Greens propose Luas for Cork

Amazotheamazing

daveirl wrote:

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That's what us Limerick folk get for having a main national route run right through the city centre, though the Cork bypass has been great. Hopefully the tunnel will make things a good bit easier.

On the plan for a Luas, It's worth investigating but it screams soundbite.

probe

It is not in Berlin . It is near the Med. Other than that I can’t say. Being near the sea or a large body of water is ideal for a communal heat pump system because the pipe grid can be laid on “land” that is not in private ownership and free for use. My greatest fear is that a few journos working for various Irish newspapers would come down here, check it out, and write a series of stories on the place! There is a lot to write about here in terms of how a city/country should be run.

My worry is that our property prices would skyrocket, Irish style. Within a short period, the place would be teaming with Irish owned SUVs (complete with bullbars) driving the short distance to the mall. (Most people here walk or use the bus when shopping). Irish style traffic jams and smog would quickly follow. Our nice clean streets, which are vacuumed and machine washed at around 05h30 every morning would have increasing amounts of Irish dropped litter, vomit and chewing gum blackspots everywhere, as Irish pubs and junk food stores move in to service the Irish market. No thanks.

A good example of how this place is run can be found in the public health system in the town. Last year, I was a patient in the public hospital. On arrival in A&E, I was seen to within literally ten seconds (I was not a hyper emergency case fortunately). The capacity was there to deal with people as they arrive without having to wait. They decided that I should stay a few nights – and they had a room ready for me within 2 minutes.

Patients in this hospital are connected to a high tech vital signs monitoring system – and a central computer on each floor monitors their status second by second 24/24h. If something nasty happens (like someone is heading towards a heart attack, the system automatically contacts the appropriate staff to provide immediate assistance). This system priorities the delivery of staff resources in real-time based on patients’ immediate needs. Fairly basic stuff in a hospital environment – yet seldom implemented, anywhere else. Think of all the lives it could save in hospitals if widely used. If a patient is on a drip and their bag runs out of “juice”, the system registers the event and prioritises it accordingly (ie one presumes a much lower priority).

This gives medical staff the ability to monitor dozens of patients as if they had eyes on the back of their head and intervene before events get critical. All medical records are updated in real time on a (secure web based interface) health system computer (eg you get a blood test for X and visit doctor Y and he can see the results of same on his pc web browser, the minute the test results are available – together with all your other data, medication you have been prescribed, allergies, BP, temperature, whatever tests are appropriate for your case). The health service is administered via a secure website, which gives everyone access to appropriate data on a need to know basis. It uses bog standard web server / database software – no re-inventing the wheel spending millions creating special / customised software. All the facilities – including toilets etc are kept spotlessly clean and every new diagnostic technology is available. Handwash facilities everywhere, which are in constant use by staff.

Each patient has a direct inwards dialling phone number – so when friends or family call they get straight through to the patient without going through the switchboard operator. If they move you to another room, you keep your DDI phone number (all you have to do is dial the 6 digit account code assigned to you on a bit of paper on arrival, at your new location, at any phone in the hospital, and that is where your incoming calls are delivered to until further notice. You dial the same code for an outside line, so that the calls are billed to your account – irrespective of the phone you are calling from. (They don’t like mobile phones to be used – due to the risk of it causing problems with sensitive medical diagnostic kit).

Every patient gets a computer generated food menu every day, which lists the range of food options they can take (within their diet / medial needs) and they can select their meals typically from a range of five options, for each course. If there is a particular test scheduled for a patient, and they have to stay off a particular food for 24 hours prior to the test, the menu they receive won’t have any meals with this ingredient listed. The menu order comes a day in advance, so that the hospital catering staff can order and produce exactly the required meals, offering a wide range of options with little waste in terms of unused food stocks and yet offer a wide choice.

If you have some friends visiting and you decide to have a party in your hospital room, you can order virtually anything (just like hotel room service) even a gourmet meal with wine or champagne for everyone visiting you. This is served by hotel trained staff, so you are not wasting nursing staff resources. You have to pay for it, as you would anywhere – it is not included on your medical insurance plan obviously. But this enlightened public hospital sees it as a beneficial part of a patient’s recovery process to have people visiting and having a good time. Why shouldn’t the same service be available in every hospital?

One thing that hits one when arriving in Cork is the number of obese or overweight people walking around. While I am not a doctor I suspect that poor diet among a large proportion of the population is a major contributor to hospital waiting lists. The French government health experts found the link between obesity and illness over 100 years ago and the country implemented a comprehensive education system in schools and to parents on the need for moderation in eating and this is now in the culture. With the result that you come across very few obese people in France. And the French health system has saved itself €zillions over the years as a result!

