Cork Area Commuter Rail (CACR)

Plan for Cork is to order 21 train sets identical to the DART+ fleet except they will be 25kV AC overhead

Cork is making rapid progress as there is 20+ years of preparation, planning, zoning in place to make it happen

I hate to tell you, but people are left behind at stations going into Dublin on all lines already during the morning peak. The same for the luas.

Also, the 29s are not great trains. Noisy, rock about the place, dirty, cold. Most will be happy to see the back of them. They are a stop gap. Better than a 2 car 2600 leaving people behind, but that is about it.

What I'm writing about is Mallow-Cobh, or vice versa. The Mallow to Midleton is talked about as a through train. Passengers wishing to travel to/from Cobh (from the Mallow end) would need a same-platform change to the Cobh train at Glaunthaune (Cobh Jct) or further up the line.

Both the Mallow-Midleton and Cork-Cobh trains are/will be down trains which share the same line and platforms, after they leave Kent station, as far as Cobh Junction.

Obviously, passengers travelling between Midleton-Cobh and vice versa would need a platform change at Glaunthaune or further up the line.

54,763 cars a day on the N25 just before the Dunkettle interchange (1), and 15,474 cars a day on the N25 east of Midelton (2).

The Clr is saying cars, not journeys, so 1 car on a daily commute counts for two journeys in the above numbers (inbound/outbound). So cut those numbers in half 27,381.5 and 7,737.

And of course, not everyone can switch away from their car (trucks, vans, those who only a car is viable etc) but luckily we have at least a lower bound for this number from the TFI links, 22.7% at (1) and 15.19% at (2) of vehicles are non passenger cars, so unable to switch to the train (in reality percentages would be higher as not all car drivers can/would switch). That brings the numbers down to 21,311 and 6,561.

But please do tell me how the train would take 8 or 10,000 cars off the road, how a newspaper could put this in the subheading and how an elected representative could state this as fact at a council meeting, all without spending less then 5 minutes like I have looking this up.

1. https://trafficdata.tii.ie/sitedashboard.asp?sgid=XZOA8M4LR27P0HAO3_SRSB&spid=DFA198C74264
2. https://trafficdata.tii.ie/sitedashboard.asp?sgid=XZOA8M4LR27P0HAO3_SRSB&spid=5229D264490

Note1: I could probably drop those numbers another 10% if I manually counted up all the cars on the road between 11pm and 6am from the TFI chart, but I think I've made the point pretty clear.

Note2: I'm not against any rail line or voicing any opinion on this line, just calling out nonsense.

Plain 25kv is the plan

Train is 1500VDC by design so dual voltage could be done, likely put the transformers and rectifiers on the end cars where the battery packs are.

Cork fleet will be captive, have its own depot so little it any justification to go this path

Surely it would be more useful in the long term to replace the 1.5 kV DC wires with 25 kV AC than to fit the AC stock with DC equipment.

Is it possible to do dual voltage stock without dual pantographs?

I ask that as a genuine question as I know very little about dual voltage stock and the few examples I have seen all appear to use dual voltage.

It also means less substations. It costs on average around 15% more to order dual voltage units, and considering this system will presumably be in use for a century or more, it should be looked at; Czechia has already began converting its DC lines to AC.

I don’t really think the third rail system in England is a good comparison. It’s relatively self-contained (owing to historically being operated by a different company), and doesn’t require all intercity trains coming into the city switching to the other system, unlike ours, which will.

Would a future opportunity arise with DART underground to use 25kVA in conjunction with 4North to standardize on 25kVA on the Dublin to Cork line and Dublin to Belfast line. Could have express DARTs maybe on the non stopping line into Dublin from future expansions to Kildare etc.

A bit late to this..

Nice to see that Cllr. Dineen is now embracing the concept of public transport. He previously criticised the plans for the new 25 floor Railway Yard apartment block in Cork for not having a basement car park, on the grounds that people living in the city centre could not rely on public transport, while at the same time actively mobilising opposition to the Bus Connects plan. I suspect he may be one of those people who don't actually give a sh!te about public transport but if it gives an excuse to get rid of a greenway, they're game for it.