Crash on M50 - southbound closed

skywalker_208

Seems much of the M50 is closed this afternoon because of a serious pileup.. traffic will be terrible during rush hour...

"DUBLIN: There is now no access to the M50 southbound from the M1 to the Red Cow due to a serious 5 vehicle collision between the Lucan & Red Cow exits on the M50. Traffic is stopped and is still backed up to Finglas as a result. If coming from the airport you should divert off at Ballymun to avoid the incident. All approach roads are also being badly delayed, the Navan is back beyond the Blanchardstown SC. The Naas Rd is heavy inbound from Rathcoole and there is a lot of congestion on the Lucan Rd in both directions at the M50 roundabout. Also delays are heavy on the Chapelizod Bypass, the Ballymount Rd and the Finglas Rd. No change northbound it's still at a crawl due to onlookers with delays between Ballymount exit to the Toll Plaza."

skywalker_208

yea they seem to have cleared it at 4.30 according to AA roadwatch website...

Benster

It's back to "normal" now, at 5pm, as far as I can see from Exit 5 (finglas).

B.

DerekP11

As an advocater for the development of rail transport, the irony is, I drive for a living. I feel this gives me a better appreciation for my cause as I know what the gridlock is like all over this country.

Todays incident exposed Dublin's weak spot. Without a fully functioning M50, parts of the city ground to a halt as everyone driving were reduced to scurrying rats searching for an alternative route. Lucan, Blanchardstown, Castleknock, Chapelizod and the phoenix park were all reduced to carparks. Normally quieter routes seen long delays as drivers avoided the M50, even after the affected section reopened. A similar, but less serious incident on the northbound carraigeway occurred a few weeks back and the resulting chaos sounded a warning. Regardless of upgrades and Toll buy outs, Dublins dependency on this motorway has now reached a critical level. Its actually the city's main heartbeat. That is not how it should be.

In closing, lets hope those injured today make a full recovery. The rest of us were only delayed.

MT

DerekP11 wrote:

Regardless of upgrades and Toll buy outs, Dublins dependency on this motorway has now reached a critical level. Its actually the city's main heartbeat. That is not how it should be.

I'm all for public transport but how effective can it really be in a city as sparsely populated and as sprawling as Dublin. Surely highly used public transport goes hand in hand with a planning policy that favours concentrated and dense development. Exactly the opposite of how the Republic has been developing (one-offs, sprawl) for decades. Isn't everyone increasingly too spread out to get the value out of public transport that you'd achieve in tightly packed cities like Munich.

I think public transport and development plans have a clear link if the former is to be successful.

murphaph

Planning has of course been completely absent for many years but in fairness to the city council and Fingal Co Co they have copped on of late and you'll be hard pressed to find anything less than aartments going up nowadays, especially anyway near railway lines or future railway (metro) lines. Take a train from Connolly to Clonsilla and you'll find mile upon mile of apartments under construction. The only problem is that the railway won't be able to cope in the short term!

eth0_

Why did it take so long to clear? I left town at 3.30 and it was nearly 5pm by the time I got to Liffey Valley...I thought the accident happened around mid-day?

seamus

eth0_ wrote:

Why did it take so long to clear? I left town at 3.30 and it was nearly 5pm by the time I got to Liffey Valley...I thought the accident happened around mid-day?

I got to the M50/M1 junction just as the M50 reopened. I passed over the area, and it would seem that there was either oil or blood all over the road, as the section was covered in sand.

Assuming the former (someone mentioned to me there was an oil truck involved), they would have to remove all of debris and broken vehicles, and then covered the road in sand and leave it for a while. An M50 covered in oil would leave more than a 5-car pileup.

Traffic

why the m50 was closed for so long

A number of crash victims had to be cut from their vehicles
Accident investigation team had to do their work
Site cleared of vehicles debris and sanded

Capt'n Midnight

Rubbernecking.

this causes major delays and in many cases can cause a pile up on the free lanes and or other carrigeway.

Maybe accident crews have cameras to film passing traffic, so if there is an accident then they will have evidence to present as to the cause. Or a portable marquee to cover the site. Or just block all traffic if no one can think of a better way to prevent slowdowns and diverting attention causing more accidents.

Traffic

The m50 south bound was closed to traffic from m1 to redcow noting to do with rubbernecking

Capt'n Midnight

It was a generalisation, that would apply to that crash and to the other one on the on the N11 on the same day. On the radio a while back there was a delay because of a fender-bender where the people involved pulled on to the central reservation, no damage and no obstruction but people in the overtaking lane slowing down to have a gander.