I was looking at a crèche the other day in my town. A collection of recently built state of the art timber buildings in a public park, run by the local Red Cross, within walking distance of most homes using the facility, away from traffic and similar risks. In addition to the usual toys and amusements, ducks and other wildlife inhibit the environment. [Wildlife in this area is not afraid of human beings and the kids can get up close to them and they typically don’t fly away when approached]. When you think about it, a public park is about the safest, healthiest, most fun place for a crèche to be located.

I could go on and write a book about the town and how it is run. But it is just all common sense stuff – all within reach of a modern society. Everything they do in this town gets a lot of thought put into it. Political considerations are not allowed get in the way, because the powers that be know that the population will be happy when the place is well run.

.probe

dahamsta

You can't say? Are you a sekrit agunt?

daveirl

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parsi

I know where it is - it's Hav !

http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/generalfiction/0,,1779644,00.html

dahamsta

The thing that confuses me is why someone so utterly (self-)satisfied with the place they live and their life in general, is spending time on the Cork forum on Boards.ie. I think perhaps I've been feeding a troll. How embarassing.

adam

probe

daveirl wrote:

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It is my fear that an influx of Irish people would drive up property prices in this town which has very limited area to expand (because it is surrounded by mountains). Call me selfish, but I don’t want property prices in the area to rise to Shrewsbury Road levels. It has a far better climate than D4 (it hasn’t rained for at least two months), a major airport close by, and it wouldn’t take much to fill the place to overflowing.

As a consequence, there would be few people available to clean the streets or work in the hospitals or do most of the things that makes this place special. Because most of the great people who make this place work could no longer afford to live in the area.

All I am suggesting is that Ireland (and Cork in particular, given that it hasn’t reached the same level of saturation of everything at Dublin) gets its public transport, planning, health services, sustainable energy systems, etc up to best practice levels as they are close to achieving where I currently live.

The notion that Cork doesn’t need trams and doesn’t have a traffic problem is head in the sand stuff. The same sort of short-termist thinking that gave Dublin a four lane M50 - barely good enough for five years from the date it opened. A large city near me has an 8 lane motorway ring road which was originally developed in the 1920s. The city has half the population of Dublin and nothing like the traffic problems. They are currently planning an additional outer motorway ring road to deal with traffic growth over the next 20 to 30 years. Before the issue becomes a problem – rather than in arrears as is so often the case in procrastinative Ireland.

.probe

lostinsuperfunk

The notion that Cork doesn’t need trams and doesn’t have a traffic problem is head in the sand stuff.

I completely agree with you there, although coming on a Cork forum and calling us morons and backward looking is a bit troll-ish. To the other posters, yes, better bus lanes would go a long way to solving our current problems, but we need to at least start planning (if not building) for the future now. The population of outlying districts is increasing and will continue to increase, but many of these people will end up commuting to the city.

CPO's should be issued now to acquire land along corridors suitable for
light rail or guided busways from the city centre to Douglas/Carrigaline, Mayfield/Glanmire, Bishopstown/Ballincollig. We should learn a lesson from Dublin and not wait until the place is completely gridlocked before doing this. The area along the quay behind the train station should be kept for public transport usage - turn the train station around to face the rest of the city! - instead of selling it all off to a property developer. However, I believe that it will be very difficult to do any of this without stronger local government. Although Cork City Council is quite good at what it does within the limitations imposed on it, we should really have professional, well-paid, full-time councillors, local taxes paid directly to the city/county council, and a Cork Transportation Authority with the ability to plan and build infrastructure. And finally [personal rant] we should demolish every car park on the central island and build a few more car parks around the periphery (a la Carroll's Quay, Anglesea St) instead and create more park and ride services[/personal rant].

BTW, my guess is that Probe lives in Nice.:eek:

Blitzkrieger

probe wrote:

The notion that Cork doesn’t need trams and doesn’t have a traffic problem is head in the sand stuff.

Nobody disagrees with you on that point. We just don't want to see another hugely expensive embarassment like the Luas.

probe

lostinsuperfunk wrote:

BTW, my guess is that Probe lives in Nice.:eek:

It would be nice if Nice was as well run as my town. Nice will even have trams within the next few months. However it is not Nice. They don’t have the communal integrated energy system recycling their rubbish and sea temperature differentials into green hot water, air conditioning, electricity and space heating using heat exchangers. It is missing a few other things too…

If I was living in Nice I wouldn’t be worried about the impact of Irish buyers arriving en masse – it is a big place and they would have a limited impact on the market.

