Cork Area Commuter Rail (CACR)

You could still co-locate the bus station, as the space is available to the East of Kent. But it's not without its own issues: see the situation of the Galway bus/coach transit hub.

The historical issue in Cork is that the rail station is owned by IÉ, and the bus station is owned by BÉ. If BÉ were to move all operations, IÉ would need to charge them rent. And they were traditionally mandated (since the break-up of CIÉ) to compete for passengers. So IÉ would have effectively been mandated to charge BÉ a fairly high price.

That's a negative result of privatisation, basically. The ideal scenario would have been to separate the rail "network management" and "rolling stock" into two companies, with the state owning the network side. Rail transport outside of Dublin likely wouldn't have survived such a separation.

So a possible solution still available would be for the state to build and manage a new rail/bus/tram transit hub to the East of Kent (and one in Blarney and one in Dunkettle/Tivoli). Whether IÉ and BÉ would move operations would be complex though: they already have their own city stations and such a hub would be desirable/beneficial for the other independent competitor coach operators: so why would IÉ or BÉ move? And the Horgan's Quay land is already probably more valuable to IÉ as property on which to build density (this appears to be the strategy they're following).

Privatisation is difficult, shocker!

Sorry, I hope this is all still on-topic. I find it an interesting problem at least :D

Bus eireann and Irish rail aren't private ,

They're both still owned by CIE, ( I think)

Moving the bus station from Parnell place to Kent, would be a bit bonkers , it's relatively central , it'd be better if there was space for private coaches next to it ,or near by,at least all the coach travel would be centralized,

It's bonkers that there isn't a park and ride transport hub at dunkettle , and south ring orbital / northern distributor (when it's built) orbital , dunkettle is already the main transport hub for cork ..

The two stations are about 700m apart. The word remote seems a bit of reach here. It's about an 8 minute walk with frequent buses also (205 and 214).

I would also say those using the bus arriving from west Cork for example, would not be happy having to stay on the bus through the city centre only to be dropped off further away from the centre than they currently are.

Precisely. Focus on the main intercity and urban lines.

and reopen lines, both can be done in one of the world's richest countries.

reopening lines does not stop focusing on the main lines and the urban and suburban services that run along part of those main lines.

Yep I believe the owners of CIÉ are either just the minister and department, or a number of government bodies, but all government. So what makes them semi-state definitely isn't the ownership, as you rightly say!

But their model of semi-state tasks them with autonomy, competition and profit-making (!). Again, munchkin_utd has it spot-on, the whole thing is to keep private coach operators happy. There's almost no chance of CIÉ just telling them both to cooperate, because of privatisation.

As an aside, I think most or all of the old guard are gone now, but the CIÉ personnel from BÉ and IÉ who were close colleagues and used to sit side-by-side in the same offices were effectively told overnight to compete with each other. I've lots of stories about this, where neither of the two was happy about it and resented being told not to cooperate. But they did what they were told.

I guess all I'm saying is that the blame definitely doesn't lie with BÉ and IÉ. And the blame probably doesn't even with CIÉ, from what little I know.

Most of Bus Éireann’s commercial Expressway services don’t really compete with IE anymore as they have cut some routes and serve different markets on others.

The NTA set all of the PSO service levels nowadays, so the notion of BE and IE competing on this level is not valid anymore.

I really don’t see the need to move the bus station from Parnell Place. It’s in a good city centre location, and is directly connected from the railway station by the 214 bus, the 205 close by and even more routes under BusConnects which will have a zero penalty LEAP transfer fare.

The 225 and 226 buses to the Airport, Carrigaline, Ringaskiddy and Kinsale already start at the station.

You could perhaps start the West Cork PSO routes 233/236/237/238/239 at the railway station, but that’s really about all that would be necessary.

