Cork Transport

@browser wrote:

vkid, answer me this, if the daa wasn’t to pay for the debt why then was it given, in toto, the Great Southern Chain and Aer Rianta international? How come Cork & Shannon didn’t get 1/3 of those? In any event the project over ran from€140m to €220m. Who was supposedly surpervising the project at the time? The DAA of course. My good sources inCAA tell me they have run Cork airport into the ground for thelast 2 yrs vetoing any decent proposal – as of course you’d expect the to because they are the competition!

That is even before you recall that the DAA and Shannon got their airport upgrades through the purse strings of Aer Rianta, a state body with tax money from everywhere, inc Cork, funding those upgrades. We should have been upgraded 20 yrs earlier but the delay in giving us an upgrade is being used to justify us having to pay for it!

Don’t get me wrong, the question you ask is valid (this isn’t a begging bowl issue I promise) but so are the answers to it. I think the government has no idea of the strength of feeling about this here. The promise (and I know – politicians break these all of the time) is being seen as a bell wether of whether this gov could give a flying f**k about Cork (we already had our doubts). The answer is a resounding no.

The DAA also tried to sell a large landbank belonging to Shannon as well before they were stopped in their tracks and there are still major issues with the DAA’s treatment of Shannon , They also vetoed a huge cargo proposal there some years ago. Its not all roesy there either and the DAA are playing dirty with many areas of that airport.
But I still don’t really see why they should pay for all of CA’s debts. If CA is to really stand alone it should be liable for some of the cost of the Airport ( the same as any business would be liable for its premises).

@Torquemada wrote:

Likewise,here’s one more lost FF voter.The PDs are as bad and share in the culpability here also.FF’s watchdog?More like lapdog..

😡 The lying politicians are not the only ones to blame on the Cork Airport dept.
The board of CAA should be seen to be independent, get up off their backsides and START doing what they get well paid for;
Attracting new airlines and routes to Cork (not just once in a blue moon flights to Azerbywherever)
Expose those that are out to hold Cork back instead of lunching with them in the most expensive hotels in the city.
Loose their fear of Ryanair exposing their lack of Airport know how and allow M.O’Leary use the old terminal as a hub.

😮 The PD that nobody elected, Sen.John Minihan was on radio today, he is “furious, but not for resigning on the matter”, kind of says it all really?

Vote machine could be about to take on an all together new meaning!!

http://www.rte.ie/news/2007/0220/cork.html

Desire for street-cars in Cork

By Eoin English
A COLOURFUL new concept in public transport was unveiled in Cork yesterday.

Bus Éireann took gardaí, city and county officials on a test drive on board a sleek lilac street-car it hopes to introduce in the city soon.

The striking articulated vehicle, which is described as a tram on wheels, is already in use in York and Leeds in England.

There are also several on order for introduction in Las Vegas in the near future.

Bus Éireann said they hope to introduce the vehicle on a green route in the city on a pilot basis soon.

It is hoped that under the Government’s Transport 21 investment programme, that several more will be ordered for use in Cork.

The street-car can carry up to 118 passengers and is fully wheelchair accessible.

It is a cross between a light rail system and is designed to be able to run on roads or on a guided bus system.

It has a diesel engine but can be easily converted to run on bio-fuels.

The diesel version pulled up outside City Hall yesterday morning where senior city officials and senior gardaí jumped on board.

It then travelled out the link road, negotiated the Kinsale Road roundabout and travelled out to County Hall to collect county officials.

Another short test drive followed before the street car returned to City Hall.

Bus Éireann area manager Joe Fitzgerald said the vehicle, manufactured by Wrights in Ballymena, negotiated some of the city’s narrowest streets with ease.

“It’s a new concept in public transport that’s designed to encourage people out of their cars and into public transport,” he said.

The street car will visit Limerick today and Galway tomorrow for more test drives.

Mr Cullen said that if Cork did not want to take on the debt that was ‘fine by him’.

