Time to banish the car and truck from Cork city centre?

probe

Is it not time that the motor vehicle was removed from a large part of the city centre island of Cork city?

A short video of Nice – Place Massena this Saturday lunchtime (16.6.07).

This area used to be gridlocked with 10 lanes of cars going in all directions 24h/24.

Until the city authorities had to get the location ready for a new tram system.

The entire area has been 90% pedestrianized in the process.

Cars have been kept out and people will have to use the tram to get into the centre.

The new tram service will not be operational for a few months.

But it is already having an effect on the quality of life in the area.

Check out the video and see la différence!

About time Cork brought back the tram to the city....

.probe


http://rapidshare.com/files/37548137/NCE1.mp4.html

(scroll down and click on “free”)


Note: The vid is in MPEG4 format, which can be viewed in Real Player or Apple Quick Time on Windows, Mac and Linux machines.

Nice Tram pre-opening website: www.tramway-nice.org

Public transport map of Nice ville: http://www.lignedazur.com/ftp/FR_pla...%A9g%C3%A9.pdf

(A detailed .pdf map which you have to zoom to 100% or more to see the details).

Blitzkrieger

*cough

I think consensus was people would like to see improved public transport but don't trust the council not to make an expesive balls up of it.

IMO the city centre is pedestrianised enough. Until you improve the public transport you can't reduce the cars or buisnesses will suffer.

Owen

Public transport my hole. Some decent shops would suffice. Instead on Patrick's Street alone you have Debenhams, BTs, 4 record stores, derilict units, 15 thousand mobile phone stores, 4 jewellery stores, and a lot of average girls clothes stores, not to mention the fast food outlets. We could do with an injection of new brands, and new stores TBH to bring people back into the city, people are bored.

cork_ie

Cork City has basically ruined itself with clamping , mediocre quality shops and overpriced parking. Why bother going into the city centre anymore when you can do almost everything you want in any of the suburban shopping centres with free parking and a lot less hassle. I now only go into Cork City about once a year at Christmas.
Comparing it to Nice or any other european city Cork is quite frankly a hole.

Balmed Out

Cork city centre would be better with more pedestrianised streets but to be fair it is actually far better then most european cities. What we need to be doing is stopping the spread of shopping malls outside the city centre before we lose the city centre and end up like most cities these days - with no real centre and living in a collection of dreary monotoneous suburbs all more dreary then then the next, mini LA's (hole that it is). How many city's with a population simular to ours has so much choice in shopping eating drinking etc in its centre. For that matter how many city's with twice our population have?

Banning cars and trucks? Never gonna happen.

probe

ned78 wrote:

Public transport my hole. Some decent shops would suffice. Instead on Patrick's Street alone you have Debenhams, BTs, 4 record stores......

Aside from your views on public transport (clearly you never had the fun of living in a city with a good tram system – trams running every 5 minutes, no traffic jams, no car to park, no drink driving risks, a single integrated ticket – just get on and go….), one would tend to agree with the matter of retail choice in Cork.

Shut Debenhams and replace it with a FNAC high quality media/gadget store… www.fnac.fr crappy website – but check out their cool shop next time you are in Nice (44 ave Jean Médecin) – just up from Place Massena in the video.

William Roche must be turning in his grave at the thought that the core of the business he worked so hard to establish has been sold to this gang of …… by his ungrateful heirs.

.probe

Owen

probe wrote:

Aside from your views on public transport (clearly you never had the fun of living in a city with a good tram system – trams running every 5 minutes, no traffic jams, no car to park, no drink driving risks, a single integrated ticket – just get on and go….)

I've had plenty of experience with cities that have great Public Transport - Warsaw, Paris, NYC, Munich to name but a few. I wasn't dismissing the idea, but saying let's get the actual city sorted out first before we put the cart before the horse.

dahamsta

Personally I think horses and carts would be a step backwards.

Blitzkrieger

Well if we use the manure to geneate electricity it could turn out to be quite green.......or brown.

run_Forrest_run

I agree with some of the views here, the city is a kip and not a pleasure to visit for shopping. The quality of shops is terrible and the gridlock makes it just not worth it. Yes Cork needs an injection of new fresh shops. The current bunch of shops are serving those over the age of 60 or those who like to support slave labour in Asian countries by shopping in places like Penneys! I avoid the city like the plague.

probe

ned78 wrote:

I've had plenty of experience with cities that have great Public Transport - Warsaw, Paris, NYC, Munich to name but a few. I wasn't dismissing the idea, but saying let's get the actual city sorted out first before we put the cart before the horse.

Warsaw, NYC, Paris “great public transport”? You jest?

Munich is getting there, maybe.

There is only one city where the public transport system has been taken to its logical conclusion. Zurich!

.probe

run_Forrest_run

probe wrote:

Warsaw, NYC, Paris “great public transport”? You jest?

Munich is getting there, maybe.

