities.

Just on the Dunkettle Interchnage

Does anyone else think that a radical rethink is needed on this roundabout/interchange.

I’d personally get rid of the 2 sliproads feeding the Glounthane road for a start.

Secondly I would scrap the roadabout altogether and install a standard motorway interchange with all sliproads etc. You’d be talking no roundabout and no more traffic congestion around the tunnel.

@Micko wrote:

Just on the Dunkettle Interchnage

Does anyone else think that a radical rethink is needed on this roundabout/interchange.

I’d personally get rid of the 2 sliproads feeding the Glounthane road for a start.

Secondly I would scrap the roadabout altogether and install a standard motorway interchange with all sliproads etc. You’d be talking no roundabout and no more traffic congestion around the tunnel.

Im not sure about the possibility of lght rail or motorways n Cork. Its a village compared to Dublin anyway. Maybe they should just extend the heavy rail.

Future proofing doesn’t have to involve building a dual carriageway in case it’s needed. All you have to do is reserve enough land to build a dual-carriageway, make sure all bridges can handle a dual carriageway and build a single-carriageway (or 2+1) road where one of the carriageways would be. That is enough to future proof and is substantially less costly than building the entire dual carriageway.

@jungle wrote:

Future proofing doesn’t have to involve building a dual carriageway in case it’s needed. All you have to do is reserve enough land to build a dual-carriageway, make sure all bridges can handle a dual carriageway and build a single-carriageway (or 2+1) road where one of the carriageways would be. That is enough to future proof and is substantially less costly than building the entire dual carriageway.

Again, it looks as if the NRA are not going to use 2+1 after all due to safety issues. A lot of reported crashes where the end of 2nd lane comes up. People trying to get past others before the lane ends and then crash into the barrier before making it.

For the sake of a few million euro, the Cork Dublin road has to be completed in dual carriageway.

The 2+1 was primarily going to be used on the Galways to Sligo and Midleton to Waterford sections of the Atlantic Corridor. The Cork to Galway section is and was always going to be full dual carriageway.

Now, if 2+1 isn’t going to be used on the other 2 sections, what will they use ?

BTW, as I have pointed out already, in very heavy traffic, 2+1 is a worse setup than single carriageway. This is due to the fact that every 4 miles you will have 2 lanes converging into 1. This would be traffic chaos. This is reportedly another reason why the NRA has scraped the idea of using 2+1.

@Micko wrote:

Again, it looks as if the NRA are not going to use 2+1 after all due to safety issues. A lot of reported crashes where the end of 2nd lane comes up. People trying to get past others before the lane ends and then crash into the barrier before making it.

BTW, as I have pointed out already, in very heavy traffic, 2+1 is a worse setup than single carriageway. This is due to the fact that every 4 miles you will have 2 lanes converging into 1. This would be traffic chaos. This is reportedly another reason why the NRA has scraped the idea of using 2+1.

1 don’t build the barrier.
2 BTW in very heavy traffic this makes no sense.

3 jungle is spot on , future proofing does not require building the road now but keeping the option open for the future.

4. commuter traffic at the edges of both cities takes up all the extra space on the dual carriageways heading into each city. So there is no , repeat no point in building a dualcarriage way between cashel and portaoise until you are able to upgrade the portlaoise dublin section to a 4 lane motorway , and dublin’s m50 to a min six lane motorway, and cork’s ring road to a four lane ring road.

@a boyle wrote:

1 don’t build the barrier.
2 BTW in very heavy traffic this makes no sense.

3 jungle is spot on , future proofing does not require building the road now but keeping the option open for the future.

4. commuter traffic at the edges of both cities takes up all the extra space on the dual carriageways heading into each city. So there is no , repeat no point in building a dualcarriage way between cashel and portaoise until you are able to upgrade the portlaoise dublin section to a 4 lane motorway , and dublin’s m50 to a min six lane motorway, and cork’s ring road to a four lane ring road.

Boyle, the whole point of 2+1 is that you have a barrier to stop traffic running into oncoming traffic :confused:

Well, the Cork North Ring Road is going to be built over the next few years. And this will take a hell of a lot of traffic off the Dunkettle Interchange and the southern ring road.

I don’t think the M50 in dublin needs to be widened. What needs to be done is to sort out all the interchanges which is the main problem, not the lack of lanes.

Rumours aswell that the section of motorway between Portlaoise is all going to be upgraded to 6 lane motorway. This is evident as the section from Naas inwards is being upgraded to 6 lane.

Boyle, you’ll be delighted to hear that the entire stretch of the Atlantic Corridor between Cork to Galway is going to be Motorway/Dual Carriageway standard. Although I’ve heard that 2+1 isn’t going to be used in future, I can’t find anything on the internet about it. That prob still means that the Atlantic Corridor from Galway to Donegal and from Midleton to Kilmeaden will be 2+1.

@darkman wrote:

Im not sure about the possibility of lght rail or motorways n Cork. Its a village compared to Dublin anyway. Maybe they should just extend the heavy rail.

how is it a village compared to dublin when it has a third of its population ya typical dublin birdbrain!

@daniel_7 wrote:

how is it a village compared to dublin when it has a third of its population ya typical dublin birdbrain!

He is on about Dublin Metropolis….. didn’t you hear daniel, it’s bigger than Tokyo, London, New York and Paris combined. :rolleyes:

I didn’t know that a Kerry man was behind the new airline FlyGibraltar, but here it is in front of me on the Sunday Times Business section. Flights are to start early next year from Cork and Dublin to Gibraltar. Here’s a picture of what we can expect FlyGib

@A-ha wrote:

He is on about Dublin Metropolis….. didn’t you hear daniel, it’s bigger than Tokyo, London, New York and Paris combined. :rolleyes:

this whole population thing is pathetic.

the cso figures are.
dublin city : 505,739
cork city : 119,143
galway city : 71,983
limerick city: 52,560

dublin in at least four times bigger than cork which is one and half times the size of galway which is one and half time the size of limerick.

Each city can push it’s boundaries out and come up with a bigger number .

if you do that with dublin you get 1,186,159 living in dublin county. tops a million people are living in a surburb which is contiguous with dublin ,

as for the other cities it is difficult to say since the urbanisation is so recent.

but cork could believably claim to 200000 galway 100000 and limerick 750000.

Just so we know where we stand.

Does anyone know anything about that Water Taxi service that was planned? I haven’t heard anything about it in ages. Maybe they abandoned the plan? :confused:

@a boyle wrote:

this whole population thing is pathetic.

the cso figures are.
dublin city : 505,739
cork city : 119,143
galway city : 71,983
limerick city: 52,560

dublin in at least four times bigger than cork which is one and half times the size of galway which is one and half time the size of limerick.

