Cork Area Commuter Rail (CACR)

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.