Commuting Times from Millstreet

Like it or not, we live on the outer fringes of the commuter belt for Cork City. We all know lots of people that head off early in the morning to work, and are home in the evenings just in time to see their children to bed. We saw a map recently (above right) which shows where people travelling long distances to work were from. As expected there is a large commuter belt around the larger cities of Dublin, Cork, Galway, and Limerick.

Expecting to see Millstreet as one of the worst affected commuter areas, we zoomed into the Millstreet area (see the map below), and we were thankfully surprised to see that Millstreet fared much better that other areas around us.

(This is an overlay of Google Maps on the commuter map ). The map is shaded as per electoral divisions. Dark colours mean that a higher percentage of people have a long commute. The light green to the left of Millstreet is Coomlogane, the light blue to the right of Millstreet is Drishane and Keale.

We think the reason that Millstreet has a lower commuter rate is most likely, due to having in our locality large business like ALPS, Clover Hill, O’Flynn Medical, our trucking companies, many smaller local businesses, and our large farming community.

It appears that the worst affected areas are the are Lombardstown, Banteer, Nadd, Kilcorney, Inchigeela, Ballingeary, etc. These are areas of little local industry (big or small), and where people travel to other towns to do their shopping.

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The average commute for those at work rose in 2016 to 28.2 minutes, having fallen between 2006 (27.5mins) and 2011 (26.6mins). Commuting times rose in every county, but there was still significant variation in times travelled depending on where people lived. – CSO (2016)

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The moral of this story … shop locally and support local businesses, or we lose small businesses and we start to become a place where people only sleep 🙁

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