TII Motorway Service Areas (MSA) Progress Thread

munchkin_utd wrote: »

I soon can drive from the end of the Ballincollig bypass to North of Kells on Motorway (/very decent dual carraigeway), a distance of 320km, without a single designated service stop provided for rest/ toilet or refueling.

You can't, though. There are two Esso stations directly on the route in that direction (Beaufort and Joels) and in the opposite direction, there are two Esso's on the route (Beaufort and Rathcoole), a Topaz on a slip road and an Applegreen beside the route signposted as 'Services 24hr'.

The situation is nowhere near as bad as people imagine - and if the NRA just signed the existing 24hr stations beside routes on motorways as well as DCs, it'd be mostly alleviated.

MYOB wrote: »

if the NRA just signed the existing 24hr stations beside routes on motorways as well as DCs, it'd be mostly alleviated.

Agree with this ... at least until they build their own ones. Kilmartins (east of Athlone) is a 24Hr just off the M6, though I don't think there are any signs to it.

Bluetonic wrote: »

Work starts on the M1 service stations at Ballough (Lusk) tomorrow. The traffic management (hard shoulder closed southbound) is already in place. Applegreen will run the garage, the restaurants will be Burger King - same as all the other planned service stations.

The Ballough service station will open in August 2010.

1 machine on the hard shoulder at his site this morning at 11am with a load of guys surveying etc and the guys up at the new stop south of Dundalk had already broke through the fence and were digging out in the field.

BluntGuy wrote: »

Well lads, which one of us will be up there grabbing photos of this?

I'll go to Ballough on Saturday and get pics

Regarding Ballincollig to Kells, aren't there service stations on the N7 between Johnstown and Dublin

cargo wrote: »

They were landing all the site cabins in South of Dundalk today. Anyone got a link to the plans / design of these?

Jesus I couldn't be waiting for ye to reply and do the hard work for me. I went and looked it up myself.

Here's the link to the EIS documents for all 3 SA's. The Non-Tech summary is the handiest to read as it has most of the info and all the maps etc as well.

The East & West sides of the motorway are not been linked. There's two full seperate facilities on each side of road. Probably as cheap or even cheaper than building a bridge to get traffic from one side of the carriageway.

http://www.nra.ie/Publications/EISPublications/

Carawaystick wrote: »

In France, the service area stops have a fuel station stop with fairly basic food- coffee and ready made sandwiches kinda like we'd have in a convenience store and a separate canteen/restaurant operation run by a different operator to give some amount of competition.

This is much the same in the UK - the pumps will almost always have a drinks station and prepacked sandwiches to whatever level the pump operator wants, with the facilities block and the cafe/fast food/WH Smiths it contains separate. We seem to be going for a one building approach here.

One of the reasons for separate buildings in the UK was to stop people parking at the pumps and going for their dinner, seeing as Irish people seem to think its OK to go in a petrol station and spend 10 minutes at the hot deli / newspapers / getting stuff to cook the dinner as it is I can see the single building approach needing a few tow trucks!

Furet wrote: »

Does Burger King have the rights now to all service areas in the country, be they under construction or in planning? That's pretty poor form. I've nothing against Burger King, but surely a variety would be better than just one fast food joint. If the choice is between breakfast rolls and beef burgers, that can't be good in the longterm!

All three official ones, yes. When you consider what's sitting right beside junctions, you've got Subway, Wimpy, McDonalds, any number of privateer operators, etc. Eventual intent is that I'll have a website that lists the nearest fuel stops or preferably ersatz services off each motorway/DC junction in Ireland - I've got the domain for it but not the site yet!

I assume you mean Applegreen rather then Steve Jobs pride and joy.

munchkin_utd wrote: »

But obviously the long stretch from Dublin to Cork OR Waterford OR Limerick is safety uncritical!


How long will it be before you have people pulling over at the side of the motorway on long journeys desperate to relieve themselves on the hard shoulder?
norm to use the hard shoulder as a toilet for the lack of any alternative.

Not long is the answer in fact I already have on the M4 somewhere between Mullingar and Kinnegad - and whats more to the point I had to stop once on the same stretch of road with children in the car so one of them could puke. The lack of rest areas on our spanking new motorways is just indicative of the way this f***king country is run by the various authorities, quangos and government agencies which couldn't organise a f****king p*ss up in a brewery. The incompetence in planning is just unbelievable. Its a joke. A very sick one.

westtip wrote: »

.....The lack of rest areas on our spanking new motorways is just indicative of the way this f***king country is run by the various authorities, quangos and government agencies which couldn't organise a f****king p*ss up in a brewery. The incompetence in planning is just unbelievable. Its a joke. A very sick one.

You have to understand, Irish ministers dont need piss stops whilst driving to the provinces because they go by toilet equipped plane rather than road.
How the head honchos in the government possibly know of the dearth of services on incomprehensibly long stretches of road in Ireland if they wont even use these multi billion euro resources??

O'Donoghue flew to Kerry or back 73 times in a year
Despite having a €100,000 driver, the minister took to the air at a cost of almost €15,000

http://www.tribune.ie/article/2009/aug/30/odonoghue-flew-to-kerry-or-back-73-times-in-a-year/

Anyhow, back on topic and to put things in perspective,
on an equivalent journey in Germany as Dublin to Cork, i.e. from Munich to Würzburg (270km), there's 9 full service service stations/ restaurants.
If you ignore the ones at the start and end of the journey which are probably of no use to you, you still have 7 places en route to make a pit stop for toilet/ fuel/ breaks.
This does not even include very basic rest stops that have toilet only facilities in between the fully equipped stops.
Maybe Irish people have much better bladders (and larger fuel tanks) than in Germany that no services are needed? :rolleyes:
http://www.tank.rast.de/standorte/servicenetz/11_en.php

These are taken from the bridge over the M1 in Ballough, down the road from White's Agri and Murtaghs pub used be at the junction of this and the R132.

