Road signs! Where? Back there!

Blinda

Has Dept of Transport any plans to modernise the 'road signs' system so drivers know they are HEADING in the right direction. Or the wrong one once past the post!!!

robbie1876

Like driving along the M50 looking for the turn off for Cork or Galway. Neither are signposted.

Flukey

Lack of proper signposting is a huge problem in this country. Even those of us that have a reasonable knowledge of our way around, would have problems, so what about the poor tourists? Often the signposts are there, but not in enough time. Signs for the west on the M50 are very bad. Coming out of Dublin, there should be signs with more principal places listed, rather than just the likes of Cork, Limerick, Galway, Sligo, Belfast etc. Names of counties that people might be heading to are nowhere to be seen. How many signs are there leaving Dublin with the names of counties like Roscommon or Laois etc. on them? You won't see signs to them until you are halfway across the country, which is nearly where they are! There should be signs with them at the main junctions of the M50 rather that just "The West" or "The South" as we often see. Another one that confuses people who are not familiar with the M50 is seeing Northbound and Southbound on it. Signposts at both a national and local level do need radical improvements.

thejollyrodger

Motorways should have those signposts that go over the width of the motorway with all directions above you, so you can see them in time. Also they should all be lit

sign posts in this country are a joke.

mrhappy42

Signposts require carefull taught, need to be clearity, show consitancy and be aware of other signs....each one of these needs skills not shown by the people in charge of our roads.

pork99

robbie1876 wrote:

Like driving along the M50 looking for the turn off for Cork or Galway. Neither are signposted.

The exit for Galway is marked as the exit for Sligo?!?!?! :mad:

wtf are they thinking? But we don't do joined up thinking in this country.

The best solution would be to sack whatever civil service chair-moisteners are in charge of this and bring in someone who has a clue to overhaul the entire system. These guys maybe? (see "Signage Systems" under What we do/Industrial Design)

Kappar

I don't think there's a need to have bilingual signage. I think it looks rather messy and complicated. I know that how hard can it be to spot the english places on the sigh but when your driving along trying to look out for a sign drive saftly etc there's no need to make it harder for no real reason.

pork99

Kappar wrote:

I don't think there's a need to have bilingual signage. I think it looks rather messy and complicated. I know that how hard can it be to spot the english places on the sigh but when your driving along trying to look out for a sign drive saftly etc there's no need to make it harder for no real reason.

I've seen road signs at the entrance to slip roads to the M7 Kildare bypass which were only in Gaelic. If this is critical information this is hazardous. Most people will not be able to read them. I'm all for bilingual signage where appropriate but not here.

GerardKeating

robbie1876 wrote:

Like driving along the M50 looking for the turn off for Cork or Galway. Neither are signposted.

Galway is sign posted, at least when heading North from Tallaght, not sure about the other direction.

Ernest

Of course Irish motorway road signs are a bit of a joke ( though, to be fair, not as bad generally as in Dublin where they are way beyond a joke) but why expect anything from these clowns in the National Roads Authority which
(a) Designed the M50 with 3 lanes but had the vision to built only 2.
(b) Designed most motorways without central barriers - thinking that hedges or ditches would do instead!!
(c) Designed all motorways without service stations or toilet areas - maybe thats what the ditches/are for - wouldn't put it past these clodhoppers!
(d) Allowed National Toll Roads to seize a tiny part of the nationally/EU funded M50 to build privately an essential bridge and thus act as bandits for decades to come.
(e) Allowed National Toll Roads to increase toll charges to "pay" for the widening of their bandit bridge even though this cost only €30m - small change in the light of the money they extort from motorists each year.
(f) Is clearly intent on not being a national service but a "profit centre" by relentlessly imposing tolls on all roads that they can get away with ( ie nearly all new roads ) thus no doubt hoping one day to be formally "privatised" so they can all become rich!

pork99

GerardKeating wrote:

Galway is sign posted, at least when heading North from Tallaght, not sure about the other direction.

That's where we went wrong, we approached from the south! We so stupid!

Flukey

pork99 wrote:

That's where we went wrong, we approached from the south! We so stupid!

I think it is more a case of those that did the signposting that are stupid.

Bee

Of course Irish motorway road signs are a bit of a joke ( though, to be fair, not as bad generally as in Dublin where they are way beyond a joke) but why expect anything from these clowns in the National Roads Authority which

Why blame the incompetent engineering soley on the NRA/

What about the fiasco by DCC that costed the tax payer 150k + Euros because they failed to consult with Shame on Brennan and the idiotically designed Dublin city centre road signs had to be scrapped! Any other city manager would have resigned in shame.