Each city can push it’s boundaries out and come up with a bigger number .

if you do that with dublin you get 1,186,159 living in dublin county. tops a million people are living in a surburb which is contiguous with dublin ,

as for the other cities it is difficult to say since the urbanisation is so recent.

but cork could believably claim to 200000 galway 100000 and limerick 750000.

Just so we know where we stand.

You could reasonabley expect at least 250,000 out of cork if the likes of Glanmire and Ballincollig was included. I’m guessing you mean 75,000 for Limerick. 😀

Greater Cork is 186,000 according to 2002 cencus. That doesn’t inclue Douglas which has 20,000 people. Glanmire another 15,000. Ballincollig 15,000 and sundry others which might add up to 10,000.

That would be 256,000.

Add in Midleton, Blarney and Carrigaline you get to 274,000 which is the figure stated in the Cork Housing Strategy for the Metropolitan Cork Area.

@Micko wrote:

You could reasonabley expect at least 250,000 out of cork if the likes of Glanmire and Ballincollig was included. I’m guessing you mean 75,000 for Limerick. 😀

Greater Cork is 186,000 according to 2002 cencus. That doesn’t inclue Douglas which has 20,000 people. Glanmire another 15,000. Ballincollig 15,000 and sundry others which might add up to 10,000.

That would be 256,000.

Add in Midleton, Blarney and Carrigaline you get to 274,000 which is the figure stated in the Cork Housing Strategy for the Metropolitan Cork Area.

just stop . how ever many you add dublin can add many more and the other cities can add just as many. it is really silly. leixslip/celbridge is physically connect to dublin ‘city’ but sits in kildare. will i add another 50000.

does dublin stretch to greystones (another 10000).

get over it. all the cities have grown .

Dublin remains a big town, cork a town galway a small town , and limerick another small town.

who cares if cork has a quarter of a million does it change anything ?

@a boyle wrote:

who cares if cork has a quarter of a million does it change anything ?

No it doesn’t…. now that Water Taxi anyone??? lol.

@a boyle wrote:

just stop . how ever many you add dublin can add many more and the other cities can add just as many. it is really silly. leixslip/celbridge is physically connect to dublin ‘city’ but sits in kildare. will i add another 50000.

does dublin stretch to greystones (another 10000).

get over it. all the cities have grown .

Dublin remains a big town, cork a town galway a small town , and limerick another small town.

who cares if cork has a quarter of a million does it change anything ?

On this point A Boyle is right. I would call Cork’s urban population 250,000 but even at that it is, at best, 1/4 the size of Dublin. Galway is about 100,000 and Limerick a little less when the right boundaries are used for all the cities.

Where I wouldn’t agree with the discussion on populations is with Darkman. Sure, relative to Dublin, Cork is v. small (call it a village if it keeps him happy) but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t and shouldn’t get light rail / trams in the short term. Yes Dublin had to wait til it was a 1m city before it got light rail but that was ridiculous. All over Europe there are cities the same size (and smaller) than Cork with proper public transport. This is before we factor in expected population growth in Cork in the next generation of 100,000+. Because of its Centre Island make up, the core of Cork City is ideal for full pedestrianisation with light rail / trams running through it. building such a system now for Cork is no more premature than building (as we allegedly are) Metro for Dublin. Both cities can support each now but clearly will need them into the future. What is wrong with forward planning now? I think Transport 21 should be ripped up and chucked in the bin as it basically is just a plan for Dublin and its commuter belt. If we are serious about regional growth (which Dublin would in truth be the main benefactor from) then a transport plan which sees funding for projects along the lines of, say, 35% for Dublin & hinterland, 15% for Cork & hinterland, 7-10% each for Galway & Limerick, etc is needed to let the other regions play catch up with Dublin. I don’t know the statistical break down of funding under Transport 21 but I’d be amazed if Dublin & Hinterland was getting anything less than 50-60%.

Very well made points

One has to look at where the ball is going and not where it has come from; Cork Docklands represents the best redevelopment opportunity in Ireland at the present time and with a solid transport foundation Cork could become a model for many other cities that wish to grow from 250,000 population at a rate of 3-4% a year but without the proper foundations it will become mired in gridlock as Dublin has over the past decade.

So we can get on with the relevant discussions, these are the CSO (2002) figures for the total population of the cities taking into account where they spill over county boundaries.

Dublin 1,004,614
Cork 186,239
Limerick 86,998
Galway 66,163
Waterford 46,736

The figures for the 2006 census aren’t available yet, so these are 2002 figures

this is moving the topic, but

what i can’t understand is that limerick has train tracks that run right through it. why is it not used ?

it might not solve all limerick ills but it would hardly break the bank to try to expand the ennis train service to the south of the city by building one or two basic stations : ie just platforms .

Great point TP, let’s learn from Dublin’s mistakes and do something that will serve as a model as to how to
take it forward.

Dublin is indeed deserving of the infrastructural investment it is receiving, but the government must beware of creating a Singapore part two.

@mickeydocs wrote:

Great point TP, let’s learn from Dublin’s mistakes and do something that will serve as a model as to how to
take it forward.

Dublin is indeed deserving of the infrastructural investment it is receiving, but the government must beware of creating a Singapore part two.

a laudable aim , unfortunately dublin and it’s commuter belt hold 40 percent of the population. I think it is enevitable that development will not only continue but cement in its lopsided nature.

Hey, hate to be going off the point of the last few posts but my brother flew into the new terminal last week. He said there was a really long que for the mens toliet in the baggage reclaim area – you wouldn’t often see a que for a mens toliet even in a night club! 🙂

The 3 or 4 baggage belts is worrying also – more than 4 or 5 planes land at close enough times and it’s “angry people trying to lug their bags off the belt….!” But we’ll see! At least there’s room for expansion in years to come and we have the old terminal also..just in case! 🙂

@A-ha wrote:

Does anyone know anything about that Water Taxi service that was planned? I haven’t heard anything about it in ages. Maybe they abandoned the plan? :confused:

Abandoned as far as I know, due to exhorbitant insurance prices and a 9kmh speed limit in the river.

@THE_Chris wrote:

Abandoned as far as I know, due to exhorbitant insurance prices and a 9kmh speed limit in the river.

That’s such a shame. I was really looking forward to using the Lee as a mode of transport. Oh well, maybe in a few years when all those boardwalks and such are built down in the docklands.

@daniel_7 wrote:

how is it a village compared to dublin when it has a third of its population ya typical dublin birdbrain!

In terms of scale the difference is very noticable between Cork and Dublin. Cork is far smaller no matter what way you look at it. The GDA has a population approaching 2 million. The reason these Counties Meath, Kildare, Wicklow are little more then suburbs of Dublin is because of a: Urban Sprawl, b: Dublin has whats known as a ‘critical mass’ of commerce and industry matched no-where else on the island. Even Belfast also looks town like to me and it has less then half the population. BTW I dont understand how you could take that as a slur against Cork. I like Cork, its a very nice place compared to the congestion in Dublin.

