Extra tolls set to be levied on M50

full forward

Extra tolls set to be levied on M50
18/11/2004 - 8:49:44 AM

More tolls are likely to be levied on people using the M50 as a traffic-management measure to cut congestion on the motorway.

Although there are plans to build a third lane and new interchanges at a cost of €750m, it is feared that the upgrade will not be enough to cope with predicted demand for the motorway.

The National Roads Authority is suggesting the implementation of traffic management measures, such as tolls or traffic lights.

Meanwhile, it has been revealed that the company, which operates the West Link, will have generated around €1bn in gross revenue by the time its franchise on the bridge expires in 2020.

The costs of tolls on the West Link are expected to increase again next year.

---

So the NRA's solution to improving trafic flow is to spend millions making it worse? This is making me so angry I cant type. I dont have a choice but to use the M50. If I had any choice I would take it. My average speed these days is 16mph yet 90% of my journey is a 70mph zone. Do they not think if I had an alternative I would take it? There is simply no public transport between where I live (Maynooth) and where I work (Finglas).

ishmael whale

full forward wrote:

Extra tolls set to be levied on M50
The costs of tolls on the West Link are expected to increase again next year.

Is it not intuitively clear that the main reason there’s congestion on the West Link bridge is because of the process of bringing the traffic to a halt to pay the toll.

If the toll was abolished, given that the bridge has been well paid for at this stage, presumably traffic would simply cross the bridge without excitement.

Or am I missing something?

BrianD3

traffic lights

Traffic lights on a motorway. Just ponder that statement for a moment. Only in Ireland :rolleyes:

BrianD3

clarkee

Great Irish solution to traffic bedlam, traffic lights on roundabouts, traffic lights for traffic lights, traffic lights for a motorway..................all about as useful as a chocolate tea-pot.

Tom Dunne

BrianD3 wrote:

Traffic lights on a motorway. Just ponder that statement for a moment. Only in Ireland :rolleyes:

BrianD3

I was thinking the same thing.

A Dub in Glasgo

The problem is that the M50 was initally designed as a ring road so that people travelling from the north/south could skirt around Dublin without going through the city centre. As Dublin has been allowed to swarm outwards for miles, the outer ring road theory was blown out of the water and there is far too much 'local' traffic on it. The best thing to do is to provide an alternative route for the local traffic. How they do that, I do not know but suggesting traffic lights on the M50 is lunacy.

full forward

There is talk of an new orbital route in the indo today

"If such a project were to get the go-ahead, the new road would loosely follow a route through Drogheda, Co Louth, Navan, Co Meath and Naas, Co Kildare, said the NRA's head of corporate affairs, Michael Egan. "

Irish Independent

jank

You need to register to view the page
Any chance of a copy and paste?

A Dub in Glasgo

....

THE construction of a massive new orbital road around Dublin is being considered, even though the M50, which was expected to solve the capital's traffic woes, has not even been completed.

The National Roads Authority, which is currently planning the upgrade of the M50 to facilitate up to 140,000 cars a day, admits that increasing traffic volumes means that the upgraded road will soon be unable to cope.

The upgrade, costed last year at €300m, is now expected to cost €750m.

NRA chief executive Michael Tobin told an Oireachtas committee yesterday that when the M50 does reach its traffic capacity, a series of measures, such as tolls, traffic lights and ramps, would have to be introduced in an effort to alleviate congestion and avoid gridlock.

"Within a relatively short time of finishing the M50 upgrade project, the motorway will have reached its capacity. It is acknowledged by all parties that traffic management measures will have to be the way to deal with that," Mr Tobin told the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport.

However, the NRA chief executive went on to say that even when the upgrade was completed and the traffic management measures were introduced, the capital could still need an outer ring-road to handle traffic congestion.

If such a project were to get the go-ahead, the new road would loosely follow a route through Drogheda, Co Louth, Navan, Co Meath and Naas, Co Kildare, said the NRA's head of corporate affairs, Michael Egan.

Meanwhile, the completion date for the controversial M3 motorway through the archaeologically sensitive Tara-Skryne Valley in Co Meath has been pushed back almost two years, the NRA confirmed last night.

The project's chief engineer, Nicholas Wyatt, told Kells Town Council on Monday that the projected completion date will now be the end of 2009 at the earliest, despite initial projections that it would be completed by the end of 2008. The €680m motorway will run for 60km from Clonee in north Dublin to Kells in Co Meath, passing close to the Hill of Tara.

dmeehan

full forward wrote:

There is talk of an new orbital route in the indo today

"If such a project were to get the go-ahead, the new road would loosely follow a route through Drogheda, Co Louth, Navan, Co Meath and Naas, Co Kildare, said the NRA's head of corporate affairs, Michael Egan. "

Irish Independent

its not very "orbital" if it finishes in naas :rolleyes:

murphaph

Rail, anyone?

jlang

I think the traffic lights being referred to could be what are known as Ramp Control Signals or Ramp Meters - ie limiting (or rather regularising) the rate of traffic coming down the on-ramp to allow better merging take place at the end. Because of the traffic lights on the roundabouts, we tend to have rather bursty on-ramp traffic and cars get to the bottom of the ramp too close together to merge cleanly with the slow lane of the M50.

The evidence is there - apart from the toll bridge, the worst section for traffic is where the N7 traffic joins the M50 northbound and the N4 traffic joins it southbound. Often once you get past the merge point, the traffic starts moving smoothly again at 50/60mph and you wonder what the hold-up was about - ie the capacity of the road isn't being used to its fullest.

ramp control signals (link found via Google)
another link

It is something that could be tried in the short-term, until the interchanges are built and the pressure moves on to somewhere else.