Who does this guy think he is? to come out with a childish statement like that just indicates the contempt in which FF holds Cork. As per yesterdays papers, Ned O Keefe, Noel O Flynn and Michael Martin all feel that its quite alright for the governement to promise that CA would be debt free, then take 4 years to make a decision about it and then do a complete U turn with the most flagrant breach of a promise I have seen. Their point appears to be that there was such a cost over run we should bear the debt when its they were responsible for the cost over run in the first place !!!

Allison Donnelly’s Front page of this evenings Echo reports that;

MINISTER Micheal Martin has said that Cork Airport Authority chairman Joe Gantly supports the Government plan on how to deal with the airport debt.
Today Mr Gantly was not available for contact and a spokesman for the airport said Mr Gantly would not be commenting on the issue.
The claim of Mr Gantly’s support came as confusion surrounded whether the CAA had sent a letter to the Government’s rejecting its plan to saddle them with the €100m: debt.
Sources said the Board had agreed earlier this week to send a letter to the Taoiseach rejecting the proposal that they carry €100 million debt while the Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) carried €120m. They felt that the DAA, who built the new terminal, should carry the entire cost.
It is not clear if this letter has been sent and there are now suggestions that the two airport authorities have already begun discussing there break up into separate entities. This would mean that Cork would have no choice but to take on board the debt, although a source denied that any negotiations about a split in the authorities had taken place.
The option that Cork remain under the DAA umbrella and wait for Dublin to use their reserves to pay Cork’s debt was still on the cards, despite that fact that this is not said to be supported by Mr Gantly. One source said that this would not inhibit Cork from growing and would be favourable to starting life with huge overheads.
However, Minister for Enterprise Micheal Martin said that he felt the best way forward was for immediate separation.
“There is a strong feeling that it is right to break away now. Cork Airport has been performing well and it has a surplus. For the interests of developing Cork it is best that they are their own authority.”
He added that he was not surprised by the massive public interest in the issue.
“This is a very contentious thing so in that context I am not surprised at all. Cork has done very well as an airport but it needs to be a priority and it wasn’t for a long time. I would like to see the DAA and the CAA conclude their discussions and then the CAA decide how best to move forward.” According to financial experts, the CAA would have to pay some €7 million a year to service a debt of €100 million, if they were to borrow the money to repay the debt.

@kite wrote:

😡 The lying politicians are not the only ones to blame on the Cork Airport dept.
The board of CAA should be seen to be independent, get up off their backsides and START doing what they get well paid for]Loose their fear of Ryanair exposing their lack of Airport know how and allow M.O’Leary use the old terminal as a hub. [/B]

😮 The PD that nobody elected, Sen.John Minihan was on radio today, he is “furious, but not for resigning on the matter”, kind of says it all really?

Kite, you’re pretty much on the ball with everything so far, but I can’t agree with the popular concept of “let Ryanair take over the old terminal and everything will be great.”

The old terminal is, well, old; it would be in need of major investment just to bring it up to a standard where it would be fit to use as a passenger terminal again. Running a passenger terminal also involved serious logistical considerations – how would security, catering, cleaning, retail, car parking, administration etc be handled? How would revenues/costs be shared? The new terminal meanwhile is still well within capacity (despite the statistics thrown about) and it would make no sense at all to waste all this money on resurrecting a shabby old building while there is spare capacity in its adjacent neighbour.
Apart from the duplication of effort/cost, there are a few other reasons —

Planning permission exists for one passenger terminal only. In order to secure planning for a second operational terminal, a full EIS would need to be carried out and other procedural matters would lead to a significant delay in achieving this (according to rumours at least)

There is insufficient aircraft parking space to base many more aircraft at Cork. As it is, private jets are routinely asked to vacate their parking stands while idle to facilitate scheduled operations, and during the busy summer months it has been known for planes full of passengers to be left waiting on the taxiway after landing for an available parking stand. The next proposed stage in developing more parking space incidentally involved the use of the 40 acre site currently receiving mention in the news. If the DAA get away with selling this for commercial development (and keeping/robbing the spoils for themselves) then future expansion will be seriously hindered. Not to mention that if the airport cannot even afford an extra airbridge for €400k (correct me if I’m wrong) right now, then with an extra €100,000,000 in debt I doubt they will be whipping out the check book for further capital spending any time soon.

