New train station Carrigtwohill

timmyjimmy

Does anybody know why there is not a train station in Carrigtwohill Industrial Estate? There are thousands of people who work in this estate, or does it make too much sense to the powers that be...

namloc1980

timmyjimmy wrote: »

Does anybody know why there is not a train station in Carrigtwohill Industrial Estate? There are thousands of people who work in this estate, or does it make too much sense to the powers that be...

IDA were to at least part fund it but it never came to anything during the financial crisis. I also think that the frequency of trains is not sufficient to support the industrial estate. Alot of the jobs are shift hours. I live in Carrigtwohill and huge numbers of people leave the IDA around 7pm. Next train after that time is at 7.52. One train per hour ain't gonna cut it. In fairness if there was a demand a shuttle bus to the train station would work or the existing bus service with bus stops at the front gate could be used. I think the majority of people there will stick to their cars.

mire

timmyjimmy wrote: »

Does anybody know why there is not a train station in Carrigtwohill Industrial Estate? There are thousands of people who work in this estate, or does it make too much sense to the powers that be...

There is planning permission in place for a railway station in the fota retail park; close to the industrial estate

Outkast_IRE

Yeah a massive missed opportunity.

With Stryker expanding so much in recent years and Gilead also, this should really be on the cards as a priority. The bus service to carrigtwohill is patchy and expensive.

A rail connection timed correctly would do well if they tie in with the companies and promote the Leap Card as an option.

mean gene

timmyjimmy wrote: »

Does anybody know why there is not a train station in Carrigtwohill Industrial Estate? There are thousands of people who work in this estate, or does it make too much sense to the powers that be...

They cant afford to tar the roads no mind make a train station down there.

whisky_galore

Outkast_IRE wrote: »

Yeah a massive missed opportunity.

With Stryker expanding so much in recent years and Gilead also, this should really be on the cards as a priority. The bus service to carrigtwohill is patchy and expensive.

A rail connection timed correctly would do well if they tie in with the companies and promote the Leap Card as an option.

There's a well-used railway station in Little Island serving a massive estate or estates, yet people can't get in or out of estates now at peak times the place is so clogged with cars.

Outkast_IRE

whisky_galore wrote: »

There's a well-used railway station in Little Island serving a massive estate or estates, yet people can't get in or out of estates now at peak times the place is so clogged with cars.

Well the rail connection is well utilised and well placed so you cant hold that against it.

People will always drive, as even if the rail is good, the amount of locations you can get to is limited. But it helps the situation in little island alot. Imagine the traffic without it.

The situation in little island is due to a combination of factors primarily being the fact that there is only one primary access route onto or off the island, and to get off the island and the majority of the cars/ HGVs need to pass through a single route at peak times. Any time outside of peak time the traffic is very light. It is debatable if the dunkettle upgrade will help or hinder the island, but there was a traffic survey carried out a few weeks ago, and i would be hopeful a second access route to the island can be put in on the eastern end.

TheQuietBeatle

whisky_galore wrote: »

There's a well-used railway station in Little Island serving a massive estate or estates, yet people can't get in or out of estates now at peak times the place is so clogged with cars.

People don't make use of it because it's a rip off.

the beer revolu

TheQuietBeatle wrote: »

People don't make use of it because it's a rip off.

Do explain.
How much is a weekly or monthly pass?

Mushy

TheQuietBeatle wrote: »

whisky_galore wrote: »

There's a well-used railway station in Little Island serving a massive estate or estates, yet people can't get in or out of estates now at peak times the place is so clogged with cars.

People don't make use of it because it's a rip off.

Those trains are very busy at peak hours.

Wonder with the huge development in planning in carrigtwohill will it push forward the idea of a new station at the IDA park/fota retail.

whisky_galore

TheQuietBeatle wrote: »

People don't make use of it because it's a rip off.

Not so much of a rip off as car insurance!;)

namloc1980

TheQuietBeatle wrote: »

People don't make use of it because it's a rip off.

If you insist on paying with cash for single fares then yes it can get expensive. Use Leap card and get weekly or monthly tickets and its very reasonable. Many employers have the tax saver scheme which makes it cheaper again.

It's like people who moan about the price of bus fares in Cork. Leap card fares are 27% cheaper than cash fares plus you don't have to be fumbling around for change. It is literally a no brainer. Yet I still see most people paying cash on the bus. Makes no sense to me but I'm happy with the 27% saving.

Impetus

It seems to me that Carrigtwohill needs a feeder bus system to bring people from places of work and homes in the area to the train station which looking at the map is far away from the source of demand for the rail service. Feeder buses fill trains and make a more frequent rail service viable. The same applies in Little Island and other similarly situated suburban rail stations.

