City transport: Cork prides itself on being the first urban area in Ireland to have adopted a land use and transportation study. But the LUTS plan of 1978 turned out to be less than the sum of its parts; only the roads element of it has been delivered.
The Jack Lynch Tunnel, the Southern Ring Road and airport access route (partly installed in the old Kinsale railway line cutting) all evolved from the LUTS. However, nothing was done to re-open the Youghal railway line at least as far as Middleton, which LUTS also recommended. Since the LUTS strategy focused on developing a necklace of satellite towns around Cork city - Ballincollig, Blarney, Carrigaline, Cobh, Douglas, Macroom, Mallow and Middleton - good transport links were vital. But throughout the 1980s and 1990s, no funding was available for public transport.
"At one stage, we were in danger of losing the Cobh line, but by the dint of getting an additional train set, business went up by 60 per cent and they couldn't close it down then," recalls Mr Nicholas Mansergh, senior planner with Cork County Council. The key was to provide a more frequent train service.
Mr Mansergh is "reasonably optimistic" that the 2002 Cork Area Strategic Plan (CASP), which replaced LUTS, will "work in a more rounded way" - especially after the Government allocated €100 million to re-open the Middleton line and upgrade commuter services between Cork city and Mallow, on the Dublin mainline.
The county council intends levying developers for contributions towards the provision of new stations along the railway lines in places like Glounthane, Little Island, Carrigtwohill and Monard. Crucially, these levies will be offset by lower contributions for roads so as not to deter investment along the rail lines.
In Monard, on the Mallow line, three developers with plans to build major housing schemes in the area have offered to pay for a new station to serve them. But it's not a philanthropic gesture; as other developers have found being located near an existing or planned rail station is a huge selling point, too.
Others would go further. UCC transport specialists Dr Séamus Ó Tuama and Dr Cathal O'Connell have proposed that the Cork-Middleton line should be extended an extra half-mile into the city centre, as the original LUTS plan envisaged. CASP also proposes a more extensive rail network in the longer term.
There are also plans for 10 "green routes" on the city's main arteries with dedicated priority for buses and cyclists - Cork's version of Dublin's Quality Bus Corridors - and a vast park-and-ride site has opened at the Kinsale Road roundabout, offering all-day parking for €5 and a free bus into town.
But because so much of Cork's development over the past 25 years has been car-based, the car remains the principal way of getting around. Carrigaline, six miles south of the city, is the most car-dependent area in the State, with 74 per cent of its commuters driving to work, the 2002 Census found.
The satellite town is ahead of Dunboyne, Co Meath (70 per cent); Tramore, Co Waterford (67 per cent) and Naas, Co Kildare (65 per cent). What's more, the figure for car use in Carrigaline rose from 63 per cent in 1996, mainly due to rapidly rising car ownership.
No wonder congestion is as bad as it is at the Kinsale Road roundabout, known in Cork as the "Magic Roundabout". Work is to start in February on an overpass that was omitted from the Southern Ring Road on cost grounds and, inevitably, it will cost a lot more now. A Northern Ring Road is also planned.
"We have an opportunity now to get it right," says Mr Ronnie McDowell, senior planner with Cork City Council. Mr Mansergh agrees. "It's very important to get the rail project in place so that we can create the critical mass in areas along the two lines to make them immune to property downturns."
The emphasis in Cork's satellite towns has shifted to "beefing up to make them more urban" and to ensure that the development of villages doesn't make them look like "suburbs that have gone for a walk", as Mr Mansergh puts it. Cobh, in particular, has huge potential once its Third World steelworks are cleared away.
One very poor example of joined-up planning is the location of the new National Maritime College at Ringaskiddy, which opened last month, right opposite the controversial hazardous waste incinerator planned by Indaver Ireland for which the Environmental Protection Agency recently issued a draft licence.