BusConnects Cork

Kinsale Road - Douglas is a goner because of the Grange Road extension over Ballybrack Woods. Maryborough Hill - City Centre will be the same due to the Douglas Road works and removal of the Fingerpost Roundabout (even though the new Fingerpost looks way better). Hopefully they'll quickly fix Maryborough Hill - City Centre by changing it so Douglas Road is one way northbound and South Douglas Road one way southbound with bus lanes on either road. Not sure how they'll resolve Kinsale Road - Douglas

And no Luas plans either. The problem is Douglas Road and South Douglas Road are major pinch points going to the city centre. Boreenmana Road and Grange Road are good alternatives, but first have to be accessed by the narrow Well Road and Church Road. The only way to bypass those two are bridges through Ballybrack Woods or a bridge over Lough Mahon, neither of which are ever likely to happen. I'm not sure what the NTA are going to be able to do, as its likely the most populated area of the city (probably around 30k people) so something needs to be done

It will be an ABP process though, so I'm not sure how much councillors will matter in the end. Plus these are just emerging routes so the NTA has said they're willing to be flexible (and were the routes a few weeks back). If you're in support of this, I definitely recommend putting that in a submission. Sometimes submissions are only used by people to voice their lack of support in something. I plan on for Maryborough - City Centre as, while the route will directly affect me, I am broadly supportive of it

Councillors have as much input as you or I. It will be through ABP approval, not council approval. I guess they could bring legal action against it, but I doubt the council executive would support that, and again you and I could too so councillors aren't special here. Just have a platform

Ngl I have no idea what a preservation order is. A very small section of the road is ACA (the terrace across from Belair). The City Development plan, which will formally be adopted in August, makes no mention of any kind of preservation order or ACA for the road outside of the afformentioned section. I feel the adopted motion was to look for one, not to add it. Hard to tell. I also assume anything like that would need public consultation first

EDIT: ACA = Architectural Conversation Area

People in Douglas are rightfully annoyed at the idea that a 6 lane bridge over the Ballybrack woods is an option here, we shouldn't have to sacrifice our only walkable woods/car free/green corridor space in Douglas so people can drive over it. douglas had that before with the N40 and people saw the dirty/concrete mess those brought to the village and they are less than half as wide as this would be. If it was a cycle/pedestrian only bridge and something like a suspension bridge (less obtrusive and less damaging) a lot more would be for it, myself included.

it doesn't make sense to build it, especially when a new cross road is currently being built between donnybrook and the carrigaline road, and when the ballinrea road is in existence and could be widened.

Busconnects would stand a much better chance of happening if they chose instead to bring the buses up to either of those cross roads, alongside the benefit of future proofing a bus route for the 1000's of homes which will be built in those fields in years to come and maintain a bus route in Donnybrook which is about to lose one via bus connects which will force those 1000's of people into their cars. it's nonsense created by someone using google maps and zero local knowledge. This is very evident where they say they will take 5m of a "garden" where now a home/house stands as people have built into these large gardens since whatever map they had was created. The idea of peoples homes being demolished isn't favoured in the current housing climate.

People are in favour of a busconnects program that works, these proposals are no where near "working" especially when the clear result is pushing people into their cars more than the current terrible system does, or into having their homes demolished. These are real objections and to save what 5 minutes of journey time? this is clearly an attempt to aim high to deliver low.

I'd rather see this money invested into a better (protected) cycle lane network imo than a bus one.

What park? There are none directly next to Ballybrack Woods with green areas. Do you mean Grange Avenue or Eugene Drive? Here are the drawings, I hope they were included in the flyers and it wasn't just a sentence saying it

Meanwhile, if you look at the plans, they are going out of their way to CPO small sections of gardens rather than needing to CPO any houses. I have so far read through Dunkettle, Mahon and Maryborough extensively and have yet to see a house fully being CPO'd. This is a problem with public consultation. Public consulation is extremely important, but extremely difficult to get right with very detailed and info heavy projects like this. Especially when newspaper look for headlines and feed bits of infos, while councillors give vague reasons they are against it. I am doing a series on Reddit to explain the proposals in detail, but in an easy to understand way, as I am sick of people spouting misinformation about this. Everyone is 10000% entitled to be against these proposals, but only when their objections are based on actual, real info, not misinformation

https://www.reddit.com/r/cork/comments/w57u8a/bus_connects_the_real_deal_part_1_maryborough/

The Douglas Road plans are lunacy, but at least we get a say. I was at the council drop in at Nemo today.

Forcing traffic up Bel Air, past Lady of Lourdes school and down Wallace's avenue is stupidity defined...those who know the area will know

In fairness to the council today, they made it clear it was still very open to change

Coming off the South Link at the second Douglas exit will no longer have a left turn, it's up the well road or right into Douglas.

Sorry just a seperate observation...reading through the book bit by bit.

215 services through Ballinlough are being slashed in favour of Douglas road buses. A lot of elderly rely on the 215.

I'm up the top of the Well Road, so if I want to go to St Finbarrs hospital I won't be able to turn right by Eglantine, have to go through Douglas which will be even more fun when Lidl is built.

The bus gates are all well and good but what about the 3 schools..douglas comm, regina monday & eglantine primary. What ever about the 2 secondary schools & pupils using the bus ( where they can get it ) what about dropping & collecting junior infants and the like. They're not expected to get the bus on their own surley

But that's Cork for you. Its a bastion of ignorance and scaremongering. The Bus Connects is a fairly well meaning and well thought out plan but it'll be nit-picked and before we know it only the bare bones of a plan will be left. It'll be as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike then. Committees are being formed by nimbies all over the city about it.