@darkman wrote:

In terms of scale the difference is very noticable between Cork and Dublin. Cork is far smaller no matter what way you look at it. The GDA has a population approaching 2 million. The reason these Counties Meath, Kildare, Wicklow are little more then suburbs of Dublin is because of a: Urban Sprawl, b: Dublin has whats known as a ‘critical mass’ of commerce and industry matched no-where else on the island. Even Belfast also looks town like to me and it has less then half the population. BTW I dont understand how you could take that as a slur against Cork. I like Cork, its a very nice place compared to the congestion in Dublin.

LOL…. don’t make me wet myself. I mean, honestly….. yeah Dublin is bigger than Cork, but come on, it ain’t no metropolis. It’s the capital of Ireland, not capital of the world, so don’t make it sound as if it is Tokyo, London, New York or Paris, because it is far, far from it. And may I ask where you got your 2 million figure, because last time I looked, Dublin wasn’t host to over half of Ireland’s population. Also, I don’t understand your “critical mass” of commerce and industry. Define critical mass…. because I’ve never heard those words used in the same sentence as Dublin without “doesn’t have any” stuck in the middle. As for Belfast being town like… don’t kid yourself and don’t forget that Belfast is the capital of a country aswell. The Greater Belfast Area has about half a million people, larger than some other European capitals and it seems to be doing just fine. I’m sure everyone on here will agree that Dublin is by far bigger than Cork, but don’t use us as an excuse for you to try and glam up Dublin to make it sound like a world player when it comes to global cities. Get a hold on yourself!!!! 😉

As a Dub living in Cork and loving it I can now see that Dublin has all the hassles and stresses of a big city but very few of the conveniences i.e. cheap mass transit,affordable property and quality of life.
I love Dublin but moving south has opened my eyes to its problems as its easy to get around Corks roads and get to West Cork or Kerry easily etc. I hope Corks planners learn from Dublins mistakes.
The Dublin/Leinster area having a massive population in itself is’nt a great thing its just the sign of a successful economy but it means that more and more people demanding the same thingsproperty,transport,leisure etc.

Just to deviate the thread slightly

Any thoughts on Kinsale roundabout? certainly struggling at the moment but to be fair lanes are closed and resurfacing is taking place. I havent driven it yet so am only going on hearsay but the freshly re laned roundabout I am told is worse than the last one.But I am willing to wait and see. I still wont take it in the morning to go in to the city until they finish it fully!

@Pug wrote:

Just to deviate the thread slightly

Any thoughts on Kinsale roundabout? certainly struggling at the moment but to be fair lanes are closed and resurfacing is taking place. I havent driven it yet so am only going on hearsay but the freshly re laned roundabout I am told is worse than the last one.But I am willing to wait and see. I still wont take it in the morning to go in to the city until they finish it fully!

Its fine so far but hard to judge until all the re-surfacing works are completed in 6 weeks.
It has been a lot quicker for me heading home in the evenings through to Frankfield.

I came home to Cork for the 1st time from Dublin in about 7 weeks last weekend (Always more going on at the weekends in the summer so it’s harder to get down! 🙂 ) I came under the tunnel and went over the flyover – but I needed to go through the roundabout – missed my exit because I was so fixed on checking out the flyover – it’s good – has a nice view at night time of the city lights/glow! Will be interesting to see in Sept. when the schools are back how the Frankfield hill will be! :rolleyes:

The longer I live in Dublin the more I appreciate Cork. Don’t get me wrong – Dublin is fantastic – big city, great buzz, really young. But it’s a breath of fresh air getting around Cork and heading in around town on a Saturday for a walk around the shops. I just hope that if/ when I eventually move back to Cork it won’t have turned into the chaos that Dublin can be now! :p

@Pug wrote:

Just to deviate the thread slightly

Any thoughts on Kinsale roundabout? certainly struggling at the moment but to be fair lanes are closed and resurfacing is taking place. I havent driven it yet so am only going on hearsay but the freshly re laned roundabout I am told is worse than the last one.But I am willing to wait and see. I still wont take it in the morning to go in to the city until they finish it fully!

It’s a big change for many motorists, so it’s bound to have a few kinks and everything. Just needs some getting used to in my opinion. But I would agree, avoid it if possible for the moment, at least until re-surfacing is done. Traffic from the tunnel isn’t helping either.

Ohhh, almost forgot. The new terminal opened for departures today. Last flight from the old terminal was a Wizz Air flight to Katowice. Many memories.

@A-ha wrote:

It’s a big change for many motorists, so it’s bound to have a few kinks and everything. Just needs some getting used to in my opinion. But I would agree, avoid it if possible for the moment, at least until re-surfacing is done. Traffic from the tunnel isn’t helping either.

I have one gripe about the signage, which is that it isn’t 100% clear that you have to turn off before the flyover to go to Togher. I was expecting it, so no bother, but I suspect they may have a few overshoots in early weeks.

@A-ha wrote:

Ohhh, almost forgot. The new terminal opened for departures today. Last flight from the old terminal was a Wizz Air flight to Katowice. Many memories.

departing flights delayed this morning as baggage belts broke down but teething problems to be expected I suppose. Ryanair throwing shapes at taking the old terminal.

@A-ha wrote:

Ohhh, almost forgot. The new terminal opened for departures today. Last flight from the old terminal was a Wizz Air flight to Katowice. Many memories.

departing flights delayed this morning as baggage belts broke down but teething problems to be expected I suppose. Ryanair throwing shapes at taking the old terminal.

On an exclusive basis?

@Pug wrote:

departing flights delayed this morning as baggage belts broke down but teething problems to be expected I suppose. Ryanair throwing shapes at taking the old terminal.

I wonder if those poor passengers got to use the airbridge this morning…. it was raining. Ryanair has been on about that for over a year now. They want to take control of the old terminal and operate it as a Ryanair only terminal, with charters using it at summer peak periods. I think it would be a great move if they did take it over, but I’d hope that it wouldn’t be at the expense of other airlines using Cork. Variety is good. I’d hate to see a monopoly at Cork. We had enough of that with Aer Lingus in the eighties.

@Pug wrote:

Just to deviate the thread slightly

Any thoughts on Kinsale roundabout? certainly struggling at the moment but to be fair lanes are closed and resurfacing is taking place. I havent driven it yet so am only going on hearsay but the freshly re laned roundabout I am told is worse than the last one.But I am willing to wait and see. I still wont take it in the morning to go in to the city until they finish it fully!

