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M20 - Cork to Limerick [preferred route chosen; in design - phase 3]
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mysterious wrote: »They can buld a trumpet here, trumpets are not built because it has to have a high traffic demand. Trumpets are not expensive to build:rolleyes:
They cannot build a trumpet because the junction is supposed to serve the N21 and Croom both.
If they build a junction on the general scale of the N18/N19 junction and with 2 lanes all around the top and no overly sharp bends or inadequate sightlines then that is perfectly adequate.
There can be no trumpet unless you crayon Croom off the face of the earth
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The simple facts are as follows.
Once you are past Croom to the south and Adare to the west the traffic levels towards
a) Rathkeale / West Limerick
b) Cork / South Limerick
are circa 12500 AADT each ( 2008 and 2009 statistics)
The sections of the M20 that now justify Type1 and Motorway designation are
a) Fanningtown ( North Croom) to Limerick Ring Road
b) Velvetstown/Buttevant to Cork.
(and that is including a built N21 Adare and Cork NRR)
The section between Velvetstown and Croom, strictly speaking, could be a 2+2 EXCEPT that unlike pissant roads to Mayo and Kerry the M20 connects the second and third largest cities in Ireland and ALSO the fourth and second largest.
An argument can easily be made that any improvement over the goat track we have now will naturally lead to greater commercial interaction between those cities on the west coast and that a day 1 traffic scenario could jump considerably from 12500 to nearer the 20000 that would justify a Type 1 but which is not now the case.
A further argument needs to be made that an express bus service would be able to get from Galway to Cork , non stop , in well under 3 hours. This is about the limit of tolerance most people have for buses but nevertheless important.
Consequently we should look carefully at the National Imperative of strengthening this commercial corridor from Galway to Cork and should, in the case of the road from Croom to Buttevant....jump ahead of ourselves with a Type 1 and with motorway status.
The EIS has not looked at the Cork - Galway corridor in any great depth and this is a manifest weakness. The staging of the M20 into south and north may be designed to deliver this traffic ramp that will ( post facto) justify the Type 1 Motorway further north. I believe that a wide ranging investigation tying in the west would justify it now..or at least contemporneously with the southern section ....no matter what someone like Peter Sweetman tries on
Other than the equally clear case of Mullingar - Longford there is no National justification for any more interurban Type 1 motorways bar the odd bit on urban fringes of Sligo and Cork and Tralee east and Castlebar-Westport at a push but there is no national imperative implied there save north of Sligo. There are regional imperatives or local ones of course...but not National.
2+2 it shall be, at best, everywhere else. Lets get real and lets keep the powder dry to deal with the loonies who want us to stick to cycling our goat tracks for ever more or building silly train tracks where there are no people.0 -
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We need to be extremely careful or we're going to end up with a completely disproportionate demographic in the greater dublin area.
We already have that. However long term planning in the Cork - Galway corridor is particularly affected by green idiocy such as costly and unsustainable light rail schemes where we need a robust express bus network as much as anything.
We need to shoot down this infestation of silly sh1te rail schemes wherever they may be found and to focus instead on a simple and clear deliverable.
Con from Cork should be able to charge his 400mile max range electric car in Cork.
He should then be able to drive from Galway to Cork, and back, on one charge. This requires an efficient motorway network where Con can maintain a constant speed and not run out of juice in Buttevant on the way home.
Con should also have the CLEAR option of taking a bus, doing a days bizness in Galway and coming home to his family again, unfrazzled.
Only a motorway will let Con from Cork do a sustainable days business in Galway and come home to the bosom of Cons sustainable family in Cork and Cons loving kiddies who sustainably want to see Con before they are sent to bed. Con wants to read a sustainable bedtime tale of butterflies and green aphids to the kiddies too.
Idiot sh1te rail schemes that leave Con unsustainably scratching his hole in Limerick Junction cannot and will not do this. Down with that sort of thing for the good of Cons kiddies
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The development of Motorway will have to be met with very well applied controls on rural housing too though - otherwise you could end up further dispersing the nascent critical mass in both city regions across Co Cork and Limerick.
You may take it that there shall be no new housebuilding along that corridor for at least 10 years. North Cork and rural Limerick are simply rotten with empty one offs and ghost estates.
NAMA will probably show up at the Oral hearing with a plan to get LTEV out of these places ....and requiring a motorway
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Sponge Bob wrote: »The simple facts are as follows.
Once you are past Croom to the south and Adare to the west the traffic levels towards
a) Rathkeale / West Limerick
b) Cork / South Limerick
are circa 12500 AADT each ( 2008 and 2009 statistics)
The sections of the M20 that now justify Type1 and Motorway designation are
a) Fanningtown ( North Croom) to Limerick Ring Road
b) Velvetstown/Buttevant to Cork.
