Limerick city traffic - looming catastrophe?

Zoney

Limerick doesn't have a great road network at present; there are few main arteries, they are just two lane urban roads, and there are particular bottlenecks on all sides of the city. Raheen/South of the city - Punches Cross, Dock Road, Childers Road, John Carew Park Link to N20; Caherdavin - Condell Road, Ennis Road and Northern Relief Road; Corbally - Junction with the Northern Relief Road; Castletroy - Childers Road (thanks to the retail park), Mulgrave St. & Parkway (both complicated by queues due to lights either end St. Patrick's Road), Groody R'bout, Golf Links Rd. junction.

Well, with the Southern Ring Road being completed, it's going to get worse. The existing access from N20 dual carriageway to Childers Road will be closed. Motorists will have to travel onto the Ring Road around to the already congested Dock Road or the Tipp Road. The former junction will be slips down to the existing cement factory roundabout with another rbout on the other side of the ring road for the other two slips. The latter junction is an already inadequate and dangerous cheap diamond junction.

Now here is where the fun continues. The Dublin Road between Groody and the Parkway is a nice 4 lane road that the NRA provided. The council already have lights put in for the Parkway Retail Park - these are fine for now, but a new shopping centre is being built, the largest in Limerick, the LiffeyParkway Valley Shopping Centre right alongside this part of the Dublin Road (there are currently six full cranes and various smaller ones - that gives an idea of the scale). At the bottom of the hill there is a junction thus far without lights, and getting busy just with an Aldi off it and residential access to Rhebogue (already the median filter lane overflows). Right by it on the other side of the road, a high-rise hotel is to open, with another retail park (and possibly more to come).

A slight consideration of how traffic will play out will suggest obvious disaster between Groody and Parkway Rbouts, the Childers Road is already a disaster prior to this, and those seeking to escape via Tipp Road (e.g. through link by Brookfield etc.) will have to contend with traffic from the N20 accessing the city (and Parkway Valley) via the Ring Road junction there.

The Dock Road isn't a sane option even prior to the floodgates of the ring road opening onto it. The mind boggles what it will be like.

And no doubt we'll have N20 traffic switching back to the old road through Raheen (old N20) and exacerbating problems at the junction with Childers Road and Punches Cross.

Woohoo!

Anyone up for some more walking? Ah - of course, the construction dust and traffic fumes don't do much for one, not to mention the weather, darkness and haphazard protection (hah) of peds at crossings as well as the ubiquitous road works and site entrances. How about the bus? You know, the one that with *current* traffic problems can have you waiting for 45 mins despite a schedule of buses every 15 mins? Oh, and cause they are still only single deck buses and infrequent at rush-hour, they'll be too full to take everyone on board at peak times, despite the hellish trips and poor journey time dampening demand.

fricatus

My knowledge of Limerick's specific bottlenecks is limited, but the Dock Road and Condell Road have been on AA Roadwatch Bingo for a long time!

What I can say is that the traffic problems in Irish cities outside Dublin are the biggest blind spot in the government's transport policies. We're all well aware of Dublin's traffic problems, but they get discussed on Prime Time, the Port Tunnel has been built, the M50 is being widened and its junctions improved, the Luas has been built to Tallaght and Sandyford with more lines planned. Metro North is also in the pipeline, and we're constantly hearing about QBCs.

Similarly, the problems of moving between cities are being addressed, particularly with the interurbans all under construction to one extent or another.

Apart though from a token mention of "more buses", there doesn't seem to be much in the line of commitment from central government about solving the traffic problems in Galway, Waterford and Limerick. Cork suffers too, but seems to have had a master plan for many years and is surprisingly well run from a transport point of view.

Where I live in Waterford, it has more than once taken me 25 minutes to drive the one mile from my house in Grantstown to the regional hospital at Ardkeen, plus a further fifteen minutes to get to Rice Bridge. There were no roadworks, it wasn't even raining! It was just an October morning at 8.05 and I was a little late getting out the door. That's 40 minutes to drive three miles across a small city (or large town if it was seen in a British/French/German context). That's extreme, but 30-35 minutes is the norm for that three-mile journey between 8 and 9, weekdays, September-April. Mile for mile, it's worse than anywhere I've seen in Dublin, with the possible exception of Ranelagh.

The worst thing is, we just accept it. It's never ever raised in any forum as being an issue. The national media concentrate on Dublin, and if Limerick city council is anything like Waterford city council, they're short on funds but also on ideas on solving the traffic problems. Nobody is taking responsibility.

Chris_533976

I'd say what a lot will do is come up the N20 from the Cork direction, come off at the Dock Road interchange, come back on Eastbound and go up the Childers road that direction.

Its a stupid system, they're removeing N20NB - Childers access to stop queueing, but the Dock Road interchange is going to be a nightmare soon.

I think they also did it too to encourage more people to use the toll somehow.