The worst thing about the (if you can find any!) motorway signs is that they are placed on the exit rather than 300 yards prior to an exit

Bee

John R

Bee wrote:

The worst thing about the (if you can find any!) motorway signs is that they are placed on the exit rather than 300 yards prior to an exit

It is almost as if they are encouraging last minute dashes across lanes of traffic to get to the sliproad, not that Irish drivers need any encouragement to act stupidly.

The final exit sign on motorways should be a minimum of 200 meteres from the exit, probably more.

pork99

Flukey wrote:

I think it is more a case of those that did the signposting that are stupid.

No it was all our fault. One of us should have used yogic astral projection to leave our physical body about 2k before the exit and approached the exit from the North on the astral plane. He could have then rejoined his physical body with an exact knowledge of where the Galway exit was. Problem solved.

It's really simple when you think about it.

LFCFan

Signposting (or lack of it) is one of my pet hates in Dublin. It's unbelievably bad. The one Signpost that makes me laugh most though is the one for Ballyshannon (a small town in Donegal) on the N3 beside Blanchardstown Village. Who the hell came up with the idea of adding a sign to a small town 200 miles away. Muppets. I pity poor tourists driving around Dublin when natives find it hard enough to find anywhere.

pork99

LFCFan wrote:

Signposting (or lack of it) is one of my pet hates in Dublin. It's unbelievably bad. The one Signpost that makes me laugh most though is the one for Ballyshannon (a small town in Donegal) on the N3 beside Blanchardstown Village. Who the hell came up with the idea of adding a sign to a small town 200 miles away. Muppets. I pity poor tourists driving around Dublin when natives find it hard enough to find anywhere.

Probably some NRA guy from Ballyshannon put it there as a joke. If you work in the public sector where you can never be fired this all just becomes a big laugh for you.

Victor

Flukey wrote:

Lack of proper signposting is a huge problem in this country. Even those of us that have a reasonable knowledge of our way around, would have problems, so what about the poor tourists? Often the signposts are there, but not in enough time. Signs for the west on the M50 are very bad. Coming out of Dublin, there should be signs with more principal places listed, rather than just the likes of Cork, Limerick, Galway, Sligo, Belfast etc. Names of counties that people might be heading to are nowhere to be seen. How many signs are there leaving Dublin with the names of counties like Roscommon or Laois etc. on them? You won't see signs to them until you are halfway across the country, which is nearly where they are! There should be signs with them at the main junctions of the M50 rather that just "The West" or "The South" as we often see. Another one that confuses people who are not familiar with the M50 is seeing Northbound and Southbound on it. Signposts at both a national and local level do need radical improvements.

Buy a map.

pork99 wrote:

I've seen road signs at the entrance to slip roads to the M7 Kildare bypass which were only in Gaelic. If this is critical information this is hazardous. Most people will not be able to read them. I'm all for bilingual signage where appropriate but not here.

Have you told the council?

GerardKeating wrote:

Galway is sign posted, at least when heading North from Tallaght, not sure about the other direction.

pork99 wrote:

That's where we went wrong, we approached from the south! We so stupid!

heading North = approached from the south !

Bee wrote:

What about the fiasco by DCC that costed the tax payer 150k + Euros because they failed to consult with Shame on Brennan and the idiotically designed Dublin city centre road signs had to be scrapped! Any other city manager would have resigned in shame.

The scrapped signs cost €8,000.

LFCFan wrote:

Signposting (or lack of it) is one of my pet hates in Dublin. It's unbelievably bad. The one Signpost that makes me laugh most though is the one for Ballyshannon (a small town in Donegal) on the N3 beside Blanchardstown Village. Who the hell came up with the idea of adding a sign to a small town 200 miles away. Muppets. I pity poor tourists driving around Dublin when natives find it hard enough to find anywhere.

Tell me, where does the N3 end?

Capt'n Midnight

LFCFan wrote:

Signposting (or lack of it) is one of my pet hates in Dublin. It's unbelievably bad. The one Signpost that makes me laugh most though is the one for Ballyshannon (a small town in Donegal) on the N3 beside Blanchardstown Village. Who the hell came up with the idea of adding a sign to a small town 200 miles away. Muppets. I pity poor tourists driving around Dublin when natives find it hard enough to find anywhere.

Perhaps because it's the town at the other end of the N3

sliabh

pork99 wrote:

The exit for Galway is marked as the exit for Sligo?!?!?! :mad:

wtf are they thinking? But we don't do joined up thinking in this country.

For the M50 signs, there is a consistent logic to them. At each exit priority is given to the lowest number N route. So taking the Red Cow (which is the one I am most familiar with but the same holds for the N4/5/6 going west/north west) the three N routes are N7 to Limerick, N8 to Cork and N9 to Waterford. The logic is N7 gets priority so that is the one listed on the signs. But I am pretty sure that Cork and Waterford are listed underneath in brackets with their road numbers.

