Simple solution to the M50 problem.

Chris_533976

Usual whining - not enough land, fornication at government level etc.


Build upwards!


Instead of adding new lanes alongside, put in pillars and build a second set of lanes on top of the others. So you have 4 lanes in the space of two, like a two deck effect.

Its done in America all the time.

murphaph

.....but the M50 (well the entire northern cross and western parkway) was built to allow future addition of lanes by including a very wide median. Really this is a country of 5 million, we'll likely never see the volumes of traffic that are seen in England, a country roughly the same size but with c. 11 times the population. The junctions and associated slips are the key problem on the M50, not the mainline width. Even the addition of a continuous weaving lane from the j7 to j9 (N4 to N7) would make a massive difference as much of the traffic would never have to merge to the mainline.

The Sisco Kid

Or a continuous boxed in lane in the air, all the way from the M11 to the M1 just like the car pool lanes in the US, we could call it ....... THE MONORAIL!

ballooba

Oh... the Indiana Skyway... the hungover memories.

That thing is cool anyway.

seamus

It would be easier to buy more land to winden the road. Travel along the M50, and imagine a duplicate lane 4/5 metres above your head. Think about the engineering nightmare each time you reach an interchange.

There are a number of problems with the M50:

1. The Toll bridge
2. Interchanges using signal-controlled junctions.
3. Lack of dedicated merging lanes/insufficient merging lanes.
4. Insufficient capacity on certain roads coming off the m-way.
5. Insufficient capacity on certain parts of the M50
6. No solid dividing barrier between the two sides (rubbernecking is a major cause of traffic problems - stick up a big wall, rubbernecking is no longer an issue.)

Extra lanes will help the M50 problems, but it'll still be gridlock every evening from 5 - 7.

BrianD

Cool...instead on the Luas on stilts we can have the M50 on stilts!

Maskhadov

Its a intresting idea. Personally I would go for

Upgrade all interchanges
Extra lane & weaving lane
All tolls to be electronic
Outer relief road
Park and Ride outside M50
More public transport, LUAS Metro, Dublin Bus.


If all of that doesnt work then they should add a few extra lanes on top

Victor

Chris_533976 wrote:

Instead of adding new lanes alongside, put in pillars and build a second set of lanes on top of the others. So you have 4 lanes in the space of two, like a two deck effect.

So at junctions, where the current bridges are at the height of your proposed mainline, would the mainline have traffic lights?

Capt'n Midnight

Just how many lanes are there on the motorway to the north of Belfast ?

Rather then pour money into private transport some info and alternatives are needed. We need one toll free weekday on the M50 to rule in/out the toll. It would be unannounced.

There was one town in the UK where a proposal for a bypass was shelved because ONE traffic warden did their job and got rid of the congestion caused by illegal parking.

I keep saying it but removing learners should free up some of the excess traffic. And creative investment in Buses, and getting children to walk to school in organised groups would do more to reduce the traffic than new roads. Also subsidised broadband so people could telecommute. Changing Zoning so that people don't have to leave the local area to get services / look for jobs.

Victor

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

Just how many lanes are there on the motorway to the north of Belfast ?

About 9.

Yup -> http://www.cbrd.co.uk/motorway/2n.shtml

Maskhadov

Victor wrote:

About 9.

Yup -> http://www.cbrd.co.uk/motorway/2n.shtml

I cant make head nor tail of that. Is it 9 altogether ? Is there even that on the M25 in England :eek:

Reading that side its seems as though the "motorway network" up the north is a bit of a mis planned mess ? Would that be correct ?

Victor

Maskhadov wrote:

Reading that side its seems as though the "motorway network" up the north is a bit of a mis planned mess ? Would that be correct ?

4 inbound 5 outbound. The 5 is actually split into two virtual carriageways (solid "bus lane" line) as it approaches the M5.

I think the widest UK M-way is 18 lanes.

murphaph

At one time the M2 (NI) was indeed the widest m-way in the entire UK! From Wesley Johnston's excellent NI roads site;

Despite being incomplete, the M2 is still impressive. At ten lanes, the foreshore section was for 30 years the widest motorway in the British Isles, and is today the busiest section of road in Northern Ireland

There is no need or no point to a US style mega highway around Dublin, a simple D3M with weaving lanes between junctions and full freeflowing interchanges at all the N roads is all that's needed or wanted. Unfortunately the NRA plan does not even go this far and we will be left with some partial freeflow junctions at critical locations, which really is not acceptable. The toll must be made fully electronic with just one or two toll booths to the left of the carriageway to allow visitors/infrequent users to pay.