Drove it today. They’ve gotten rid of some traffic lights there, but the big problem is theres a lane closed near the linkup that comes from Cork. It’ll get better once they have it all sorted.

But the flyover is a big, big help. Will be interesting though to see how quickly the tunnel snarls up once the schools go back.

@THE_Chris wrote:

But the flyover is a big, big help. Will be interesting though to see how quickly the tunnel snarls up once the schools go back.

😡 That tunnel is turning out to be one big Irish JOKE, mainland Europe is littered with tunnels and most Countries would use a guillotine on whoever is responsible for closing one on such a regular basis.
What is the problem with the tunnel?
Has the guarantee run out or are Walls still responsible for defects?
Will this “maintenance schedule” become more regular with age?
Will the taxpayer have to foot the repair bill if, (when) defects are found outside the warranty period?
Does anyone care; after all public money is there to be wasted!! 😉

Its the manhole covers. They keep breaking and the concrete around them needs replacing every few months.

Believe it or not, Im not joking about this.

@THE_Chris wrote:

Its the manhole covers. They keep breaking and the concrete around them needs replacing every few months.

Believe it or not, Im not joking about this.

😡
Thanks The_Chris, I was wondering what the problem was this time.
This sounds like the same problem that closed the tunnel within 2 months of it opening in 1999. I remember inshore fishermen at the time (before the tunnel was built) saying this would happen as the tunnel would be built in tidal waters, they were dismissed as fools by the engineers involved in the project.:o

A demand from Cork City Councillors for an update on the condition of the Jack Lynch tunnel dated 9th Feb.2004, Motion 10.9 brought the following response from city management;
“The condition of the Jack Lynch tunnel is excellent. There is no structural damage to the tunnel.
The tunnel is closed for 2 nights every three months for regular maintenance. The last closure was 8th – 9th January 2004. Apart from routine maintenance closures, there are no plans to close the Jack Lynch tunnel”

Who is telling porkies???:p

@Pug wrote:

departing flights delayed this morning as baggage belts broke down but teething problems to be expected I suppose. Ryanair throwing shapes at taking the old terminal.

Surely the dis-economies of scale of operating both terminals (duplication of security etc) count against its use?

Was it always planned to remain in use or was it due to be knocked? If it is to be used, would it not be better to use the old terminal for say, cargo planes or perhaps internal flights only?

correct me if i am wrong , but i think the plan is to turn the old terminal into office and sundry.

I would guess they will keep the two open side by side , for some time in order to tease out the enevitable problems with the new building.

It would be great to see Ryanair use it as a low cost hub. Would such a strategy be unique or does anyone know of an airport operating such a policy?

@a boyle wrote:

correct me if i am wrong , but i think the plan is to turn the old terminal into office and sundry.

I would guess they will keep the two open side by side , for some time in order to tease out the enevitable problems with the new building.

Indeed, that is the current plan. Although the part of the old terminal that handled inbound baggage may be knocked to allow one of the stands to accommodate wider aircraft.

I think I’ve posted this before, but for anyone who didn’t see it…

When the new terminal was built, they avoided having to do a full environmental impact assessment because the old one was closing. If the old one were to reopen, it would be required. That would delay any plan to reopen the old one although not necessarily scupper it.

I still maintain that Ryanair don’t run terminals and won’t take the terminal over. If it did reopen, it would be marketed as a Low Cost terminal for all LoCos operating into Cork.

I don’t think it’s a priority for Cork Airport anyway. The new terminal will suffice for a number of years and the planned extension to that one is more likely. I’d put future expansion of passenger capacity quite a long way down the list of needed enchancements after

• More stands for aircraft (Critical and it’s irrelevant to talk about expansion of passenger facilities until it’s done)
• Moving the cargo facilities from their current location
• Building a parallel taxiway (Without it, the airport can handle around 16 flights/8 turnarounds per hour (assuming a mix of inbound and outbound) only. This is already being pushed on summer weekends.
• A lengthened runway (Some destinations – Cyprus – already require aircraft to stop if the winds are blowing the wrong direction. Longer flights – Egypt – are planned and East Coast of the US is likely. Contrary to popular belief, the terrain will easily accommodate a 300m extension)

Prectically, the third and fourth on the list should be done at the same time.

@mickeydocs wrote:

It would be great to see Ryanair use it as a low cost hub. Would such a strategy be unique or does anyone know of an airport operating such a policy?

I know of nowhere where a Low Cost airline operates a terminal. However, there are some airport (e.g. Marseilles, Geneva) where the airport operator maintains a separate terminal for Low Cost operators.

I dont think Ryanair will take over the old terminal simply because they wouldnt be willing to pay for the full terminal security that would be required.

@jungle wrote:

• A lengthened runway (Some destinations – Cyprus – already require aircraft to stop if the winds are blowing the wrong direction. Longer flights – Egypt – are planned and East Coast of the US is likely. Contrary to popular belief, the terrain will easily accommodate a 300m extension)

Jungle, are you sure about this? Most people (popular belief!) seem to think there are major issues with this. Similar problems for upgrading the ILS to CAT-III?

X B

@X Boil wrote:

Jungle, are you sure about this? Most people (popular belief!) seem to think there are major issues with this. Similar problems for upgrading the ILS to CAT-III?

X B

CAT III is a problem. The terrain falls away very quickly after the end of the runway and it would be very expensive to install it.

A short runway extension (up to 300m) isn’t an issue. This would be enough to make aircraft other than the 757 viable for transatlantic flights. Anything much more than 300m and you would run into problems, but unless very long flights or very big aircraft are being targetted, that’s not likely to be required.

The big issue with a runway extension would be how to keep the runway operational (especially to CAT II level, which is definitely needed in Cork) while it was being constructed.

That said, all these comments are made with respect to terrain. There would be land ownership issues assoicated with a runway extension and at least one house would require a CPO.

In fairness one house is not a huge price to pay once it is nothing special in architectural terms ans would be a lot less intrusive than some of the Dublin and Stansted extensions and proposed extensions.

Unless like Knock you wish to build an airport on top of a mountain there will always be at least a small number of losers and I’m sure that CPO would be an attractive option to a householder currently living directly under such a low flightpath.

@Thomond Park wrote:

In fairness one house is not a huge price to pay once it is nothing special in architectural terms ans would be a lot less intrusive than some of the Dublin and Stansted extensions and proposed extensions.

Depending on the length of the extension, it could be as many as 7 or 8. There would also be another few houses that may become practically uninhabitable as the aircraft would be much lower overhead. It’s not massive money or inconvenience though.

If the airport management had any sense, they’d be purchasing these houses every time one of them came on the market anyway. They are going to need to acquire them at some point.

@jungle wrote:

Depending on the length of the extension, it could be as many as 7 or 8. There would also be another few houses that may become practically uninhabitable as the aircraft would be much lower overhead. It’s not massive money or inconvenience though.