Another thing I like about the more recent junctions built is that there are two lanes coming down the on-ramp and their entry to the main traffic flow is staggered with huge amounts of white paint hatching - they should retro-fit this kind of arrangement on the other busy junctions as a second phase of the 'capacity improvements' left-turn slip lanes already built.

Andrew Duffy

The proposed traffic lights are exactly as described above. They're on a lot of M25 junctions in London.
Also, the plan for the M50 upgrade includes making the toll fully gate-less (by electronically reading number plates and billing/fining you if you don't pay) within a year or so.

Alun

jlang wrote:

Another thing I like about the more recent junctions built is that there are two lanes coming down the on-ramp and their entry to the main traffic flow is staggered with huge amounts of white paint hatching - they should retro-fit this kind of arrangement on the other busy junctions as a second phase of the 'capacity improvements' left-turn slip lanes already built.

Yeah, they've got them on the Ballinteer on-ramp heading north, but there's no signage warning of the short slip road if you're in the rightmost lane coming on to it, so it can come as a bit of a surprise if you're using it for the first time.

BrianD

If they wish to continue tolling the M50 perhaps they should make it fully electronic and get rid of the toll plaza and removing one bottleneck from the route. Overhead gantries at each on/off ramp or route section would detect the motorists eazypass or photograph vehicles without electronic tags. Motorists would have 24 hrs to pay their toll or face a large fine. This system would allow greater pricing flexibility (and probably raise revenues) and would remove some unnecessary journies of the route. It works quite well in other cities.

A Dub in Glasgo

Andrew Duffy wrote:

The proposed traffic lights are exactly as described above. They're on a lot of M25 junctions in London.
.

Aaah I see, they are used at peak times to regulate the flow of traffic onto the M8 in Glasgow

antoinolachtnai

What about a bus service covering the area around the M50 route? Why can't they get that together?

murphaph

antoinolachtnai wrote:

What about a bus service covering the area around the M50 route? Why can't they get that together?

cos it makes too much sense. The M50 should be downgraded to dual carriageway and bus lanes installed ASAP.

antoinolachtnai

They wouldn't need to downgrade it, there's no reason why you can't have a bus lane on a motorway, is there?

I think I posted something on boards.ie about this before. It would cost 50 or 100 million to do well. But it's small money in the context of what we're talking about.

murphaph

I'm sure a motorway has to have hard shoulders, no?

BrianD3

It is something that could be tried in the short-term, until the interchanges are built and the pressure moves on to somewhere else

But according to the article, the NRA have admitted that these measures may be needed *in addition to* the M50 upgrade. In other words, we could end up with ramp control signals on the "free flowing" spaghetti junctions which along with the third lane are going to cost 750 million.

BrianD3

Victor

BrianD3 wrote:

which along with the third lane are

Third lane + weaving lane = 4 lanes.

jbkenn

The upgrade, costed last year at €300m, is now expected to cost €750m.

How can €300 million become €750 million in 12 months? How can you get it so wrong?
Where do we get these guys?, do we pay them big bucks?, or, do we take them out of the loonie bin on work experience?

jbkenn

mackerski

antoinolachtnai wrote:

What about a bus service covering the area around the M50 route? Why can't they get that together?

There's the 76A.

Though the real lunacy here is the radial bus routes that don't join up. What we lack is a bus network.

Dermot

Capt'n Midnight

ishmael whale wrote:

If the toll was abolished, given that the bridge has been well paid for at this stage, presumably traffic would simply cross the bridge without excitement.

Or am I missing something?

On the Right Hook today they were talking about this and the impression was that NTR have an airtight contract for tolls on the M50 between the junctions, so the new bridge came under the old contract...
The NRA has three choices, widen the road to deliver more punters to NTR's, Buy out the contract (€300-€600 million depending), build a new road parallel to the M50 but not connected directly to it !

They also made the point that in the US they have roads with no toll in one direction and a double toll in the other - less delays and the tolls and revenues average out. So on one side you'd drive straight through. On the other you'd have double the number of toll boths so speeding things on the other.

NTR claim they will have an elecronic toll thing for easypass in the next 12-18 months, but it's not clear yet who will have to pay for it, probably the motorist.

antoinolachtnai

The one-way toll is very interesting and relevant for Manhattan or San Francisco and possibly Singapore and Hong Kong, but it is utterly irrelevant for Dublin. It works when you have a limited number of ways of getting back out of town, and people are more-or-less forced to use a tolled route on their way home.

When I said 'bus service', I meant a bus that runs at least every 10 minutes in each direction during the peaks. To service all of the housing and industry around the M50, my own reckoning is that you would need at least a bus every 5 minutes.

Also, according to the schedule mackerski linked to, the 76A has no fewer than six (6) of its stages on the Westlink toll bridge. Is this not some sort of record? The bridge must be wider than I remember. I will be sure to watch out for all the bus stops next time I'm on it.

You are missing something if you think removing the tolls would make things better. My view is that the amount of traffic would increase to a very large degree (maybe 2- or 3 or more-fold) if you took the toll off the bridge. That would really screw things up. This is the truth that everyone on the inside of the process knows but does not dare utter. (I would be interested to hear other people's views on this.)

gibo_ie

when i lived in zustralia they had automatic tolls on the main ring roads around places like melbourne and adelaide. Basically they had cameras along the way which took a photo of your registration. It then checked its database to see if you had paid a toll.
You could pay your toll yearly/monthly/weekly or daily. You could even pay up to 24hours after using it if you didnt know beforehand you were going to use it. All you did was stop at any garage in the area around the city and they had machines where you paid with cash or card and punched in your registration.
Easy as pie and cheap as you paid per day not per journey.
Wonder of we will ever catch up with the rest of the world....