I am a huge fan of residential densification and quality (especially rail based) public transport, but the bypass of our capital city should meet at least minimum European standards and it doesn't.

mackerski

murphaph wrote:

At one time the M2 (NI) was indeed the widest m-way in the entire UK! From Wesley Johnston's excellent NI roads site;

For any Google Earth users that fancy a look, open the attachment.

Dermot

OMcGovern

Ah sure roads are just a temporary measure until we get hovercars.... :-)

corktina

concept of the m50 is the problem, it is more of an outer ring road than a bypass.....traffic comes out of city on to it and back in a couple of junctions later......needed to be further out to act as a bypass......

btw...what is this outer ring road I see signs for on the N7?

cyclopath2001

OMcGovern wrote:

Ah sure roads are just a temporary measure until we get hovercars.... :-)

Or the oil gets scarce & we're back on our bikes.

murphaph

corktina wrote:

btw...what is this outer ring road I see signs for on the N7?

Originally under the auspices of Dublin County Council (before it was broken up) this road was to run from Tallaght on the N81 to Dublin Airport going via Kingswood (N7), Woodies Interchange on the N4, crossing the Liffey on a high level bridge and connecting with Blanchardstown Road South, running past the Blanchardstown Centre and on out to the Airport. Fingal Co Co have rejected the notion of the high level bridge and so the ORR is essentially dead as originally envisaged. FCC deleted it from the development plan a year or two ago. It's a stupid name and should be dropped really.

A different river Liffey crossing is proposed by FCC well to the west, connecting Ongar in D15 with the N4/M4 interchange at the Spa Hotel.

corktina

thanks for that...i guess it is a link round from the N7 to the N4 now maybe?

murphaph

corktina wrote:

thanks for that...i guess it is a link round from the N7 to the N4 now maybe?

It will be, when it's complete. There's a bit missing near the N4 around Ballydowd afaik. The southern bit as far as the N81 will also be completed (basically all the bits inside SDCC's administrative area except half the bridge over the Liffey obviously!)

Phase 1
Phase 2
Phase 3

hth.

spacetweek

murphaph wrote:

Fingal Co Co have rejected the notion of the high level bridge and so the ORR is essentially dead as originally envisaged. FCC deleted it from the development plan a year or two ago. It's a stupid name and should be dropped really.

I really think this link should be built. Linkages between the towns of west dublin are terrible. As the crow flies Lucan is only about 1-2km from Castelknock but it still takes 15 minutes to drive to along the Strawberry beds. Ridiculous. Even if the link was bus only it would be better than nothing. I can't wait for the Ballydowd section of the ORR to be finished, it's currently under construction.
As for the name, I agree: the road isn't outside anything, it's a distributor road. A good idea would be to rename the lot the N82 when complete - never saw why the road through Citywest got national status like that.

murphaph wrote:

There is no need or no point to a US style mega highway around Dublin, <snip> Unfortunately the NRA plan does not even go this far and we will be left with some partial freeflow junctions at critical locations, which really is not acceptable.

Agree totally - the small jct upgrades and the M1 and N4 are good, but the N3 and N7 are not good enough and i see them having to be remodelled again in the long term future - the visualisation for the N3 looks like someone vomited on the M50, and the N7 still has a bleedin Luas line running AT GRADE through the junction as well as two other junctions located far too close to the main one. Grr!! :rolleyes:

Capt'n Midnight

A bridge would be a great idea except for one little fly in the ointment.
NTR would have the rights to toll it.

spacetweek

Chris_533976 wrote:

Build upwards!
<snip>Its done in America all the time.

And it looks awful everytime it's done. The M50 needs to be upgraded to bring it up to international standards, but beyond that, we need to recognise the problem of induced traffic and have a moratorium on any additional lanes, concentrating on public transport.

spacetweek

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

A bridge would be a great idea except for one little fly in the ointment.
NTR would have the rights to toll it.

Eh? The link bridge would be totally pointless if it was tolled. It would be a distributor road - i don't think tolling it would be morally right.

Capt'n Midnight

spacetweek wrote:

Eh? The link bridge would be totally pointless if it was tolled. It would be a distributor road - i don't think tolling it would be morally right.

Well AFAIK the original contract for the M50 meant that they had to open the gates if the queue was more than 70 yards long. Also the planning iregulatries with Redmond etc. and the whole rezoning of green belt and areas laid aside for roads atin't moral either.

It's up to their board / shareholders / law makers if they want to change the contract.

Morality doesn't seem to be an issue for a significant proportion of the people involved in the decision making juging by hearsay and disclosures in court and tribunals. Especially when you take into account the number of times people have gotten away with stuff that would be illegal in the UK but for which we hadden't passed laws for.

