[Amtmann]

Originally Posted by blacktopper

I agree rail has been neglected too long. I suggest a frame shift of public investment to rail. You now are starting to get the point. If there is no new thinking in roads then rail becomes the new roads.

You've shown a few times now that you know nothing about transport, road design consideration, and the constraints of population density.

You speak on behalf of, or are affiliated with, PlanBetter - yet you didn't know the difference between Type2 DC and motorway. Why should anyone engage with you? You appear to have a default anti-road construction position, which is tedious to behold. Everyone else here adopts a more nuanced view on a case-by-case basis; but you come across as an absolutist.

[marmurr1916]

Originally Posted by blacktopper

I agree rail has been neglected too long. I suggest a frame shift of public investment to rail. You now are starting to get the point. If there is no new thinking in roads then rail becomes the new roads.

I think you've spectacularly missed the point.

The WRC is a waste of money.

Pouring more money into it would be a waste of money.

Ireland cannot afford to waste money.

[Sponge Bob]

Cancelling Adare Abbeyfeale because it has NO CHANCE of being built for 15-20 years is fair enough. What is ridiculous is the airtime given to self selected sociopathic green types to rabbit on about it and conflate 2+2 ( Rural Dual Carriageway is what that is) with Motorway which is a greatly different road type.

We still have genuine motorways to build like the M11 , M18 M17 M20 and M4 and we we can look at the N15 N17 N21 N22 N5 etc to 2+2 , I do think we need to look at our intended use of thru 2+2 and consider interleaving 2+2 andc S2 ..offline on a new alignment on newly cheap land that does not have a development and site value premium on it

Sure how else are we supposed to get from A to B in our electric cars before the battery runs out in a tailback outside Abbeyfeale with the nearest charge point 30 miles away, what!!

[tharlear]

I do think we need to look at our intended use of thru 2+2 and consider interleaving 2+2 and S2 ..offline on a new alignment on newly cheap land that does not have a development and site value premium on it

I think this is a valid suggestion, and could help keep costs down while the country is broke. However new access to these S2 roads would need to be severley restricted. No one offs or petrol station belonging to the friends of local FF/FG/Lab/SF gobs

Also the land take should be such that it allows for future upgrading of the S2 sections to 2+2 were necessary when money is available.

I have seen this accur in the US. One half of a State highways is built and used as S2 while the land for the other half is purchased and left vacant beside it. In some locations grading is completed, no bridges or culverts, for easy competion when funds become avaibalbe.
Generally referred to as planning ahead.
Even where there is no cash to build a road, the land could be cpo'ed and fenced off, rent it back to the farmer on 11 month contracts. This would protect the aligment for future use. Not sure of the legality of the this option.

[Cress]

To Sponge Bob and Pete Cavan:
I am not James Nix. Request the admins to confirm by IP address or any other means.

Originally Posted by corktina

tell that to the relatives of the first person to die because this road has not been replaced with a much safer new one.

Road-building means the death count goes up.

More roads mean increased car use, more car ownership, more choice for drivers and the making of driving an easier option. Therefore you have an increase in the yearly number of people killed or maimed for life on roads, in addition to all the other ill-effects of a motor-car-borne society (non-renewable fuel consumption, inefficient use of resources, single-occupant-vehicle road congestion, time wasted commuting, social isolation, destruction of communities, obesity, increased anxiety, low sex-drive, an unequal soceity, land take, decay & degeneration of urban areas, noise & air pollution generation etc. etc.)

No "safety features" of roads can address this and in fact the improved safety features in cars the motor industry always make hay of actually displace risks onto other, vulnerable road users - pedestrians, cyclists etc. Spongebob your video illustrates this only too well.

Actually the future inquiries into the road-building programme of the 2000s predicted at the start of the thread should probably be changed to the trying of the NRA for mass murder.

[blacktopper]

KevR you must be joking surely. When you consider all the externalities of roads such as ghg emissions, accidents, damage to buildings, noise pollution, congestion, scarcity of space in urban areas, and damage to the environment the single occupant car user gets a cheap deal, a really cheap deal. The external costs of transport are large (estimated at about 8 % of EU GDP (INFRAS, 2000)). When they tried to cover all those externalities into the price of fuel in Hungary the people rioted. Europe wants those externalities payed for on "the user pays principle" this is not a aspiration for tomorrow this is policy today.

