IRHA to blockade M4 toll

dts

So how was it a success?
Have the tolls been reduced or abolished?
I think not. If something was to be done about the M4 toll it had to have been before it was built. There is no point complaining now as its too late. As it stands people are paying the toll so eurolink are making money and for the rest of us that wont pay the toll we are stuck on the old N4.
Look to the future and stop new roads being built as toll roads!!!!!!!

corktina

i think it was a flop wasnt it...60 trucks, some of whom would be innocent passers by.....

I can't see what the problem is...if truckers don't want to use the toll road, then don't...You can have free passage on the old N4 and get through quicker because of the proportion of trafficwhich elects to use the toll road...You cant have your cake and eat it chaps....

1huge1

corktina wrote:

i think it was a flop wasnt it...60 trucks, some of whom would be innocent passers by.....

I can't see what the problem is...if truckers don't want to use the toll road, then don't...You can have free passage on the old N4 and get through quicker because of the proportion of trafficwhich elects to use the toll road...You cant have your cake and eat it chaps....

if people thought like that there would be tolls everywere
can you really justify them being ripped of (and they are being ripped of) and your saying ah sure they can go the old road
well they should have to

corktina

whats the difference? you can watch old films on RTE for no extra charge or you can pay extra for sky movies if you wish ...............

1huge1

corktina wrote:

whats the difference? you can watch old films on RTE for no extra charge or you can pay extra for sky movies if you wish ...............

well its easy for us to say this in munster

jwt

corktina wrote:

I can't see what the problem is...if truckers don't want to use the toll road, then don't...You can have free passage on the old N4 and get through quicker because of the proportion of trafficwhich elects to use the toll road...You cant have your cake and eat it chaps....

A major issue in Clonard, on the N4, is that even though the volumes of traffic have reduced through the village, the number of trucks hasn't changed much. But the speed of the trucks going through has increased as there aren't many holdups in the village now.


At night walking on the footpath i have seen pedestrians being blown off balance by artics whipping through at 50 mph plus!!!!!


Even after lunch when the National School, which is on the main road, is emptying of kids between toddler age and 12, trucks are still blasting into the 50kph limit before the school using the hill to reduce momentum.

I tried to get our 4 year old into a car seat through the offside door (younger child was strapped into a car seat attached to the nearside seat) and gave it a miss when a I saw an artic lock his back wheels attempting to avoid a mother and toddler trying to get into a car.


I understand that sometime in the next few months the speed limit outside schools is to drop drastically, and that the speed limits in clonard will be extended signifantly. Hopefully that will reduce the speed through the village and shift the economic balance back towards using the motorway.

If you sit back and look at the logic its bananas. We have a 4 lane road with a concrete central barrier, crash barriers, good road surface and great sight lines going through fields with cows in them. But a village with a national School, kids, a shop etc has traffic passing within millimetres and not a conrete or steel crash barrier to be seen.

It really does make me wonder if we've got our priorities straight.

we'll see what happens.


John

corktina

jwt wrote:

A major issue in Clonard, on the N4, is that even though the volumes of traffic have reduced through the village, the number of trucks hasn't changed much. But the speed of the trucks going through has increased as there aren't many holdups in the village now.


At night walking on the footpath i have seen pedestrians being blown off balance by artics whipping through at 50 mph plus!!!!!


Even after lunch when the National School, which is on the main road, is emptying of kids between toddler age and 12, trucks are still blasting into the 50kph limit before the school using the hill to reduce momentum.

I tried to get our 4 year old into a car seat through the offside door (younger child was strapped into a car seat attached to the nearside seat) and gave it a miss when a I saw an artic lock his back wheels attempting to avoid a mother and toddler trying to get into a car.


I understand that sometime in the next few months the speed limit outside schools is to drop drastically, and that the speed limits in clonard will be extended signifantly. Hopefully that will reduce the speed through the village and shift the economic balance back towards using the motorway.

If you sit back and look at the logic its bananas. We have a 4 lane road with a concrete central barrier, crash barriers, good road surface and great sight lines going through fields with cows in them. But a village with a national School, kids, a shop etc has traffic passing within millimetres and not a conrete or steel crash barrier to be seen.

It really does make me wonder if we've got our priorities straight.

we'll see what happens.


John

You are quite right of course that lower volumes could equal higher speeds. This isnt an arguement to reduce or remove the tolls of course. if this is a problem, the Gards should be notified and approriate action taken by the CC such as traffic calmimg measures.

As I understand it, private capital was used to part-finance the new road and it would not have been available without the prospect of a return on it.As dts said earlier, the thing to do is to stop more toll roads being built and ensure that new roads are built with NRA funds for the good of us all.

dts

Just to let you know, there are a few people here where I work that have been done for speeding on the new road. The guards were hid on a bridge so they didnt know untill the letter came through the post.
Now thats going to encourage people to pay the toll?