Something that frustrates me with people in this country is they assume from the outset that the people making these decisions are muppets and every example they see of something they don't like is an example of incompetence. This is petty, simplistic and not fair to the people who generally work pretty hard and their jobs, and lets face it have considerably more experience than most of us at these things.

Barring political interference (which follows a logic of its own) the people in the likes of the NRA, RPA and other state (and private) bodies don't do the things they do just to annoy people. They are not stupid, they are at least as smart as you or I. If they have done something you think is daft it may be because they have a little more information on the subject than we do. (as a case in point I am sick of explaining to the likes of Taxi drivers why the two Luas lines are not the same gauge, or why building more roads is not the solution to traffic congestion)

There are problems with the likes of the RPA and the NRA. As an organisation the RPA is overstaffed, it suffers from the civil service risk avoidance mentality and they have admitted that they lack the skills to properly estimate projects as some examples. But these are institutional failings so leave off the people. I have friends who are planners, engineers and architects (declaration I am an IT consultant myself and get this sort of stick all the time too) and they are sick of people criticising their work in an uninformed manner. Isn't there a saying about walking a mile in someone's shoes?

It's more productive trying to understand why a decision is made than just adopting a knee jerk - "what moron came up with that idea" approach.

--- end of rant ---

sliabh

Ernest wrote:

but why expect anything from these clowns in the National Roads Authority which
(a) Designed the M50 with 3 lanes but had the vision to built only 2.
(b) Designed most motorways without central barriers - thinking that hedges or ditches would do instead!!

These design decsions pre-date the NRA, but they are pretty sound. The M50 was designed as a 2 lane road as that would have been sufficient providing:
- Various commerical interests had not bribed politicians to rezone land and approve commercial projects. These changed the nature of the M50 from being an orbital motorway around Dublin to a conduit for cross city traffic.
- The growth of car ownership in Ireland was unprecendented and unforseen, by anyone let alone the people designing the M50. We are at levels of traffic that were not predicted until around 2015. So the M50 capacity would have been fine for another 5-10 years based on the original designs.
- Rather than spend the extra money buidling it as 3 lanes from the outset (something that was not expected to be needed for 15-20+ years) the designers rightly built it as 2 lane with the capacity to be upgraded to 3 when required. This is a sound design decision.

The central barriers is an oversight. But that is/was custom and practice in other countries. I was on a UK motorway recently and they are still using the big grass median with a thin hedge in the middle. The NRA has demonstrated that they can learn and adapt.

Ernest wrote:

(d) Allowed National Toll Roads to seize a tiny part of the nationally/EU funded M50 to build privately an essential bridge and thus act as bandits for decades to come.

NTR funded the bridges so there is nothing unusual about them collecting the tolls for a concession period of 30 years. They also had their concession to collect tolls extended for another 30 years in exchange for carrying out the M50 widening and junction upgrade work. This is a pretty good (public private partnership) move by the governement. The work gets done and the people that will benefit the most from it (i.e. M50 users) are the ones that will pay for it (through tolls) rather than the rest of the country.

LFCFan

Victor wrote:

Tell me, where does the N3 end?

Donegal. Signposts are supposed to work for tourists aswell as those who know where certain roads end. Someone heading to Donegal will just see Ballyshannon and wonder if they're on the right road. What's wrong with signposting Donegal and then within 20 miles signpost Ballyshannon.

Victor

sliabh wrote:

NTR funded the bridges

Well they put up 25% 75% EU funded)of £30m for the first bridge (including foundations for second bridge) and paid for the second bridge.

LFCFan wrote:

Donegal.

No, it goes to Ballyshannon. Now separately, it might yes be an idea to extend it to Donegal town, but thats a separate argument.

sliabh wrote:

as a case in point I am sick of explaining to the likes of Taxi drivers why the two Luas lines are not the same gauge

Just for clarity, the two Luas lines *do* have the same gauge, it's the gap between the tracks, not the gap between the rails is different.

sliabh

Victor wrote:

Just for clarity, the two Luas lines *do* have the same gauge.

I know that, but (knowing I am preaching to the converted here) the spacing between the two (I forget the correct term for this) is different as the green line is ultimately intended to be upgraded to a Metro.

Capt'n Midnight

sliabh wrote:

NTR funded the bridges so there is nothing unusual about them collecting the tolls for a concession period of 30 years. They also had their concession to collect tolls extended for another 30 years in exchange for carrying out the M50 widening and junction upgrade work. This is a pretty good (public private partnership) move by the governement. The work gets done and the people that will benefit the most from it (i.e. M50 users) are the ones that will pay for it (through tolls) rather than the rest of the country.

http://www.irishtrucker.com/news/2004/may/0505042.asp

Average daily traffic at the West Link Toll Bridge increased to 98,000 vehicles, according to toll operators NTR.

