Cork Transport

@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!

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.

@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.

@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.

Are you still plugging a single airport?

@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 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.

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!

@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.

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?