Outer Ring Road

murphaph

Does anyone know if the ORR is connected at Balgaddy yet? You know the 200m gap that is/was there?

darkman2

murphaph wrote:

Does anyone know if the ORR is connected at Balgaddy yet? You know the 200m gap that is/was there?

I thought you were talking about the proposed outer ring motorway for a second there!. Last time I lookked it wasnt connected yet:rolleyes:

murphaph

What a crock of sh!t. That gap has been there for ages now and the road is useless asa ring road without it being filled. Perhaps they're waiting to finish that whole phase (widening the overbridge at Woodies and the existing road routh of there). That could take a good while yet :mad:

Idleater

murphaph wrote:

What a crock of sh!t. That gap has been there for ages now and the road is useless asa ring road without it being filled. Perhaps they're waiting to finish that whole phase (widening the overbridge at Woodies and the existing road routh of there). That could take a good while yet :mad:

I think you are right about this. I presume once they open the road and all the traffic gets chaotic at woodies that will leave the next "gap" - across the liffey and a couple of km to join up to Blanch/Clonsilla.

L.

murphaph

nereid wrote:

I presume once they open the road and all the traffic gets chaotic at woodies that will leave the next "gap" - across the liffey and a couple of km to join up to Blanch/Clonsilla.

Not gonna happen. T'was dropped from the Fingal County Development Plan. The council do not believe it prudent to build a distributor grade road parallel to a tolled (rip-off) motorway bridge as they think the ORR would be choked by people trying to avoid the tolls, which it would!

They have included a new Liffey Crossing much further west from Ongar (nr. Clonee) to the Spa Hotel interchange on the N4 in their latest dev. plan.

spacetweek

murphaph wrote:

Does anyone know if the ORR is connected at Balgaddy yet? You know the 200m gap that is/was there?

Here's your 411.
ORR Phase 2

This covers the gap at Balgaddy, finished by summer 2007. The other gap is the one over the Liffey which it looks like will never be built.

murphaph

Great. They could have pushed phase I a bit further north when they were building it and it'd actually be some use!

Idleater

murphaph wrote:

Not gonna happen...

I wouldn't bet on that. If you have a look at it on the map, you will see that over the other side of the liffey at blanch there is a nice "gap" about the width of a dual lane road alongside porterstown road that just happens not to be built on. This points pretty much directly at the new woodies junction.

This gap joins to a roundabout at Blanchardstown road/Clonsilla road where they built that nice new bridge over the railway line.

Anyhow, it won't be built in the near future, they will wait till the current ORR is open and then when the "chaos" at the woodies junction is enough, they will say, "how about a bridge over the liffey to join up with this other bit of an ORR on the north side"....

L.

spacetweek

nereid wrote:

I wouldn't bet on that. If you have a look at it on the map, you will see that over the other side of the liffey at blanch there is a nice "gap" about the width of a dual lane road alongside porterstown road that just happens not to be built on. This points pretty much directly at the new woodies junction.
...

So you're saying they're gonna make it a self fulfilling prophecy. That sounds about right. Though their gap over on the other side may just date from when they still planned on building it.

That said I think road links across the Liffey in west Dublin are a joke - the Strawberry beds is the main road from Lucan to Castleknock, it's like a country lane from an Enid Blyton novel. The ORR gap will just HAVE to be filled eventually.

murphaph

That 'gap' along the Diswellstown Rd (that's it's name, not Porterstown Rd) is going to be filled with a certain metroWest lads. It'll run alongside Diswellstown Rd, on a bridge parallel to Dr. Troy Bridge (that new one) and parallel to Blanch Rd South between it and Coolmine Ind Est/Milenium Park up past the Blanch Centre.

The ORR would still make sense to me as the road network improves in west Dublin on both sides of the river apaart from improving links across that river (which are indeed like something out of a Blyton book!-great description!)

Chris_533976

They badly need a link between the N7 and the N4, so you can get to Maynooth from the Naas Road without going through cart track countryside, and not go through the M50.

icdg

What badly needs to be done, in that regard, is a major upgrade of the R120. Particularly with Adamstown on the way (some people seem to have renamed it "Adamstown Road", it was always the "Newcastle Road" to me), there is at least two humpback bridges on the road one of which has a stop-go on it. Also some pretty bad bends. They seem to be doing some work on it at Adamstown at the moment, but IMO more needs to be done.

