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  • Originally posted by Sluggie View Post
    Shortage of pilots?
    Possibly an additional reason. However the moving of existing Ports to sea is prompted by developmental aspirations of huge financial gains on land sales and putting high rise, high rent, units on the city quay walls. The problem is the down river berths for all traffic types is not ready or enough in both Cork and Waterford. The country needs ports that are tide friendly and needs dredgers to keep them so. There are other ports- Sligo-Drogheda-Wicklow-Arklow.

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    • Originally posted by ancientmariner View Post
      Possibly an additional reason. However the moving of existing Ports to sea is prompted by developmental aspirations of huge financial gains on land sales and putting high rise, high rent, units on the city quay walls. The problem is the down river berths for all traffic types is not ready or enough in both Cork and Waterford. The country needs ports that are tide friendly and needs dredgers to keep them so. There are other ports- Sligo-Drogheda-Wicklow-Arklow.
      There is an article on the history and future of GALWAY Harbour in the March Edition of the SEA Breezes Magazine. The idea is to move the port into a reclaimed zone and provide around 600m of berthage for all kinds of shipping in a harbour provided with breakwaters. It mentions leisure provisions and Naval Berthage and of course the conversion of the current harbour into a developers heaven. It mentions that new harbour will handle cruise units up to 12000-20000 tonnes which will not meet the current typical cruise tonnages of 20000-60000 tonnes while the number over 100000 tonnes is becoming the norm. Harmony of the Seas is a 220000 tonner. I hope there will be proper estimations made and the harbour built to meet the actual requirement.

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      • Originally posted by ancientmariner View Post
        There is an article on the history and future of GALWAY Harbour in the March Edition of the SEA Breezes Magazine. The idea is to move the port into a reclaimed zone and provide around 600m of berthage for all kinds of shipping in a harbour provided with breakwaters. It mentions leisure provisions and Naval Berthage and of course the conversion of the current harbour into a developers heaven. It mentions that new harbour will handle cruise units up to 12000-20000 tonnes which will not meet the current typical cruise tonnages of 20000-60000 tonnes while the number over 100000 tonnes is becoming the norm. Harmony of the Seas is a 220000 tonner. I hope there will be proper estimations made and the harbour built to meet the actual requirement.
        I received a book/research study into port histories by Maritime History dept in the Memorial University of Newfoundland. The study makes many interesting points including that ports were always about bringing goods, materials, and people together, whether for import or export worldwide. The best ports were always those that were city based and convenient to the handling of cargoes and adjacent to administrative offices of shippers and stevedores. The success of a port depended on long term engineering planning for the efficient and rapid handling of cargo and the provision of port of refuge facilities such as ship repair and drydocking.
        While ports are critical to the status and strength of a nation the operation of ports fell to port users and authorities emanating from those users. Hierarchies of decision making emerged leading to many short term revisions that lost sight of current port technology. It concludes , in this case , that government did not view port services provision as a national industry. There is a current Government study into Maritime matters. I hope they research widely and look at busy ports, includimg some that see no problem in 5km of berthage in a single port.

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        • It is not just the port itself but the links it has to the main economic areas. Looking at the biggest ports in Europe they are almost all on river systems with good rail and road networks. It is no good having the best port if it is not linked on the land side. If we look at Cork, there is not even a motorway linking it to Limerick or Waterford. Where is the link road bypassing the city for port traffic coming and going from Ringaskiddy?

          Rosslare is similar, the is no motorway link to Waterford at all and the link to Dublin is only partial.

          This is why there has to be a strategic national plan for infrastructure not just looking at Maritime on its own.

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          • Originally posted by EUFighter View Post
            It is not just the port itself but the links it has to the main economic areas. Looking at the biggest ports in Europe they are almost all on river systems with good rail and road networks. It is no good having the best port if it is not linked on the land side. If we look at Cork, there is not even a motorway linking it to Limerick or Waterford. Where is the link road bypassing the city for port traffic coming and going from Ringaskiddy?

            Rosslare is similar, the is no motorway link to Waterford at all and the link to Dublin is only partial.

