Cork - Light Rail [route options idenfication and initial design underway]

This is going to be a tough one to route between the city centre and Mahon Point. The Bishopstown area also poses challenges. Easiest route would be to follow the old railway line where the current greenway is presently. Docklands aside, this route avoids many of the residential areas in this area of the city; possibly too many for it to be effective.

More on street running may be necessary, possibly using parts of Boreenmanna Rd., Beaumont Quarry, Beaumont Drive, Church R., Skehard rd, Ringmahon Rd., then looping down to Mahon Point and returning on the R852. This would mean much repurposing of road space, but less disruption to existing buildings. The big advantage is it brings a much larger population access to the system. Getting from Boreenmanna Rd. to the docklands is going to be tricky though. It could be possible to cut through SMA lands to Blackrock Rd. and onto the docklands from there. This would require some demolition of buildings, which in the greater scheme of things is relatively minor, but would inevitably lead to uproar.

It's going to be far far more disruptive than anything Bus Connects has thrown up to date. Can easily see the motor industry/I don't want to lose half my front garden lobby declaring war on planners and city council. I can understand why it's cost 1.37m to date.

We'll be doing very very well if we end up getting one line by 2040. Carrigaline for a rail line is a non-runner for at least 50 years.

Navan, Swords and Letterkenny would claim that title before carrigaline

Having rail planned in this country is fairly worthless. The last 3 GDA transport strategies have been the same but worded differently because none of it has been built.

There was an article in the Echo before Christmas where the NTA were quoted as saying it would be early Q2, so April at the earliest.

Any go on at the event centre ?

The problem with the likelyhood of it going down the old railway line is that it will be on nobody's doorstep making access much more difficult. We won't get people out of cars unless it rivals them in convenience.

Hopefully we get a more creative design than what the artists impressions so far show.

Possibly, you'd have to bring it down through Blackrock to pick up the population and the scale of resistance to that would admittedly be huge. We'll see. I just hope there's some evidence of thought put in to it rather than picking the easy route.

The montage on the NTA's alignment map looks to me to show two tracks merging into one along the greenway - that would hardly be a runner would it?

Although I doubt they are planning to scrap the greenway either - some of it just opened.

LRT-Alignment-Map-P75.pdf (nationaltransport.ie)

I wouldn't pay a huge amount of attention to the routing shown on that map. It also shows it ploughing through several of the office blocks in Mahon as well as the Mater.

IIRC, there had been discussion previously about how the section from Atlantic Pond down to Mahon was going to be single track, with passing loops due to the available width and the requirement to maintain the greenway along that section. There are also other issues along that section to further complicate matters. IF the line is to follow the original rail route across Skehard Road, there is insufficient headroom to allow for that at present. However excavating may not be an option because the two large pumped headers for the Cork Main Drainage system are buried under the former rail bed as they run from the Atlantic Pond pumping station to the the header tank at Mahon (though I'm not sure at what point they veer off to the tank) so it looks like the entire road junction would have to be elevated.

Given that the greenway already functions for active travel with people commuting to the area by foot / bike / e-scooter, it seems odd to be inconveniencing those who have made some commitment to avoiding car use by turning that route into a construction site, followed by shared use with the rail system. Perhaps the rail should be using street space in the area? Inconvenience those who would still chose to drive

In the end, I wouldn't be too excited by this. Given that it involves transportation for the public, Terry Shannon and his ilk will block this at every turn.

If the opposition to the Bus Connects project is any kind of clue as to how light rail routes will be received, this project is doomed. The attitude of the local councillors is frightening. One of the Labour councillors sent around an update a couple of weeks ago in which, amongst other things, he explained his opposition to the bus gates on the Douglas Road. Apparently, the bus gates would make it harder for parents to drive their kids to school. Try putting them on the bus maybe? Sorry if this appears to be off-topic but I think it is relevant because it illustrates the level of self-centredness and plain idiocy that pervades society.

I thought the same with busconnects and tii but given the level of watering down of the design on round 2 over there I really don't have much confidence the light rail will be any different

Exactly. And the level of disruption building on-street light rail is much greater than bus corridors due to the "utility diversion" phase of construction which is essentially absent when all you're putting down is tarmac.

Yeah was thinking this too. I would say they will go with full underground metro at that point.

I've beat this drum before but having experienced traveling on Trambusses in Europe which are 'Efficient as a tram, flexible as a bus'. I still think they are the answer for a city the size of Cork. Providing the infrastructure to support Trambus routes would entail just a small fraction of the disruption and cost associated with that required for light rail.

Trambusses travel on open roads and dedicated lanes either through green spaces or on the roadside, they can be operated via multiple power sources such as overhead lines and/or battery or onboard CNG-powered generators.

Click https://www.intelligenttransport.com/transport-articles/23541/efficient-tram-flexible-bus/ for more information.

If there is any scope to water down a transport scheme it will be viscously exploited in the consultation process, as we have seen with busconnects in Cork. The same would happen with a trambus where dedicated lanes would be cut and shortened all over the shop to appease ferociously motivated anti change residents groups.

The best thing about a tram is that it’s all or nothing. No bus gates, no dedicated lanes between certain hours, no merging with traffic for just a few hundred metres, you either build it or you don’t.

Trams are used all over Europe in cities of a similar size or smaller than Cork, some examples include; Nancy, Tours, Brest, Castillion, Granada, Cadiz, Charleroi, Odense, Aarhus, Trondheim, Bergen, Lund, Norrköping, Lausanne, Tampere, Heidelberg, Linz and Innsbruck.

We have the plans, why not just proceeded and get it done? If we want to use a trolley bus we could try it on a North South line.

A trambus would be killed immediately in Cork by local residents and councillors. We can see BusConnects being watered down massively as we speak. Light rail is the way to go on a dedicated corridor.

Not sure why we have to constantly compare Cork to other cities.

The east west corridor for the Cork Luas has massive trip generators along the length of it: Ballincollig, MTU, CUH, UCC, city centre, Kent, Docklands, Pairc Uí Chaoimh, City gate, Mahon Point. Just get it built!

Dublin has one of the highest capacity tram systems in the world

It has the second longest trams. Crawling for km through the city centre. Undercapacity...

Is anyone actually surprised? The delays to critical transport infrastructure in Ireland is an absolute outrage and it happens again and again and again.

Stench of political interference off this.