(and that is including a built N21 Adare and Cork NRR)
The section between Velvetstown and Croom, strictly speaking, could be a 2+2 EXCEPT that unlike pissant roads to Mayo and Kerry the M20 connects the second and third largest cities in Ireland and ALSO the fourth and second largest.
An argument can easily be made that any improvement over the goat track we have now will naturally lead to greater commercial interaction between those cities on the west coast and that a day 1 traffic scenario could jump considerably from 12500 to nearer the 20000 that would justify a Type 1 but which is not now the case.
A further argument needs to be made that an express bus service would be able to get from Galway to Cork , non stop , in well under 3 hours. This is about the limit of tolerance most people have for buses but nevertheless important.
Consequently we should look carefully at the National Imperative of strengthening this commercial corridor from Galway to Cork and should, in the case of the road from Croom to Buttevant....jump ahead of ourselves with a Type 1 and with motorway status.
The EIS has not looked at the Cork - Galway corridor in any great depth and this is a manifest weakness. The staging of the M20 into south and north may be designed to deliver this traffic ramp that will ( post facto) justify the Type 1 Motorway further north. I believe that a wide ranging investigation tying in the west would justify it now..or at least contemporneously with the southern section ....no matter what someone like Peter Sweetman tries on
Other than the equally clear case of Mullingar - Longford there is no National justification for any more interurban Type 1 motorways bar the odd bit on urban fringes of Sligo and Cork and Tralee east and Castlebar-Westport at a push but there is no national imperative implied there save north of Sligo. There are regional imperatives or local ones of course...but not National.
2+2 it shall be, at best, everywhere else. Lets get real and lets keep the powder dry to deal with the loonies who want us to stick to cycling our goat tracks for ever more or building silly train tracks where there are no people.
Its going to be motorway.0 -
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And a ban all the rest that clog this goat track on a semi-permanent basis!
Capacity and Level of Service are intertwined.
A road has less capacity at level of service D than at level of service C . That is because the cars are going faster at D than at C.
If you set a Level of service low enough a goat track would carry as many vehicles as a Motorway, albeit very very slowly
Major Inter Urbans such as Galway - Cork are designed to provide level of service D , continous 94kph on dual carriageway and continous 105kph on motorway.
M20 Constraints 2008 Page 18 of 200
Maxima
A Reduced Dual Carriageway can handle 21000 ( Rural) and 27,000 ( Commuter)
A Wide Dual Carriageway can handle 34600 ( Rural) and 45,000 ( Commuter)
A Motorway ( Wide dual form like M6) can handle 43500( Rural) and 56500 ( Commuter)
However absent the hard shoulder it is very easy to take a lane out of a reduced dual carriageway which is not an issue on a wide dual carriageway and thereby throttle its capacity and this is a particular issue where cars overheat from crawling in heavy traffic.
It is absolutely vital that there is no confusion about whether the M20 is a "MAJOR INTER URBAN" otherwise Isaac and his mates will play puck with the Buttevant to Croom section and will do their damndest to turn it into a 2+2 rollercoaster. National Policy is to have High service level motorways on Major Inter Urban routes and 2+2 roads connecting "Linked Hub" towns ....towns named in the National Spatial Strategy by the way.
If the regions themselves do not use the correct phrasing they are inadvertently playing into the hands of Isacc and the green nutjobs.
I recommend that EVERYBODY reading this from Cork and Limerick read their draft regional development plans and ensure they get the phrase "MAJOR INTER URBAN" inserted early and often into those regional development plans where the M20 and its corridor is mentioned.
Public submissions close shortly and time is short. The South west plan ( Cork) is here and the Midwest plan ( Limerick ) is here. email your submissions and tell your friends to do the same.0 -
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Sponge Bob wrote: »A Reduced Dual Carriageway can handle 21000 ( Rural) and 27,000 ( Commuter)
A Wide Dual Carriageway can handle 34600 ( Rural) and 45,000 ( Commuter)
A Motorway ( Wide dual form like M6) can handle 43500( Rural) and 56500 ( Commuter)
Is the difference due to poor driving skills by the rustics??
@Chris1234567
Certainly good news they are going ahead with Newlands Cross and Rathnew - Arklow. They get some priorities right!
Are some folk falling down when it comes to describing Cork-Limerick as "inter-urban"? Who? Why? When? Name and Shame them Sponge.0 -
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And heres the best image of the scheme so far. Note that Adare isnt shown, presumably because the route selection wasnt done at the time this image was made.
Edit: And for the road nerds, note how the junction numbering starts from the Cork side, which is the opposite of what is currently on the ground.0 -
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In other words... journey time reduced by over 60%.
This is no small reduction. Cork and Limerick will become very close with a 45-50 minute journey time as opposed to a 2 hour + one.
While I don't believe motorways magically trigger economic growth, it could certainly help act as part of a springboard to increased economic activity in the overall region.
Jaysus such a piece of infrastructure would certainly influence my choice of masters,UL is great for postgrads. Wait a minute what forum am i in?
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