Besançon, French city of 118,000, opens 14.5km tram line

embraer170

Besançon, a French city of 118,000 (conurbation total 245,000), today opened its 14.5km tram line 31 station tram line built at a cost of €254m or €17.5m per km.

http://www.railjournal.com/index.php/light-rail/besancon-opens-low-cost-tram-line.html?channel=526

http://www.urbanrail.net/eu/fr/besancon/besancon.htm

http://www.lexpress.fr/region/besancon-le-tram-de-tous-les-records_1571741.html (in French)

A inspiration for what should be possible in Cork with a city population of 120,000 and a conurbation total of 400,000.

metrovick001

But....by the time all the quangos, govt advisors & fact finding missions to the Bahamas for TDs, senators & county council types had been paid for there wouldnt be much cash left LOL!

Fair play to the people of Besançon.

embraer170 wrote: »

Besançon, a French city of 118,000 (conurbation total 245,000), today opened its 14.5km tram line 31 station tram line built at a cost of €254m or €17.5m per km.

http://www.railjournal.com/index.php/light-rail/besancon-opens-low-cost-tram-line.html?channel=526

http://www.urbanrail.net/eu/fr/besancon/besancon.htm

http://www.lexpress.fr/region/besancon-le-tram-de-tous-les-records_1571741.html (in French)

A inspiration for what should be possible in Cork with a city population of 120,000 and a conurbation total of 400,000.

metrovick001

But....by the time all the quangos, govt advisors & fact finding missions to the Bahamas for TDs, senators & county council types had been paid for there wouldnt be much cash left LOL!

Fair play to the people of Besançon.

embraer170 wrote: »

Besançon, a French city of 118,000 (conurbation total 245,000), today opened its 14.5km tram line 31 station tram line built at a cost of €254m or €17.5m per km.

http://www.railjournal.com/index.php/light-rail/besancon-opens-low-cost-tram-line.html?channel=526

http://www.urbanrail.net/eu/fr/besancon/besancon.htm

http://www.lexpress.fr/region/besancon-le-tram-de-tous-les-records_1571741.html (in French)

A inspiration for what should be possible in Cork with a city population of 120,000 and a conurbation total of 400,000.

Grandeeod

I'll give you real inspiration.

On a small island 785 sq miles in size, with a total population of 900,000, they built this.

http://metrotenerife.com/home/

dowlingm

The difference though is that new tram lines in France are built with Alstom La Rochelle vehicles for the most part. They also have nuclear power so trams mean low-carbon transport. In Ireland LRVs are imports and may be fossil powered generation fed.

corktina

"Line 1 expected to carry 50,000 passengers a day" , or nearly half the population (or fifth of the conurbation) . WRC type predictions perhaps?

Oh and we don't have a quarter of a billion to spend on Dublin never mind Cork....

cgcsb

dowlingm wrote: »

The difference though is that new tram lines in France are built with Alstom La Rochelle vehicles for the most part. They also have nuclear power so trams mean low-carbon transport. In Ireland LRVs are imports and may be fossil powered generation fed.

We have the European Union which means that we can trade things, upto and including light rail vehicles between states with minimum hastle. We are also moving towards a single energy market. Re: power, France also relies on fossil fuels for a portion of it's energy needs, regardless of it's nuclear assets. In short there is no effective barrier for Cork to achieve the same other than the willingness to spend the cash.

corktina

Cork would be ideal with an east west axis from the Kent to UCC/CIT/UCH and north /south from Blackpool to the Airport (or thereabouts), can't see it happening though, we can't even make Patrick St a non-through route!

AlekSmart

J'aime Besancon

http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/city_result.jsp?country=France&city=Besancon

:eek:

embraer170

corktina wrote: »

"Line 1 expected to carry 50,000 passengers a day" , or nearly half the population (or fifth of the conurbation) . WRC type predictions perhaps?

Oh and we don't have a quarter of a billion to spend on Dublin never mind Cork....

50,000 passengers. If we assume each person takes 2 journeys (1 out, 1 back), that is 25,000 people (or about 20% of the city population). Not a totally unrealistic number for a well designed tram network with a bus network designed to serve (rather than compete with) 1 or 2 core tram lines.

Markcheese

Cork city and county councils have a plan for one of the bendy bus tram things, basically city center to balincolig taking in UCC, CUH,CIT, and on to balincolig , they were looking at going through to Carigaline but apparently the population density isn't really there...

dowlingm

Following on from what embraer170 said, let's get full integration between the Mallow/Midleton/Cobh rail services and their bus counterparts before adding another mode to scrabble for business.

Cgcsb - all I will say is I think that is an overly optimistic view on your part.