            This is why there has to be a strategic national plan for infrastructure not just looking at Maritime on its own.
            Ringaskiddy: Work in Progress, the NIMBYs delayed it as long as they could. Combined with the Dunkettle interchange works it will make traversing easier. The lack of motorway to either Waterford or Limerick is an arguement for another day. All our motorways eminate from Dublin. No reason you would not want to go either to or from dublin for anything urgent or important, apparently. And once you are there, you can go anywhere else. The railway network shares this logic. All routes lead to Dublin.
            Rosslare: The closer you get to it, the worse the roads are, the more you think you have taken a wrong turn. As I said before, the train doesn't even go to the ferry any more, even though the station Rosslare Harbour (ferry) is built on the quayside. The train stops just inside the Rosslare Harbour(village) area. Walk the rest of the way, plebs.
            Dublin: The Port tunnel helped, but it ignored the fact that anyone bringing goods to or from the Southern docks to clients in the South East, or South, will not cross the Liffey to enter the Port Tunnel, to join the Northernmost end of the M50 Car Park. So instead you have heavy goods vehicles, negotiating the leafy suburbs of the southside, on roads never designed for HGVs, putting Pedestrians and cyclists at risk while doing so. Most can't be blamed because they are just following their satnav. Surprising how much port traffic goes through Dundrum.
            For now, everything hangs on implementation of the CoDF report.

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            • Originally posted by na grohmiti View Post
              Ringaskiddy: Work in Progress, the NIMBYs delayed it as long as they could. Combined with the Dunkettle interchange works it will make traversing easier. The lack of motorway to either Waterford or Limerick is an arguement for another day. All our motorways eminate from Dublin. No reason you would not want to go either to or from dublin for anything urgent or important, apparently. And once you are there, you can go anywhere else. The railway network shares this logic. All routes lead to Dublin.
              Rosslare: The closer you get to it, the worse the roads are, the more you think you have taken a wrong turn. As I said before, the train doesn't even go to the ferry any more, even though the station Rosslare Harbour (ferry) is built on the quayside. The train stops just inside the Rosslare Harbour(village) area. Walk the rest of the way, plebs.
              Dublin: The Port tunnel helped, but it ignored the fact that anyone bringing goods to or from the Southern docks to clients in the South East, or South, will not cross the Liffey to enter the Port Tunnel, to join the Northernmost end of the M50 Car Park. So instead you have heavy goods vehicles, negotiating the leafy suburbs of the southside, on roads never designed for HGVs, putting Pedestrians and cyclists at risk while doing so. Most can't be blamed because they are just following their satnav. Surprising how much port traffic goes through Dundrum.
              Train not going to Rosslare Europort is worse again when you consider Irish Rail is the operator (jointly) of the port

              In Dublin, some of the empties depots (not sure if it was the case before) are now in Clondalkin and Donabate

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              • Originally posted by DeV View Post
                Train not going to Rosslare Europort is worse again when you consider Irish Rail is the operator (jointly) of the port

                In Dublin, some of the empties depots (not sure if it was the case before) are now in Clondalkin and Donabate
                Roads can be built, and some decisions reversed but siting of ports is a critical decision , once taken it has to follow through and be made to work. I would never place a port in an end of line quiet village . The Western portion of southern Monkstown Bay, now has a quay berthage of about 0.45km and is the sole large ship handling facility with 13.4m dredged depth. I mentioned that some Asian ports have up to 5km of berthage. The Cork Port Development to grow will have to be fragmented with a consequent division of resources over a wider area. Now we have queues for ship berthage, to be followed with queues for tugs and other services.
                In my young days the trains ran down to Victoria Quay via Brian Boru Bridge , the only conclusion is that vested interests wants to exclude rail and maximise disposal of what are really state assets. The major foreboding is the potential to interfere with the operational integrity of the Naval Base and the adjacent Maritime College of Ireland.

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                • I heard a suggestion that many of the railways in Ireland were closed to force people into Cars, and to support our small car manufacturing industry. Nobody would buy a car if they could get the train anywhere in the country. In my Grandfathers time you cycled a couple of miles to the next big town, where you could get a combination of trains to most other big towns in Ireland. In the early days of the free state, there were few places in the otherwise rural landscape, not served by some rail link.
                  Famously, during the Emergency, one of the Nazi spies was discovered when he was found waiting for a train at a recently closed station in Kerry.
                  As for the Trains to Victoria Quay, I remember in my childhood, chasing the train across Brian Boru bridge from the Colleseum, as a man walked in front carrying a red flag. All the city quays, including Tivoli, served by Rail branch lines. The rails are still there on many of them.
                  As for berthage, if we can't get foreshore licences to extend marinas, there isn't much hope of us developing a mini-Europoort style facility on reclaimed land.
                  For now, everything hangs on implementation of the CoDF report.