Litcagral

Traffic wrote:

why the m50 was closed for so long

A number of crash victims had to be cut from their vehicles
Accident investigation team had to do their work
Site cleared of vehicles debris and sanded

In addition the use of heavy duty recovery vehicles to clear trucks would add to the delay. Firstly they have to try to reach the scene - not easy through gridlock in extra large vehicles and it's got to the stage where they almost have to publish a Health & Safety Analysis of the situation before they are permitted to lift anything. :rolleyes:

murphaph

Litcagral wrote:

In addition the use of heavy duty recovery vehicles to clear trucks would add to the delay. Firstly they have to try to reach the scene - not easy through gridlock in extra large vehicles and it's got to the stage where they almost have to publish a Health & Safety Analysis of the situation before they are permitted to lift anything. :rolleyes:

Watching BBC news today (some item about road congestion) they showed a Police Range Rover TOWING a broken down FULLY LADEN car transporter off the M25 to the hard shoulder to get the traffic moving as quickly as possible. It shows that it can be done without a heavy duty recovery vehicle I was surprised. I bet the Range Rover was diesel and 4 wheel drive of course with a very low (hill climbing) gear selected.

Anyway, the Garda Traffic Corps over reacted IMO-the accident was between J7 and J9, yet they closed the M50 southbound from J3 to J9. What gives? They should have just closed the stretch between the affected junctions and advised motorists of such (of course most motorists don't know the junction numbers, something that needs to be addressed) using the VMS units on the aproach roads to the M50. The M1 has them, as does the N3 and N4 (not sure about the N2) and Gardai could have advised others instead of just forcing everyone off the motorway at all the southbound exits to battle their way home, especially as many people will have been travelling across the Liffey! If cross median emergency acesses were located near to both sides of the accident site they could have then opened a contra-flow, but that's unlikely.

I was out getting pics of poor road signage for the forthcoming website and saw the Gardai in action along the Northern Cross Route. I couldn't believe they were closing the entire motorway rather than just the affected junctions.

The VMS displays on the M1 (and N3 that I know of) simply said;

-not a lot of use, no "Divert via" or anything. I wouldn't fancy being a driver from outside Dublin having to find an alternative route across the city yesterday.

In Germany, all the exits from the Autobahn have diversionary signposts that allow you to follow the 'best' back road to the next junction(s) in the event of a motorway closure. Great system and we should follow it, but we can't even get regular direction signs up properly so there's no chance of that.

seamus

murphaph wrote:

Anyway, the Garda Traffic Corps over reacted IMO-the accident was between J7 and J9, yet they closed the M50 southbound from J3 to J9. What gives?

In fairness, which junctions would you have them block from? Let people through the toll, and divert off there? The N4 southbound junction couldn't handle that volume of traffic, it's ridiculously over capacity as it is. The M50 would be a complete standstill from the N4 junction back.

It could have been done, sure, but I don't see how people's lives would have been made any easier. The good thing about traffic congestion when it's not on a motorway is that people can park and/or turnaround. If you've got 5,000 vehicles at a standstill on the motorway, nobody can go anywhere. Remember the floods a couple of years back? Six hour traffic jams?

BrianD3

More fun and games today - a pickup hauling coal overturned near Leopardstown AFAIK. Traffic backed up as far as the toll bridge. It took me ~20 mins to get from the bridge to the N4 roundabout.

murphaph

seamus wrote:

In fairness, which junctions would you have them block from? Let people through the toll, and divert off there? The N4 southbound junction couldn't handle that volume of traffic, it's ridiculously over capacity as it is. The M50 would be a complete standstill from the N4 junction back.

It could have been done, sure, but I don't see how people's lives would have been made any easier. The good thing about traffic congestion when it's not on a motorway is that people can park and/or turnaround. If you've got 5,000 vehicles at a standstill on the motorway, nobody can go anywhere. Remember the floods a couple of years back? Six hour traffic jams?

I hear what you're saying Seamus. I did have a think about it before I came to the conclusion that the Gardai didn't handle it as well as they might. J7 would not normally be able to handle the entire stream of southbound traffic exiting here but there were Gardai all over every interchange on the M50 Northern Cross yesterday. These Gardai could possibly have been posted on point duty at the N4 roundabout and give priority to traffic coming off the M50 at J7. It would be messy of course and people could divert off the M50 if they so chose, but what happened yesterday was that 10km of one of the highest capacity roads in Dublin was empty while the suburbs absorbed all the vehicles. This was a mismanagement ofa critical resource-roadspace. If the M50 had been kept open to J7 and this had been relayedto people on the VMS displays, then many people bound for places like Leixlip/Maynooth would have been able to travel to the N3 and divert via N3-Ongar-Leixlip or N3-Clonee-Dunboyne-Maynooth etc. In short, keeping the M50 open as far as the affected junction may have allowed people to get closer to home before diverting off, thus at least taking advantage of the roadspace on the M50. I'm ot saying it should have been a pain free cruise home for all, but that keeping traffic on the m-way as far as possible should be the goal. This is typically what happens on the M25 etc. when an incident occurs.

Victor

murphaph wrote:

The VMS displays on the M1 (and N3 that I know of) simply said;

-not a lot of use, no "Divert via" or anything. I wouldn't fancy being a driver from outside Dublin having to find an alternative route across the city yesterday.

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