[Article] M50 upgrade to cause six years of traffic chaos

Victor

http://www.sbpost.ie/web/DocumentView/did-697209029-pageUrl--2FThe-Newspaper-2FSundays-Paper-2FNews.asp

M50 upgrade to cause six years of traffic chaos
12/09/04 00:00
By Niamh Connolly

Site investigations for the €600 million upgrade of the M50 motorway around Dublin will start within months, heralding the beginning of six years of traffic disruption.

Traffic delays are expected for an initial period of three-and-a-half months at Dublin's busiest roundabouts - the Red Cow and western interchange at Palmerstown - as ground surveys begin.

The upside for motorists is that the upgrade will deliver a third lane along the entire M50 35-kilometre motorway from the M1 junction near the airport to the Sandyford roundabout.

It will also lead to greater traffic flow at five motorway interchanges through a system of spaghetti junctions, to be built at five roundabouts - Blanchardstown, the M50/M1 airport roundabout, Finglas, as well as at the Red Cow and Palmerstown junctions.

The downside is that the surveying work involving ground boreholing is expected to lead to lane closures starting next summer and lasting until the upgrade is completed in 2010. Surveying companies have been asked to tender for the initial site investigation work by October 15.

A spokesman for the NRA, Michael Egan, said strict penalty clauses will be contained in the contract to minimise traffic disruption.

``There would be some disruption to traffic, but obviously we will try to minimise that. It's a difficult working environment, but every effort will be made to keep levels of disruption down,'' he said.

The new third lane will be built in the grass median of the M50, which will require no land purchase. However, some compulsory purchases will be required for the interchange upgrades.

gobby

Why dont they carry out as much work by night as they can!?

[Overtime, I'm guessing]

Victor

gobby wrote:

[Overtime, I'm guessing]

And lighting and safety and ...

Mayshine

Ha Ha Ha. This is the funniest thing I have heard in a while. It is so Irish. Upgrading a road that is not even fully built. Sorry but 6 years to upgrade 35kms of road is as pathetic as can be.

Oh my god I would hate to have to drive along that road daily in the future...

:eek:

MadsL

"surveying work involving ground boreholing"

Would this not have been done when they built it in the first place??

Victor

Not necessarily and not to the detail they will need for the bridges. And the data may not be up to date, for example where someone has changed the ground level adjacent to the motorway.

Kaner

The design of the Red Cow junction "upgrade" is so bad that they will have to do it again before 2010.

I dont know why they cant do it right the second time.

jank

Any maps around about those upgrades!?

Andrew Duffy

http://www.nra.ie/News/DownloadableDocumentation/d1175.PDF

The proposal for the interchange with the N2 at Finglas isn't in there, but the media is reporting that it will be done. It's here:



I notice the two unusual tunnels under the M50 are still there.

jlang

Andrew Duffy wrote:

The proposal for the interchange with the N2 at Finglas isn't in there, but the media is reporting that it will be done.

Makes sense - the M2 to just past Ashbourne will be built in the same time frame .

Mayshine

I notice in the graphic, that there are still roads that cross each other. In this case then it is not a true free flow system.

If the red cow junction will still need 5 sets of traffic lights then again irish road planners have shown that they are useless and incompetent. One set of traffic lights is too much...

fletch

By the time the 3 lanes are fully opened, they will, most likely be grossly inadequate and they will start thinking of building a 4th lane. Why don't they see NOW if 4 lanes are feasible and physically possible and expand the M50 to cater for the forseeable future rather than just the next few years. It makes sense.

Hagar

Victor, I know you mean well posting stuff like this, but please I can't take any more news like this. Stop now before I'm forced to throw myself in front of a Red Line Tram where I will probably starve pitifully to death.

sliabh

fletch wrote:

By the time the 3 lanes are fully opened, they will, most likely be grossly inadequate and they will start thinking of building a 4th lane. Why don't they see NOW if 4 lanes are feasible and physically possible and expand the M50 to cater for the forseeable future rather than just the next few years.