There is only one city where the public transport system has been taken to its logical conclusion. Zurich!

.probe

Paris has an excellent Metro and NYC has a very good public transport system also...it has to have one in order to move around such large volumes per day...otherwise it would fail as a city. It's the same reason why Cork will never become a major city unless while it has incompetent public transport.

probe

run_Forrest_run wrote:

Paris has an excellent Metro and NYC has a very good public transport system also...it has to have one in order to move around such large volumes per day...otherwise it would fail as a city. It's the same reason why Cork will never become a major city unless while it has incompetent public transport.

Whether Paris or NYC can be said to have good public transport depends on how one measures the impact.

While the Paris metro is probably the best large city metro in the world, the Paris area still has huge road traffic congestion problems – because many people still want to use their car rather than public transport. NYC is a lot worse.

Paris RER is not as good as Sbahn in many German or Swiss cities. Having arrived at CDG airport, the RER user often has to stop at virtually every station en route to Gare du Nord – at some of the most deprived and badly designed banlieue in France, taking one’s life in one’s hands – particularly late at night. Despite the fact that CDG can fill an RER train on its own, most hours of the day.

By way of contrast, you can arrive at Zurich airport at any time and get an SBahn, IC or Eurocity or whatever is running at the moment into Zurich Hbf and arrive in 10 mins, usually non-stop. If you are going somewhere else (eg Bern – I’m writing this at 22h11 (UTC+2) and did a quick check and the next train for Bern from Zurich airport is 22h13. If I missed that, there is one at 22h39). That is good public transport. The type of public transport that that makes people decide to leave their car at home. Integrated, non-stop, end to end.

If the day ever arrives that one can get a train from Dublin airport (at 22h11 and 22h39 or any time) direct to Cork, Limerick, Galway or Newbridge, public transport will be on its way to competing with the car in Ireland. Geneva Airport, Switzerland’s second city also has this type of rail connectivity with the rest of the country.

While one can get direct trains from Paris CDG airport to Marseille, Lyon, Bordeaux etc. the system is not an almost door to door, integrated, nationwide network that sucks in so many people to use it every hour of the day that it can run frequently to offer great service, creating a virtuous circle, as is the case in Switzerland.

That is what separates the Swiss Travel System from every other public transport infrastructure in Europe and the rest of the world. The rest of them could be categorised as varying from good to awful, with Ireland closer to the awful end of the spectrum.

Cork probably has the worst public transport non-system in Europe for a city of its size, if you ignore the Continent of Great Britain, which is not in Europe anyway :-(

.probe

run_Forrest_run

Good post probe, you have a few good points. I wonder what the reason is for some of the public transport problems in Paris..perhaps unions etc..if they try and change something the whole system downs tools (which is another huge problem in itself).

I have never been to Germany or Switzerland but I actually heard that the public transport in these places is so good that you could set your own watch by them. Wow, sounds like commuter heaven.

They should bringing back the rail line to Youghal. Or how about a water ferry on the river lee from tivoli or further out into the city centre. I think these could make a bigger dent in the cities traffic congestion than banning cars and trucks from the city centre.

run_Forrest_run

Deleted User wrote:

They should bringing back the rail line to Youghal. Or how about a water ferry on the river lee from tivoli or further out into the city centre. I think these could make a bigger dent in the cities traffic congestion than banning cars and trucks from the city centre.

true, I actually heard something about establishing a river taxi/commuter along the water from Passage West, would be a great idea but sure I'd say us humans will have evolved to grow wings by the time the authorities will get their ass in gear on this.

I recently had relations from Sydney visiting and they were gobsmacked that we didnt have a water taxi service here. I works really well in Sydney apparently. I know thet have a much bigger harbour there but I think it could work really well here too. Get all those commuter cars out of the city. They are a real pain in the hole, I live in Ballyphehane and the people who drive into the city and park their cars in residents spaces is incredibly annoying

simu

Balmed Out wrote:

Cork city centre would be better with more pedestrianised streets but to be fair it is actually far better then most european cities. What we need to be doing is stopping the spread of shopping malls outside the city centre before we lose the city centre and end up like most cities these days - with no real centre and living in a collection of dreary monotoneous suburbs all more dreary then then the next, mini LA's (hole that it is). How many city's with a population simular to ours has so much choice in shopping eating drinking etc in its centre. For that matter how many city's with twice our population have?

There are some interesting shops in town but not on Patrick Street, which is very bland indeed. In fact, pretty much any other street is more interesting.

Debenhams is a particular hate of mine - I wonder if it's making a profit at all???

parsi

FNAC is too dear....

And you better check Zurich out again - no trains after 0:57 tomorrow morning until 05:00 - not quite "at any time...".

Good to see that you've (Probe) let us know finally where the utopia in which you reside is. (What a clumsy sentence..)

Davedubh

They should definetly ban those boy racers who jam up patrick street cruising aimlessy up and down every evening.