Zurich (twice the pop of greater Cork) has taken it to the extreme. 16 tram lines and 12 duplex train lines (double deck trains) are fed at many stations by buses taking people to / from the rail/tram station. As a result the average waiting time for a tram is 3 mins, and one wouldn't dream of using a car for an urban journey. Everything runs on electricity - leading to cleaner air.

At the city end, Kent Station needs to be a tram stop on a tram line running from Mahon to the west - to ultimately Ballincollig. Well run tram systems are magnets for users, and are profitable. They need integrated blob zone ticketing (which over-priced Leap is not). Cash fares should be increased to EUR 5 on buses. Subscription fares (week/month/year) should be reduced in tandem.

1. Fix the system
2. Induce people to buy into the system using subscriptions rather than cash fares.
3. Increase the carrying capacity of services to meet demand.

Public transport should be targeting 80% market share of urban trips. The more people that use it, the more frequent the service can become - assuming it is well managed.

The Bus Eireann monopoly needs to be shut down in Cork. Cork needs a fare system like Unireso in Geneva - a single fare system with multiple bus operators, ferry boats, and rail services participating. The Geneva system even bleeds into neighbouring France. And the bus service for Cork airport is a mess. At this time of year, buses arrive at the airport 'bus full' and continue on their journey without stopping. Third world public transport - the only thing that is missing is thousands of people climbing on the roofs of trains etc! Instead they are stuffing the road network with cars, and polluting the environment reducing their life expectancy.

namloc1980

We're not going to get a Swiss style transport system in Cork. It would be great but reality dictates it simply won't happen. Dublin is sorely lacking in terms of transport and it's by far and away the biggest city in the country. Cork isn't going to get the investment needed to do what you're suggesting.

The Government's updated infrastructure plan is due out in September. Almost certainly Cork will get little or nothing in it and that will put into context how far down the priority list transport improvements in Cork are. In addition because transport infrastructure tends to be a long term investment it's not a vote winner for politicians. Bleating on about potholes and hospitals/schools wins votes, transport doesn't.

I do agree about cash fares though. They should be much higher.

Impetus

namloc1980 wrote: »

We're not going to get a Swiss style transport system in Cork. It would be great but reality dictates it simply won't happen. Dublin is sorely lacking in terms of transport and it's by far and away the biggest city in the country. Cork isn't going to get the investment needed to do what you're suggesting.

The Government's updated infrastructure plan is due out in September. Almost certainly Cork will get little or nothing in it and that will put into context how far down the priority list transport improvements in Cork are. In addition because transport infrastructure tends to be a long term investment it's not a vote winner for politicians. Bleating on about potholes and hospitals/schools wins votes, transport doesn't.

I do agree about cash fares though. They should be much higher.

I was simply stating the obvious.

1) A country needs an objective in terms of public transport – eg 75% or so of repeat journeys need to be made by public transport – because car growth clogs up the system, are is a waste of energy and time. They take up space to park and cause traffic interruption parking and leaving their parking space. Above all they are a health threatening pollutant (unless they use electricity – H2 or battery etc). But no matter how the car develops – autonomous, electric, PM2.5 particulate filtered, etc – they are a health risk, almost as bad as cigarettes. Even if we end up with autonomous shared car fleets that can park themselves etc – they still take up space and new roads will be needed to deal with the traffic. (As an aside, electric car owners in Denmark can make up to EUR 1’500 pa while cars are parked, selling peak time electricity back to the grid. The intelligent Danes have installed two-way charge stations that can charge a car or use its electricity storage capacity in peak times. The car’s energy management system can be set to ensure that it retains enough power for the drive home etc.)


2) To get to 75% usage, public transport needs to be well run, comfortable, fast and subscribed to. Public transport at this level in urban areas needs little subsidy and can become profitable. The current fleet of buses in Cork is antiquated – even though some of them have 171 plates. Poor visual design/colour, only one door doubling the average dwell time at each stop. In any well-designed system, a bus has two or three doors for people to get on and off. Ticket control can then be on a tram basis – ie random inspection with €100 fines. Barriers and controls are a needless, expensive friction on the customer using the system. Irish mainline railway stations are the only mainline stations in Europe with barriers pathway to/from inter-city trains. Oirish public transport is “un-cool”, and Cork (with its absence of trams etc) is the capital of “un-coolness” in this regard. Trams move from stop to stop with a minimum of delay – because they have lots of doors and ticket checking is random. Irish buses have only one door – leading to longer journey times, more struggle getting on and off the bus. Higher friction of use. No intelligent person will sit in a bus in Patrick Street for 10 minutes before it ‘takes off’ for their destination.