If the airport management had any sense, they’d be purchasing these houses every time one of them came on the market anyway. They are going to need to acquire them at some point.

I thought that Cork Airport was buying up all the houses that came up for sale in the past number of years.

On a seperate note demolition has begun on Beasley Street off South Mall & Parnell Place including one of the facades onto Parnell place for a hotel development.

Its a pity they’re taking down those old buildings. Sure, they are ugly as they are, but the designs on them would have been quite nice if restored.

Any pics of the new place, or are we just gonna get another generic mostly-glass-front-Clarion-style hotel?

Could someone settle this arguement.

I make off that years ago, maybe 40 years ago, to travel from Cork to Midleton you would first have to go into Glanmire, over the hump back bridge beside the AIB and up the back of the Water Resevoir and end up at thee back of the present IBIS hotel.

It was only years later that a bridge was built at the glanmire roundabout which allowed you to get to where the IBIS hotel is today.

@Micko wrote:

Could someone settle this arguement.

I make off that years ago, maybe 40 years ago, to travel from Cork to Midleton you would first have to go into Glanmire, over the hump back bridge beside the AIB and up the back of the Water Resevoir and end up at thee back of the present IBIS hotel.

It was only years later that a bridge was built at the glanmire roundabout which allowed you to get to where the IBIS hotel is today.

😀 As I remember the route from Cork to Midleton; McCurtin St. pass Kent Station, pass the Silversprings Hotel (now Moran’s) to the Elm Tree pub, skew bridge, past Youghal Carpets factory….next stop Moby Dicks in Youghal (hic) circa 1971-2

On a more positive note – I was back home in West Cork last week and had to visit the city on Wednesday. I decided to use the Black Ash park and ride facility for the first time. It was excellent.
As there was a bus about to leave the attendant handed us our passenger tickets and told us to pay on our return. The service has us on the quay in a few short minutes. The return was equally punctual.
The whole experience was effortless and great value for money. The car park appeared to be quite full so hopefully it is a sign that people in Cork are willing to use clean, efficient and reliable public transport even if it is not rail based.

I think Black Ash has been a total success story…. you’d just wonder what the hold up is in building new Park and Rides around the city. Love the double deckers too, it’s a shame Bus Eireann got rid of them a few years back.

Yeah the Park and Ride is brilliant. Much better than fighting to get a park in the city.

Though they’ve just added a Bus Lane to the South Link inbound that the P&R bus takes. Of course they didnt think to cut the trees! Im surprised the front window of the bus didnt shatter. People started screaming.

But yeah… theres one planned for Midleton when the railway line reopens, and one at Glanmire somewhere. They need to get their fingers out and build them though.

Hi, just wondering what date is the Fermoy bypass due to open? (approx.!!):rolleyes:

October – Fermoy Bypass.

The Fermoy Motorway is only one piece of Ireland’s largest jigsaw….. when will the rest of the stretch to Portlaoise be done, or is it even on the books yet? Also, I have been hearing rumours that CSA Czech Airlines are to undergo a major re-structuring, which will result in job losses in Prague and the closure of several routes, one of them most likely being Cork. It’s not certain that the route will close but no doubt Aer Lingus starting up on the Cork-Prague route isn’t helping the situation for CSA either.

Cork – Dublin will be fully Dual Carriageway in 2010. I think this is real too and not election spin. Whether the whole lot will be motorway or classified as Dual I dont know.

http://www.nra.ie/RoadSchemeActivity/SchemeActivity-2006/#d.en.1230

and further down. Im not sure if they’re all listed there (theres 3 or 4), but they’re all about to start or will start in a years time.

Does anyone have any pictures of what the new train station will look like in Midleton? Also, has Irish Rail approved the councils plans to open a new station at Kilnap (near Farranree)?

@Micko wrote:

Could someone settle this arguement.

I make off that years ago, maybe 40 years ago, to travel from Cork to Midleton you would first have to go into Glanmire, over the hump back bridge beside the AIB and up the back of the Water Resevoir and end up at thee back of the present IBIS hotel.

It was only years later that a bridge was built at the glanmire roundabout which allowed you to get to where the IBIS hotel is today.

and you’d have to flog the mare every inch of the way, begorrah.

i’ve been on that road for about 20 years, and even the difference in that time is incredible. i cycled the new sections of the n25 just before they opened with the old man back in the day. the whole notion was completely alien, actually bypassing somewhere. shortly after we were reading proposals about not bridging but TUNNELING under the lee. sure that’ll never happen

Aha – No pictures or drawings of the Midleton train station, but I do know Irish Rail will be refurbishing the existing station. Carrigtowhill will however get a new station at a different site. As an aside, the engineers have done most of the groundwork and the actual track laying will take no more than 4-6 months apparently. Glounthaune station will see a pretty advanced track layout with local loops in both Carrigtwohill and Midleton thereby allowing greater frequency. Park and ride to be given priority. Already Glounthaune station’s car park is full every morning, with many commuters coming from Midleton and beyond and taking the train from Glounthaune into Cork.

It’ll still take a fair while to do, especially because of the dirty great road bridge (over the railway) being built soon on the Lower Glanmire Road to replace the level crossing 🙁

What type of car park will be built in Midleton? Don’t know what size the land around the station is exactly but I wouldn’t think it’s very large. A multi storey would be needed if Irish Rail want to make Midleton a success. Commuters to Cork from Midleton, Killeagh, Youghal, Dungarvan and more will be using the station (hopefully)…… but where will they all park? On the N25 Road, they seem to be widening bits and pieces as you approach Midleton from Cork, needs to be re-surfaced though.

@THE_Chris wrote:

It’ll still take a fair while to do, especially because of the dirty great road bridge (over the railway) being built soon on the Lower Glanmire Road to replace the level crossing 🙁

Presumably though, they’ll be able to build this without too much disruption to services. Otherwise, the Cobh line will be out of action too.

That said, even if they had Midleton built by the end of next year, there would still be a significantly long testing programme required.

The layout for Midleton station can be viewed here;

http://www.iarnrodeireann.ie/projects/RailwayOrderDocumentsCD/03_GMR_DRAWINGS/01_STRUCTURES_PLANS/S05_Proposed_Midleton_Station.pdf

The CPOs for the Midleton North Ring Road (1st phase) were published recently, they’ll bring traffic in from the N25 directly to the new station access road to the north of the station. That road will also extend (as per the SLAP) to the N25 at the East of the town eventually.

Any word on the 80 acre site for sale at Knockgriffin?

The existing roadworks on the N25 near Midleton may have something to do with the fact that there will be two new flyovers going up there shortly, one for Amgen and one for a new housing development (Castlerock?)

