Michael Moynihan: Thoughts on BusConnects while taking a short bus journey in Cork

Will BusConnects bring people into town or discourage them from leaving the suburbs, such as Douglas?

ST PATRICK'S Street: This is great, it’s so long since I got the bus that I’d forgotten the traffic ban on St Patrick’s Street means the buses roll through unimpeded, double-decker gazelles cruising along the tarmac veldt.

Who am I kidding? It’s like the Arc de Triomphe scene from John Wick 4 here. Cars, vans, bikes, scooters: stuck for the last five minutes. If the traffic ban isn’t enforced here, what hope with enforcing new rules and procedures for BusConnects?

A trip through some of Cork’s greatest yellow boxes will soon bring home the extent to which traffic regulations are more honoured in the breach, etc. Something we’ll return to as the bus finally starts making headway. Here we go!

St Patrick’s Street-Grand Parade: Is there ever not a crowd at the counter of that McDonald’s in Daunt’s Square?

As the bus rounds the corner I can glimpse the hills of the northside.

I note that the BusConnects plans had to be altered due to those hills and narrow streets, as acknowledged by its spokesman last week.

Deputy chief executive of the National Transport Authority, Hugh Creegan.

“The northside of the city hasn’t changed, it is just as hard now as it was last year,” said the spokesman, Hugh Creegan. “We have to compromise in places and other people have to compromise with us. The geography with hilly terrain and narrow streets is extremely challenging.”

Well, we all knew that beforehand, as noted. 

Why begin with plans that will have to be changed anyway, even if they are in draft form? 

A few weeks ago this column echoed residents’ fears that proposals for Summerhill North would have reduced footpaths to the extent that they would have been unsafe. No harm that that proposal has been reversed, but why suggest it in the first place?

It’s not ... to give residents the impression of a win, is it? Or am I being too cynical altogether?

Anglesea St: Stuck at the traffic lights by the Garda station. Not too long, hopefully, but the intersection is made a little bit more exciting than necessary by the attitude toward the traffic light turning
red.

I noted recently someone left a sign on traffic lights in Limerick stating RED MEANS STOP, and we could do with a few of those in Cork as well. As mentioned here before, I must have missed the memo freeing drivers to treat the red light as a deeper shade of amber rather than its own crimson self.

Everywhere in Cork people sail on through those stop lights, which is in itself a challenge to BusConnects. Not because it has a direct impact on bus services (unless one of those drivers ends up having a direct impact on a bus service) but because it indicates a complete lack of road discipline

This is likely to bleed into the operation of a new integrated transport system. That lack of discipline which has nothing to do with BusConnects per se but it speaks to the fact that BusConnects is just one of several interlocking pieces. All interdependent. All capable of complicating the others.

Southern Road: There’s the Southern Star, I was in there last week. Sorry. Back to business.

I mentioned the interdependent aspects of the traffic equation. Here’s another. As you roll up the Southern Road there’s a bump or two, or three, in the road. Feel the bus go over them?

After the rain in recent weeks, the potholes are back with a vengeance. Would BusConnects yield a surprising infrastructural dividend in that vulnerable roads would enjoy an easing in traffic level, even if it’s just at peak hours?

St Finbarr’s Hospital: There’s a “bus gate” going here. No, sorry, just east of the hospital, which would put it ... right in front of the Tesco Express?

It’s a good thing there’s another round of consultations because this is a disaster if I ever saw one

 Cars come along to the bus gate and discover they can go no further, so they have to U-turn in the Tesco car park and head back the way they came, I presume.

I see there was a bus gate’ meant for Bel Air estate, which would divert all the Douglas cars up through those houses, right past the national school on Ballinlough Road. The national school where the city council is spending thousands on road safety measures because of the existing car chaos. Which will see a huge leap in car numbers because of this bus gate.

Ah well. Onwards!

Douglas Road: These are the people going to take on BusConnects, then? Depending on your point of view they’re either plucky householders standing up for their rights or selfish boomers who want the world to burn.

I see that leap being made pretty fast by people, and not just with BusConnects, of course: the conceptual jump which takes you from an initial “I disagree with your point of view” to an entrenched “Why are you trying to murder my children” in the time it takes the synapses to fire.

Proclaiming your doctrinal purity is all very well if that’s the point of the exercise — to preach to the choir, to get those pats on the back. But doing so to bring people along with you, never mind reaching some kind of workable compromise, is a losing proposition. I note a fair amount of what Anthony Burgess skewered a long time ago as the ‘wow that’s great, Janice’ school of commentary since the last BusConnects developments.

(Don’t worry, it’ll be your own favourite topic to virtue-signal about soon enough.)

Douglas itself: Will BusConnects bring people into town or discourage them from leaving the suburbs?

I’ve seen some (rational) discussions of the plans which focus on reallocating road space and reducing pinch points for public transport (from Dan Boyle, among others), which are valid observations of the process.

But at the far end, when BusConnects becomes a reality, what will be the consequences for the centre of Cork and its outskirts? 

It’s already easier for many people to visit the suburbs — for shopping and entertainment — than it is to get into the middle of town. If you can’t get into town without using the bus at rush hour, will that be a disincentive?

Last stop: everybody off.

A final thought on BusConnects, courtesy of Mr Creegan’s comments at last week’s press call, as I hop out at a much-changed Douglas.

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When asked about opponents of the scheme questioning the validity of the maps being used to plan the routes, he said: “The maps may be a year or two out of the date, but we will be doing our own surveys in the detailed design process later.”

Full marks for honesty, but shouldn’t the surveys for the detailed design process take place sooner rather than...

Look, what do I know? Anyway, back on the bus with me. I left the car in North Main St.

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