98K per day @€;1.50 each x 204 days = €30M

So ignoring the fact that trucks and buses pay more & (more than balances out the "discounts") they'd gross the cost of the second bridge in less than seven months.

Out of this €53.6 some goes to the Govt,
http://www.transport.ie/viewitem.asp?id=5325&lang=ENG&loc=1346

In 2002 the number of toll-paying vehicles using West-Link was 27,273,151. An amount of €7,584,901 in payment of the GTR share due to the Minister in respect of 2002 traffic volumes was received in May 2003.
...
It should also be noted, as stated earlier, that the Exchequer now also receives VAT receipts from tolls estimated at € 7.7m in 2002 in respect of the West-Link Bridge.

98K per day @€;1.50 each x 365 days = €53.6M
So if at 2002 levels they could pay for the bridge in one year and €15.3M to the Govt and still have €8.3M to pay for the running costs.

So to me it looks like they could break even on a one year toll never mind a 30 year one..


I love this bit

The expanded West-Link Bridge is due to be fully operational in September and will significantly alleviate congestion at this pressure point on the M50.

Ernest

"NTR funded the bridges so there is nothing unusual about them collecting the tolls for a concession period of 30 years. They also had their concession to collect tolls extended for another 30 years in exchange for carrying out the M50 widening and junction upgrade work. This is a pretty good (public private partnership) move by the governement. " - Sliabh

Can Sliabh be serious or is he/she some kind of masochist who likes being fleeced?? These bandits collect tolls from users of the publicly funded motorway but they themselves built only a tiny part of the total - public funds built the rest. As other correspondents pointed out, the cost of the bridge extention represented less than one years revenue - yet they were allowed to increase fees to "pay" for the recent widening of the bridge. The result of what Sliabh calls a "pretty good" move by the government is that generations to come will have to pay money to cross the river at this point - adding cost, inconvenience, uncertainty, stress and delay to by-passing Dublin thus diminishing the quality of life further in this city. If the Government were not ideologically driven ( like Sliabh it would appear) they would have seen the obvious fact that it would be easier, and cheaper to just build the bridge themselves - they are not short of public funds to do so. There is no reason why parasites like National Toll Roads should make money out of the State providing a long needed upgrade in roads. If it were not for ideology the State could just have built this basic bridge themselves and avoided the waste of time and other disadvantages ( see above) in collecting money from people every time they cross this essential piece of roadway.

Zaph0d

NTR knew where to get good advice for their business.

http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2000/10/15/story293799.asp

mrhappy42

NTR do 15m a year turnover. http://www.ntr.ie/PRESS%20RELEASE/Half02Release.pdf

on 60m they turn profit of 7m. not possible to say how much of profit is related to roads as its group.

Assume they have 30 staff at 40K a year is about a million. Assume they loaned the 30m over a 10 year period at 5% is about $ 318,196.55 a Month which about 4m assume some other costs of about 1m or so that gives a yearly total of 6m..before tax....interesting....it would make this a nice little earner.

pork99

Victor wrote:

heading North = approached from the south !

As far as I remember the signs for the same exit said Galway when approaching from the North, Sligo when coming from the South. My memory could be playing tricks on me but that's what I remember from the last time I made that trip via that route which was about a year ago. (We saw it from both directions because we missed it twice!)

sliabh wrote:

For the M50 signs, there is a consistent logic to them. At each exit priority is given to the lowest number N route. So taking the Red Cow (which is the one I am most familiar with but the same holds for the N4/5/6 going west/north west) the three N routes are N7 to Limerick, N8 to Cork and N9 to Waterford. The logic is N7 gets priority so that is the one listed on the signs. But I am pretty sure that Cork and Waterford are listed underneath in brackets with their road numbers.

There is a lack of user-centred design there which reminds me a bit of one of the classic mistakes of website design; the company which structures its site & site navigation based on its internal org chart. Here the road directions are presented according the NRA's classification model and not the needs & priorities of people using the roads.

Crossley

While on the subject of the Westlink bridges, I think it's important to remember that there wouldn't be any need for a second bridge if the toll plaza didn't exist. If there were no tolls the existing four lane bridge would be well able to cope with the traffic volumes. Whilst I don't have a problem with tolls in general, I do believe they should be removed once the capital cost of the feature being tolled has been covered i.e. in this case the original bridge which has been paid for many times over at this stage.

dmeehan

Crossley wrote:

While on the subject of the Westlink bridges, I think it's important to remember that there wouldn't be any need for a second bridge if the toll plaza didn't exist. If there were no tolls the existing four lane bridge would be well able to cope with the traffic volumes. Whilst I don't have a problem with tolls in general, I do believe they should be removed once the capital cost of the feature being tolled has been covered i.e. in this case the original bridge which has been paid for many times over at this stage.

well i doubt thats gonna happen!