Traffic in the morning.

Bacchus wrote: »

Shocking bad this morning. One car broke down just past Douglas and it was backed up beyond the Kinsale Rd. Roundabout. Took about half an hour to get from there to Mahon.

I was a bit later than usual this morning but found the traffic (westbound) ok - probably because of the tailbacks heading the other way! Seems to be every morning now that traffic heading east through the tunnel (mostly to Little Island I'd imagine) is backed up to Rochestown and beyond. How people queue all that time before going into work I don't know - I regularly get it heading home in the evening, but at least I am on the way home! Add in that car broken down just before the Douglas flyover, and consequent queue stretching back to Wilton, and it definitely was not a morning to be driving east!

I was wondering what all the queuing was about this morning, the traffic was insane right up to 10am in Douglas!

run_Forrest_run wrote: »

some clown managed to turn their vehicle over at the Bloomfield interchange.

There were a few incidents I think that just made it a perfect storm. One guy just broke down on Douglas flyover. There was that overturned car at the Bloomfield interchange as you say and I heard there was another crash somewhere around the lower Glanmire road.

Jimmy Bottles wrote: »

2 annoyances this morning.

1. The light sequence on the Kinsale Roundabout is after changing. Before, if you came down the sliproad off the South Ring Road, you generally got a free ride all around the roundabout. Now you get stopped at every single light. Its causing huge tailbacks where there were none last week.

2. A bus came out of Black Ash going into town on the South Link Road. There's a bus lane specially there for this bus service. But guess what. Yep, the bus pulled out into the driving lane and didn't even use it. Madness.

Yeah, big (really big) queue at Kinsale Rd, coming from the East - presumed there had been a crash but I guess the council have been up to their usual tricks! I went on to Sarsfield Rd instead and got where I was going quicker. BTW don't tell anyone, but Sarsfield Rd is really quiet these days! Our little secret!

Balmed Out wrote: »

They have one lane closed of in the tunnel today and massive tailbacks on either side. Why this isnt been done at night is beyond me.

WTF! Seriously, who is making these decisions?

I left Cork on Saturday (lunch time) to head up visiting family. There was about a half hour delay getting to the tunnel on our side. The other side was just plain crazy though. Traffic jam all the way back up to the Glanmire exits. I'd say there were people sitting in that traffic heading to Cork waiting up to 2 hours there. It looked like an absolute nightmare. How this work on the tunnel was planned on the Jazz weekend, one of Cork's biggest weekends of the year, is beyond me. Terrible terrible planning. Mind you, the alternative was to do it during the week and disrupt work traffic for 3 days so maybe it was the lesser of two evils.

Bottom of sarsfield rd flooded again this morning, those drainage works they carried out dont seem to be doing much on the approach to the south side of the roundabout.

It was a tough call to make. It was the wrong one though IMO. Considering that there is far less traffic going through the tunnel this week with the schools on mid-term break (the road going west was near empty at 8:05 this morning, traffic going east looked heavier though) they should have done it during the week. They could even have waited to start on Sunday when most of the jazz tourists are already in the city. As it was, at its worst there was a 6km tail back on the motorway heading for the tunnel. That is ridiculous and not a good advert for Cork. I'd say some amount of money was lost with all those people stuck in their cars for 2 hours (my guesstimate) when they could have been out shopping, drinking, eating.

Jimmy Bottles wrote: »

On the tunnel. If it take a full day for the concrete to dry, why didn't they do the work on an ordinary weekend. Why in God pick the busiest weekend of the year to do it ?

Dunno...guess they needed a 3 day weekend to get all the work done and allow time for the last of the concrete poured to dry properly. Not like all digging and concrete could be poured at same time.

Still no excuse for doing it this weekend. If they HAD to do it they could have organised it better.

Boots234 wrote: »

I apologise to anybody caught going westbound on the south link this morning between half 7-8 as my car broke down on the Douglas flyover! Disaster of a morning

You were gone by the time I got there but that was some tailback! Back through the tunnel (and beyond after I went through I'm sure)!


On the tunnel: if they had to do work, and then leave the concrete to set for 48 hours AND not disrupt work traffic - surely they had no choice but to do it on a holiday weekend?

pwurple wrote: »

They needed 4 days to do all the work required, and a long weekend has far lower traffic volumes than any mid-week period in the tunnel. Love all the genuises picking random busier times for it. :rolleyes: As if those 40 or so fellas in there doing the work wanted to be there, working all through the day and night over a bank holiday either. Can't please the public.

Noone's saying anything about whether or not the workers wanted to be there. I'm sure they did, probably got a great hourly rate for working the bank holiday weekend.

Also, I think it is fair enough that people are bemused/annoyed that this happened on Cork's busiest weekend of the year. Personally speaking, I've recognised that it was a difficult choice for the council to make, there's no "high horsing" here, there's no complaints to the council, it's just a few people having a bit of a moan and speculating could it have been done better. The fact that I'm a genius is irrelevant.

IMO, there is some merit to the idea that doing it from Sunday - Tuesday instead of Saturday to Monday would have caused less traffic problems.
1. Most traffic arriving for the Jazz weekend will have arrived by Saturday night. While the Cork papers may have have ads out, I doubt there was much word of it getting to the people travelling TO Cork.
2. The schools are on midterm break. This has a huge effect on traffic using the tunnel and works on the tunnel would not have had the same impact this week as they would have on a typical 'school week'.