Far as I know they’re still a fair way off yet. They havent even got plans online yet, but there have been a few meetings about it. Couple of years before they start, anyway.

That said, coming out of Midleton to go to Cork that stupid turning is being replaced by a roundabout. Good idea IMO, loads of crashes happen there because the right of way is well, downright retarded.

S’pose it would have to go, the entrance to the Midleton NRR will be directly across from the end of the flyover as far as I know.

Bet that roundabout will be fun at 8 in the morning!

Seen a few calls in papers etc recently for Cork to get its own transport authority, I think its a brilliant idea once it would consist of people who would know what they are doing i.e. little or no politicians or unions and a few lay people from various areas that would quite quickly let the authority know what needs doing. Brilliant example being the utterly foolish closing of the fast lane of the south link rd in the mornings thereby causing traffic back up to carrs hill – what a joke.

I see Car Free Day advertised somewhere as well and year on year they never learn. Public transport (if you enjoy sitting in traffic if you actually get on to a bus thats not too overcrowded) is free but only between 10am and 4pm i.e.off peak hours. Whats the point in that? SHould be free all day.

I never got that one either

This from today’s Irish Examiner…..with incidents like this, no wonder people resort to cars….public transport is an ordeal too far. And what is it about train services and striking workers at Cork….does not seem to affect other parts of the country as much.

Strike at train station derails 2,000 commuters

By Dan Collins
AN estimated 2,000 train commuters were forced to travel by bus and taxi yesterday when a wildcat strike was staged by maintenance staff at Kent Station in Cork.

Behind-the-scenes talks were underway last evening in a bid to avoid further travel disruption today.
The striking workers had no comment to make regarding their lightning action.
At lunchtime yesterday, rail maintenance staff, who had been working at the station, walked off the job.
Their unofficial action was supported by other Irish Rail employees in Cork.
The first trains which were affected by the dispute were the hourly services from Cork to Mallow and Cork to Cobh.
The 1pm train due to arrive in Cork from Heuston Station Dublin was terminated at Mallow.
Later in the afternoon, with pickets in place on the gates of the station, the 3pm from Dublin to Cork ran as far as Mallow only as did the 5pm service.
The 3.30pm train from Cork to Dublin was unable to leave Cork and operated from Mallow. The 5.30pm train from Cork to Dublin was cancelled.
The 7.30pm Cork to Dublin service ran from Mallow.
A spokesman for Irish Rail said the company had organised buses and taxis for many of the Cork to Cobh and Cork to Mallow commuters.
At such short notice it was not possible to arrange alternative transport for all intending rail passengers, the spokesman said.
Neither Mallow nor Kerry rail stations were affected by the dispute.
“Every effort is being made to accommodate disrupted passengers with alternative bus services between Cork and Mallow. We wish to apologise for the disruption and inconvenience caused. Iarnr

I was reading abit ages ago about how they are to make changes to the Watergrasshill by pass so that people won’t be tempeted to go through the town and into Fermoy in a bid to dodge the toll on the Fermoy Motorway. I’m not all too familiar with the road, but what is one extra roundabout gonna do…. because that’s their solution!

@A-ha wrote:

I was reading abit ages ago about how they are to make changes to the Watergrasshill by pass so that people won’t be tempeted to go through the town and into Fermoy in a bid to dodge the toll on the Fermoy Motorway. I’m not all too familiar with the road, but what is one extra roundabout gonna do…. because that’s their solution!

As I read that report, they wanted a roundabout on the main Cork-Dublin road! Absolute insanity and how many people would end up dying then because of suddenly seeing stationary traffic while travelling at 100km/h?

Going back before it was built, perhaps the junction should have been on the other side of Watergrasshill, but working with what is there, some kind of relief road system in Watergrasshill is probably the practical solution.

Hmm, just a thought.

I see that certain bye laws can be used to bringing the speed limit on Dual carriageway roads up to 120k/h,

Any hope of this happening on either the Watergrasshill bypass, the new Road to Midleton or the Ballincollig bypass ?

Ballincollig bypass yes, definatly. Cork – Carrigtwohill proboboly. Carrigtwohill – Midleton no chance.

Watergrasshill possibly.

Basicially if its HQDC (High quality Dual) then probobly yes. If its SDC (Standard Dual), no.

90% of new DC is HQDC tho.

Well the section from Carrigtohill to Midleton is going to be completely redeveloped with all junctions replaced with fly overs and sliproads. I guess it all depends how good the job they do on that stretch of road.

Will Cork Co Co use this by-law to raise the speed limit though. I think they should, especially from the top of Glanmire to Watergrasshill. There really isn’t any point not to do so.

Could also be implemented on the Fermoy to Mitchelstown section of the N7, the proposed Northern Ring Road and the dual carriage upgrade on the N28 road from Roachestown to Ringaskiddy. Add in the future dual carriage way to Limerick planned under the Atlantic Corridor setup.

@Micko wrote:

Well the section from Carrigtohill to Midleton is going to be completely redeveloped with all junctions replaced with fly overs and sliproads. I guess it all depends how good the job they do on that stretch of road.

When is all of that due to happen. It would make a huge difference. Those f*cking crossroads in the middle of the DC going into the quarry will be the death of people soon enough. It’s ridiculous!
Also read in the Echo the other day that Amgen want to develop a train station at their site in Carrigtohill, so employees won’t have to take their cars to work. It’s a brilliant idea, hope they get permission and Carrigtohill will go from a town with no station to a town with two stations. All in the name of pharmaceutical development of course.

Heard more about that Ryanair airport to be built in (or around) Killeagh. I have just regarded this as rumour now, but where is it that people are hearing it from, because it isn’t the first time I heard it. :confused:

Amgen also want their own railway sidings for freight. I assume Like IFI much of their product will travel by rail.

Local residents have loged a number of objections to the Amgen plant, mostly in the area of Infastructure. There will be a large volume of Construction traffic using the already poor roads in the area for the building of the plant. The Council plan to replace the Interchange to the quarries with a flyover, but many fear this will not be done until after the plant is constructed.(it won’t be needed then) There is a large amount of underground geological oddities in that area also. Thats why the surface is so poor.

The main fear again is that the heavy construction traffic will compromise this already delicate surface.

There are two problems with 120km/h. One is that it will lead to a worsening in air quality around the roads in question. The other is that it will excaerbate congestion in the run up to interchanges.

From this point of view, it would only be appropriate to start it as a speed limit around 5km from Dunkettle on both the N8 and N25.

Similarly, it should only start west of the Curraheen junction on the Ballincollig bypass.