For two reasons, first because it is acknowledged that you can't just build your way out of a road congestion problem. Usage expands to fill the available road space. Second you can keep following your argument from 4 to 5 lanes to n. Where do you stop? I have a friend who visits Houston regularly and he was telling us about how the freeway there is to be expanded from 12 lanes in each direction to 16 and even they don't expect that to solve their problems.

But in the particular case of the M50, it was originally designed to be expanded to 3 lanes from 2 at some point in it's future. It was never designed as a 4 lane system. Cuttings, ramps, junctions etc, just will not support it.

fletch

sliabh wrote:

For two reasons, first because it is acknowledged that you can't just build your way out of a road congestion problem. Usage expands to fill the available road space. Second you can keep following your argument from 4 to 5 lanes to n. Where do you stop? I have a friedn who visits Houston regularly and he was telling us about how the freeway there is to be expanded from 12 lanes in each direction to 16 and even they don't expect that to solve their problems.

But in the particular case of the M50, it was originally designed to be expanded to 3 lanes from 2 at some point in it's future. It was never designed as a 4 lane system

Fair point.....jus seems like a neverending battle really....16lanes!!! scary!

Hagar

It would be an interesting experiment to see how the M50 would work if the toll gates were left open for let's say a week. I know everyone would still have to slow through the toll area itself but even allowing for that....

LFCFan

How can they justify 6 years to add 1 lane to a 2 lane 'motorway'. I Wonder how long it took to add all those lanes in Houston????

robbie1876

The toll booths aren't a problem anymore. Northbound, the tailback happens at the red cow, where the slip road feeds traffic into it from the roundabout. Once you get about a half mile past the slip road, there is no queue to the toll booth, most of the time.

When the upgrade is completed, this slip road will still be merging into the traffic, and will still cause the huge tailbacks every night here. That merging lane should be extended and made into a 4th lane for about 2 miles extending north from the Red Cow. There is land available for it.

Robbie

Kaner

Robbie

You are exactly right. Having driven on the M50 about 20 times when I was back in Dublin on holidays, it seemed the me that the Red Cow and Blanchardstown junctions were causing the traffic jams, not the West Link bridge.

There needs to be 4 lanes each way between the Red Cow and Palmerstown junctions, and between the Red Cow and Tallaght junctions. They also need to at least build a two lane flyover from the city bound Naas Road to the southbound M50. The loop they have planned will jam up all three lanes of the motorway as it dumps slow moving traffic onto the southbound M50.

Having a natural interest in the design of motorways, it seems that poorly designed slip roads cause most of the tailbacks. Traffic from slip roads needs to enter the main motorway at 60 or 70 mph. Also the main motorway should to be wide enough to absorb traffic entering from slip roads. Otherwise people have to hit the brakes, which makes the cars behind them hit the brakes harder, until a mile down the road traffic comes to a halt. This is why the M50 near the Red Cow will remain the biggest car park in Ireland even after the upgrade.

The other planned interchange upgrades look good, except for maybe the Palmerstown N4/M50 interchange, which looks a bit small when you consider the amount of traffic it will carry.

As for the argument that you can't build your way out of road congestion, I don’t think this is true. I live in a city of 1.5 million and there are never traffic jams unless there is a big accident. That being said I guess the 'law' does apply in Dublin, but surely that is no excuse for the horrendous congestion on the M50. People talk about the traffic congestion in other countries, but I have never seen anywhere as bad as Dublin, except maybe London. Even Los Angeles, which has a bad reputation, is a dream compared to Dublin.

It depresses me when I see the ****e Dublin drivers have to put up with. Why can't the whole upgrade be done in two years, instead of six? Its crazy.

thejollyrodger

Its good news that they are starting work on the upgrading of the M50 but the bad news is that they are only adding an extra lane and taking 6 years to do it.

