Cork - BusConnects

The final revised network for Cork was published today:

https://busconnects.ie/cork/

The new 1 is the new main east west corridor from Mahon to Ballincollig as they want it to mirror the future Luas line and be a 24 hour service.

Based on the higher frequency and the 90 minute ticket there'll be a high frequency transfer from the 1 to the 3 (to Apple) in the city centre.

I disagree about the North and South Links. Almost no buses will be using these roads and there are no major populations living along these roads (at least the N40 and N27) with any type of access to the roads to make bus stops. As well as that, the housing near the roads are low density. Having bus lanes would be a waste of space as there would never be any type of need for them. The N40 is supposed to be a 'freeway' running through the southside (originally around it but we know what happened there) so that cars don't need to drive through residential roads or the city centre to get to either side of the city. That idea is very much enforced in these plans. As the Douglas Road will be local access only now with three bus gates, the thousands of cars a day that use the Douglas Road will need to go somewhere, even if there was a huge reduction in car usage in favour of buses (as is the hope). The South Douglas Road likely won't be able to fit this excess traffic, and so people south of the N40 and east of the N27 are being told to use the N27 to access the City Centre or the Southern Distributor (also partially included in this through the extension of Grange Road to Carrigaline Road, the Kinsale Rd - Douglas bus corridor) to get around the city west of the N27

As for the rest of your comment, I can't give an opinion just yet. I have only looked at the Maryborough - City Centre route and it looks good to me. Fingerpost changed to a junction with bus priority, a bus gate added to allow buses onto East Douglas Street (which is being made a cul-de-sac for private cars), Old Carrigaline Road made two way, bus gates on Douglas Road look practical, etc. Will be extremely controversial though

Bus gates at Well Road, Bellair and Ballinlough Road. Cars can access their house on Douglas Road using the the various points of access to the road from South Douglas Road (like Belvedere Lawn, Rosebank and Cross Douglas Road), Ballinlough Road/Bellair, Eglantine Park and Woodview. Cars can freely move around the local access areas, but the three bus gates prevents someone from driving from Douglas to the city centre on the Douglas Road, reducing traffic on the road for buses while mantaining local access for houses and schools. I assume the buses will have a scanner so only buses can get through. I think there is already one at the back of Mahon Point

Some of the details are really strange.

I don't understand the motivation to keep the Tivoli Dual Carriageway a 60kmh Dual Carriageway for instance: traffic is often backed up there, I would have thought it a prime candidate for a bus lane, especially if it's all 60kmh. And some of the cycle routes are a bit off the wall, they're effectively "get out of the way of important traffic" routes, rather than actually offering anything for cyclists. Often on narrow, steep longer routes than the obvious route.

Lots of good stuff in there too though. On balance I would like to see all of it done, rather than none of it done.

Local councillors are elected on a couple of hundred votes. That is what critical infrastructure rests on in this country.

Absolutely embarrassing that we have these councillors calling the shots. BusConnects will die a death at the hands of these dinosaurs in City Hall and the nimbys that will be emboldened by their stance.

Accounts like that make me despair. Spreading lies and BS without any effective way of taking them down. Kinda makes me wish we could approach infrastructure projects in a more China-like way and just send idiots like that off to labor camps for a decade or two!

It’s not just social media. Colette Finn was on Neil Prendeville this morning getting all the usual tropes from our Neil and a few callers-in.

“So the government are at war with car owners?”

“They want cashless transport. So they’re at war with old people now too.”

“They’re at war with farmers too.”

“All of this to cut twenty minutes off a bus journey. Wouldn’t it be better to spend this on houses?”

Amazing…an article discussing opposition to the plan which doesn’t mention Terry Shannon. That’s a first.

The consultants for this are very very against one way running on different roads for bus services as it inevitably means that on at least one leg of the journey a lot of people have a much longer walk at the end to get home etc. Case studies show that this difference is enough to put people off using the bus.

Bit of a bump, but Ballincollig is festooned with anti-Bus-Connects signs

1) Save our trees!

2) Don't cut down 60 trees!

3) Save our right turn lanes!

I mean really.