MGWR

embraer170 wrote: »

Besançon, a French city of 118,000 (conurbation total 245,000), today opened its 14.5km tram line 31 station tram line built at a cost of €254m or €17.5m per km.

http://www.railjournal.com/index.php/light-rail/besancon-opens-low-cost-tram-line.html?channel=526

http://www.urbanrail.net/eu/fr/besancon/besancon.htm

http://www.lexpress.fr/region/besancon-le-tram-de-tous-les-records_1571741.html (in French)

A inspiration for what should be possible in Cork with a city population of 120,000 and a conurbation total of 400,000.

Funny that they call it the "lowest-cost" tram line (€28 million per mile), when the Portland Streetcar (Oregon, USA) was built for about €12.3 million per mile (or €7.7 m/km; converted to euro from present-day inflation-adjusted dollar value) including vehicles.

The government-created GSR and successor government-owned CIE robbed Cork of its urban/suburban railway system, which used to be more extensive than Dublin's, from the 1930s onward. Can the government really be trusted to build any new rails there?

corktina

dowlingm wrote: »

Following on from what embraer170 said, let's get full integration between the Mallow/Midleton/Cobh rail services and their bus counterparts before adding another mode to scrabble for business.

Cgcsb - all I will say is I think that is an overly optimistic view on your part.

It's hard to see how you can integrate bus and rail on these routes as they do different jobs. The Mallow route , for instance, is part of the X51 service to Limerick on bus and part of the IC Dublin service on rail. I can't see how an urban tram service would have anything to do with this

cgcsb

corktina wrote: »

It's hard to see how you can integrate bus and rail on these routes as they do different jobs. The Mallow route , for instance, is part of the X51 service to Limerick on bus and part of the IC Dublin service on rail. I can't see how an urban tram service would have anything to do with this

I think he's referring to ticket integration which of course we should have in 2014, considering how common it's been around europe, north america and asia for circa 40 years

end of the road

MGWR wrote: »

The government-created GSR and successor government-owned CIE robbed Cork of its urban/suburban railway system, which used to be more extensive than Dublin's, from the 1930s onward. Can the government really be trusted to build any new rails there?

no they can't. i'm surprised roadstone andrews even left the east cork branch

dowlingm

corktina wrote: »

It's hard to see how you can integrate bus and rail on these routes as they do different jobs. The Mallow route , for instance, is part of the X51 service to Limerick on bus and part of the IC Dublin service on rail. I can't see how an urban tram service would have anything to do with this

I'm talking about the suburban services, which should be bringing people to Midleton and Mallow railheads. In the case of the east side, buses should be heading through the tunnel to the airport and south side generally rather than plodding into town when the train is running down the Glanmire Road beside them.

Grandeeod

end of the road wrote: »

no they can't. i'm surprised roadstone andrews even left the east cork branch

Can we put this "lets blame it all on Todd Andrews" business to bed. Anyone with a half decent knowledge of Irish railway history should know that he's not and never was some kind of Dr. Beeching. In his role at CIE, he was very much into cost cutting, but he was advised by a board and management. The decision to close the Harcourt street line was taken before he was anywhere near CIE.

Moving forward in time, the decision to close the Waterford - Rosslare route was first proposed in the 1970s. This is where people need to recognise the cultural aspects of CIE and how it rarely changes its position from one decade to the next, despite management changes. Once the blueprint is written, it stays. Anything outside of that is done under duress, whether worth it or not.

corktina

dowlingm wrote: »

I'm talking about the suburban services, which should be bringing people to Midleton and Mallow railheads. In the case of the east side, buses should be heading through the tunnel to the airport and south side generally rather than plodding into town when the train is running down the Glanmire Road beside them.

How would they be suburban buses? Any buses running to Mallow or Midleton and swapping their passengers on to rail there would most definitely be rural buses.
I can't speak for Midleton but rural bus services in North Cork (route 243 to Kanturk/Newmarket and also to Doneraile) feed into the X51 at Mallow on some journeys and go direct on others.
To swap the passengers to rail would be a dis-improvement because some of the journeys are direct now on the one hand and Kent is less convenient than the Bus Station on the other.

dowlingm

I wrote rural, backspaced out because people might object to that... Oh well!

roundymac

Markcheese wrote: »

Cork city and county councils have a plan for one of the bendy bus tram things, basically city center to balincolig taking in UCC, CUH,CIT, and on to balincolig , they were looking at going through to Carigaline but apparently the population density isn't really there...

They'v now introduced a new Carrigaline-Ballincollig service which goes via city centre, UCC, CUH, CIT. This service 220A will be half hourly. I saw a double decker on it the other day, that would help you digest your brekkie fairly quickly.