This isn't the first time this has happened either btw, last year they planned major work on the flyovers over the Jazz weekend and there were similar issues with traffic, though nowhere near as bad as the 6km tailbacks this year.

Jimmy Bottles wrote: »

On the tunnel. If it take a full day for the concrete to dry, why didn't they do the work on an ordinary weekend. Why in God pick the busiest weekend of the year to do it ?

There was talk about this on the radio this morning, this concrete takes 48 hrs to cure fully before it can be load bearing or something along those lines

Toppy

Boots234 wrote: »

I apologise to anybody caught going westbound on the south link this morning between half 7-8 as my car broke down on the Douglas flyover! Disaster of a morning

Dannyboy83 wrote: »

So today is the first day of the mid-term...

Traffic has been even worse today than it has been for the last 6 weeks, so it doesn't look like it's the school run as was previously thought.

Any other ideas as to what is causing such congestion ?

The idiot above you :D:D

Only joking...

pwurple wrote: »

Believe or not, it's not done on guesses.... closing or restricting traffic in the tunnel is going to affect people no matter when they do it. It's a piece of infrastructure which is in massive use, constantly. (Even more reason to maintain it). I'm glad they managed to keep it open contraflow, as at least that took some pressure off. I passed through the tunnel 4 times over the weekend, and while there was a delay, it was in the order of about 4 to 6 minutes. That would have been mulitplied up tenfold had it been midweek.

You know those little strips on the ground as you enter and exit the tunnel? Those are traffic counters. There are decades of data on traffic patterns there, and that history what is used to choose the slots to restrict it and do work.

Believe it or not, I don't actually think it was done on guess work.

evilivor wrote: »

There were a load of ads in papers last week warning of "Urgent Works" on the tunnel and to expect delays.

People still read those???

Some advance warning signage would be a help. Unfortunately we're conditioned to ignore a lot of road works signs because lazy council men don't bother taking them down when they're finished work.

Traffic is gone mad recently, it took me 50 minutes to go from Ballinlough to south mall last week, 55 minutes from Ballinlough to Ballincollig today, I know someone who spent an hour and a half going from Douglas to the city today,
Another guy I know had to be in ballincollig at 8:00 this morning got there at 8:50! He was coming from the Dublin road,
There were An extra 40,000 people in Cork and it was the busiest Jazz festival for 10 years, working on the tunnel was idiocy,
The work today on the kinsale road caused mayhem even after 9am with no schools!

More roadworks on the ring road this morning caused delays too. The ring road is definitely quieter this week though.

Bacchus wrote: »

Which way were you heading? There was a car broke down heading west which may have caused delays.

Going east was a breeze. Light traffic moving freely at 8:05.

Generally speaking, the school run does have a huge impact. The drive during the Summer months is nothing like the rest of the year.

Bizzarely the Kinsale round roundabout was a breeze this morning heading for the Airport.:) Wilton was messy, but there is a lane closed by Dennehys cross.

If Forge hill/Pouladuff road eases off a bit now, that will keep me happy enough for now.
Pouladuff road is slammed on a daily basis for the last couple of weeks.

moyners wrote: »

I've found the roads out in the suburbs a lot quieter this week with no school traffic. The south ring and in towards the city seem just as busy if not busier. My theory is people are getting onto the main routes into the city quicker and they're maybe busier for a shorter period of time earlier in the morning.

I didn't think it was a shorter period of time, I thought it was a considerably longer period of time, it's getting busy now before 7am.

However, I think you've a point about the South Ring.
Since the bike lanes were done, I use the South Ring exclusively where previously I would have made a lot of journeys through the city.

I know there are plenty of people similar to me in that regard, so I'm fairly sure we are adding to the congestion.
The city's traffic has reduced, but capacity has reduced even further due to all the mismanagement, so it seems busier than ever despite lower throughput.

Then there is also a lot of bad driving on top of the bad planning.
Yesterday at Dennehy's cross heading toward UCC, the car in front of me, and myself, both moved over into the bus lane after the bus had passed ahed of us, so that the right turning traffic behind us could flow through.
One woman behind us drove right up past us as far as she could get into our lane (there was plenty of space to pull in behind me) , then indicated left, and blocked up both lanes and the whole bloody intersection. smh
To add insult to injury, another woman pulled right up behind her, did the same thing, then overtook both of us!

Technically they weren't in the wrong - the layout here is terrible, but they either didn't think or didn't care

hoodwinked wrote: »

the only thing i think she did wrong was indicate left, as the road markings go there traffic in the bus lane have to give way to traffic on the right as the bus lane merges into the lane to go straight through/left at the cross junction. the right hand lane has right of way at the yellow box, so you should have let her and the one behind her through and only proceeded if the way is clear, it's not right but it's the way it's marked and anytime (rare but it did happen) when i saw traffic not moving into the bus lane this junction actually worked a lot smoother and efficiently and i was one of the ones turning right.

Sorry, I should have stated that the intersection was fully blocked on a green light, so the left lane was at an impasse, while the right was empty and intersection clear.

You are correct, if she had merged at the box, technically she would have been correct, and we should give her right of way.
She didn't attempt to merge tho, she tried to cut in behind the bus, before the lane merge, and blocked both lanes.

I also find the junction is smoother when people merge as planned in light traffic.
But in heavy traffic, it's disastrous - when the intersection is blocked, then because of the merge, both lanes of traffic come to a full halt which causes long queues.