@A-ha wrote:

When is all of that due to happen. It would make a huge difference. Those f*cking crossroads in the middle of the DC going into the quarry will be the death of people soon enough. It’s ridiculous!
Also read in the Echo the other day that Amgen want to develop a train station at their site in Carrigtohill, so employees won’t have to take their cars to work. It’s a brilliant idea, hope they get permission and Carrigtohill will go from a town with no station to a town with two stations. All in the name of pharmaceutical development of course.

Heard more about that Ryanair airport to be built in (or around) Killeagh. I have just regarded this as rumour now, but where is it that people are hearing it from, because it isn’t the first time I heard it. :confused:

Ryanair are an Airline and do not build or manage airports.

How about this from today’s quondam Cork Examiner:

18 September 2006

‘Magic circle’ not a traffic solution

AFTER reading about the impact of a slip-road on Watergrasshill, north of Cork city, and the proposal of a roundabout as the solution (Irish Examiner, September 14), I feel this is not the answer to the village’s problems.

Why spend millions of taxpayers’ money on a new motorway and then effectively scupper it by interrupting the flow of traffic with a roundabout in the middle.

This would create bottlenecks on a road designed to eliminate them and increase the likelihood of accidents as fast-moving traffic must slow down and merge with other traffic at the roundabout. Anyway, most Irish drivers seem totally incapable of correctly negotiating roundabouts anywhere.

Putting one in the motorway at Watergrasshill would also increase environmental costs as vehicles must accelerate to cruising speed after they have gone through, using significantly more fuel. This is a ‘solution’ most people, and especially the motorists paying for it, would not want.

Take, for example, the roundabouts on the South Link road in Cork city. Surely people have learned by now how poorly they cope with traffic. Their only real function is to impede traffic flow. It was implied in your report that Watergrasshill community council was consulted on the initial bypass.

If this was the case, then it seems a little short-sighted of those involved in that consultation to have accepted the slip-road in the first place.

It would not have taken much to realise that if local traffic was going to grow significantly, and if they were worried about its effect on residents, they should either have objected to the location of the slip-road in first place or not allowed a new estate to be built right beside it. Doing neither, and then complaining about motorists using a road they have funded through road tax, seems like them wanting to have their cake and eat it.

May I suggest that instead of campaigning for the construction of a roundabout at taxpayers’ expense, would if not be better to concentrate on abolishing the toll that will drive all those extra vehicles into the village?

The people of Watergrasshill are also taxpayers, and I’m sure many would agree they have already paid in taxes — direct and indirect, over and over again — for roads such as this.

The only people really to benefit from the tolls are the private individuals operating them.

Even if the removal of the toll gates is not feasible, the construction of a second slip-road to join up with the old road on the northside of the village would be preferable to the building of yet another ‘circle of pain’ on the main highway.

Having had for many years the questionable claim to the country’s only ‘magic roundabout’ at the Kinsale Road intersection, and the subsequent dumbfounding attempts to copy its inanities at Wilton and Bishopstown, the people of Cork truly deserve better.

Kieran Donnelly
Lr Beechwood Avenue
Ranelagh
Dublin 6

@Spinal Tap wrote:

Ryanair are an Airline and do not build or manage airports.

Not at the moment. But they have plans to build and operate their own terminals in airports across Europe (including Dublin) in a bid to lower taxes and charges. They already have a large stake in Frankfurt-Hahn airport, which is how they managed to reduce taxes on that route substantially without getting into trouble with the European Union, which is what happened/is happening in Charleroi and Shannon. Oh and before I forget, bmiBaby have ceased all operations at Durham Tees Valley Airport and thereby ending the route to Cork. If anyone’s wondering, I think the nearest alternative is Newcastle with Jet2.

@Praxiteles wrote:

Why spend millions of taxpayers’ money on a new motorway and then effectively scupper it by interrupting the flow of traffic with a roundabout in the middle.

I think the bigger question is why spend millions of taxpayers’ money, only to put a toll on the road? lol. I suppose we are lucky that the tunnel was never tolled though….. can you imagine it?

The inability to operate tolls in this country at river crossing without serious tailbacks is depressing.

I read about a €4million refurbishment of Kent Station the other day, that will include more retail units, new lighting, heating and flooring, extensions to facilitate the new Midleton Commuter Service and a new bus and taxi passenger set down and pick up area in front of the station. Does anyone have any pics. of what we can expect?

Bit of a comedown from the €35 million revamp including new bus terminus that had been planned.

When is that election!!!!!!!

Whatever about the scale of the development, they’d better still include an entrance onto the quays. It would take 5 minutes off the walk to the city centre (and south docklands if anthing ever happens there…)

In terms of increasing the attractiveness of commuting by train, that one small development is vital.

Rail line is being extended to Midelton and I believe the track bed for the old Youghal Line is still in existence. On the other side the track bed from Waterford to Dungarvan is still in CIE hands – 18 mile gap for a potential Cork – Dungarvan – Waterford – Rosslare – rail line – any views on long term possibility – should a route be identified and safegaurded.

The original intention was to complete a line on the route you mention. I’m not sure why it was never finished and Cork-Waterford trains routed via Mallow instead.

As for linking them up…

The first thing would be to make the Cork-Youghal and Waterford-Dungarvan lines viable again. This would require the respective county councils zoning land to increase the populations of Youghal and Dungarvan. Once that was done, a line between the two could be considered. There is the substantial natural obstacle of the Blackwater Estuary to cross as well as some pretty mountainous terrain. Overall, it would be a ‘nice to have’, but in the context of rail transport in this country, there are far better ways to spend the money. I suppose there would be no harm in creating a theoretical route on a map and restricting development along it.

Something that is potentially of more interest is the line from Charleville to Patrickswell. This line existed until the early sixties and is 17 miles long (chopping more than 30 miles off the rail distance between Cork and Limerick). Its reinstatement could make a Cork-Limerick-Galway service much more competitive timewise. It could also be handy for commuter services in the Limerick region.

Anyone been on the new M8 motorway in Fermoy? What’s the chance of all this Watergrasshill traffic congestion stuff being sorted out by Christmas? Its only been open a few days and everywhere I look is criticism. No doubt it’s a brilliant piece of infrastructre for people travelling to Dublin, or indeed for people living in Fermoy…. but where is all the praise gone?

Also, RE: the Cork-Waterford train. I think it would be a brilliant service, and would be very popular, especially with the amount of students from Waterford studying in Cork, but unfortunetly, I don’t see it happening in the next twenty to thirty years (but you never know). At the very least, extending the Cork Suburban Rail to Youghal would put the finishing touches on the overall Cork services and no doubt prove popular in the summer with droves of people going to the beach for the day (the station is right next to Youghal Strand). Whatever happened to those tram rumours for Cork, you’d think they would create something in the gossip mill with an election coming up soon!