MT

...(some people seem to have renamed it "Adamstown Road", it was always the "Newcastle Road" to me),...

A good argument for the use of route numbers - cuts down on any chance of parochial confusion. 'Aye, take the road by the church' only leaves an outsider baffled.

What's the quality of signage on the ORR like? And what's its route number?

dr zoidberg

Chris_533976 wrote:

They badly need a link between the N7 and the N4, so you can get to Maynooth from the Naas Road without going through cart track countryside, and not go through the M50.

And one from the N4 to the N3, Blanchardstown is a major centre of employment and lots of people have to go on crappy back roads to get there.

spacetweek

icdg wrote:

What badly needs to be done, in that regard, is a major upgrade of the R120. Particularly with Adamstown on the way (some people seem to have renamed it "Adamstown Road", it was always the "Newcastle Road" to me), there is at least two humpback bridges on the road one of which has a stop-go on it. Also some pretty bad bends. They seem to be doing some work on it at Adamstown at the moment, but IMO more needs to be done.

On the dev plans there are long term plans to upgrade this road as far as Baldonnel mainly using a new alignment. However it won't be for ages apart from a phase or two which are going ahead in the short term.

The bridge right beside Adamstown is being widened at the mo to provide extra capacity in light of developments nearby. They seem to be building a new bridge alongside the old one but I'm not sure what their plans are for the old one. In any case I believe the old one will need further changes when the Kildare Route Project starts.

jimmycrackcorm

How did this road manage to get built with 8000 objection signatures?
The road to woodies is bad enough at present never mind once it joins up to the N7.

murphaph

MT: The ORR hs decent signage AFAIR but I don't know it's route number. It'll likely be R1xx

As for people who buy into car dependent estates complaining about new roads, well, I'll hold my tongue. Anyway, look at the SDCC and FCC development plans and you can see a whole new mesh of roads covering west Dublin, so the ORR is just one aspect to it. We badly need these distributor roads in West Dublin as currently all this traffic is being carried by either the M50 or the cart tracks that have been there since I was a kid growing up in Newcastle. In those days hardly any traffic passed through the village, now everyone from Celridge travelling to Tallaght etc. has no real choice but to and the roads can't cope.New didtributors are needed*.


*Usual point about publc transport being the soluion applies but we need good roads to run good bus services too!

spacetweek

jimmycrackcorm wrote:

How did this road manage to get built with 8000 objection signatures?
The road to woodies is bad enough at present never mind once it joins up to the N7.

It didn't. The 8000 signatures resulted in the original plans (dualler) being downgraded to what they're building now. The original plans would have had the road encroach too much on existing estates especially up near the Woodies bridge.

Capt'n Midnight

The road from Woodies past Lidl is being widened. They are working on the stretch south of Lidl. Then two roundabouts up there are barriers. Another 100m of roadworks, but at least one layer of tarmac is down. Then Dual carraigeway all the way to Wyeths, over the railway and canal.

The east road from newlands road (balgaddy) to newcastle road is just hard core at the moment, grading not finished and no tarmac

murphaph

Cheers for the detailed update captain. The road will form a nice bit of relief and in decades to come it'll provide a quality bus corridor feeding into the DART and Luas at Tallaght. These orbital dirtributors are a key (but unsung) apsect of developing quality public (and private) tansport in this city.

TheMonster

Does anyone know if they are going to upgrade where this road connects to the N4. Hopefully the new bus lane will join the N4 without ending first as it currently does?

murphaph

TheMonster wrote:

Does anyone know if they are going to upgrade where this road connects to the N4. Hopefully the new bus lane will join the N4 without ending first as it currently does?

Yeah, if you've been there in the past month you'll see they are building a parallel flyover there to widen the carriageway to S4 (single carriageway 4 lane) all the way to the QBC at Woodies. Proper bus priority measures at last.

TheMonster

about time too

jmkennedyie

Yep - re the N4 Lucan Woodies flyover I understand they are actually constructing a pedestrian bridge at the moment so that they can remove the footpaths on the existing bridge and turn it into 4 lanes.

murphaph

Interesting. I just presumed from the width of the support structure north of the N4 that it'd be for a road deck. They'll do very well to squeeze an additional two lanes from an existing bridge (footpaths are only 1m wide each and a road lane must be around 3m minimum (I'm not sure but I know a motorway lane is 3.75m wide).

