M50 Unusable Now

murphaph · 31-08-2006 10:44am

Embankment Road inbound will also be choc a bloc I'm afraid. People will just have to try to live closer to work, even if that means sacrificing the front & back garden (not aimed at you OP, just a general observation) and living in a small apartment.

A Dub in Glasgo · 31-08-2006 11:37am

One of the problems is a lot of people living quite a distance from their work or working quite a distance from where they live. It is understandable that the commute has increased with the crazy situation ragarding property.

westtip · 31-08-2006 12:03pm

A Dub in Glasgo wrote:

One of the problems is a lot of people living quite a distance from their work or working quite a distance from where they live. It is understandable that the commute has increased with the crazy situation ragarding property.

Yes property prices have played their part in decentralising the work force, but the whole socio-economic infrastructure has changed. The Dublin economy has boomed partly on the back of the M50, with new industry springing up all the way along the route - Citywest complex for example. This is one of the problems transport planners face. If everybody actually worked in the City Centre as opposed to being increasingly scattered across the urban area, like a spiders web in new business parks here there and everywhere - but increasingly as near a motorway junction as possible; then transport planning would be a lot easier. It would be about shifting a lot of people at peak times into and out of one point - the city centre. With the de-centralisation of commercial activity out of the city centre (and its not just Dublin which faces this issue), there is a spacial fragmentation of where people are working on a daily basis. Businesses want to be in new buildings which are easily maintained for complex IT infrastructures, near motorway junctions for supply chain efficiency and a lot of the new builds on the edges of cities offer very good commercial rent deals (as there is so much office space in competition with each other). How people get to work is not the problem of the employers, they put a business in an office on a motorway junction and leave it to peoples imagination (try hard - its simple they have to drive).

The provision of the motorway facilities has enabled people, rightly or wrongly to make the decision that living 30/40 miles from their place of work is doable, as long as they can afford the increasingly more expensive private car to run and the tolls they pay on a daily basis. For example, if you use the M50 crossing the toll bridge every day you pay €3.60 in tolls and the cost of fuel and depreciation on your car. If you use a commuter train you will probably pay a little less and the season ticket is tax deductable. Try to put your toll charges and petrol costs to and from work on your tax return!

Two people working in a household will mean two cars, with one person working 30 miles in one direction the other 30 in a different direction, although perhaps an extreme example, is probably not unknown. Also, people change jobs more often these days, but they don't necessarily move closer to the new job when they move, because they make an assesment the new job is doable without the upheaval of moving home, an understandable situation. The whole scenario just keeps multiplying and I don't think there is a great deal we can do about it, the fact is we have become a very car dependent culture, and unfortunately for those involved in the daily snarl up on the M50 it is totally unavoidable, unless you move, work from home or find a job nearer home or a job you can get to on a train. It is sickening and unacceptable.

BTW - much of this post is a copy paste from a post a few weeks ago - it seems we are going round and round in circles on these boards debating the M50/Toll bridge etc. Every week there seems to be a new thread devoted to the M50. We all know the situation is crap.

joe_elway · 31-08-2006 12:27pm

fletch wrote:

Well yesterday I decided to try an alternate route home.....took the M50 from Sandyford as far as the Tallaght exit. Headed inbound on the N81 to the first roundabout where I turned left on to Wellington Road, continued on to the Walkinstown Roundabout and across Longmile Road and down through Ballyfermot and Chapelizod and up Knockmaroon Hill....will never be doing that again...... 1 hr 20mins!
Gona try Belgard Road and up on to the Fonthill Road today and see how that goes.

I worked up the Belgard Road for 3 months this year and was heading out the N7. Awful road. In the morning you get snarled up at the LUAS junction heading south for anything up to 20 minutes.

In the evening heading north, the junction at Newlands Cross is a joke. I've been stuck there for 30 minutes a few times.

On the whole M50 thing, I regularly hear politicos or civil servants claiming that peak usage charging or something like London is the solution. Just put me in a small room with those tree huggers and I'll change their minds. I'm sick of hearing this argument. Why would anyone choose to spend 3 hours of their day on the M50 if their was an alternative? I live where I live because that's where I could afford to live. I'm 30 miles from the M50 and if I get a job in Swords/Sandyford then I have to go on the M50.... am I really going to train to Heuston, LUAS to city centre, and LUAS to Sandyford/Bus to Swords? Really? Any hippies out there?

