[PR] Dublin Cyclists Slam NRA's disgraceful stance on City centre Lorry ban

Victor

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Press Release: Dublin Cyclists Slam NRA's disgraceful stance on City centre Lorry ban
From: Dublin Cycling Campaign
Date: 11 February 2007

For immediate use
The Dublin Cycling Campaign (DCC), has slammed the NRA's opposition to the banning of HGVs from Dublin city centre as utterly disgraced. David Maher PRO of the DCC explains "The whole point of spending €800 million of tax payers money on building the Dublin Port tunnel (DPT) was to remove the HGVs from the city centre. Now having finally built the tunnel, years late and 100's of millions of euros over budget the NRA seem determined to divert HGVs away from orbital M50 route and the heart of the city. Where is the logic in that ?"

Maher continued "The NRA seem to have a Martini attitude to HGV management, pursing an "Any time, any place, anywhere" approach to HGV access to the city centre. This type of shambolic panic-management is typical of the NRA. The M50 which was supposed to allow non-Dublin bound traffic to bypass the city, has instead been allowed to fuel urban sprawl which has allowed the motorway to become a virtual car park."

Maher challenged the NRA to name another capital city is the world where road planners endorsed a policy of diverting huge HGVs into the city centre to reduce congestion on orbital routes.

Maher concluded "Either the NRA believe allowing HGVs unfettered access to the city centre is safe or they simply don't care whether it is safe or not. Management within the NRA must be made morally, and if necessary criminally accountable for pursuing a policy that will see innocent road users needlessly being killed by HGVs in the city centre."

ENDS

The DCC is a voluntary organisation that represents commuter cyclists in Dublin

Victor

http://www.thepost.ie/post/pages/p/story.aspx-qqqt=NEWS-qqqs=news-qqqid=20855-qqqx=1.asp

NRA warned council about M50 chaos
11 February 2007 By Ian Kehoe

The National Roads Authority (NRA) warned Dublin City Council 12 months ago that its plan to ban heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) from the city centre was based on poor research and could lead to chaos for commuters on the M50.

The National Roads Authority (NRA) warned Dublin City Council 12 months ago that its plan to ban heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) from the city centre was based on poor research and could lead to chaos for commuters on the M50.

The NRA wrote to the council last February stating that there was a ‘‘significant knowledge gap in the decision-making process’’ in relation to the council’s HGV policy. It asked for the ban on trucks to be implemented on a phased basis over a number of years.

From February 19, all trucks with five axles or more will be banned from the city centre from 7am to 7pm, seven days a week. From then, the trucks will be forced the use the Port Tunnel and drive onto the M50 to access routes to the west or south of the country.

According to the NRA, the new policy is ill advised and will lead to a greater number of HGVs than expected using the M50, already one of the busiest roads in the country. In the letter, seen by The Sunday Business Post, the NRA said that it was not aware of any research or traffic-modelling that had been done to predict truck flow in the tunnel.

Furthermore, the state agency said that no assessments had been carried out on the impact that the corridor would have on M50 traffic.

‘‘The exact effects of the HGV management proposals on the tunnel itself and on the M50 motorway have not been assessed,” the letter states.

The NRA believes that HGVs will now be heading to a point where traffic is already being held up by a major upgrade project underway between the N81 and N4 junctions. Another major upgrade project is due to get underway next year.

Meanwhile, despite the government’s plans to go ahead with the purchase of the West Link toll bridge, barrier-free tolling is not due to come into operation until next year. With these problems on the M50, the NRA is warning that a blanket ban on HGVs using a southern access route - particularly to the South Port - would risk creating traffic chaos on the motorway.

A spokeswoman for the council said it still believed that the M50 ‘‘will be manageable’’.

She said that traffic modelling was not required and that the council had carried out its own research.

Calina

It's too late but....

this annoys me greatly. Construction on the tunnel started what, about five years ago? And it occurred to nobody in either the NRA or Dublin City Corporation to see where all that traffic should be routed after it was built? Were they not talking to each other? Do they talk to each other at all?

Where's the joined up thinking here?

Bards

what gets me is that DCC says "traffic modelling was not required and that the council had carried out its own research. "

mmm... me thinks it was a finger in the air to see which way the wind was blowing type of research

John R

Even if the NRA's doom and gloom scenario is correct routing the trucks via the M50 is still a valid decision.

Traffic congestion is only one of the issues.

The effect that running large numbers of trucks through the city centre has on the environment, health and safety of the city and it's population is a much more important factor than the possiblity of extra traffic congestion on a motorway.

