Lane painting

Trampas

When they are laying down roads and the people employed aren't sure how the lanes should be painted down do they just not bother painting the lanes in and just leave it to the road users where to go.

Example of this is coming down D'oiler street turning around onto College Green.

At the lights at the end of D'Olier street the lanes just disapper.

Also another mad place is the Blanc M50 roundabout where heading out to Blanc3 lanes go into 2 lanes but when you are in the middle lane. The a new lane just appears in the middle of it.

Madness if you ask me

Maskhadov

When they are laying down roads and the people employed aren't sure how the lanes should be painted down do they just not bother painting the lanes in and just leave it to the road users where to go.

What ?

BrianD

A big contributor to traffic chaos. Badly thought out lanes. The contractors seem to use paint that fades very fast. Given the limited driving ability of Irish drivers it causes further confusion and plays into the hands of those who use unclear markings to drive according to their own rules.

Better lane marking and overhead signage would go along way to improving traffic flows than the Gardai employed to stand around during freeflow.

Saruman

I agree. If you head past st Patricks then take a left heading towards the green you come to a junction with almost no road markings. You can see 3 lanes. One to go right, then 2 others. Personally i would hope they mark it so that left hand lane has to turn left, middle straight toward stephens green and right lane turning right. As it is you have people in the left lane trying to go straight which is asking for an accident when there are cars in all 3 lanes.. there is just not enough space. And since there is only the one lane after the junction it makes sense. Even though cars try and make it 2 lanes.

Calina

BrianD wrote:

Better lane marking and overhead signage would go along way to improving traffic flows than the Gardai employed to stand around during freeflow.

I totally agree. One of the most stressful things about driving in Dublin's city centre is the shocking amount of guess work you need to do to figure what lane you're supposed to be in to get to where you want to go to. The area around Christchurch is particularly bad.

Neil_Sedaka

Yeah me too, does anyone else have trouble seeing lane markings in the wet under those yellow sodium street lights?

MorningStar

hAs anybody here ever actually designed a road layout or even being involved? Like most things unless you have you really don't know all the resaon why it is done a particular way you might think it could be better a different way.

I will trust the people who actually studied civil engineering as opposed to some guy who drives a car and believes they know better without any training on the subject.

Alun

Well seeing as I know one Traffic Engineer who doesn't have a driving licence and has never driven a car in his life, I'd wonder whether that's true. In any case, we're talking about road markings and giving drivers sufficient and adequate warning of what lane they're supposed to be in to turn left, right or go straight on. Also adequate maintenance of same, so that they can actually be seen properly. That's not exactly rocket science, and doesn't take a degree in Engineering to figure out properly.

Calina

Neil_Sedaka wrote:

Yeah me too, does anyone else have trouble seeing lane markings in the wet under those yellow sodium street lights?

Yes.

Calina

MorningStar wrote:

hAs anybody here ever actually designed a road layout or even being involved?

I'm not worried about how they are designed. I'm worried about how poorly marked and signed they are. When I was doing driving lessons and commented about how poorly lanes and lines and arrows were painted on the roads around a town in North Cork, I was told that the reason for that was that the UDC wouldn't release the funds to repaint them. That has, as far as I can see, nada to do with the design of the road layout itself, and everything to do with the implementation of the design.

I'm a user of how roadlayouts are designed and I say the designs in a lot of parts of Dublin are pretty badly implemented in terms of how they are indicated.

There is a road near me which splits to two lanes on the approach to a crossroads. One lane turns left, one lane turns right. Only one lane also is for traffic going straight on. Which lane that might be is not indicated until 100m after the road splits. It's indicated by an arrow painted on the road. It's a very busy road, and very often, because there is traffic on top of it, you cannot actually see the arrow. If you want to go straight on, you have absolutely NO idea which lane you are supposed to take at the point the road splits. This is not a criticism of the road layout, but of its implementation. Are you seriously suggesting to me that a traffic engineer might have a good reason for this? Because if you are, I'd be glad if someone could enlighten me as to what it might be.

cyclopath2001

BrianD wrote:

A big contributor to traffic chaos. Badly thought out lanes. The contractors seem to use paint that fades very fast. Given the limited driving ability of Irish drivers it causes further confusion and plays into the hands of those who use unclear markings to drive according to their own rules.

They're probably using the special paint that's only supposed to be used for marking cycle lanes. Photo (linked): taken in 2001 shows a typical example, it's still the same today:

This paint was designed especially to fade once the City Council had been paid for 'constructing' cycle facilities.