Victor

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

NTR would have the rights to toll it.

I don't think so.

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

Well AFAIK the original contract for the M50 meant that they had to open the gates if the queue was more than 70 yards long.

I don't think so.

Keyzer

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

Well AFAIK the original contract for the M50 meant that they had to open the gates if the queue was more than 70 yards long.

If that was the case then I'd say that plan or paperwork was quietly binned in recent years cos the queues in the morning and evening are just a tad over 70 yards...

Its great that we can all talk about what can be next, some of the ideas here are good but the thing is, why was the M50 not built as a 3 lane motorway to begin with? Surely the government had planners and economists etc involved.
Its nothing more than a cross between a glorified dual carriage way and a car park at the moment... Rant over...

More lanes....
Less exits...
Upgrade existing exits....
Electronic toll...

I'd like to see that experiment someone mentioned earlier about removing the toll for one morning /evening unnanounced to see what effect it would have...

pinkybrain

The biggest problem is that Ireland is a land of suckers, you just keep taking it and taking it.
That, and stupid people making important decisions.
As they wont be changed any time soon, either continue to put up with it all, or get out, like I did.

Keyzer

pinkybrain wrote:

The biggest problem is that Ireland is a land of suckers, you just keep taking it and taking it.
That, and stupid people making important decisions.
As they wont be changed any time soon, either continue to put up with it all, or get out, like I did.

True....

murphaph

One of the factors that led FCC in their decision to drop the high level bridge was that it would be used as a 'toll evasion' route and would be artificially busy because the principal route costs money to use. This is 100% correct of course. The problem would appear to be the West-Link, again.

I also like the idea as originally planned, but the Westlink fcuks it up I'm afraid. Links across the Liffey in West Dublin are attrocious.

jlang

TBH, I think they should build it, and probably toll it too.

corktina

spacetweek wrote:

Eh? The link bridge would be totally pointless if it was tolled. It would be a distributor road - i don't think tolling it would be morally right.

tolling may or may not be morally right but NTR have a franchise for any Liffey crossing .......

murphaph

I'd like to see where it's written down that only NTR can bridge the liffey? Seems unlikely, even in this two-bit country. This wasn't mentioned by FCC in their development plan, surely if they were legally prohibited from building a new bridge just west of WestLink then they'd have given that as an excuse.

corktina

I could be wrong, but that is what I understand to be the situation.....lets bite the bullet and buy out the contract with NTR now......(mind you, the Gov also gets a good rake off from the NTR tolls, so it might not be too keen to chancge the situation.......it brings to mind the Toll Bridge between Whitchurch and Pangbourne in the Thames Valley where the bridge exists under ancient charters but the amount they can charge is also ancient...it is a mere few pence to drive across it.....

murphaph

You're right Corktina, the government receives so much from WL (21% VAT on every toll, a proportion of each toll after about 30k cars have passed through the barriers and all the toll after about 90k cars have passed through in a day) that a buy out is not even on the agenda. This policy is fcuking up the transport planning for the rest of West Dublin though.

mackerski

spacetweek wrote:

A good idea would be to rename the lot the N82 when complete - never saw why the road through Citywest got national status like that.

Before Citywest existed the N82 referred to the road linking the N81 to the N7 via Saggart. The road through Citywest fulfils this role and removes through traffic from Saggart, so it is more suited to be the national route.

Dermot

spacetweek

mackerski wrote:

Before Citywest existed the N82 referred to the road linking the N81 to the N7 via Saggart. The road through Citywest fulfils this role and removes through traffic from Saggart, so it is more suited to be the national route.

That's true, I remember when they changed it, but what I'm saying is that the ORR will be even more suited to be the national route.

jimmycrackcorm

spacetweek wrote:

I can't wait for the Ballydowd section of the ORR to be finished, it's currently under construction.

I'm dreading this as I live there and it will only multiply the current traffic problems. Had it continued on over the liffey it might be better but it will not improve anything otherwise - traffic will get log-jammed at the N4 junction.

Unbelievably there were 8000 objections to the road and it still went ahead - so much for democracy.

The ORR should have been placed on the outer side of Lucan.

murphaph

jimmycrackcorm wrote:

Unbelievably there were 8000 objections to the road and it still went ahead - so much for democracy.

The ORR has been on the various county development plans for 30 years. People can't say they didnt know it was coming before they bought. Many folks don't bother reading development plans before buying homes-big mistake if you're fussy. Lots of folks here in D15 were very surprised when construction started on the Ongar Distributor Road-I wonder what they thought that 3km long perfectly straight stretch of scrubland was being preserved for, if not a road

spacetweek

jimmycrackcorm wrote:

Unbelievably there were 8000 objections to the road and it still went ahead - so much for democracy.
The ORR should have been placed on the outer side of Lucan.

