Three-lane motorways

lounge_lizard

Slightly off topic, but I am from the UK and our motorways have 3 lanes. Supposed to be slow lane and 2 overtaking lanes. But of course most people stick in the middle lane!

I have been down to blanch the past few weeks and found the traffic terrible. But if your motorways had an extra lane then a lot of the problems would be solved.

The buses, trucks, caravans, (spit!) and slow movers have the inside lane and we can all use the other 2. But as you only have the 2 lanes here many cars undertake if you are not going fast enough for them. This is so dangerous and I have seen many cars totalled in the UK for doing the same thing.

If the govt want to cut down on accidents, why not build another lane? It would be cheaper then the cost of providing ambulances, fire trucks, police, court cases, etc?

Sorry just my 2 pence!

Andrew Duffy

Adding lanes to motorways is expensive and counter-productive - making a route more attractive leads to more traffic using it. In any case, the motorway-like N7 and N4 have been or are being widened near Dublin and the M50 is being widened for most of its length.

Calina

lounge_lizard wrote:

Slightly off topic, but I am from the UK and our motorways have 3 lanes. Supposed to be slow lane and 2 overtaking lanes. But of course most people stick in the middle lane!

I have been down to blanch the past few weeks and found the traffic terrible. But if your motorways had an extra lane then a lot of the problems would be solved.

The buses, trucks, caravans, (spit!) and slow movers have the inside lane and we can all use the other 2. But as you only have the 2 lanes here many cars undertake if you are not going fast enough for them. This is so dangerous and I have seen many cars totalled in the UK for doing the same thing.

If the govt want to cut down on accidents, why not build another lane? It would be cheaper then the cost of providing ambulances, fire trucks, police, court cases, etc?

Sorry just my 2 pence!

An extra lane is being put in on the M50 and I think although I'm not au fait with all the details than an outer ring road is being built as well. That being said, much of the issues here relate to the excessive amount of commuting so that what would be better is to try and get more people living within the C-ring area and onto public transport.

Unfortunately that's a little harder and a good bit more expensive in the short term than widening the M50 and wringing your hands. If it's any consolation, it's what the British are planning to do as well - add extra lanes to motorways rather than sorting out the mess that is public transport.

Victor

Split from other thread.

Please keep posts kinda relevant.

Capt'n Midnight

Having an extra lane would only work if people here knew how to use motorways. It's an enforcement problem. Driver training is not an issue when 20% of the population have provisional licenses and no one is restriciting them driving.

Irish drivers are too selfish, they will drive in the fast lane because they know other of their ilk won't let them pull out again. And so the muppet doing 95 kmph , who could pull into the left ever minute or two to allow faster motorists to progress, instead determines the maximum speed of all road users. On M50 the outside lane is treated as a "fast lane" not as an overtaking lane. And it's not that fast, in many cases you are better off staying on the inside lane.

Until people who obstruct the overtaking lanes on our motorways and dual carraigeways are sorted a huge chunk of the NRA's budget is wasted.

In manchester or was it leeds they are running a trial of using the hard shoulder as an extra lane when traffic is so heavy and slow you don't need a run off area.

With a bit of luck and planning we might get variable speed limit signs on gantrys on the M50. When the speed drops to 60Kmph the signs indicate you are allowed to use the hard shoulder.

Zoney

The M7 from the end of the Naas Road upgrade, all the way to the junction with M9, needs to be upgraded to three lanes, and fast.

The average daily traffic volumes in 2006 almost reached the NRA recommended limits for *wide* two lane motorway. And those figures were a 10% increase on 2005.

The mind boggles what it will be like when the HQDC to Waterford opens. The section of N9 between the M9 and Paulstown (N10 for Kilkenny) is not far below the limit for 2+1 in places, hence the need for DC.

As for Paulstown-Waterford, I really think there will be a lot more commerce and traffic with DC all the way to Dublin.

If you want to look for yourself, the traffic counter data is available on the NRA website here- though the links to each counter are broken (you need to replace a backslash in the links with a forward slash). The summary data elsewhere on the site is useless - as in car-loving Ireland, figures from 2003 are pretty useless.

Zoney

Data from M07-35 (Lewistown - just north of M7/M9 junction):

AADT for 2006: 52139
AADT for 2005: 47016

Recommended AADT max for standard/wide D2M: 52,000/55,500 *

Just south of the M7/M9 junction traffic is about 18,400 less, M07-31.

*Table 4: Recommended Rural Road Layouts, Interim Advice Note on Road Link Design for 2+1 roads, NRA, Feb 2006, p6/2 (41 of PDF).