3) Feeding rail based (ie train and tram) systems with customers using connecting buses creates a need for greater rail capacity – ie more frequency of service to handle the demand. Keeping buses out of a city centre makes it more user friendly – with a single tram line running through, fed by busses taking people to/from their houses on the last km of the journey.


4) All modes of transport need to be integrated using a single ticketing system. Integrated tickets need to be available for various time periods – eg 2h, 24h, 1 week, 1 month, 1 quarter and 1 year. Eg if the 2h ticket costs €5 and the 24h ticket costs say €6 – the system is nudging the customer to buy the 24h ticket and maybe make more use of the system. The same principle can be employed to pricing 1w, 1 month, etc tickets. There should be a discount of perhaps 25% for tickets which are not valid until after 9h Mo-Fr. This would induce discretionary time travellers to use less the system outside the peak period.

The fare system needs to be zoned on a blob basis. By that I mean zones like Dublin postal districts. Eg to travel from D4 to D2 you transit two zones ie 4 and 2, therefore you need a 2 zone ticket. If your travel is within Dublin 4 you only need a 1 zone ticket. If your trip is from D14 to D2 you use the resources of D14, D6 and D2 so you need a 3 zone ticket. In practice, travel zones do not have to equate with postal zones – but I use them to clarify the concept. The most stupid travel zones are the concentric circle zones – as used in London and elsewhere.


If your feelings are so negative about Irish politicians and ‘the system’ and its treatment of Cork (or anywhere else) compared with Dublin, I can only say that people get the politicians they deserve and want to be in power – especially in a functioning democracy. There were 895’000 people in Cork city and county in 1851, compared with 358’000 in Dublin at the same time. At the Dublin end of things, Dublin is facing electric power and water constraints – which will be “black out” issues by 2020 if growth continues at the current pace. Not to mention saturated road traffic and a housing shortage.

namloc1980

Impetus wrote: »

I was simply stating the obvious.

1) A country needs an objective in terms of public transport – eg 75% or so of repeat journeys need to be made by public transport – because car growth clogs up the system, are is a waste of energy and time. They take up space to park and cause traffic interruption parking and leaving their parking space. Above all they are a health threatening pollutant (unless they use electricity – H2 or battery etc). But no matter how the car develops – autonomous, electric, PM2.5 particulate filtered, etc – they are a health risk, almost as bad as cigarettes. Even if we end up with autonomous shared car fleets that can park themselves etc – they still take up space and new roads will be needed to deal with the traffic. (As an aside, electric car owners in Denmark can make up to EUR 1’500 pa while cars are parked, selling peak time electricity back to the grid. The intelligent Danes have installed two-way charge stations that can charge a car or use its electricity storage capacity in peak times. The car’s energy management system can be set to ensure that it retains enough power for the drive home etc.)


2) To get to 75% usage, public transport needs to be well run, comfortable, fast and subscribed to. Public transport at this level in urban areas needs little subsidy and can become profitable. The current fleet of buses in Cork is antiquated – even though some of them have 171 plates. Poor visual design/colour, only one door doubling the average dwell time at each stop. In any well-designed system, a bus has two or three doors for people to get on and off. Ticket control can then be on a tram basis – ie random inspection with €100 fines. Barriers and controls are a needless, expensive friction on the customer using the system. Irish mainline railway stations are the only mainline stations in Europe with barriers pathway to/from inter-city trains. Oirish public transport is “un-cool”, and Cork (with its absence of trams etc) is the capital of “un-coolness” in this regard. Trams move from stop to stop with a minimum of delay – because they have lots of doors and ticket checking is random. Irish buses have only one door – leading to longer journey times, more struggle getting on and off the bus. Higher friction of use. No intelligent person will sit in a bus in Patrick Street for 10 minutes before it ‘takes off’ for their destination.


3) Feeding rail based (ie train and tram) systems with customers using connecting buses creates a need for greater rail capacity – ie more frequency of service to handle the demand. Keeping buses out of a city centre makes it more user friendly – with a single tram line running through, fed by busses taking people to/from their houses on the last km of the journey.


4) All modes of transport need to be integrated using a single ticketing system. Integrated tickets need to be available for various time periods – eg 2h, 24h, 1 week, 1 month, 1 quarter and 1 year. Eg if the 2h ticket costs €5 and the 24h ticket costs say €6 – the system is nudging the customer to buy the 24h ticket and maybe make more use of the system. The same principle can be employed to pricing 1w, 1 month, etc tickets. There should be a discount of perhaps 25% for tickets which are not valid until after 9h Mo-Fr. This would induce discretionary time travellers to use less the system outside the peak period.