Moving back to Cork, while I agree that there needs to be some agency charged with the delivery of high quality public transport on an integrated basis, (pedantic mode=on) I don’t like the idea of calling it an “Authority”. Smells like “Dublin Airport Authority” (worst airport operator in the EU, aside from BAA (as in British Airports Authority) who operates the London airports – ranked bottom in a recent EU survey of airports). Or “National Roads Authority” – who doggedly presides over the worst motorway network in Europe without service areas for people to rest, eat, and get fuel etc. The only “motorway” in Cork City or County (“the Fermoy bypass”) is narrower than the toll-free ordinary road that connects with it! It is also poorly signposted (even some of the speed limit signs don’t comply with Irish or international regulations). And the tolling is pig inefficient – no credit cards accepted. No change from the self service lane coin baskets. (This is not the M50 with 100,000 vehicles per day). Rip-off Ireland. A poor quality but hyper expensive motorway system run by backstreet operators. The road surface is not up to best practice standards either.

Public transport is all about customer service. The word “service” should be in any agency’s name and in their charter and in everybody’s job description and all their advertising etc. And they should be required to live up to the word.

The most successful public transport system in the world is in Zurich. In Zurich Canton every public expenditure exceeding CHF 10 M requires a referendum for the public to agree on an investment proposal. The politicians and administrators tried to foist a metro on the city several times and the proposals were thrown out when it came to the vote. Zurich has always had trams, and the people wanted more of them. And no metro. Waiting for a tram is like waiting for an elevator in a skyscraper – you wouldn’t dream of using your car in Zurich because public transport is so good – just as you wouldn’t dream of using the stairs to get to the 20th floor in a tall building. In Zurich the tram lines act as arteries. Buses feed the tram system at various points, and their arrival and departure is coordinated with tram arrivals. Buses stay out of the city centre (as do cars and other vehicles for the most part). Buses therefore run on time because they don't get stuck in city centre traffic. Trams run on time because they get priority from the traffic management computer system (the traffic light control system has the tram timetable in its database and takes it into consideration when changing a traffic light to green or red).

It seems to me that Cork would be well served by two tram lines – one running East/West and the other North South with suburban feeder buses and other modes (e.g. public elevators (as in Genoa) and funicular railways to bring people from hilly areas to city centre levels.

The other issue is the maintenance of public transport vehicles in Cork. It is appalling. Buses are filthy and bodywork damage remains un-repaired for months or longer. An ugly, unattractive "system". Ugly livery too. The buses themselves are of poor quality and of course they all run on polluting mineral diesel. Bus Éireann do a lousy job in the city, and there is no excuse for it.

http://www.ecoplan.org/politics/general/zurich.htm

.probe

parsi

probe wrote:

It seems to me that Cork would be well served by two tram lines – one running East/West and the other North South

.probe

Ah yes - I can see it now - a Citadis zooming up Shandon St or Cathedral Road. Cork City -the only tramway system using the Abt rack system.

galwayrush

we've had a similar proposal for Galway City from the Greens as well.and we know that it's going to happen here.........:D

Faith

Nah, I'm going to guess that probe lives in Montpellier. S/he referenced it earlier as having a tram system. I spent a summer there learning french, and it's a nice place, but boring as hell, and certainly not all the OP cracked it up to be.

That is assuming I'm correct about the location.

StandnDeliver

the boring old dinosaurs in the county council need to get there thumbs out..

I mean the sugar beet factuary in mallow would have been an excellent plant to make bio-fuel to run cars,bu tdo they look tho the future noooooo.They had all the equipment there to make it work.But they just see the €€€€ signs.

Cork county council and City council have a lot to answer for,Instead of giving the lord major a chaufeer driven merc,and a pay rise to where a gammy chain,Why not do something worthwhile with the dosh,Instead of visiting the primary schools promoting their party!!!

Blitzkrieger

I know I'd love a bio fuel car.

parsi

Faith wrote:

Nah, I'm going to guess that probe lives in Montpellier. S/he referenced it earlier as having a tram system. I spent a summer there learning french, and it's a nice place, but boring as hell, and certainly not all the OP cracked it up to be.

That is assuming I'm correct about the location.

Anywhere so bloody perfect would have to be boring - "Singapore by the sea"