[blacktopper]

Tremelo, I know nothing about roads?! I suggest the reader looks back on this thread and makes his own mind up. Rail being the obvious choice obviously hit a raw nerve. Pity because its not me your going to have to get insulting with on that one its the present government, best of luck I hear demeaning insulting language is just what works with politicians. Rail is the new roads Prof. Austin Smyth did the mid term review of Transport 21 on that one not me maybe he knows nothing as well. Now if you want me to start posting the same proofs on the folly of present road building strategy again you keep going. I won't be fobbed off onto a new thread on designing a new mid sized road to get affordable value for money infrastructure this time either. I will just leave lots of nice evidenced based arguments against road building all over this thread as the thread's title suggests I should and you road trolls will have to waste time on the same arguments again. Any fool knows that the same rules cannot be used in both the biggest economic boom the nation has had and then the biggest economic collapse. That might be why after the national press from my publishing the 7% fall in traffic over the last 2 years the NRA has now revised its traffic growth forecasts from 2-3% year on year growth to no growth in the short term and 1.12% in the long term. I don't know what I'm talking about! Who exactly do you think your talking too. You keep going like this I'll get half the ESRI posting and see how you like them apples. And as for your everyone else here is nice and reasonable and kind to small animals crap that is because you road trolls sit on this thread and scare the unknowing public off, your fooling no one Tremelo. Maybe you'll infract me again to shut me up.

[Amtmann]

Originally Posted by blacktopper

Tremelo, I know nothing about roads?! I suggest the reader looks back on this thread and makes his own mind up.

I repeat: You didn't know the difference between type 2 dual carriageway and motorway, and it took an obscene amount of time to explain to you. This makes it awfully difficult to take anything you have to say seriously.

I won't be fobbed off onto a new thread on designing a new mid sized road to get affordable value for money infrastructure this time either. I will just leave lots of nice evidenced based arguments against road building all over this thread as the thread's title suggests I should and you road trolls will have to waste time on the same arguments again.

Unless you have new arguments to make, it sounds like you're planning on soap-boxing. I wouldn't go there, if I were you. Also, please don't engage in name-calling.

I don't know what I talking about! Who exactly do you think your talking too.

Someone who didn't know the difference between type 2 dual carriageway and motorway. Someone who, despite this manifest ignorance, thinks he is informed enough to enlighten the rest of us about road design.

You keep going like this I'll get half the ESRI posting and see how you like them apples.

Anyone who wants to post is free to do so as long as the forum's rules are obeyed. There are very effective remedies for forum invasion, though, which can be activated at the touch of a button. Now, rather than being obstreperous, perhaps you could explain how it is possible to be an authority on roads while being ignorant of the difference between Type 2 DC and Type 1 DC.

[blacktopper]

Maybe you should ask Sean O'Neil of the NRA that because as you well know it was his email that stated type 2 dual carriageway had been up graded to motorway status. Are you saying I might have been foolish to believe the NRA is sufficiently competent to know the difference? Are we really going over this again Tremelo in which case go speak to Sean not me. Rail are the new roads. The more you cover the same ground the more ardent I will be in lobbying the new Dail on the fact. You keep going. As for forum invasion why on earth are a load of professional/semi proffesional road building types hogging a thread saying the "NRA must be stopped" why don't you toddle off and make your own thread saying the "NRA is the best thing since sliced bread" or all of the numerous other road threads you appear on Tremelo. Was I clear in your final remark that if I get a load of transport economists to post some frank facts about how road building is probably the worst way of creating jobs you can find etc. etc. you'll press your little button and suspend them. Now that sounds to me like someone who's trying to manipulate free speech. How the hell did someone who loves roads as much as you end up as the mod on a thread titled "the NRA must be stopped". For the unknowing public I think that is a bit unfair don't you?

[Amtmann]

Originally Posted by blacktopper

Maybe you should ask Sean O'Neil of the NRA that because as you well know it was his email that stated type 2 dual carriageway had been up graded to motorway status. Are you saying I might have been foolish to believe the NRA is sufficiently competent to know the difference? Are we really going over this again Tremelo in which case go speak to Sean not me.

If you had known anything about roads, you would have immediately recognised that the NRA spokesman made a mistake when he said that. Instead you believed what was an obvious terminological error because you obviously weren't au fait with the topic. It's as simple as that. And no, we will not be going over it again. This thread is going around in circles and it's about to be locked.

Rail are the new roads. The more you cover the same ground the more ardent I will be in lobbying the new Dail on the fact. You keep going

If you really believe this, then argue the case in the parent Infrastructure forum. Describe there how your slogan can possibly be true given the abysmal failure of the Western Rail Corridor and the dispersed population settlement that blights large swathes of the country.

This thread has run its course.