The consultation on the infrastructure element of the BusConnects corridors is now open.
Unfortunately it looks like BusConnects in Douglas at least is dead before it begins thanks to the genius councillors in City Hall.
More of the same. BC is dead in the water and not a penny more should be wasted on transportation in Cork. Let them enjoy their dreadfully slow buses while they crawl through the heavy congestion and the web of badly timed traffic lights, a complete mess but its what the people want, so be it.
BusConnects and NTA controversial plans for Cork: unique opportunity or highways to Hell? (irishexaminer.com)
Any chance of a Cork Luas will be stopped in it's tracks by these same Councillors and NIMBYs. Meanwhile our roads are creaking under car traffic but it seems Cork people are happy enough with that.
Oh, this project is dead, no doubt about it! Unless the government somehow gets both the authority and backbone to go all Tienanmen Square on the NIMBYs and Cork Sh!tty Council, which is honestly still better than they deserve, this will never get anywhere.
All those who are b*tching about why Cork isn't what it used to be, just look at what's going on with BusConnects and you'll see that the Leesiders are more than happy to kill their own city in favour of chasing some mystic rose-tinted past that never existed in the first place!
I'm beginning to think, actually i'm quite confident at this stage, that BusConnects is going to fall at the first hurdle.
We have councilors voicing fierce opposition to every single aspect of it and demanding the entire plan be discarded, residents crying over the plan (not my words, see here https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/munster/arid-40960250.html), road conservation status' changes in the hope of protecting the fabric of the city (https://twitter.com/CllrDesCahil/status/1546808046327840770?cxt=HHwWhICykaHurvcqAAAA). Parking in St. Lukes also seems to be causing some major issues, and i'd imagine the list is far far longer than only the ones I am aware of.
The greenfields/coolroe meadows scheme, while not part of the bus connects plan, i think shows a microcosm of what awaits for the bus connects plans, very vocal local objections, backed up by councilors seemingly results in the plan being entirely discarded in favour of the status quo. While the plans may not have been the best, i really feel the status quo is not the best outcome for anyone here.
I see bus connects headed the same direction. At most it ends up being a completely watered down version of the plan with very little changes.
While this is cork focused, it is probably not just a cork thing, I can imagine the dublin plans are headed in a similar direction.
Agree the amount of trees coming down is disappointing. They did the same in douglas park and on skehard road. The new trees are never mature ones.
I find the flow quite hard to visualise , it’s a pity there isn’t a simulator version of the traffic where you could load it with school or match traffic.
lol at you claiming I made some kind of logical fallacy in response to your hyperbole...
It's not my responsibility to "do us a favour and look it up" myself in order to verify your claim. Specially when the claim has no grounding in reality.
You make a claim..be prepared to back it up. That's not spoonfeeding.
Ah the classic "but not that". Why don't you do us a favour and look it up yourself. 👍 Councillors spreading misinfo and negativity also. I'm not going to spoon feed you 🙄
lol, your source is one tweet from a crank account with 35 followers? Ironically you've probably trebled their audience by posting that tweet.
Is that all you have to support your claim, seriously? That's not "a scandalous amount of disinformation". Less of your hysteria please.
Where someone stores their private property is entirely a question for the car owner to resolve and should not entail handing over the public realm to private storage.
Yep, "bus gates" at Bellair traffic lights to stop cars going towards town...all on-street parking to be removed on this stretch also (with 15-20? parking spaces at St Finbarr's entrance to compensate). Outside of peak hours, all buses that pass this way are empty (215, 207, 220, 216 etc) so the proposals are complete overkill and deserve to be killed off.
If this does somehow go ahead, parking will need to be removed on Wallace's Avenue too as this will be the new rat-run into town. Of course the NTA only inform residents of what's happening on their 200m of road so it's hard to visualise the scale of the stupidity on a city-wide basis...
The worst thing however, in my view, is the amount of trees they plan to cut down...on the Douglas Rd and Boreenmana Rd...to facilitate road widening 😡😡😡
To be fair the Regina Mundi crowd are a pain in the h*le and cause traffic chaos on the Douglas Road every morning and afternoon...blocking cycle lanes, the bus stop, the petrol station forecourt, etc. Yes, their little angels should be getting the bus where possible (but I guess the problem here is that so many students aren't from the local area and rely on being driven to school...but there's a separate thread).
Citation please?
I haven't read anything about houses being demolished or people being barred from owning cars. However the question of continued car ownership is an interesting one: with onstreet parking being removed for High Street and the Douglas Road, one has to question where car owners will continue to park their cars (as the proposed number of spaces at the front of St Finbarr's is clearly inadequate for the number of residents in the area)?
I don't think that's particular to Cork, at all, but it is what will probably happen.
You can still drive on the Douglas Road, you just can't drive the length of it due to the bus gates (Well Road, Bellair and Ballinlough Road). You can still access it by car from Belvedere Lawn, Tramore Lawn, Rathmore Lawn/Rhodaville Estate, Rosebank, Bellair, Eglantine Park and the Cross Douglas Road. By foot/bike, you can also access it from Clermont Avenue and Woodview.
I don't think that will be the case for Donnybrook. Otherwise, it would be the same right now for Maryborough Hill with the 220. It is sometimes in the morning I think but otherwise it's not. The 220 replacement (3) will split between 3A and 3B, plus a few other going from Carrigaline to the city centre, so I don't see capacity for Donnybrook being an issue.
South Douglas Road does have a bus route, No 7 (Kent - Mount Oval), 20 minute frequency. The No 6 is every 15 minutes (Grange - UCC) stops on South Douglas Road too, it just doesn't travel down it. Maybe a 2/3 minute walk from the school
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?
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.
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.
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
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
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.
Yup, but that doesn't affect Wallace's Avenue (unless you are saying that separately), those cars would go down to Boreenamana Road
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.
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/
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
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.
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:
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
