[Article] Shannon tunnel section complete

Victor

http://www.rte.ie/news/2008/0928/shannon.html

Shannon tunnel section complete
Sunday, 28 September 2008 15:34

The last concrete section of the Shannon tunnel was laid beneath the River Shannon in Limerick this morning.

The 20,000 tonne concrete structure was sunk beneath the river in a pre-dredged channel as part of the €500m Limerick tunnel project.

The tunnel will be 915m in length.

It is one of the largest infrastructural projects in the west of Ireland.

It will also complete the Limerick south ring road project, which will give Limerick its fourth river crossing, linking the city's dock road with the dual carriageway leading to Shannon and Ennis.

The four-year project is due to be completed in 2010.

BluntGuy

Could somebody explain how the N20/N7 interchange shown at http://www.limericktunnel.com/Section6-N7Interchange.html is actually gonna work? Their diagram is kinda difficult to make out.

Chris_533976

Herea ya go

http://www.limericktunnel.com/RouteMapInteractive.html

Cute little car and everything.

Zoney

There will be no access *from* the N20 across to Childers Road once the junction is completed. Traffic arriving from Cork, Kerry, West Co. Limerick will have to go onto the ring road and enter the city via the N69 Dock Road or N24 Tipp Road.

That is going to be rather hellish for commuters into the city - the Dock Road is a disaster already and it will only be more congested from the new junction for the ring road - which is just being tacked on to the existing Cement Factory roundabout. At the Dock Road a second roundabout will be added and some slips thrown down to it and the existing four exit roundabout (Dock Road, Foynes Road, Cement Factory, Link Road to Raheen).

As if things weren't a mess already with the cheap and messy job they did on the Tipp Road junction (a "diamond" junction - even poorer than the "dumbell" plan for the Dock Road). That had tailbacks onto the dual carriageway it was so inadequate for peak traffic, and now that they've added lights it just switches the tailbacks to the main N24 Tipperary Road.

As for the Newport Roundabout - I do not have any great hopes of a sane solution there when the Limerick-Nenagh motorway is hooked up.

Sorry to sound so despondant, but Limerick is not that big a place and it should be possible to put in place the infrastructure to avoid the disproportionate traffic chaos that is a regular feature at particular choke points. Instead, the new infrastructure is just creating new problems due to ill-conceived junctions.

BluntGuy

Poor junctions seem to be quite a common feature on toll roads.

I presume they're to annoy motorists into using the road...

The restricted-access nature of Coonagh West interchange is going to contribute significantly to traffic problems, as it doesn't allow access from the new road to Clonmacken from the southbound carriageway.

Now admittedly, there is an alternate route available, but I can't help but feel that the junction would have permitted that movement if it hadn't been a tolled PPP.

Also, the dock-road interchange is a disaster.

And after looking at the map, I finally understand how the N20/N7 (or M7 perhaps) interchange is going to work. At least it'll be partially free-flow, which they should be doing for major junctions on all new road building schemes (I hope the person that dreampt up that hideous 'Grannagh Interchange' is listening).