Potential for Cork Luas within a decade, but cost of project set to double 

Cork could have its Luas within a decade, Transport Infrastructure Ireland has said, but the cost will now be closer to €2.5bn and has more than doubled since initial estimates.

Speaking at the launch of the preferred route for the Cork light rail system, Paolo Carbone, TII’s head of light rail projects, said “subject to funding and permission”, the first trains could run by 2036.

Mr Carbone said he was hoping ground would be broken on Luas Cork before the 100th anniversary of the last trams running in Cork on September 30, 1931.

When the emerging preferred route (EPR) for Luas Cork was published last year, unofficial estimates put its likely cost at “€1bn-plus”, but construction inflation has affected those figures adversely.

“Currently we are budgeting in the region of €90m to €120m per kilometre for light rail,” Mr Carbone said.

With the preferred route now running at just over 20km, that would mean Luas Cork might currently cost between €1.8bn and €2.5bn.

Compulsory purchase

Meanwhile, as many as “a couple of hundred” gardens and seven buildings may face full or partial compulsory purchase to make way for the Luas Cork, in what TII called “the worst-case scenario”.

At Friday’s launch, TII officials conceded that the new drawings showed the Luas cutting through schools, sports clubs, and residential properties, principally in the Bishopstown area.

However, Fergus Meehan, TII head of light rail delivery, said the purpose of publishing the revised route was to prompt engagement with local stakeholders and elicit their responses before the final design stage. “That feedback will inform future design, so what’s presented today is the worst-case scenario; it allows us to start that consultation process,” he said.

With this round of non-statutory public consultation running until June 12, Mr Carbone had one request for Cork people between now and then: “Engage, engage, engage.”

The initial emerging preferred route had shown the westbound Luas travelling down Melbourn Rd, onto Curraheen Rd, and then Bishopstown Rd.

The new preferred route now turns left and east at the northern end of Melbourn Rd, running uphill past or through the grounds of Bishopstown Community School, Bishopstown GAA, Highfield Rugby Club, and Coláiste an Spioraid Naoimh.

Bishopstown

It cuts through Bishopstown GAA’s most westerly pitch and between Highfield’s two fields, while it takes a corner from St Columba’s Convent before turning down into Cork University Hospital (CUH).

It then runs through several back gardens on the eastern side of Wilton Ave, before emerging on Bishopstown Rd at the front of CUH before heading for the Wilton roundabout.

Mr Meehan said the initial route along Melbourn Rd would have impacted 14 businesses and more than 40 properties, with considerable loss to garden spaces, but the key deciding factor was the prospect of traffic congestion on Curraheen Rd.

The new route greatly reduces the need for compulsory purchase orders (CPOs), he added, saying that it would require the purchase of “slivers of garden space”, but he emphasised that the detail was at “a very, very early stage”.

Responding to a question from Labour Party senator Laura Harmon, TII assistant chief architect Sarah O’Donnell clarified that there would be “up to about seven” buildings requiring CPO, “and then slivers of gardens and boundary details, it would be a couple of hundred”.

Over at the eastern end of the preferred route, in Ballintemple, there were some very minor tweaks to the light rail line plans, and Ms O’Donnell said TII had looked at “reinstatement of The Venue bar [as] a smaller pub”.

Last April, when publican Con Dennehy’s customers told him that the emerging preferred route then showed the Luas tracks going through his pub, he asked if it was a belated April Fool’s joke.

Separately, TII chief executive Lorcan O’Connor said Luas Cork will not be a 24-hour service, but rather will probably run from 6am to 1am each day. “It’s unlikely to be a 24-hour service, as you n

eed to be able to service the track, and that would be common to all rail services around the world,” he said.