I drove the M8 yesterday and was frankly not impressed. First problem is that signeage is shocking and its impossible to tell who goes where. There will be accidents as drivers unfamiliar with the layout will cross lanes in an attempt to get to the correct booths.
Rolling up to the “exact change” barrier, with exact change ready(while on my motorcycle) comes the first problem. The “exact change” barriers are only for cars.
Barrier fails to open until I pay my remaining 70c(Not bloody likely) so I wait and watch the q build up behind me. German engineer type comes over and explains that barrier is for class 1 vehicle only, Not class 2.

I never new there was a class system in motoring. How do I become upper class? Who is lower class?

Another yellow jacketed individual pushes barrier open for me and i speed off(to the sound of the “tilt” alarm going off on the barriers, but you can push them 😉 )
Motorway is nice, but just two lanes, and little room for expanding, should the need arise, particularly in the region of Dr Barrys Bridge, where the road is cut through the hillside. On my travels I noticed on occasion the old N8, still full of the many articulated trucks that will divert through Watergrasshill to avoid paying the toll.

The central reservation has those concrete wall type barriers, and no “run off”, apart from at the other off ramps along the way.
The ending is confusing, as rather than merging two lanes into one at Moorepark, the inner lane gets fed up the slip road to one roundabout, while the outside lane gets fed up the offramp against traffic entering the motorway.
I made the return leg, noticing that there may be crosswinds for high vehicles on the Blackwater bridge.
After my experience with the toll booth on the outward leg, on my return I joined the q behind all the trucks,buses and other lower class vehicles that would not fit through the height controlled “exact change” booths. This single q also includes those seeking reciepts, and thosw who wish to pay by cheque or from their loose change jar.
5 minutes waiting at toll.
Sure it beats waiting in Fermoy traffic, but its not very encouraging. High speed motorway=hot engine. Waiting in a stationery vehicle with a hot engine is not good for the cooling system of ones vehicle.

Good effort, but needs much improvement.

How many tolls is the government planning for the N8 between Cork and Dublin?

Not sure, but if they keep building scraps of by-passes, calling them motorways and sticking a toll on them, then I would imagine it’s going to be quite a substantial amount. I can’t see them getting away with it for long though, not many people would stand for it. Talk about double taxing! Isn’t it our money paying for the roads anyway.

Far as I know (think I mentioned it a page back), Fermoy and the M7/M8 interchange (when its built) are the two tolls going to be on the road. Two too many, of course.

I’m not opposed to tolls on roads per se, but can someone answer this for me.

I’ve heard that the electronic pass on the Fermoy bypass won’t work on the WestLink and any other tolled roads in the country. Someone please tell me it’s not true.

Why are you paying car tax for the maintanance of the roads if you are then charged AGAIN to use them?

@Praxiteles wrote:

Why are you paying car tax for the maintanance of the roads if you are then charged AGAIN to use them?

There is an alternative for people who don’t want to pay.

The real reason I have no objection is that it allows the finance to be raised for faster completion of the projects, which to my mind is beneficial.

@Praxiteles wrote:

Why are you paying car tax for the maintanance of the roads if you are then charged AGAIN to use them?

I assume that it is because the money put up to build the M8 came from private sources and they need a return.
I have just travelled to Fermoy on the old N8 and back on the M8.
Without doubt, there were four times as many trucks on the old route than on the Motorway

@lawyer wrote:

I assume that it is because the money put up to build the M8 came from private sources and they need a return.
I have just travelled to Fermoy on the old N8 and back on the M8.
Without doubt, there were four times as many trucks on the old route than on the Motorway

Has it been deemed a Motorway or high quality dual carriageway?

Motorway, officially.

Motorway rules apply.

Continuing the Cork Airport saga, this letter appeared in to-day’s electronic version of the quondam Cork Examiner. This week, the excuse is that three planes landed at the same time. I cannot explain the date:ù

10 April 2006

Wet, walk and wait: airport a big letdown

CORK airport may be one of the newest in the world, but it must also rank as one of the worst.

On a recent flight from Madrid via Dublin, I landed in Cork in the rain. I had to walk about 200m, climb two flights of stairs (in crutches!) and wait over 40 minutes for baggage.

This was due to three planes landing at the same time, a floor staff member explained.

At the new airport in Madrid, there were no queues and there were landing bridges to all planes, regardless of how many arrived at the same time. There were escalators and even trains that ran from landing bridge to the exit terminal — all in five minutes — and our baggage was there before we arrived.

Was there no real planning for Cork airport, or did the Dublin Airport Authority win out on this issue?

Gerard Manley
13 Amberly Heights
Grange
Douglas
Cork

I drove through Watergrasshill tonight and the traffic was very heavy. Prob more on the old road than on the new bypass.

Anyone know what Fermoy was like during the week ?

Also, bringing down the speed limit on the old rod to 80kph is a farce. Why were the by-laws for speed limits on local roads brought in if they aren’t going to be used.

Re Cork airport: Behold the Wikiality of the situation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cork_International_Airport

@Micko wrote:

I drove through Watergrasshill tonight and the traffic was very heavy. Prob more on the old road than on the new bypass.

Anyone know what Fermoy was like during the week ?

Also, bringing down the speed limit on the old rod to 80kph is a farce. Why were the by-laws for speed limits on local roads brought in if they aren’t going to be used.

Traffic congestion in Fermoy has eased considerably since the opening of the by-pass. It is now possible to cross from one side of the town to the other withouit taking up to 20-30 minutes to do so.

On the other hand, the number of lorries passing through the town is still relatively high. The speed restriction on the old section of the road is being read locally as an “official” tactic to discourage traffic from using the old road and as an “incentive” to use the tolled part of the new road. So, the guardians of the peace in Fermoy are currently opeating something akin to another toll system on the old road – just like the robber barons on the medieval Rhine. We await, however, to see if the Blackwater will not produce its equivalennt of the Rheinmaedchen to help us ford its treppant floss.

No, the lowering of the speed limit is because since the Primary Route, the N8, is now not passing through the town, that road has now been reclassed as an R road. So a lower speed limit. Simple as that.

@THE_Chris wrote:

No, the lowering of the speed limit is because since the Primary Route, the N8, is now not passing through the town, that road has now been reclassed as an R road. So a lower speed limit. Simple as that.

And no politico-locomotive consideration ?

@THE_Chris wrote:

No, the lowering of the speed limit is because since the Primary Route, the N8, is now not passing through the town, that road has now been reclassed as an R road. So a lower speed limit. Simple as that.

That’s true. But there are a number of by-laws which can be brought into action to bring the speed limit back up to 100kph. The whole point of these by-laws was so that R roads which are of a very good quality can have a 100kph limit. If this road isn’t good enough I don’t know what is.

The amount of fatal accidents there in recent years are evidence enough that its not suitable for a 100km/h speed limit.