Cork Area Commuter Rail (CACR)

Because whereas ‘dart’ suggests speed, ‘cart’ suggests something slow, possibly pulled by a horse.

A unified branding is important and isn't something that is in place on Dublin. There you have Luas, DART, Commuter Rail, Dublin Bus and various "Connect" services etc. all with their own logos, fonts, ticket branding. Dublin transport branding is a mess.

Look at best in class branding e.g. Transport for London. While there's multiple services they're all unified through the roundel logo and overall branding.

Yeah it's a bit crap to be honest. Missing a trick by not having a Cork specific livery or something distinguishing about it. And you'll still have all the various "Connects" buses with their own branding, ticketing, route maps on top of all that. And Irish Rail then having their own livery, different fonts etc. And future Luas in Cork will have it's own livery etc like the Luas in Dublin. Slapping a tfi logo on something isn't going far enough in creating a strong brand.

Use the train from East Cork regularly and there's no obvious tfi branding that I can see anyway.

What? I'm talking about the Connects services like, Cobh Connect, Cork Connect, West Cork Connect etc. Some of them take Leap, others don't. Some of them appear on tfi maps of Cork buses, others don't. They use the term "Connect" and you got confused between them and BusConnects. A mess.

They are private unsubsidised commercial operators, nothing to do with PSO services.

Of course they can brand their services as they see fit. That’s the same in any country.

All PSO services will however have standard liveries and fares.

But the NTA are rolling out standard bus stops with standard timetable presentation including those operated by commercial operators.

We don’t have up to date maps anywhere unfortunately, other than for rail & tram services.

That’s something that needs addressing, but I suspect the NTA have put updating them on hold pending the implementation of the revised networks which involve substantial changes, both nationally and in towns & cities.

The Cork map dates from 2021 and I suspect predates the launch of the 210 & 211!

Actually it's standard across Europe for unconnected public transport systems of different cities in the same country to have the same branding. All German speaking countries have U bahn and S bahn the logos vary between country, not city. Similarly in Spain except Catalonia, its the Cercanais and metro. In France its the RER and metro. Granted these are very large countries with multiple large cities. Consistent branding is important I think. The variation tends to be based on language rather than city.

I'd prefer for the DART to change name to something else if it meant consistency with the Cork system, assuming that CART isn't a runner. Traen Áitiúil or TÁ might be an option, something that can be consistent across different cities, bearing in mind there may be a commuter rail system in Limerick in the future.

We'll probably be paying climate fines for 50 years or so before any action is taken but still nice to imagine.

It's good to hear that buses will have a uniform livery nationally. Will this just apply to city services or will long distance buses also be obliged to carry the TFI livery? This may annoy some people but I would favour abolishing the DART brand and replacing it with generic commuter or suburban (NIR used to have a Suburban branding and livery, distinct from the InterCity one, though this disappeared in the early 90s and it was all unified again). This commuter/suburban rail brand would then be common across the country. There is no need nor desire for locally named services/branding. It should all be uniform. TFI seems to be going in that direction so hopefully it continues. It's much better when the branding is instantly familiar to a user, nationwide. It will build ridership if people "know" the public transport everywhere, even if they don't. I agree that TfL is the class leader in all this. There is clearly a way to have distinct yet unified brands for the different services.

All PSO buses will eventually be in a common livery.

Commercial operators (including Expressway) will retain their own branding and identities.

I dislike the TFI green/yellow bus stops, I find them harder to spot than the old red ones. I don't know if they get lost in street clutter or they don't stand out in dull Irish weather. Bang of quango off the TFI brand.

Not sure it was mentioned here but the planning application for the extension of the platforms at Kent and to facilitate through running was granted in November. Here's a piece on it when the planning application was submitted last summer.

The Blarney line could be called the 'Salonika' line. 'They takes us out to.......'😉

I know there has been lots of speculation about this. Electrification in the short to medium term would make no sense, as you would have a small stand-alone electrified segment at the end of the non-electrified Cork main line. When the latter is electrified (which it must be sooner (or later knowing Ireland) it will almost certainly be at 26Kv AC. So you would not have commonality with existing Dublin-area DART stock (1500V DC).

Hybrid would make no sense, and purely battery operation would in my view have problems (no more 5-minute turn-around times). So I reckon it will be class 2900 DMUs to reinforce the existing 2600 in the short to medium term.

This will cause some outrage, but electrification, which personally I regard as absolutely vital, will have to be rolled out as part of a national system-wide programme, and Cork suburban will have to fit into this.

Only because it's being funded by the EU COVID Recovery and Resilience Facility which has a deadline on it. If this was a normal government funded project it would still be stuck at the drawing board. Even at that the bureaucracy in Ireland is doing its best to slow this down. The railway order for the dual tracking from Glounthaune to Midleton element is stuck in ABP since last November. It's such a relatively quick win but the red tape is extensive in Ireland.

At least there are signs.

Most bus stops in Limerick City have no markings to indicate their existence.

Can you elaborate on "governance and legal problems"? I'm not absolving them of all blame, but the fact is that various governments have loaded more and more work onto ABP without funding it to hire enough staff to deal with that extra workload.

Going against the inspector's report is a normal part of how ABP works - it should not be universal but it should not be rare either. The inspector gathers evidence about a particular application, listens to submissions and makes a recommendation, but it is the Board that ultimately decides whether to approve an application. The inspector confines themself to one project, but the board considers that project in the context of other projects.

Judicial reviews are a direct consequence of under-resourcing. JRs are objections based on process, not findings - you can only win on the basis of "ABP did not follow this legally-required process", and when you haven't got enough staff on hand to deal with the workload, there will be oversights and omissions, and that leaves the door open for JRs - JRs are usually pretty quick in terms of court time, but they get dragged out by an under-resourced Courts system. The length of time that it takes APB to handle a planning application also allows the legal framework to change during the evaluation process. Again, with adequate resourcing, the jobs would get done quick enough that this would hardly ever happen.

Yes, it's maddening, and a big part of it is that "Minister approves funding for 100 more public servants" is seen as a negative, while "Minister approves funding for new rail project" is positive. Thing is, without the first, we can't get the second. Planning for big schemes should take 6-9 months - you won't get quicker given that people have a right to know what's being planned and to make observations - but there just aren't enough inspectors and general staff to deal with the number of schemes, so everything gets backlogged.

There are changes to the planning process coming with new legislation that will cut down on the number of spurious objections and make it harder to bring JRs, but the planning system still needs to be properly resourced or the delays will continue.

It's sort-of independent. The signalling work will be for a dual-track railway, but in theory they could just tell it it to "close" the sections of track that don't actually exist yet, and route trains over the existing single-track way. However, the dual-tracking work is also out for tender as I understand it.

Interestingly, the Strategic Rail Review document listed the Cork suburban network as a railway with "electrification already planned". The news report linked on previous page said that services would treble from the current one train per 15 minutes level, and I don't see how they're going to get to twelve trains per hour reliably without electrification... does anyone have any details?

The new signalling will be digital, they can add more physical signals later and program in the new double-tracked section fairly easily.

The plan is 10 minute frequency on each line which would be a train every 5 minutes west of Glountaune.

So they plan to build a station in the middle of an empty field in Monard?

This one is for a new town planned by the County Council. It will have no cars, just like Ballinglanna and Waterrock (I hope you can feel the sarcasm in my post!)

Here's a nice post about Monard. Conceptually it's not terrible, but realistically each and every one of these people will be a commuter. There's almost nowhere local for them to work. It's Carrigaline or Ballincollig with a train station basically.