The wide photo shows the hard shoulder closed off, the cones extend about 200m south of this bridge.

The other photo shows more of the work taking place including a crane on site.
A track/gravel road can be seen running alongside the works. this has been here a long time and is either for ESBN to put up their pylons, the footing of one which can be seen close to the main work site or their is a gas substation immediately south and east of the bridge I'm standing on.

The bridge over the M1 in the middle distance is from the Five Roads to the Nags Head, while there are tall lighting poles visible in the distance, either from the old five roads junction or from the junction where Applegreen are now.

I might try bring the zoom lens either this weekend or next week when it should be brighter as I go to work, to get a better close up of the work. There didn't seem to be any work going on west of the m1

MYOB wrote: »

land for these was probably bought at the absolute top of values, knowing the nra...

Wouldn't you imagine it's better to stick to what you know rather than incorrect presumptions? They add nothing to the discussion.

Bluetonic wrote: »

Wouldn't you imagine it's better to stick to what you know rather than incorrect presumptions? They add nothing to the discussion.

Do you have anything, at all, to show it to be an incorrect presumption other than a presumption?

Its an informed presumption, based on when the MSAs were announced and the figures given for the NRAs costs.

KevR wrote: »

Since you're adament that it was an incorrect assumption would you care you enlighten us with the correct information that you obviously have?

This is a discussion forum by the way and speculation is part and parcel of it.

MYOB wrote: »

Do you have anything, at all, to show it to be an incorrect presumption other than a presumption?

Its an informed presumption, based on when the MSAs were announced and the figures given for the NRAs costs.

The land was CPO'd when the M1 land was being CPO'd, the prices paid were far from 'absolute top of values'.

I have found this great motorway service area off the N4 - Its called Mother Hubbards, come off the motorway at Kinnegad coming east or at Kilcock going west - avoid the toll - and pick up a breakfast and complimentary Indo for 5.99, take your toll off that makes breakfast 3.09 and take off the "free" Indo it makes breakfast just over a euro - and you can join all the other toll hoppers! And b4 someone comes in to tell me MH has always been there....please spare me ......

However it does tell a tale in itself - actually I toll hop on this section of the N4 most of the time I come down to Dublin now - it only adds about 5 or 10 mins to the journey and on a return journey adds over 5 litres to my tank - at non peak times I see no point in using the motorway, anyway that aside, MH did actually offer to build an MSA on the new M4 at the time the PPP was being constructed don't know what happened to that idea - and it is only based on a conversation I had with a manager there about 4 or 5 years ago - but what it does say is we do everything arse about face in this country of ours - we shouldn't even be debating MSAs etc they should have been built in the first place. Hello does this sound like common sense - oh please no don't get me started. Now here is another one in Athlone at the Eastern end of the old by-pass there was a service station (name escapes me) but it is quite big which of course did a roaring trade when the old N4 used to come into the roundabout and through traffic went on the Athlone bypass and other traffic took the road for Athlone town centre (or went on to a different Athlone junction), the point was there was a service station there in existence so WTF wasn't the new seamless M4 running into the Athlone Bypass built with a slip road to this existing service station - maybe there is one but there is no brown information signpost (is there?) with a petrol filling sign. What I am saying is utilise what already exists - Think about this - if Johny Foreigner gets off the boat at Dun Laoghaire, gets off onto the M50 and N4 and finds he/she can no longer fill up at Lucan (where it seems to have been made awkward to get on and off the N4 to the one service station there - and then heads west for Galway - where is the next filling station.....I would be interested to hear from the AA how many people are running out of petrol on the M4. I am sure Johny Foreigner woudl think to himself are sure this is a motorway - all motorways have service stations every 20 miles or so .....don't they ....FFS what is wrong with our planners...If they had brains they would actually be dangerous.

I mean are these new service stations going to involve new junctions and slip roads? Why is the question? Firstly utilise what we have got - and signpost petrol filling stations near junctions so people can get off the motorway in emergencies to fill up, (ie the Athlone story above), secondly let the service stations be built privately near existing motorway junctions (on one side of the road only) so only one station needs to be built, Of course this might present a problem - eg if you had such a solution at say the Kinnegad junction where M4 meets M6 (one would have thought a logical place for a petrol station/service station) if the service station was "off motorway" it might just encourage drivers heading to the tolled section to come off the motorway and toll hop.....it all requires a lot of thought and planning... something we lack unfortunately.

Ah yes Kilmartins, I remember now - if my memory serves me right there is a Macdonalds or such like very nearby, really there should be one of those big brown signs on the motorway on the approach to the junction showing there are facilities at the next junction - for the sake of those who don't know its there.

Kilmartens Centra is 24hr, however after midnight it's just a window drawer until around 6am, Dolans Esso outside Ballinasloe is a 24 hour station with walk in facility all the time, it is a frequent stop for the night patrol Gardaí so it's never been targeted.

Carawaystick wrote: »

What kind of price is a litre of fuel at this "service station"

I nearly made much the same comment earlier but IIRC that branch of Mother Hubbards has diesel pumps... no petrol though.

Only the westbound M4 MSA has any obvious action on it yet, no VMS and nothing at all on-ground visible for the eastbound one.

Its a real shame they don't have this screened off from the M1 as it's just getting annoying now with people slowing down and breaking to have a look across at the works in peak traffic.