The fare system needs to be zoned on a blob basis. By that I mean zones like Dublin postal districts. Eg to travel from D4 to D2 you transit two zones ie 4 and 2, therefore you need a 2 zone ticket. If your travel is within Dublin 4 you only need a 1 zone ticket. If your trip is from D14 to D2 you use the resources of D14, D6 and D2 so you need a 3 zone ticket. In practice, travel zones do not have to equate with postal zones – but I use them to clarify the concept. The most stupid travel zones are the concentric circle zones – as used in London and elsewhere.


If your feelings are so negative about Irish politicians and ‘the system’ and its treatment of Cork (or anywhere else) compared with Dublin, I can only say that people get the politicians they deserve and want to be in power – especially in a functioning democracy. There were 895’000 people in Cork city and county in 1851, compared with 358’000 in Dublin at the same time. At the Dublin end of things, Dublin is facing electric power and water constraints – which will be “black out” issues by 2020 if growth continues at the current pace. Not to mention saturated road traffic and a housing shortage.

I was equally stating the obvious. You're not going to get a Swiss style transport system in Cork. Not going to happen no matter how much sense it might make. Yes people get the politicians they vote for and let's face it transport and transit (unless it's roads) are not high priorities for the electorate in Cork. I get the train everyday from East Cork at peak times and I have never failed to get a seat on the two car set. People don't use it heavily and public policy is focussed on roads now and for the foreseeable future e.g. Dunkettle upgrade due next year, M20 in the coming years. People must demand change and elect politicians who have vision but invariably it's the lad who can fill a pothole or get you a medical card who gets elected.

We're not going to get a new fleet of efficient buses with double doors and we're not going to get a tram in Cork for at least 30 years - that timeframe is based on the Cork 2050 vision document submitted by both councils to central government.

Impetus

namloc1980 wrote: »

We're not going to get a new fleet of efficient buses with double doors and we're not going to get a tram in Cork for at least 30 years - that timeframe is based on the Cork 2050 vision document submitted by both councils to central government.

It seems that you are happy with public money being thrown down the drain (eg buying dangerous, inefficient buses with single entry/exit doors in 2017) so long as you can get a seat on the S1 (my number - because the infra-structurally clueless civil servants / state enterprizes who control the show haven't even got around to a single identification system for trains (the equivalent of bus route numbers).

The idea that Cork might get a tram system by 2050 is not a vision. It is an admission of procrastination, in extremis, by those in power. And if the majority of citizens feel that way, putting up with 750’000 waiting for medical treatment, etc (in a country that has more medical “professionals” – eg nurses and doctors than most countries in the world, except Norway) they deserve to live in the slum that Ireland and Cork have become – relative to the standards one enjoys in most of the rest of the EU. A big problem (in gov, transport, health etc) in Ireland is an excessive spend on administrators, and under-spending in service provision/intelligent management of systems.

(I'm not suggesting that Norway is an efficient country. Quite the contrary. It too has a massive government, and the entire system is living off oil and the national sovereign wealth fund. But it does have electric trains running the length of a large country for a population roughly similar to Ireland).

When I started travelling, a few years ago, Denmark had no electric trains. It was one of the few countries in Europe that hadn't electrified its network. Today https://www.dsb.dk/en has electrified its network, which largely run from wind generated energy. Meanwhile Irish Rail run diesel electric trains on badly laid tracks that make rail journeys bumpy, tiring, noisy and dangerous. State mismanagement has consumed 70%+ of the Irish GDP over the past decade.


Efficient management of the banking system by the Central Bank would have saved perhaps €60 bn over the past decade…. Difficult to add the reputational costs associated with this mess. Efficient management of the healthcare platform (I won’t call it a health service) could for the same cost make medical care available on demand. An objective based management of public transport could create a virtuous circle, leading to close to 80% of routine journeys being taken by public transport. It needs marketing, intelligent planning, operations management, mobile apps, and integration.


While the SBB app* is available from the SBB (rail system in Switzerland) it covers all travel options door to door – tram, bus, boat as well as foreign (Switzerland is not in the EU) trips – all of Europe - except for Ireland – because Ireland has no published HAFAS timetable data. CIE owns Irish Rail, Bus Eireann, etc – and CIE stands for Córas Iompair Éireann – ie a Irish Travel System. Ireland is the only country without a travel system, because everything works to its own agenda. The management of the expenditure of public money and determination of what constitutes value for money is out of control in Ireland.


* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1HVjZGo1-M

namloc1980

Impetus wrote: »

It seems that you are happy with public money being thrown down the drain (eg buying dangerous, inefficient buses with single entry/exit doors in 2017)

No idea how you got that from my post. I simply stated the obvious - you're not going to see significant levels of investment in public transport in Cork. I never said I was happy with that but it's quite clear that it won't happen. Public transport isn't an election issue for the majority of the electorate in Ireland, and until it is politicians can safely ignore it or pay it lip service at most.