You can still drive on the Douglas Road, you just can't drive the length of it due to the bus gates (Well Road, Bellair and Ballinlough Road). You can still access it by car from Belvedere Lawn, Tramore Lawn, Rathmore Lawn/Rhodaville Estate, Rosebank, Bellair, Eglantine Park and the Cross Douglas Road. By foot/bike, you can also access it from Clermont Avenue and Woodview.

I don't think that will be the case for Donnybrook. Otherwise, it would be the same right now for Maryborough Hill with the 220. It is sometimes in the morning I think but otherwise it's not. The 220 replacement (3) will split between 3A and 3B, plus a few other going from Carrigaline to the city centre, so I don't see capacity for Donnybrook being an issue.

South Douglas Road does have a bus route, No 7 (Kent - Mount Oval), 20 minute frequency. The No 6 is every 15 minutes (Grange - UCC) stops on South Douglas Road too, it just doesn't travel down it. Maybe a 2/3 minute walk from the school

Yep, "bus gates" at Bellair traffic lights to stop cars going towards town...all on-street parking to be removed on this stretch also (with 15-20? parking spaces at St Finbarr's entrance to compensate). Outside of peak hours, all buses that pass this way are empty (215, 207, 220, 216 etc) so the proposals are complete overkill and deserve to be killed off.

If this does somehow go ahead, parking will need to be removed on Wallace's Avenue too as this will be the new rat-run into town. Of course the NTA only inform residents of what's happening on their 200m of road so it's hard to visualise the scale of the stupidity on a city-wide basis...

The worst thing however, in my view, is the amount of trees they plan to cut down...on the Douglas Rd and Boreenmana Rd...to facilitate road widening 😡😡😡

To be fair the Regina Mundi crowd are a pain in the h*le and cause traffic chaos on the Douglas Road every morning and afternoon...blocking cycle lanes, the bus stop, the petrol station forecourt, etc. Yes, their little angels should be getting the bus where possible (but I guess the problem here is that so many students aren't from the local area and rely on being driven to school...but there's a separate thread).

Citation please?

I haven't read anything about houses being demolished or people being barred from owning cars. However the question of continued car ownership is an interesting one: with onstreet parking being removed for High Street and the Douglas Road, one has to question where car owners will continue to park their cars (as the proposed number of spaces at the front of St Finbarr's is clearly inadequate for the number of residents in the area)?

lol, your source is one tweet from a crank account with 35 followers? Ironically you've probably trebled their audience by posting that tweet.

Is that all you have to support your claim, seriously? That's not "a scandalous amount of disinformation". Less of your hysteria please.

lol at you claiming I made some kind of logical fallacy in response to your hyperbole...

It's not my responsibility to "do us a favour and look it up" myself in order to verify your claim. Specially when the claim has no grounding in reality.

You make a claim..be prepared to back it up. That's not spoonfeeding.

I'm beginning to think, actually i'm quite confident at this stage, that BusConnects is going to fall at the first hurdle.

We have councilors voicing fierce opposition to every single aspect of it and demanding the entire plan be discarded, residents crying over the plan (not my words, see here https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/munster/arid-40960250.html), road conservation status' changes in the hope of protecting the fabric of the city (https://twitter.com/CllrDesCahil/status/1546808046327840770?cxt=HHwWhICykaHurvcqAAAA). Parking in St. Lukes also seems to be causing some major issues, and i'd imagine the list is far far longer than only the ones I am aware of.

The greenfields/coolroe meadows scheme, while not part of the bus connects plan, i think shows a microcosm of what awaits for the bus connects plans, very vocal local objections, backed up by councilors seemingly results in the plan being entirely discarded in favour of the status quo. While the plans may not have been the best, i really feel the status quo is not the best outcome for anyone here.

I see bus connects headed the same direction. At most it ends up being a completely watered down version of the plan with very little changes.

While this is cork focused, it is probably not just a cork thing, I can imagine the dublin plans are headed in a similar direction.

More of the same. A city of anti-progress.

Virgin Media News on Twitter: "#WATCH A €600 million Bus Connects project planned for parts of Cork is being met with opposition Southern Correspondent @PaulByrne_1 reports from Ballincollig ⤵️ #VMNews | #busconnects | #Ballincollig https://t.co/zSQGWNzmv2" / Twitter

I think people are forgetting what this process is for, though. All these issues people have with it, that's what they're looking for. They designed these routes based on past experiences and Google Maps. For example, they're not aware of the historical significance of the Douglas Road's wall or the trees. They also don't know of the importance of certain parking spots, or how certain roads don't work the way they think they do due to XYZ. This process is to gather all of that local knowledge, to combine it with their plans. For instance, none of these schemes are in planning. These aren't concrete plans in anyway. So I am completely fine with people having issues with these plans, such as a a bridge going through the Mangala or them not noticing that Maryborough Hill was already widened in 2019 and doesn't need to be widened again or more. What I do have an issue with is people thinking this is being railroaded into their lives and the detriment of everyone. I'm sure the next round of consultation will see large scale changes, especiallt with the Mangala Bridge being removed. Even after then, they will need to go for planning permission, which will be another opportunity for people to raise issues. It's just for some reason people in Ireland catasrophise everything. The whole aim of this project is to improve public transport, traffic and lives, not to ruin them. They want our knowledge

However, as notAMember said, more communication is needed, such as the above I just mentioned. It's hard though when councillors with vested interests try everything to have this project fail before it even starts

I have noticed just in the last few weeks that traffic is horrifically bad too, I'm not sure what the reason is or I'm just now noticing it. However, the Douglas Road (especially at the Well Road end) always feels bumper to bumper. I've also saw people highlight that this traffic won't be solved by electric cars