The 214 and 205 both go from Kent to the bus station. Very frequent, about every 8-10 minutes, throughout most of the day. A little less frequent in the evening after rush hour.

having them narrow gauge would mean either different rolling stock that could only serve those parts of the railway, or gauge changing stock which would be doable but would be more expensive to buy and add more complexity.

now if the reopened lines were to be part of a network designed to ultimately serve new places instead rather then be added back into the existing network then you could have them as light rail or something but that won't happen.

the luas is light rail, so it makes sense to operate it as it is as it's a tram system rather then a train which would be heavy rail and ultimately it will grow as it's own network going forward as more lines will be added at some stage.

it's not that it isn't possible to operate reopened heavy rail lines as narrow gauge, it is just that it doesn't make sense as it means extra complexity and removes the ability to operate more direct services.

In Belfast, Translink offer free connections into the city centre from Lanyon Place for alighting railway passengers and the distance into town is less than 1km

Starting with a standard gauge tram system, and opening commuter rail services is exactly what's needed. It's taking a long time to get the basics in place, but hopefully people (and importantly politicians) will see the benefits, and start pushing for extensions to services. Unfortunately it all takes a long time to get going.

Just to elaborate on tram-trains though, as they would be ideal for Cork.

The model for tram-train systems was developed in a city the same size as Cork; Karlsruhe, Germany. They solved points 1 and 3 nearly 30 years ago. The system is very extensive, and has impressive ridership numbers for a relatively small city. Gauge change isn't ideal, but has been solved before. Australia ran dual-gauge track from 1600mm-1435mm. Gauge change trains are an option too (probably not gauge change trams though...).

Not going to happen for many decades - if at all...

In my opinion, integrated ticketing and integrated ticket pricing will go a lot further than any new services, to join up the Cork public transport system.

The Luas is completely separate to the rest of the railway network, whereas your proposed narrow gauge extension to Youghal would be part of the same network as the rest of the Cork Suburban railway. A narrow gauge extension to Youghal is a complete non-runner.

we know, but unless you are going to connect youghal to a different, new network that is standard gauge then you are either increasing cost and complexity to connect it to the existing heavy rail network or you are changing people off trains at midleton which makes no sense and won't be tolerated quite rightly.

that is why reopening it as standard gauge won't work if it was to reopen.

again yes luas does operate to standard gauge but it is a tram system and couldn't interoperate with the heavy rail network anyway even if it was the same gauge.

With development at Tivoli and further east, the Midleton line would likely be over-capacity for a tram system which would be constrained by the situation west of Kent. Light rail being cheaper is a false economy in this case, the cost of adding new heavy rail stations would be a lot less than rebuilding all stations for light rail. You'd also need to buy and whole new light rail fleet. Leaving as heavy rail would be better value and higher capacity.

Light rail for the proposed east/west route makes sense. I think in future they should also look at a tram using half the South Link Road then splitting after Black Ash, one branch to the airport and another over towards Douglas.

I doubt theres any chance of a hypothetical mideton bcollig light rail being over capacity ( comparing it to the luas )

Although there is a strong chance that it would have far higher usership than electrified midleton- Kent and Kent to b'colig combined ,

Just from sheer ease of use , I'd be more likely to use through transport for a short than transfer . And people don't like more than 2 transfers..

I think the Cobh line used to be "Arrow" (or maybe it just had "Arrow" rolling stock!) but I've never heard of any other branding effort.

Unless you're just joking, in which case CART would indeed be a great name for the mass transit system.

The talk of putting light rail on existing heavy rail routes and even of mixed gauges is just a total load of nonsense. I'm sure there are routes in the Cork area quite suitable for light rail, but almost certainly these are in areas totally devoid of any rail services at present.

@hans aus dtschl

the stock that currently operates the cork suburban is the original arrow stock.

the arrow brand was removed in the 2000s and replaced with the commuter brand.

light rail on the midleton line would be pointless - unless it was to link through to a Kent -balincollig rail .. ( so don't hold your breath,

Having a single east - west transport spine would increase journey numbers ,

And a through mallow- Cobh with new stations in blarney and blackpool , and possibly a new station at rushbrook meeting the cross river ferry ..