BusConnects Cork

namloc1980

The consultation on the infrastructure element of the BusConnects corridors is now open.

https://busconnects.ie/cork/

Unfortunately it looks like BusConnects in Douglas at least is dead before it begins thanks to the genius councillors in City Hall.

https://twitter.com/CllrDesCahil/status/1546808046327840770?t=VnCSmqspP8VxPnLbMwWAcw&s=19

DylanQuestion

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

namloc1980

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119332158#Comment_119332158

Local councillors are strongly against any changes to Douglas including one way movements. It's dead in Douglas as it stands. Feel sorry for anyone living in Douglas who thought the BusConnects could be an option for the future, as local councillors appear determined to keep it a car dominated hole.

DylanQuestion

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119332553#Comment_119332553

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

namloc1980

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119332713#Comment_119332713

Their hands are going to be tied by these councillors. Terry Shannon has already come out and said he wants the entire BusConnects scheme to fail. It must be incredibly frustrating for the NTA to be dealing with such narrow minded nimbys.

DylanQuestion

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

thomil

Is there no way at all for the NTA to override these councillors? It's clear that Cork will have to be forced into any improvements with local politicians like Shannon and Cahill.

DylanQuestion

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119332827#Comment_119332827

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

namloc1980

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119332840#Comment_119332840

If the council are slapping preservation orders on the Douglas Rd, which is totally bizarre, then the NTA aren't going to ignore and steamroller that. These councillors are an embarrassment to the city and basically saying "no thanks, we don't want €600m in transport and public realm investment in Cork".

DylanQuestion

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119332866#Comment_119332866

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

namloc1980

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119332896#Comment_119332896

We'll have to see how it plays out but the optics are dreadful from so called public representatives.

Gru

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119332553#Comment_119332553

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.

DylanQuestion

Did anyone go to the community engagement events?

Nigel Fairservice

We got a flyer in the door. We live near Ballybrack Woods and the local Bus Connects plan is looking for a good chunk of our green at the side of our estate.

snotboogie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119364506#Comment_119364506

You seem to make a big jump from opposing one bridge to opposing the entire Busconnects scheme, for Douglas at least. The big fight will be on the Douglas Road, the ballybrack bridge won’t happen. I see absolutely no issues with the Douglas Road plans. There needs to be a a public transport route from Carrigaline/Rochestown/Maryborough/Douglas to the city centre. There are 16k people living in Carrigaline and 27k people living in Douglas/Maryborough/Rochestown (2016 census numbers, likely to be much higher in 2022 census) “a couple of cycle lanes” won’t do for serving the public transit needs of 50k people. The only criticism I’d have is that they aren’t going all in and building a north/south Luas via the soon to be closed N28 and the Douglas route proposed and getting it over with in one go.

DylanQuestion

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119392454#Comment_119392454

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

namloc1980

There's a scandalous amount of disinformation floating around about BusConnects on social media in particular people talking about multiple houses being demolished, people being barred from owning cars and other nonsense.

DylanQuestion

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119394036#Comment_119394036

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/

zilog_jones

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119332713#Comment_119332713

Can we not say "Luas", please?

It's a tram, or light rail, but "Luas" is just a brand name for a privately operated tram system in Dublin. Nothing to do with Cork.

namloc1980

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119394699#Comment_119394699

The NTA are calling it the Luas Cork. So there's no problem people using that as it's what it is being referred to in official documents. Example below:

hans aus dtschl

Yeah it's not a TransDev name or anything in fairness, it seems to be an NTA name. If they want them to all be "Luas" then fair enough I guess.

beer enigma

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

DylanQuestion

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119400260#Comment_119400260

Who would make that movement? The only people who can access it are those already on the Douglas Road due to the bus gate at the Well Road. Which is still a lot of people, but it isn't all current Douglas Rd movements moving to there. Although, cars coming from Ballinlough Road will need to turn right now at Wallace's Avenue. That won't be good enough, the road is two way with one lane and parking on both sides. However, I do wonder what the purpose of the bus gates are since there is a continuous bus lane outbound as is, it will only help buses going to the city centre and as someone who often gets the bus that way, there is never traffic going into town. Even in rush hour, it's people leaving town, which the bus lane fixes. I'll like add that to my submission too

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

beer enigma

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.

DylanQuestion

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119400859#Comment_119400859

Yup, but that doesn't affect Wallace's Avenue (unless you are saying that separately), those cars would go down to Boreenamana Road

beer enigma

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.

DylanQuestion

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119401523#Comment_119401523

Wait. How actually can you access the hospital? I would go towards Ballinlough on the Well Road, go through Lake Lawn to go passed St Anthony's school, left onto Ballinlough Road and go down to the very end (i.e. passed Our Lady of Lourdes and BellAir), then St Finbarrs is right in front of you. However, there is no entry to the part of the Ballinlough Road after Bellair. I don't see any other way through Douglas due to the bus gates, as they are at either side of the hospital, i.e. you can't go onto the South Douglas Road and then up the Cross Douglas Road or Capwell Road. I would probably include that in your submission if you're making one, and I will too, as it seems it isn't possible to make any movement to the hospital? Unless cars coming from Southern Road are allowed into the bus gate at Ballinlough Road? But that seems extremely difficult for almost everyone in City South East (Douglas, Mahon, Rochestown, Ballinlough, etc). The more I think about the Douglas Road bus gates, the more I think about how impractical they are

Pepsirebel

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

Gru

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119408944#Comment_119408944

The donnybrook based secondary school students are losing access to a bus route (assuming the buses coming from carrigaline at rush hour will be full and nobody will be getting off them in Donnybrook itself) and there is no route on the south Douglas road so Christ the King students i was told by Con from the NTA will be expected to get one route into the city and a second bus back to the school or walk 30 minutes to the nearest bus stop.

i'd imagine it'll be similar situations for the schools named. walk or cycle.

BagofWeed

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119394036#Comment_119394036

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.

snotboogie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119409043#Comment_119409043

The South Douglas Road has the number 7 bus, it just won’t have any dedicated bus lanes as is the case now. Not sure why someone from the NTA would be telling you there is no route on the South Douglas Road?