The DCC are dead right to slap down the NRA for their myopic approach to the issue.

murphaph

It's all coming out in the wash now......that the DPT was NEVER intended to be a stand-alone project but was supposed to be just one part of the fabled Eastern Bypass. In this context it would have at least made some sense, but as a port access tunnel it is simply pointing the wrong way. The dogs in the street know a port access tunnel should have been built from the N4 junction with the M50 and run under the quays, mirroring where the trucks run on surface streets!

spacetweek

murphaph wrote:

It's all coming out in the wash now......that the DPT was NEVER intended to be a stand-alone project but was supposed to be just one part of the fabled Eastern Bypass. In this context it would have at least made some sense, but as a port access tunnel it is simply pointing the wrong way. The dogs in the street know a port access tunnel should have been built from the N4 junction with the M50 and run under the quays, mirroring where the trucks run on surface streets!

Trucks aren't unstoppable entities. They'll go where they're told to go, as in other cities.

Calina

A couple of points.

The Dublin Port Tunnel could never be a stand alone project - it's part of a network and you're not going to have a situation whereby people just drive up and down it all day long without getting to it from another road or leaving it to go to another road.

Regards trucks going where they're told: that's fine. What if two agencies are telling them to go two different places? The NRA are, in my opinion, mad here. They should have the objective of building a viable and sensible road network for the country. If this is true and they feel that trucks that are to be taken off city streets should be put right back on them, then I question whether they are qualified to carry out this objective.

The M50 is not up to carrying the amount of traffic that uses it. Everyone knows this. With the tunnel in construction for 5 years it is inexplicable to me why it didn't occur to anyone with the requisite authority to put two and two together and extend the M50 before the tunnel finished. If the two powers that be, namely Dublin City Corp and the NRA weren't talking, then I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. And given that the NRA managed to build a 30 plus miles stretch of motorway without one service area, then I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that they seem to be the ones less attached to reality in this saga.

Zoney

Calina wrote:

The NRA are, in my opinion, mad here.

Absolutely. Instead of this nonsense, it is surely their responsibility to accelerate a traffic flow solution for the port to N4(N5,N6) and N7(N8,N9).

Whether this means another tunnel (like the original crazy 70s plans for motorways in Dublin, incl. M50 and Eastern Bypass, called for), providing alternatives to the M50 to lower overall traffic on it, or something else entirely, who knows - but it is surely their job to figure it out and come up with a rational well-thought out and expert-advised plan... rather than "AGGHGHHH! Too much traffic on the M50 - lads, stick all the trucks through the city centre!"

As for DCC - well, their priorities are in the right place (namely, city centre commerce), even if they are doing too good a hand-washing job with their not bothering to worry at all about the M50 bottleneck. I can imagine that unfortunately they probably have an antagonistic attitude towards the NRA at this stage.

Dublin Port with the Port Tunnel is at least in a better traffic situation than say, the one in Belfast... For one thing - from NI it is probably easier to get to Dublin Port than Belfast!!

bk

I'm a little confused, I understand that the restrictions are being put in place by DCC. But wasn't the prot tunnel actually built by the NRA?

Shouldn't the NRA thought of this before spending €750 million on the port tunnel?

And shouldn't they have either speed up the eastern bypass building or the M50 improvement projects or slow down the port tunnel project so that they would have been completed at the same time?

It seems rich to me that after all the money they spent on the port tunnel, they are turning around and saying, ah sure don't bother using it.

SeanW

If you ask me the whole thing was stupid, building a port tunnel to the North when presumably most of the trucks using it are heading for the Midlands, South and West, then dumping them onto the M50 which is already congested to the point of being a national joke, seriously what were they thinking?

Zoney

SeanW wrote:

seriously what were they thinking?

They've been working to a rough outline from about 27 years ago... have a look at the 1979 publication, Road Plans for the 1980s (or some such title). The plans for Dublin included an earlier form of the M50 (which unsurprisingly was built first). After that, there's the Eastern Bypass (DPT is the northern bit of this) and a link across/under the Northside of Dublin from somewhere near the start of the Port Tunnel to the N3 or thereabouts. No doubt they'll build that next rather than a sensible link to the N4 or N7 (or even better, a new route between the two crossing the M50 at the missing junction 8, with links to both M7 and M4 further out from the city).

Various things that were mooted long ago in the late 1970s have been happening even in the last ten years in a rather random (rather than prioritised) order. The Sligo Inner Relief Road and Bundoran bypasses from that era of plans. The Slane Bypass is also from the same era, and has not yet happened, despite less needed bypasses occurring.

DerekP11

murphaph wrote:

It's all coming out in the wash now......that the DPT was NEVER intended to be a stand-alone project but was supposed to be just one part of the fabled Eastern Bypass. In this context it would have at least made some sense, but as a port access tunnel it is simply pointing the wrong way. The dogs in the street know a port access tunnel should have been built from the N4 junction with the M50 and run under the quays, mirroring where the trucks run on surface streets!

Philip is right. Please think about it.