Cork - Light Rail [route options idenfication and initial design underway]

That might make the route from Carrigaline to the city too long.

I'd follow Dylan's route from Carrigaline to Douglas Court but then have it run past Tesco via the Douglas link road and then have it follow the N40 to Black Ash where you could link with a high frequency bus route or possibly a spur to the Airport. Then you either close a lane on the N27 and squeeze it in there or culvert a 1km section from the Douglas road exit of the N27 to just beyond the Old Blackrock road overpass and build it underneath the road. You then run it past the Elyssian, follow Albert street all the way across Eamonn De Valera bridge down Anderson Quay to link with the East-West line at St Patrick's Street. In the current environment, closing a lane of the South Douglas Road, which would be the minimum required to run a luas there, seems completely unrealistic.

I'd link Passage by extending the East-West line to Rochestown (as in Dylan's Route 1) and then follow his first 5 steps in Route 4. I don't think there is a need to continue this route to Douglas . I don't think there is an immediate need for a Passage link. In this dream scenario, the commuter towns in West Cork become the biggest concern, particularly Kinsale and Bandon.

Let’s hope that the preferred route is the one that passes through Kent station.

Attempts to go near Rochestown cannot be part of this project. People there have a long history of opposing public works, and if phase 1 of the light rail includes anything being built there, we may as well just cancel the project and start again. If there’s construction proposed through the expensive suburbs, I guarantee a “grass roots organisation” will fight tooth and nail to keep it out because, after all, public transport is only for people who have failed so badly at life they can’t even afford a car.

The only way to achieve what you want is to get the thing up and running as far as Mahon, then wait a couple of years until envy nullifies the NIMBYs’ arguments.

Consultation finally launches at 11am on April 14th! Open until June

https://www.echolive.ie/corknews/arid-41605978.html

I wouldn't take the luas or bus connects projects in Cork very seriously. There corridors in Dublin that have planning permission for a year and have been in planning for 7 years and there's still no construction tenders out

Could also be using something like this for catenary free usage in certain areas.

I personally think catenary-free is a bad thing - it only increases the cost of the system, adds maintenance costs/complexity, and ensures any future rolling stock purchases are more expensive. Do people really notice or care about the overhead wires?

I am very happy to see progress on this though - hopefully it progresses relatively quickly.

Very hard to understand the routing in ballincollig, Missing out on large population in the west end of the town. Also to make any extension west complicated as well.

I think they ended it in the right place. Anything to the west of Ballincollig town is very low density housing of the sort that’s designed for cars with no permeability for pedestrians. Wherever you put a line, it’ll be within walking distance of almost nobody.

Until there’s a higher-density development outside here, there’s no good case for extending the rail line.

@gooseman12 The sharing is a concern, but I don’t know what other options could be used: Cork never had that whole Georgian street-widening thing that gave Dublin handy, straight-line routes for Luas, and there’s no way to go underground in the centre, because there’s no ground under!

I can’t agree with you about the routing along MacCurtain street: I believe that a direct link at Kent is essential for the viability of the tram line. It’s all very well bringing commuters in by rail from Mallow, Midleton or Cóbh, but if there’s no reliable, high-capacity option to get from Kent to major destinations like UCC (3 km), CUH (5 km), Mahon (6 km) or Bishopstown (7 km), people will just drive instead. I’d even suggest making sure that the new bridge from Kent to the south side is made wide enough to add another pair of tracks in future.

The problem with using the old rail alignment is that it doesn’t go where the service is needed. Churchyard Lane, Well Road, Skehard Road is where people either live or need to get to. Plus, the old alignment is being used as a greenway, so there isn’t really the saving on land: widening would still have been needed.

Demolishing buildings is unfortunate. Doubly so as one of those slated for demolition is Finn’s Corner, which has only recently completed a full re-build. The Venue Bar I could take or leave (Many years ago, I used to live behind it, so I’m not as in love with it as some might be).

I don’t see this as the “one and only line”, but it is definitely the most obvious one. The geography of Cork will make any North-South rail alignment within the city an expensive pain in the arse, so it will need the first line to be a success before you could try to fund it.

The ballincollig loop is another interesting choice, limits any potential extensions and station road is another very narrow route. I would assume the main reasoning here is to cover the potential developments in the maglin area.

It's a compromise born out of the fact that many here in Ballincollig find public transport of any kind only slightly less repulsive than a venereal disease. Pretty much every major bit of non-car related infrastructure has been attacked vociferously and either killed entirely or watered down to the point of uselessness, as with BusConnects. Much of the resistance seems to have been concentrated in the Coolroe area of Ballincollig, and the loop stays well enough away from that benighted part of town.

Going with a one-way loop also sidesteps the area of having to tear up the full width of Main Street. When BusConnects was first announced, the plans called for a full pedestrianisation of Main Street between roughly the Bank of Ireland building and the intersection with Station Road. There were massive protests against these plans, with local business leaders claiming that they'd lose customer parking. You know, despite a multi-story car park in the shopping centre and large surface car parks next to the cinema. I personally think that this slight of hand with a single track won't help the situation and we're still going to see massive protests to kill the project, but it is an interesting approach.

But there is plenty of room for higher density development and you have a big trip generator in EMC which would allow commuting within ballincollig itself. The idea that the loudest anti-active and public transport voices are in the west of the town is true as well (remember the "save our right turn" signs) and has probably informed this preferred route to the detriment of those areas.

Yeah.

“Having a tram there will be so dangerous to the poooor children”, said the distracted driver of a 2.1 tonne Volvo while trying to muscle in to the space between two other cars so that their child wouldn’t have to face the dangerous traffic, “I mean, it’s bad enough with all these big SUVs around”.

I know someone with children in these schools. It's a complete shitshow every morning, with everyone trying to wedge their oversized SUVs down a narrow road. A one-way system will make it less attractive to drive down there, so I’m all for it.