Removal of tolls make any difference?

minikin

I have recently started commuting from Clondalkin to Balbriggan across the n50... just occurs to me that the worst of the traffic northbound is after the toll bridge up to the blanch exit... how will removing the toll bridge make any difference to this? (took an extra half hour to get to work this morning).

surely the real problem is that the roads off the n50 just can't handle the volume

I think we've been sold a pup, why did the exchequer have to hand over so much cash to ntr to buy them out when nothing is really going to improve... if anything they could have left ntr there and insisted that they put the barrier free tolling system in place.

paulm17781

minikin wrote: »

I think we've been sold a pup, why did the exchequer have to hand over so much cash to ntr to buy them out when nothing is really going to improve... if anything they could have left ntr there and insisted that they put the barrier free tolling system in place.

Because people whined and winged and said the tolls were the delay when they weren't. The government eventually paid a huge amount to get rid of this and now all the same people will find something new to give out about. Probably because this was paid. People who understand roads (here) said long ago it would make F all difference.

Note: I'm not aiming that at you, just giving the facts behind why it was done

minikin

seems incredibly shortsighted... simple solution to it all is to issue a rotating orange light to all drivers so that we can all belt up the roadworks access lane

Was this *makes gesture of something really tiny* close to doing it this morning...

Cookie_Monster

minikin wrote: »

I think we've been sold a pup, why did the exchequer have to hand over so much cash to ntr to buy them out when nothing is really going to improve... if anything they could have left ntr there and insisted that they put the barrier free tolling system in place.

The exchequer will get all the cash back in less than 5 years from tolls anyway so its not really costing them anything in the long run.

Doesn't solve the problem though...

OTK

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

The exchequer will get all the cash back in less than 5 years from tolls anyway so its not really costing them anything in the long run.

Doesn't solve the problem though...

The buyout price was 600m. While NTR had the concession, the state was already collecting most of the toll revenue through a royalty charge plus VAT. NTR was making about 12m a year profit. So we bought a 12m/ year revenue stream for 600m. The state will make its money back in 50 years.

600m to transfer a traffic jam from one part of the M50 to another. wahey

seamus

paulm17781 wrote: »

Because people whined and winged and said the tolls were the delay when they weren't.

Well, they are. But they're part of it, not the whole thing.

Removal of the toll bridge will ease traffic massively approaching the N4 exits - the N3 exit doesn't account for most of the traffic left queueing 2km back from the bridge.

The N3 had/has similar issues to the N7 - the volume of traffic meant that people had to queue on the motorway to get onto the slip road. Then all it takes is one idiot to stop in either lane and try to squeeze into the queue, and the whole system backs up.

Hopefully they have plans to reconfigure the Blanch exit - the need to remove the second roundabout and add a slip road off the slip road for traffic which wants to go into the town, instead of having lights on a dual carriageway.

paulm17781

But this was pointless waste of 600m when the money could have been better spent elsewhere. If they left the toll bridge and made the other necessary improvements, it probably would have made the need to remove the toll bridge redundant.

Jip

The reason for the build up after the toll going northwards is the roadworks that side of the motorway. Before the roadworks began you knew once you got through the toll you were more or less home free apart from the occasional spot of congestion here and there.
Same goes for the way it was southbound, once you got through the toll you were hit with a wall of traffic, now there's nothing.

seamus

paulm17781 wrote: »

If they left the toll bridge and made the other necessary improvements, it probably would have made the need to remove the toll bridge redundant.

How so? The toll bridge is basically a red light in the middle of the M50.
I'd say it takes an average of about 8 seconds (off the top of my head) for a vehicle to pull up to the bridge, pay the money and pull away again. With 6 (?) barriers, the throughput of the bridge in one direction is roughly 45 vehicles per minute.

If you think about the two-lane M50 at rush hour, the traffic will be fairly tight, probably around 25m separation between the vehicles. If the vehicles are travelling at 80km/h, then in any given minute, 27 vehicles will arrive in each lane at the toll bridge. This means that every minute, 9 more vehicles arrive at the toll bridge than can get through.

It doesn't sound like a lot, but after 30 minutes, a queue of 270 vehicles will have built up at the bridge, 135 in each lane. If each vehicle is 2m long, with a separation of 1m between the vehicles, then the queue in each lane is 405m long. And that's only after half an hour.

Of course this is in an ideal situation. In reality, most of the vehicles only use half of the gates, and vehicles have to share the lanes with slower ones like trucks.

markpb

paulm17781 wrote: »

But this was pointless waste of 600m when the money could have been better spent elsewhere. If they left the toll bridge and made the other necessary improvements, it probably would have made the need to remove the toll bridge redundant.

Officially the reason for the buyout is because DoT wanted to introduce free-flow tolling on the bridge but didn't want to pay for it. NTR didn't want to pay for it (why would they) and their contract didn't force them to. It also didn't force them to accept tags from all the other toll operators so the government bought it out so they could bring it into line with the rest.

It also helped to make them look good for people who don't know any better. €600m is a cheap way to buy a few more votes for FF.

L1011

OTK wrote: »

The buyout price was 600m. While NTR had the concession, the state was already collecting most of the toll revenue through a royalty charge plus VAT. NTR was making about 12m a year profit. So we bought a 12m/ year revenue stream for 600m. The state will make its money back in 50 years.

600m to transfer a traffic jam from one part of the M50 to another. wahey

They've also hiked the charges for many motorists, so the revenue stream should grow, as well as operating a tag system of its own, which was a separate cash maker for NTR...

Tipsy Mac

markpb wrote: »

It also helped to make them look good for people who don't know any better. €600m is a cheap way to buy a few more votes for FF.

How nice of FF to correct a problem they originally caused by selling the rights to the bridge with the bogiest contract ever written by people of such quality as Raymond Burke and George Redmond.

IIMII

seamus wrote: »

The toll bridge is basically a red light in the middle of the M50.

It is that.

Jip wrote: »

The reason for the build up after the toll going northwards is the roadworks that side of the motorway. Before the roadworks began you knew once you got through the toll you were more or less home free apart from the occasional spot of congestion here and there.

That is bang on - the toll plaza is a disaster, and it is only recently since the works that the north of the N3 junction has gotten really bad.

Terrontress

Tipsy Mac wrote: »

Raymond Burke

Sorry to be an utter, utter pedant but you'll find the correct name to have been Raphael.

Red Alert

Was it not Padraig Flynn who did that deal for the NTR cronies?