The traffic on the M50 is going to increase in the coming years especially with the likes of the port tunnel opening at the end of next year. How many extra lorries will that be ? Also the car ownership has doubled in the last 10 years and looks set to continue at the current rate of growth. Factor in the SSIA's in 2006/07 on new cars

The M50 needs at least 4 lanes. All of the traffic around Dublin is routed on it and no sooner than they have finished this peice of construction in 2010, they will have to start again and add another lane or 2. that or build an outer ring round which is even further out.

And those interchanges sound great but dont look as good, why cant they have all the slip roads etc seperated, were STILL going to have traffic lights:(

The proposal for the interchange with the N2 at Finglas isn't in there, but the media is reporting that it will be done.

Makes sense - the M2 to just past Ashbourne will be built in the same time frame .

Is there plans for a M2 ? And are they going to upgrade the exchange at the N2 junction? never heard anything about that.

sliabh

thejollyrodger wrote:

All of the traffic around Dublin is routed on it and no sooner than they have finished this peice of construction in 2010, they will have to start again and add another lane or 2. that or build an outer ring round which is even further out.

They already have:
http://www.sdublincoco.ie/index.aspx?pageid=539&deptid=12&pageno=9

LFCFan

Construction of 6.2km of dual-carraigeway including.

5 roundabouts.
2 overbridges - (1) bridge over Grand Canal, (2) bridge over Dublin - Kildare railway line.
A grade separated interchange at Kingswood, Naas Road.

Oh, sweet mother of God. What is it about Ireland and effin Roundabouts. Why the hell can't they build a road in Ireland without including a roundabout. They are finally copping on that the M50 needs updating to remove roundabouts and here they go again building another 'motorway' with 5 roundabouts. Muppets!

robbie1876

Muppets indeed. That's a roundabout every 1300 metres, the road is going to be similar to the old Swords by-pass. How on earth are we letting them get away with this?

mackerski

LFCFan wrote:

They are finally copping on that the M50 needs updating to remove roundabouts and here they go again building another 'motorway' with 5 roundabouts. Muppets!

Well - yes, we've had a rough time from roundabouts over the years. However:

* This scheme is nowhere close to being a motorway, and isn't intended to be.

* If you look at examples of where roundabouts really ballsed up the traffic in the past (Swords bypass...), it was _on_ the main route, whereas this is a short-distance link road. With plenty of alternative routes (including the M50 itself). Long-distance traffic would never _need_ to take this road, and would only really wish to do so if travelling between N4 and N7. The alternative routes may place a natural limit on how full it will get.

* This route will be effective in taking traffic off a lot of the back roads near its alignment, since a lot of people use them to avoid the M50. It should also offload the Fonthill Road, the outskirts of Clondalkin Village and (most importantly) Newland's Cross.

* Because the crossing roads at the planned roundabouts are mainly quite minor, it should be possible, if their capacity proves inadequate, to replace them with cheapo grade-separated junctions over time.

* In short, we're better off with this scheme as planned than without it, filling up the back roads.

Snags:

* The big test of this road will be rush-hour traffic patterns - obviously. More so than usual, though, since roundabouts discriminate heavily against the side road that has to compete with mainline traffic in the main direction of flow. This is why traffic lights make it onto roundabouts so often - and I imagine we're all agreed that the addition of traffic lights on this scheme will indicate failure.

* The magic-rezoning phenomenon could cause business and housing development along the alignment and put us right back to square one.

Dermot

Victor

Andrew Duffy wrote:

I notice the two unusual tunnels under the M50 are still there.

Cattle underpasses?

Maybe they will make the junction full free-flow at some state and are putting in the bridges now?

I dunno.

Andrew Duffy

Cattle underpasses?

They're gated off.

Maybe they will make the junction full free-flow at some state and are putting in the bridges now?

Nah, they're way too small. I think they might provide access to other infrastructure in the area; possibly a sewer or gas main. You can see them in the aerial photo of the junction on myhome.ie