The only solution to all of this mess is a real, viable transport solution. Our current brilliant leaders tink about solutions for 10 years ago.... e.g rail improvements as far as Hazelhatch and ignoring the fact that current commuter belt growth is now in south/central Kildare. The sam can probably be said for Wicklow, Louth, Meath, etc.

I just get really wound up when I read/hear this stuff and really, the solutions are not that hard. Just put in proper railways, trains and metros. ArrrghhhHH!!!! Will it be expensive. Yes. But it will be cheaper than having a road system in perpetual gridlock/roadworks and imacting the economy.

jmkennedyie · 31-08-2006 2:32pm

fletch wrote:

Forgive my ignorance but what does ORR stand for?

narommy wrote:

The ORR is the Orbital Relief Road. Linking the N4/N7/N81 eventually

delly wrote:

I think ORR stands for the outer ring road which is planned to run from Drogheda to Navan and further south i.e. an M50 shaped road 20 miles out.

There is always confusion with these names/projects. Strictly speaking:

ORR stands for Outer Ring Road. From N4 through N7 to N81. Phase 1 open (Grange Castle to N7) Phase 2 under construction (N4 to Grange Castle). Phase 3 out to tender (N4 to N81). See sdcc road schemes info
The Outer Orbital Route is at concept/route invesitagation stage as far as I know. I understand NRA got money in last budget to identify a route. Basically goes Drogheda/Navan/Kilkock or Maynooth/Naas and maybe beyond (i.e. to Wicklow town). See p26 (and the grey dashed line on map p25) of this SDCC presentation from 2004.

Just in case that was not confusing enough, the terms Inner and Outer Orbital Route are also used to refer to the blue and purple numbered junctions in Dublin City itself... info leaflet here

Hope that helps...

wwhyte · 01-09-2006 12:22am

SDCC presentation link broken -- try http://www.sdublincoco.ie/index.aspx?pageid=1584.

Powerpoint presentation.

jmkennedyie · 01-09-2006 10:35am

Thanks wwhyte. Fixed now.

impr0v · 01-09-2006 11:05pm

seamus wrote:

I've come to the conclusion that most people ignore or don't see road signage. There were signs well back informing you that the right-hand lane was closed. The traffic was moving well, so merging wouldn't have been an issue. Except that easily 90% of drivers in the right-hand lane drove all the way up to the obstruction, and then forced the other lane to stop to let them in.

I think the majority know full well what's happening but it's that get ahead/me first attitude that continually shows itself in traffic situations that you're referring to. They know they have to be in the left hand lane, but they also know they'll get ahead faster by driving right up to the merge point in the right hand lane and then either depend on some civic minded individual to let them in, or bully their way in and not take no for an answer.

Capt'n Midnight · 01-09-2006 11:47pm

impr0v wrote:

I think the majority know full well what's happening but it's that get ahead/me first attitude that continually shows itself in traffic situations that you're referring to.

The number of yellow boxes on the M50 roundabouts shows this quite clearly. The number of times (off peak) I've been held up driving on the Lucan road to town by people coming off the toll bridge who don't know the basic rule you don't enter a junction unless your exit is clear Enforcing that law alone would free up a lot on congestion.

The Fonthill/Belgard Road is a disaster in the mornings unless you use it VERY early. SDCC have taken the Fonthill road that has two lanes in both directions and choked it so that just north of Newlands Cross the merging of two lanes in to one means that it's actually slower than if there was just a single lane. If Dublin Bus get the 200 buses promised 6 years ago and an additional pro-rate increase of buses it would be a great bus route.
Anyway to get from Fonthill Road in Lucan to Tallaght for 8am turn around and go via Balgaddy road etc. onto the Newcastle road , turn at Polly Hops, and go out by Baldonnel main gate then turn Left and next right to get onto the new back road towards citywest, go left instead of going over the bridge, this takes you behind the Green Isle Hotel. You then have to cross 5 lanes of traffic in about 300m to turn back onto Belgard road.

80% of the commuters from Lucan-Clondalkin travel outside the area. The M50, canals, railway lines, Galway and Naas roads have to be crossed. Some of the crossings are still stop and go, others like Newlands cross are such bottlenecks that a 6 mile detour can be faster than the direct 2 mile route.

Adamstown will mean a LOT more cars, on a really bad day it can take 20 minutes to get to the N4 and then another half hour to the M50.

M50 Unusable Now

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