Ryanair as it stands have no interest in developing new routes or business for Cork airport. Any new routes would dilute their operations at Shannon, where they are in receipt of a very favourable deal from the airport. Ryanair have done nothing but knock Cork airport in recent years, making a big fuss of increasing charges last year (proved to amount to less than 1c per passenger) and issuing doom & gloom press releases about moving Liverpool flights to Kerry airport. A few months later they come back with their tail between their legs, move the flights back to Cork without any media attention. They congratulated themselves on opening up a ‘new Cork base’ last year, but in fact have only succeeded in driving Easyjet out of Cork. Since Easyjet left, Ryanair have all but abandoned the Gatwick route on which they competed, instead focussing their attentions on Aer Arann, whom they are attempting to drive off the Cork-Dublin route. The airline that claims to be pro-competition is obviously doing more harm than good at Cork– pushing competitors out and then cutting back on flights.

Although it may be difficult to reconcile after saying that, I’m not anti-Ryanair at all. I just want to show that it’s not just a matter of handing over an idle building to an airline and sitting back to watch tons of new business roll in. And I would predict that in the event of any Ryanair expansion at Cork, instead of opening routes to new destinations they would instead go head to head with an established airline and try to drive them away.

@Praxiteles wrote:

It was not difficult for Aer Lingus to double their services to the continent as they only had two routes from Cork: to Paris and Amsterdam. And, if you wish to avail of the services to “main” airports then in the case of Leonardo da Vinci, it operates only twice a week at present – and it should not be forgotten that Ciampino is much more efficient to clear and closer to downtown Rome!

Fair point, although you’ll see I said they doubled capacity not services. They had 2 aircraft in Cork, now there are 4, serving (…2 minutes til I check wikipedia…) Alicante, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin-Schönefeld, Birmingham, Faro, Lanzarote, London-Heathrow, Madrid, Malaga, Manchester [Starts March 2007], Nice [Starts March 2007], Paris-Charles de Gaulle, Prague, Rome-Fiumicino, Tenerife-South, Warsaw. Not every route is a daily flight, but it’s better than just London, Paris & Amsterdam!

@bosco wrote:

Fair point, although you’ll see I said they doubled capacity not services. They had 2 aircraft in Cork, now there are 4, serving (…2 minutes til I check wikipedia…) Alicante, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin-Sch&#246], Nice [Starts March 2007], Paris-Charles de Gaulle, Prague, Rome-Fiumicino, Tenerife-South, Warsaw. Not every route is a daily flight, but it’s better than just London, Paris & Amsterdam!

The Nice and Rome routes were intitiated by the ill-fated Jetmagic – which did a great job in demonstrating that there was business potential for continental routes out of Cork. It was a pity it failed (largely, I think because they launhced during low season and never did much advertising at their destination locations) and the benefits of their initiatie gone to Aer Lingus. They also had a service to Milan. Remember, that up to very recently, if you wanted to fly Aer Lingus from Cork to any continental destination other than Amsterdam and Paris meant that you had to get up at 3 a.m (sic) in order to get their connecting flight to Dublin where comfortable schedule times allowed their Dublin customers roll into Dublin airport at 8 and 9 a.m.. Otherwise, you had to stay overnight in Dublin. Aer Lingus’ comittment to Cork Airport somehow leaves me cold – very cold!

I do not want to labour the point but it seems to me that “services” and “capacity” are not completely disjointed concepts!