Chris_533976

jmkennedyie wrote:

Yep - re the N4 Lucan Woodies flyover I understand they are actually constructing a pedestrian bridge at the moment so that they can remove the footpaths on the existing bridge and turn it into 4 lanes.

Sorry but this screams "Irish solution to a problem" to me.

Just build a proper new traffic bridge and stop messing about with the old one thats probobly old and falling apart anyway. In 10 years time the 4lane bridge will be in terrible condition and will have to be torn down and replaced anyway. And knowing this country, the pedestrian bridge will then be in the way of the new traffic bridge and that will have to be demolished too, wasting another ton of money.

AKA Sarsfield Road Roundabout in Cork. When they build a flyover over the rounabout they'll have to destroy the nice new pedestraian bridge they made a huge fuss and bother over.

spacetweek

Chris_533976 wrote:

Sorry but this screams "Irish solution to a problem" to me.

Just build a proper new traffic bridge and stop messing about with the old one thats probobly old and falling apart anyway. In 10 years time the 4lane bridge will be in terrible condition and will have to be torn down and replaced anyway. And knowing this country, the pedestrian bridge will then be in the way of the new traffic bridge and that will have to be demolished too, wasting another ton of money.

AKA Sarsfield Road Roundabout in Cork. When they build a flyover over the rounabout they'll have to destroy the nice new pedestraian bridge they made a huge fuss and bother over.

Stop ranting Chris. The bridge is only 15-20 years old and is highly unlikely to be falling apart (what's the lifetime of a bridge you civil engineers?) It won't be replaced with another or larger bridge - and rightly so - as that was the original plan and was shot down by residents due to the fact that it would encroach on their property too much. The new bridge is already taking enough land from Woodies as it is.
4 lanes should be enough for anyone. I don't think roads should take priority over people.

jmkennedyie

Confirmation re pedestrian/cycle bridge at N4 Lucan Woodies: http://www.sdublincoco.ie/index.aspx?pageid=1461

Existing roundabout junctions at Balgaddy, Pennyhill and Ballyowen on the existing Outer Ring Road (Ballyowen Road) are to be changed to traffic signal controlled junctions, while junction modifications and a new pedestrian/cycle bridge are proposed at the N4 Ballydowd Interchange.

I tried to confirm the 4 lanes, but it's not clear from the map/images in the EIS. I expectthey will be 2 traffic lanes + 2 bus lanes. Maybe they will widen the bridge a foot or two as they seem to be doing on the Naas/Maudlins bridge at the moment.

Victor

murphaph wrote:

Interesting. I just presumed from the width of the support structure north of the N4 that it'd be for a road deck. They'll do very well to squeeze an additional two lanes from an existing bridge (footpaths are only 1m wide each and a road lane must be around 3m minimum (I'm not sure but I know a motorway lane is 3.75m wide).

Sometimes, bus lanes aren't even the necessary 2m, never mind the recommended 3m.

spacetweek

jmkennedyie wrote:

I tried to confirm the 4 lanes, but it's not clear from the map/images in the EIS. I expectthey will be 2 traffic lanes + 2 bus lanes. Maybe they will widen the bridge a foot or two as they seem to be doing on the Naas/Maudlins bridge at the moment.

Naas Maudlins - I'm not familiar with that bridge, where is it? What's being done to it?

murphaph

spacetweek wrote:

Naas Maudlins - I'm not familiar with that bridge, where is it? What's being done to it?

It's the trumpet intechange at the beginning of the M7 at Naas, the one with the big NRA ball sculpture beside it. It looks like it's being strengthened and possibly widened a little. It was hit a few times in its life.

D'Peoples Voice

murphaph wrote:

Cheers for the detailed update captain. The road will form a nice bit of relief and in decades to come it'll provide a quality bus corridor feeding into the DART and Luas at Tallaght. These orbital dirtributors are a key (but unsung) apsect of developing quality public (and private) tansport in this city.

Here is someone who is finding the outer link road is not all things to all men
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=53398333&postcount=2045
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=53401621&postcount=2051

Personally I find it's a fantastic way of getting from Naas on the N7 to Chapelizod village without using the M50!
It's gets the thumbs up from me!