Swords road QBC

markpb

Anyone who takes the bus along the Swords QBC and has admired the architectural merits of Whitehall church while sitting in the blocked bus lane can take heart. The gardai have been instructed not to enforce that bus lane because some genius painted white lines but forgot to put up any signs.

Wishbone Ash

Are you referring to the bus lane between the end of the M1 and the junction with Collins Avenue (i.e. inbound)? I'm quite sure the signs used to be there!

markpb

Yep, that's the one. I was sure they used to be there too but the garda on point duty was quite sure. Said she'd raised it already and they weren't allowed to enforce it.

markpb

Apparently the signs are to be fitted before lunchtime today

Heart

On a related note, the setting back of the boundary wall after the Collins Ave. junction inbound is taking shape.

Its hard to see from the road as the old wall still remains, but if you look at the traffic camera on the DCC website, you can see the new wall.

When completed this will mean that inbound buses will be able to continue from Whitehall Church across the junction in a bus lane connecting with the present bus lane opposite the Viscount pub. This is a terrible delay on buses at present.

H

Bluetonic

It's a quite badly designed bus lane in my opinion.

The bus lane should really be the middle lane of the road from the Shantalla slip, allowing the existing bus lane to become the left hand lane for Collins Avenue. The the bus lane should also continue along the Swords road southbound from Collins Avenue to Iveragh Road.

Or they could have incorporated a left turn into the side of the car park onto Collins Avenue allowing a left turn under flashing amber.

Just an idea anyhow.

markpb

Widening the road south of the junction will help a lot of but as Bluetonic says, the left turning lane before the junction is a bigger problem. That road is regularly jammed which will force buses to move right into a normal lane and then left back into the bus lane.

The whole thing could be solved very simply by putting bus priority lights at the end of the bus lane and holding regular traffic back behind the buses. This would let buses get to the head of the queue while the traffic is stopped. (Page 127 of this document)

flogen

Heart wrote: »

On a related note, the setting back of the boundary wall after the Collins Ave. junction inbound is taking shape.

Its hard to see from the road as the old wall still remains, but if you look at the traffic camera on the DCC website, you can see the new wall.

When completed this will mean that inbound buses will be able to continue from Whitehall Church across the junction in a bus lane connecting with the present bus lane opposite the Viscount pub. This is a terrible delay on buses at present.

H

Noticed that work being done, figured they were widening the road rather than the path!

Makes perfect sense, it's particularly stupid to have a bus lane, then a break, then a bus lane again as the time saved driving by Whitehall church is lost again as the bus waits to go into the middle lane at the point at which the bus lane ends (especially given that there's now a 'keep clear' box rather than a yellow box, which as I understand has no legal authority connected to it and is certainly ignored more than a yellow box is)

Not sure if the left lane will cause too much of a problem as the traffic turning left will be moving at the same time as the traffic going straight... kind of like what happens further up the road at the Drumcondra Garda station. The only problem you have here is people looking to turn left who decide to pull into the lane when it's still a bus lane which happens at Whitehall Church anyway.

zanardi

The alignment of the new section looks a bit strange, could it be that they're going to run a new buslane through the car park beside the church? Otherwise will buses have to do a left-right shimmy to get into the new part?