Galway is a traffic nightmare, I wouldnt move there FOR THAT REASON. The Bishop O Donnell road is back up at 9pm on a Sunday for gods sake. 55k vehicles a day on S2 as far as I know.

Cork isnt too bad I must say. Once Sarsfield/Bandon are done and the Dunkettle Interchange somehow upgraded it wont be that bad, save for Tivoli where it goes 2 lanes into 1.

1huge1

There closing that road that goes up beside the quality hotel once the tunnel is opened? thats madness. When they built the South ring road a few years ago they added barely any slip roads and now there making it worse.

While I'm in Limerick a lot driving i've never had to be there at rush hour too many times but the times I have been there during rush hour it was unbearable and some people have to do it every day.

Zoney

Chris_533976 wrote: »

Its a stupid system, they're removeing N20NB - Childers access to stop queueing, but the Dock Road interchange is going to be a nightmare soon.

I think they also did it too to encourage more people to use the toll somehow.

There is a reason (though not a good one) that the links won't be provided for N20 north or N7 west to Childers Road. It's not to do with the tolls, and it's not (amazingly) the NRA's fault. The *current* Limerick City Council were also taken unawares despite the EIS being in the public domain (Shades of Douglas Adams - "The first I knew about it was when a workman arrived at my home yesterday. I asked him if he'd come to clean the windows and he said no he'd come to demolish the house"..."But Mr. Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine months").

EDIT: Re: Quality Hotel, I'm glad I'm not someone investing in that!

mysterious

I'll keep this short and sweet..


Firstly this mess is totally and only the LCC fault. At this stage all is now showing is their ignorance.

In what country would allow this kind of mass scale building of 5 or 6 huge developments all built one area and in the space of 3 years with little or no proper road infastructure put it in place at all, bar the NRA funded S4 lane merge at the Parkway RO (which was long overdue anyway).

Zoney, As far as I know,
The planners of the Parkvalley development agreed to add free flowing slips + tunnels to and from the existing S4 road in their planning application, but dissapointingly there will still be another set of lights and another entrance from the groody side. Absurd to be honest and is way beyond suitable. It's going to be a disaster.

LCC were also planning to tunnel all pedestrian movements in and around the Parkway RO to separate pedestrian movements from motor traffic and allow direct access from the retail park to the existing S.C. Still not going to sort traffic though but at leasts it's something, heck they might have brushed this under the carpet.

P.S

LCC get your finger out.
There is only solution in which will sort your mess, is to build a park and ride train station at the old Parkway S.C.
The critical mass is there
The infastructure is there
the rail line is there,
two other lines to play with, both intercity and commuter
the best suited location in the city to build a proper public transport interchange.
And one of Limerick's biggest suburbs could be serviced by this station.

LCC will probably scrap this idea and build a bloody residental block instead, and that's the sick truth of it.

Zoney

mysterious:

The area in question spans Limerick City Council and Limerick County Council. While a lot of traffic problems are in the City Council area, they can't do much without the rates from the retail developments just outside the city boundary in Limerick's suburbs that are causing a lot of the traffic.

The boundary extension should have gone ahead years ago. Either it makes sense to have a separate city council, or it doesn't. If it does make sense, and for a city the size of Limerick in Ireland it is not too unreasonable, then one logically would include the whole city. At present only about half the city under the city council - the half that is mostly social housing! Is it surprising then that Limerick city centre fares so poorly?

trellheim

County get revenue from the developments; City don't.

County won't give them up without being ordered to.

Cushtie

Dock Road is a nightmare now. if you are not hitting it at around 8.05 - 8.10 in the morning you will be lucky to be in work in city centre for 9. (and is only a couple of km's)

I shudder to think what it will be like if what the OP says will happen.

DarkJager

Traffic outbound on Dock Road has been improved greatly since they redone the lanes. A few months ago I would leave work at 5pm and would meet traffic at the coonagh roundabout onto the condell road. These days, there is no traffic until you reach Jurys Inn (or the new Centra on the dock road because of whoever decided a merging lane there would be a good idea). Can't really say anything on the other routes as I don't frequently use them but I'm happy with what they've done there.

Zoney

DarkJager:

There are now two lanes outbound for a significant distance, but one lane inbound. This is indeed helping brilliantly with the traffic going out at present, but not with the traffic going into town. When the ring road opens, there will be even more traffic trying to go inbound on the Dock Road.

Also the planned cheapo "dumbell" junction (i.e. twin roundabouts either side below the ring road on the Dock Road - one being the existing Cement Factory roundabout) will snarl up with conflicting movements (e.g. traffic for Raheen coming off ring road eastbound will conflict with Dock road outbound traffic for ring road westbound). There being only a single lane either way at the Cement Factory roundabout end of the Dock Road will, if unchanged, not help the situation.

The dumbell junction isn't suitable for a junction between a national primary road (N7 SRR) and a busy national secondary road (N69 Dock Road) but considering they put in an even lower capacity "diamond" junction for the N7/N24 junction, it's not surprising.