Cork developments

It seems a shame to me that they don't continue the balincolig- city centre line out onto the midleton line - it would mean a east-west rail corridor of nearly 30 kms , would make park and ride at dunkettle more worth while - as well as way easier links to new north docks developments , little island and carrigtohil industrial estates -

What about the Cobh line? You'd have to rebuild the existing stations at Little Island, Glounthaune, Carrigtwohill, Midleton, Fota, Carrigaloe, Rushbrook and Cobh as they can't take trams. And regauge the entire line to take trams. That would cost a small fortune for very little benefit. Trams are slow, have lower capacity and over such long distances are much worse than electrified heavy rail. It's not going to happen.

Yes the plan is to electrify from Mallow to Cobh/Midleton. The first element to enable that was completed over the last few weeks with the upgrade of the signalling at Kent to replace the old analogue system in place.

A tram all the way to Cobh and Midleton is a non-starter as it would cost a fortune to regauge the entire line to accommodate trams and trams are slower and have less capacity than electrified heavy rail. Not to mention the existing stations would have to be demolished and rebuilt to accommodate trams. They offer zero benefits from Kent to Cobh/Midleton over simply upgrading what we have to electrified rail and creating an integrated hub at Kent. Nobody would suggest replacing the DART in Dublin with a Luas.

Examiner:

Excellent! The pearl clucthers won't like that lol.

Examiner write-up on 'Distillery Quarter'

Developers and businesspeople love that branding shyte, that's why.

That's the "locked gates" quarter.

It's crazy to think thar we've tried to create a tourist friendly, "historic quarter", yet we allow the residents in a few alleyways to close off public access as and when they see fit.

I've written to the council numerous times about this but nothing is done and residents continue to lock gates on public thoroughfares willy nilly.

The gates don't stop the junkies.

I used to live on one of those alleys and I've since moved and I see more junkies where I am now than I ever did in the alleys in Shandon.

I used to get more afraid having to stop, take keys out, unlock the gate and hope no one was waiting behind me to try get in.

The only time I valued those gates was when there was a particular group camping outside St Mary's and one of the group had a tendency to become highly aggressive (he's still around - even saw a TikTok of him losing it on Oliver Plunkett Street). Two of my housemates were chased by him up to the gates. They were able to slam the gates and lock him out.

So why not gate off all our residential streets so junkies can't use them?

That really is the logical conclusion to your statement.

From my experience, the same people who want free reign to lock these thoroughfares at will, seem to be vehemently again an injection centre in the area, too.

To be honest, I'm far more wary of drunks and general scumbags. While, seeing people using hard drugs on the streets isn't pleasant, I've never had hassle from these people. I'm not saying that no one has suffered at the hands of addicts but my experience has been different. In my experience, most of them are pretty harmless and they are usually too out of it to pose any threat.

Loathe to take this further off topic, and yes, booze is a disaster, especially the homemade stuff around, but my impression is that drunks often have something else in their system these days, especially if aggressive. And general scumbags… potentially also linked to substances, getting money for it, broken people from being abused by other users etc. Heroin and injecting is a fragment of the problem. Some take any pill they are offered when low. Or at least, that’s how it comes across in the court reports defence arguments… I can’t remember the last time I read one where it was only booze in the defendant’s system.

Has anyone any info on that glenveagh housing development by the Ursulines? Walked past it the other day and saw very little activity. Is it on hold?

Frome The Echo today:

Cynically I wonder if the café units were a ruse to get it through planning. The first Lidl plan got shut down for not being mixed use IIRC.

I always thought it was strange they didn't leave room for a bakery.

I think you are spot on there, condition of planning that they had to have extra commerial units. Know someone that contacted the auctioneer re the other vacant unit and got the run around. This was the plan all along I reckon

Who rents them though ? , And if it can be made viable to build student apartments how come it can't be made viable to build regular apartments ?

They will be viable because if they can’t rent to students because they are to expensive they will turn them into Air BnB

Are the major tax breaks still in place ? Or are they long gone ?

O'Callaghan Properties announcing Phase 1 of the docklands redevelopment. Already looks very promising. The one quibble would be the relative lack of apartments. They mention about 450,000 sq. feet of offices (so about 4,000 workers) but the article mentions 160 apartments. The "2,000 homes" in the title, I'm not sure of. Might be in future phases?