jungle

@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

@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.

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…

As a counter-balance to CUH, somewhere on the North-Eastern side of the city would be the best option. In that regard Glanmire would be perfect. Do the Southern Health Board (or whatever their successors are called) own any significant land around Sarsfield’s Court?

I wonder how this could affect the development of the breast-check centre.

On the subject of the Mercy, why is the ground floor completely unoccupied (or not even built if you prefer…)? It’s not great for the area and even if it was let out for retail usage or for consultants offices, it could provide useful revenue for the health service.

@lexington wrote:

I think strong cases can be made for all such light-rail commuter links – particularly however the Carrigaline/Ringaskiddy line. I think you’ll find the likes of the Port of Cork will champion such proposals – anything which will aid access and capacity to their new facilities at Ringaskiddy. Commuter wise, Carrigaline makes its own case. I think it will be important to develop any such line with strategic consideration for areas like the South Docklands, Mahon Point and Douglas.

Reopening the Cork-Passage-Carrigaline line could make sense for commuters, but not for freight. The line was a single track line and the embankments etc. were not designed to take full weight freight trains. If it were to be used for access to the Port of Cork facilities in Ringaskiddy, it would effectively mean rebuilding a new line on the old alignment. You’d never get such a line through Monkstown or Passage either, so it would need a large tunnel from Rochestown to Raffeen.

Reopening as a tramline would make a lot more sense. While there are many people who want to preserve the walkway through Mahon, I don’t see it as a big issue. Most of the line runs through a deep cutting. It wouldn’t be hard to put a roof on this to preserve the walkway. It could also mean that the walk wouldn’t be such a dark forbidding place in twilight hours.

Still, the first priority in Cork city has to be a working bus service. There should be buses every 10 minutes along the principal routes 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 14. It should be possible to buy a ticket that allows you to use multiple buses. It should be possible to buy a day ticket. It should be possible to get buses to the airport from somewhere other than the bus station (e.g. extend the 6). Buses that terminate in the city centre – 4, 6, 9, 14 – should all terminate at the train station instead. Services shouldn’t wait on Patrick St when they are operating a cross-city service. If we can’t get this bit right (and it wouldn’t even cost that much), there is no hope for light rail services.

The Environmental Impact Statement (Page 16) answers the question of the existing level crossing that will be replaced. It will be one of the ones on the Lower Glanmire Road that is used to access the houses behind the railway line. It’s quite an interesting looking new bridge that’ll be added there too…

I’m glad to see that they’ll be using the old Midleton station. There was talk of developing a new station on the other side of Mill Road to avoid having to install a level crossing. While this approach would have been marginally less expensive and had a lower impact on road traffic, it would have made any extension to Youghal impractical, so using the existing station will keep options open.

@Micko wrote:

Tell me one thing though, where is the original rail line that ran from the train station to the start of the viaduct. I’m a bit too young to remember it in action but I can’t work out through which parts of the city it ran and where it crossed the Lee.

If its gone, I hardly think train services to Bandon will ever reappear.

It ran down what is now the South Link Rd. Near to the current location of the Kinsale Rd Roundabout, the Macroom line and the Bandon Line split. The Bandon Line gradually went up the hill and ran through what is now the halting site at Forge Hill. Between Forge Hill and the Viaduct, the remains of the embankments can be seen, but on the city side it has been almost entirely built over. That wouldn’t necessarily be a problem as you could easily cut and cover down the Kinsale Rd.

However, it would be necessary to consider whether it would be better to use a different alignment anyway. You could easily divert the line to run through the airport, but this would mean missing the viaduct. There are also problems with the line having been built on in Bandon.

The real pity is that the Macroom line has disappeared. It went to Macroom via Capwell, Togher, Bishopstown and Ballincollig. Imagine if it was now possible to run trams on just the Cork-Ballincollig section of that.

@Pug wrote:

having grown up there, douglas was never designed for the level of traffic it gets every day and nothing significant was ever done to fix it – I can add no extra info for you but if you can get the image of the plans you have on this site, i’d be very interested out of mere curiousity

The relief road past Douglas Court was supposed to deal with traffic congestion. However, there are three points in Douglas that can’t handle the traffic through them – the Well Road/Tesco junction, the fingerpost roundabout, the junction by Daily’s shop (although, the creation of the right hand-turning lane has improved this one a lot). The relief road just formed an alternative route between two of these.

There are a few solutions that could provide a bit of relief – full junction for traffic accessing the ring road in Rochestown and in the Back Douglas Rd, entirely remove the ring road junction on the Douglas Rd. Unfortunately, the presence of the estuary to the East means that creating a proper relief route is nearly impossible and the only practical solution is to provide people with decent alternatives to using their cars (when will that ever happen in Cork…)

As regards the roads proposals, Deirdre Clune distributed a leaflet to people who live in her ward a number of years ago. There was one road that disturbed me, which was a proposed road from the end of Grange, through Douglas Woods to the old Carrigaline Rd. Douglas Woods have been damaged enough in recent years without having a road driven through the middle of the remainder. If these roads are to be linked, I’d prefer to see an upgrade to the existing boreen above Donnybrook and that road extended to link up with the road that comes into Grange at Pinecroft. It would be as useful for relieving traffic congestion and by joining further out the Carrigaline road, would provide full access to the N28, rather than just Carrigaline/Ringaskiddy bound. It could also form a southern development boundary for Douglas. However, it would be significantly longer and consequently more expensive…

@Micko wrote:

Cork should either go all LUAS or go all Metro. I would like to see it go all Metro if possible. It by far the cleaner option and keeps Trams etc off of the streets, helping to reduce traffic more than any LUAS system could. Sure, it would cost extra, but the benefits would be massive.

I think the best approach would be to develop a LUAS style system, but to use routes that could be cut-and-covered at a later date to take trams out of traffic if necessary. This approach has been used in a number of cities – Brussels, Antwerp, The Hague for example. It means that you get a network up and running more quickly than by digging out a metro network and realistically, I can’t imagine Cork needing more than the capacisty provided by a tram, it might just help if trams could be separated from other traffic in the long run.

I would also be highly opposed to any tramlines on Pana. Sending them down the quays on the southside of the North Channel should be perfectly adequate.

@A-ha wrote:

That all sounds very exciting. Make sure you keep us updated lex! Also, on the subject of the airport, I just read today that Aer Arann are beginning flights to Nantes (Brittany) in France instead of Angers. It’s sort of old news at this stage, but I wonder are Aer Arann trying to compete on the Nantes route with Ryanair who fly there from Shannon. I think the route will be popular as it’s the only route to Brittany without getting the ferry to Roscoff. It also saves on driving time down to Shannon (and back again) aswell as the cost of driving and parking your car down there too.

I believe this decision was related to problems with Angers Airport rather than any desire to compete with Ryanair. They also shifted their Manchester-Angers flights to Nantes.

@corkdood wrote:

I thought Douglas was considered part of the city. It is served by city bus routes for example while the likes of Ballincollig (which is not much further out of town) is not (and bus fares are almost twice the price.)

The city really needs to be enlarged to reflect the growing suburbs.

The city boundary is the Tramore River, which flows through Douglas. This means that parts of Douglas are in the Cork City, while the bulk of Douglas is in Cork County.

The traffic lights at the junction of the Well Road are in the city, while the roundabout at the entrance to Tesco is in the county. I’m convinced that the complete lack of coordination between these two junctions is responsible for a lot of the traffic congestion.