The Newcastle road will become the one on the outer side of Lucan when it is upgraded to distributor status in the next 10 years.

I know there were loads of objections but the Ballydowd gap had to be closed or we would have had a distributor standard road with a gap in it.

In fact they did have a major effect - the plans were downgraded from dual carriageway to two lanes each way and bus lanes - narrower and lower capacity than originally envisaged.

Capt'n Midnight

spacetweek wrote:

The Newcastle road will become the one on the outer side of Lucan when it is upgraded to distributor status in the next 10 years.

10 years :eek:
so we will be stuck with the one way system over the canal with about 1/3 of the time no traffic. :rolleyes:

westtip

Only allow one sex to drive, removing driving licenses and the right to drive from half of the population will make the roads safer. Now which sex shall we choose to remove from the roads

DubTony

murphaph wrote:

The ORR has been on the various county development plans for 30 years. People can't say they didnt know it was coming before they bought. Many folks don't bother reading development plans before buying homes-big mistake if you're fussy. Lots of folks here in D15 were very surprised when construction started on the Ongar Distributor Road-I wonder what they thought that 3km long perfectly straight stretch of scrubland was being preserved for, if not a road

Good point Philip. But even after checking out what that bit of waste land is all about, you can never really be sure if anything will be built. Anyone who travels toward Tallaght on Firhouse Rd., can see on the traffic lights at Spawell bridge a filter arrow directing traffic into the driveway of Charleville House. My folks bought a house in Cremorne in 1980 and were told there was a road being built in between Cremorne and Landsdowne Park. This was to be the "new" Knocklyon Rd and would lead to the proposed Spawell bridge. When Firhouse Bridge was built, Spawell bridge was shelved, even though Firhouse Bridge was to later become part of the M50. When Firhouse Bridge was taken away, a new route needed to be put in place to take traffic from Firhouse Rd. to the N81, and so Spawell bridge was built, along with traffic lights that direct people into a driveway. Imagine how much easier things would have been in the Firhouse area if the Spawell bridge had been built sooner. Some 25 years later the "New" Knocklyon Rd. is still one big hill of muck.

maxheadroom

DubTony wrote:

Good point Philip. But even after checking out what that bit of waste land is all about, you can never really be sure if anything will be built. Anyone who travels toward Tallaght on Firhouse Rd., can see on the traffic lights at Spawell bridge a filter arrow directing traffic into the driveway of Charleville House. My folks bought a house in Cremorne in 1980 and were told there was a road being built in between Cremorne and Landsdowne Park. This was to be the "new" Knocklyon Rd and would lead to the proposed Spawell bridge. When Firhouse Bridge was built, Spawell bridge was shelved, even though Firhouse Bridge was to later become part of the M50. When Firhouse Bridge was taken away, a new route needed to be put in place to take traffic from Firhouse Rd. to the N81, and so Spawell bridge was built, along with traffic lights that direct people into a driveway. Imagine how much easier things would have been in the Firhouse area if the Spawell bridge had been built sooner. Some 25 years later the "New" Knocklyon Rd. is still one big hill of muck.

Drifting a little off topic, but the realinged knocklyon road has had its funding approved and is in the final design stage according to the propoganda I get through the door from the local councillors...
see http://www.sdublincoco.ie/index.aspx?pageid=22&deptid=12&dpageid=210 for details

seamus

maxheadroom wrote:

Drifting a little off topic, but the realinged knocklyon road has had its funding approved and is in the final design stage according to the propoganda I get through the door from the local councillors...
see http://www.sdublincoco.ie/index.aspx?pageid=22&deptid=12&dpageid=210 for details

Aye. The realigned Knocklyon Road was another one of those projects that was shelved for a couple of years. When they took it back down and blew the dust off, a whole pile of NIMBY's who had moved in since, objected despite that fact that the plan had in been place for years before they bought their houses (and as such, knew about it), delaying its development. 25 years later (:rolleyes: ) it may finally go ahead.

corktina

westtip wrote:

Only allow one sex to drive, removing driving licenses and the right to drive from half of the population will make the roads safer. Now which sex shall we choose to remove from the roads

you choose mate (and you can have the honour of telling them and being torn asunder....:)

ps A good proportion of the population cant drive anyway (although they think they can) and another slice dont have licenses in any meaningful sense anyway.....so, never mind sex, lets bin this lot to start with.....(until they take lessons and pass a stiff test......at least...)