This refusal was appealed to ABP and has been overturned according to Examiner:
A 15-unit student apartment complex is set to proceed after An Bord Pleanála overturned a decision by Cork City Council to reject the plan. Developer Mideam Ltd had proposed the demolition of a rear annex and outbuildings on Hawthorn House, fronting on to Western Road and Mardyke Walk. In its place, a four-storey student accommodation development was to be built.
[...]
An Bord Pleanála and its inspector have, accordingly, overturned the rejection and approved the scheme on the basis that it would “contribute to the provision of much-needed student accommodation in Cork city”.
Planning is so broken in this country, the amount of projects that get the go ahead from ABP after being shot down by local planners is unreal, are there any repercussions for the local planners who made the wrong decision? Not that I've heard about, the government admitted they arnt up to the task by creating the SHD bypass to ABP. Seems to be far too many planning decisions are up to the individual preferences of which ever local planner's desk it lands on and whether they like the look of it.
I assume the site on sullivans quay is a dead duck at this stage.
The 5 storey development was rejected by council. New application for 3 storeys:
Permission for a new 3-storey building at Carmelite Place, Western Road, Cork. The residential development comprises of a total of 14 dwellings in a mix of 5 no. 1-bed and 2 no. 2-bed ground floor apartments, and 5 no. 3-bed and 2 no. 4-bed duplexes. Site development works includes 40 bicycle parking spaces, plantroom, waste and recycling storage, and external shared amenity areas. Pedestrian and cycling access will be from Mardyke Walk.
Carmelite Place, Western Road, Cork
http://planning.corkcity.ie/AppFileRefDetails/2140598/0
In fairness, nobody can accuse Cork City of being anti-height, so when they ask someone to reduce the height you'd feel they must have good reasons.
This apartment building on Kyle St is flying up & had its height reduced as well I read.
Cork BusConnects network redesign due to be published today.
Details here of the bus network redesign. Some big changes including no more buses on Grand Parade or South Mall.
That doesn't seem quite right. No buses on some of the busiest streets in the city. Just leaves those streets for cars!
Wouldn't fancy driving that 2A bus up and down Church Hill in Glanmire. Proper gradient there
I was expecting more additional routes, kind of disappointed.
I think that's the point. Patrick Street is going to be the major cross city corridor for buses so it looks like South Mall and Grand Parade are being freed up to take the cars.
It's all I can think of too, that they're concentrating cars on some corridors, buses on others. That's not a bad strategy, IMO.
All the routes
The loss of the current link (#205) from Kent to MTU/UCC is a head scratcher. I use the 205 and quite a few students use it from Kent to go to UCC and MTU.
It looks like Carrigaline, Maryborough Hill and Douglas are going to lose their connections to UCC and MTU, too. They should make a 3C that goes down Western Road and up Sunday's Well Road-Shanakiel Road-Blarney Road-Harbour View Road. That would cover UCC, people going to MTU can transfer on Western Road then to the three 2 routes
Some really bizarre decisions. The success of the 220 through Ballincollig/Douglas/Carrigaline and they decide to scrap it? If you're from Douglas/Carrigaline and want to go to Washington St. you'll either have a long walk from Merchants Quay or have to get a second bus. No direct bus from city to Crosshaven anymore either.
The new #8 goes to Washington Street from Douglas.
I suppose overall they seem to be going for more frequent interchanges with through ticketing etc. Will have to see how it plays out in reality.
It'll be a disaster if there's no follow through with bus lanes at junctions and traffic management. I'm fully expecting a half assed plan that gets rolled back to a compromise that makes nobody happy. Hoping I'm proved wrong.
They are shadowing the planned light rail line with Ballincollig-Mahon Point. setting out the corridor.
The 8, 3 (3a and 3b), 42x, 7, 12 and 14 all pass through Douglas village, with the 8, 3A, 3B and 12 all following the Douglas Road. This area needs enormous investment in bus priority.
Now that you mention Douglas there are planned two-way routes on both Douglas Roads, I thought the Bus Connects plan was to make both roads one way plus a bidirectional cycle lane? Might have been wishful thinking.
One way systems like that are generally a bit of a disaster for public transport. You could live close to the bus one way but could be a fair distance away from it in the opposite direction. The choices consultation in July had a big section on why one way splits are not desirable. They tend to inconvenience more people due to outbound and inbound journey stops being far apart.
When two directions of a route are far apart, some people will find that the walk, either going or returning, is too long for them.
Yes that was the plan on CMATs. You can see from the images below but it seems to have disappeared from the current plan. Imo this makes a huge section of the network unviable. I hope that this gets updated on the infrastructure plan but I doubt it.
Yeah it never made sense for the PT aspect but would have been necessary for the cycling plan, unless they propose CPOing parts of people's front gardens, which won't happen in a million years. That CMATS map had bus lanes going through the tunnel IIRC so it was never meant to be taken seriously IMO.
I think I'm going to be disappointed by what we end up with. We might get a dedicated bus lane in each direction with the other lane for all vehicles but unless they CPO there isn't a hope of getting even a single continuous cycle lane on each road (or even a proper footpath), and if they cop out with a fragmented one which ends at pinch points it won't encourage many who'd be nervous.
The problem is that there is no other option to get bus priority on either road, they are massive traffic black spots and they carry close to the entirety of the public transport from Douglas, Rochestown, Passage and Carrigaline to the city.
The big routes here are the 3, 8, 7 and 12, which will carry the 90% of the peak traffic from these 4 areas. The 3, 8 and 12 will use the Douglas Road and the 7 will use the South Douglas Road. Without a major incentive to speed up buses, this huge population centre (about 70k people) won't get out of their cars.
I think the bus network will trump the cycle lanes ultimately. However we haven't yet seen the infrastructure part of the plan as all we got today was the network design. Have to wait and see.
They won't get out of their cars with one way splits either. We haven't yet seen what the infrastructure plan for this looks like, as we only got the network today.
True, when choosing between them bus will win. Though the cynic in me says private motor vehicles will ultimately be the last to lose out.
Looking forward to the infrastructure part of the consultation.
The splits would only be on the South Douglas and Douglas Roads. It would not affect people coming from Grange, Carrigaline, Rochestown, Douglas Village, Passage, Monkstown etc. Both roads are low density residential areas so a split would only affect those living on the roads. The primary origins and destinations would be before and after the split. Its not perfect but it would be better than sending every bus into traffic black spots