D'Peoples Voice

dts wrote:

Just to let you know, there are a few people here where I work that have been done for speeding on the new road. The guards were hid on a bridge so they didnt know untill the letter came through the post.
Now thats going to encourage people to pay the toll?

It depends, there are some who don't like to have to share a road with drivers who think they are a F1 driver!
I know I feel more comfortable knowing that there are not cars driving at 150km/h on the road. Thankfully the gardai enforce the speedlimit recommended by the National Safety Council, so I feel safer! No point in introducing laws(speed limits) if you're not going to police them as Fine Gael would say.

As regards trucks driving at high speed past the school in clonard, it's reminds of a similar scenario of a school on the N5 in Roscommon, if i remember correctly, solution is setting reduced speed limits, or god forbid ramps if absolutely necessary!
The county councils have been given these powers for so long now, it's shocking how slow they are to move. But when someone is killed .....

1huge1

hey D'Peoples Voice i know this is beside the point but im curious your sig do you mean that the western corrider is way to expensive or not needed?
just curious of your opinion
as for me though i suppose its better to have it in the long run even though it dosnt serve me at all

D'Peoples Voice

1huge1 wrote:

hey D'Peoples Voice i know this is beside the point but im curious your sig do you mean that the western corrider is way to expensive or not needed?
just curious of your opinion
as for me though i suppose its better to have it in the long run even though it dosnt serve me at all

Opposition parties told us how the gov were squandering money on the luas, how it ended up 3 times the original cost. But if spending €750m on a project to carry 20m passengers approx is squandering our money, then what is spending half that amount to carry only 1.6m? Work that out? Yet the opposition parties support this!!!!!!:eek:
Put it like this, the government could have financed the rest of the cost of the new M4 themselves, with no toll, using the funds that will be spent on the Western Rail corridor! Which will carry more people? Which will benefit the west more?
It seems Irish people are oblivious to this contradiction when it comes to our taxes:mad:

corktina

D'Peoples Voice wrote:

Opposition parties told us how the gov were squandering money on the luas, how it ended up 3 times the original cost. But if spending €750m on a project to carry 20m passengers approx is squandering our money, then what is spending half that amount to carry only 1.6m? Work that out? Yet the opposition parties support this!!!!!!:eek:
Put it like this, the government could have financed the rest of the cost of the new M4 themselves, with no toll, using the funds that will be spent on the Western Rail corridor! Which will carry more people? Which will benefit the west more?
It seems Irish people are oblivious to this contradiction when it comes to our taxes:mad:

how much? £365 million for the WRC? wow! I didnt realise that was the cost, I am no longer in favour of the WRC............

Capt'n Midnight

D'Peoples Voice wrote:

But if spending €750m on a project to carry 20m passengers approx is squandering our money, then what is spending half that amount to carry only 1.6m?

Yet Dublin Bus only gets €60 for 150m passengers.

NRA would have a lot more money to spend if they could get people in Dublin to use public transport instead of the M50. Out of curiousity how much would it have cost to lay rail instead of motorway ?

1huge1

corktina wrote:

how much? £365 million for the WRC? wow! I didnt realise that was the cost, I am no longer in favour of the WRC............

its euros not pounds
anyway i think they could do better things with the money
how about some better services for cork,limerick and galway

corktina

1huge1 wrote:

its euros not pounds
anyway i think they could do better things with the money
how about some better services for cork,limerick and galway

slip of the finger / mental frailty...yes I knew it was euro, comment still stands......how many buses would that pay for?....

D'Peoples Voice

1huge1 wrote:

its euros not pounds
anyway i think they could do better things with the money
how about some better services for cork,limerick and galway

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for public transport over roads:) ,
but I just can't see why we are devoting money to a public transport project where there is insufficient demand and will not remove many cars from our roads:mad: , when there are so many other public transport projects crying out for money, and which would do a better job of removing rush hour traffic from our roads, for example have you ever heard of people giving up on waiting for buses to pass and not stopping because they are too full! Where else would you get a situation where a service can't keep with demand but doesn't expand:(
If people wish for the money to be spent on roads,
look at the N5 road, no bypass of Longford town, and single lane most of the route, and the castlebar road to Galway city isn't fantastic either.
I'd never deprive any project from being built, I just question it's priority!

Flukey

the_syco wrote:

The toll booths on the bridge over the Strawberry Beds works, as its cheap, and people will prefer to use it, rather than go a very long way around.

It works does it? You have got to be kidding. Have you ever seen the queues at rush hour approaching it? Get rid of the tolls and that bridge would work.