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                  • Originally posted by na grohmiti View Post
                    I heard a suggestion that many of the railways in Ireland were closed to force people into Cars, and to support our small car manufacturing industry. Nobody would buy a car if they could get the train anywhere in the country. In my Grandfathers time you cycled a couple of miles to the next big town, where you could get a combination of trains to most other big towns in Ireland. In the early days of the free state, there were few places in the otherwise rural landscape, not served by some rail link.
                    Famously, during the Emergency, one of the Nazi spies was discovered when he was found waiting for a train at a recently closed station in Kerry.
                    As for the Trains to Victoria Quay, I remember in my childhood, chasing the train across Brian Boru bridge from the Colleseum, as a man walked in front carrying a red flag. All the city quays, including Tivoli, served by Rail branch lines. The rails are still there on many of them.
                    As for berthage, if we can't get foreshore licences to extend marinas, there isn't much hope of us developing a mini-Europoort style facility on reclaimed land.
                    More likely as with many things we saw what the UK was doing to it's rail network and thought we should do that as well, though of course we also had the population decline issue that did reduce the viability of the rail network. No question that development would be significantly different had we kept them (or had Bus and Rail not tried destroying each other and actually worked together)

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                    • Originally posted by Sparky42 View Post
                      More likely as with many things we saw what the UK was doing to it's rail network and thought we should do that as well, though of course we also had the population decline issue that did reduce the viability of the rail network. No question that development would be significantly different had we kept them (or had Bus and Rail not tried destroying each other and actually worked together)
                      You are on the money as regards transport being an industry that needs to unify. Our country needs to be holistically managed. Our stated population is over 5m, nearly double our post war numbers. On top of that figure we have probably a floating, undocumented, population of 0.5 m permanent visitors. I'm sure that the 11.2m visitors that came into the country in 2019 all needed transport ,food, and lodging, and many came through our ports , except Cork where they were geographically squeezed out. Some daft planning to put a passenger terminal on the wrong side of the river with no transport links, hotel, restaurants, or whatever!

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                      • There isn't even a pub in Ringaskiddy any more.
                        For now, everything hangs on implementation of the CoDF report.

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                        • In comparison to other countries our public transport system is managed centrally. The major issues are it is slow, expensive, Reliability, inefficient and not intermodal (which is strange given the central control).

                          With regard to rail, in Ireland it is waaaayyyy too slow and it is only cost effective if there is a volume of regular daily Passengers. Unless you have a few hundred people using each train it isn’t worth it and a bus makes more sense.

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                          • Public transport, should be a service, not for profit. It should travel whether making a loss or not.
                            For now, everything hangs on implementation of the CoDF report.

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                            • Originally posted by na grohmiti View Post
                              Public transport, should be a service, not for profit. It should travel whether making a loss or not.
                              Cost benefit it isn’t about not providing the service it is about how it is provided, eg you could have a bus service that would service a number of towns in an area and one of the stops is a mainline rail station or you could have multiple stations and some towns with no service at all.

                              Less stops means the heavy rail is faster and more efficient but it is only viable (and will get investment) if it has high utilisation. Now having said that some lines should be very viable but don’t get the investment to make them faster and therefore have low utilisation (eg Rosslare to Dublin).

                              Look at the Rosslare Europort line, there is a least 4 out of the stops that could potentially close due to lack of use. Why do people not use it? It is cheaper, faster and more efficient to drive (and that is just because the line isn’t fast enough).

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                              • We still have a company called Córas Iompair Éireann, which years ago before the image consultants got a hold of it even have a unified image and structure. If the will was there it would be one of the main drivers of an integrated transport system. Look at Tivoli, plenty of containers, trailer units as well as cars are offloaded here, there is even a railway running along its northern edge but is there a freight siding? That means for transport everything has to go on the roads. And then there is Rosslare, not a single container bridge, plenty of trailers all waiting for a tractor unit to come and pick them up. If we had a properly designed system we would be shifting a lot onto rail.

                                There was a good reason why years ago if you had a quay there was a railway on it. Today we still see that the most efficient ports in Europe still have this type of connection.

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