Motorway redesignation Phase #2 released

serfboard

Skyhater wrote: »

The NRA did an OK job..... but our network cost too much and stupid mistakes were made in some cases.

Well, in fairness to them, when they started we, in this country, were new to the whole business of building large amounts of infrastructure, so, yes indeed, mistakes were made. However, I do think that we got better as time went on, in terms of design, project management and financial management of infrastructural development.

Zoney

serfboard wrote: »

Well, in fairness to them, when they started we, in this country, were new to the whole business of building large amounts of infrastructure, so, yes indeed, mistakes were made. However, I do think that we got better as time went on, in terms of design, project management and financial management of infrastructural development.

Here in Ireland the attitude of a lot of people is to make it up as you go along and never admit any ignorance or fallability. Sensible people look for advice. I'm not talking about hiring a bunch of consultants either, who are simply paid to do exactly as I describe so that politicians don't even have to do the "making it up as you go along" part.

Instead I question why the government could not have investigated for themselves as to how things are done on the continent or elsewhere, and what mistakes have been made by others.

The truth is, our government wasted billions and wasted years of opportunity as well (interurbans *should* have been finished by 2006 as originally promised). I do not think anyone should be making excuses for that, and certainly I don't understand why anyone but Fianna Fáil politicians *would* be making such excuses.

BluntGuy

I agree with the point about having ADS signage illuminated...

But the poor lighting, some of the tight curvature and lack of emergency telephones on recent motorways is to do with another problem...

... the fact they were originally intended to be high-quality dual-carriageways.

Look at the M8 Fermoy Bypass, designed as M from the beginning, so it came with the complete package: lighting at junctions, emergency telephones, less curvature in the road.

Compare it to the recent M8 Cashel-Mitchelstown. Lovely road, but no lighting at junctions, no emergency phones and it bobbles up and down and curves quite a lot compared to other motorways. Had it been M from the beginning, I'm sure much stricter guidelines would've been in place.

But these are all (apart from the curvature - but it's still safe to go 120 km/h), very fixable problems. Simply install lights on the ADS at junctions, install some lights at the junctions and add the emergency telephones. Yellow route markers are used sometimes on national primary roads, but I haven't seen any on motorways... again, that's a very fixable problem.

Continuity of signage. Well, we seem to have finally settled on a system (Next Edit ADS - 2km, 1km and 500m ADS etc.), now it needs to be incorporated into the new TSM (which should've been published a week ago actually :mad:), and put into law (like in the UK). The old motorways should have their signage replaced in time (the M1 already has the new 'Exit' signs at the gore).

This may sound like I'm being blaise... but in all honestly, I think all of these issues can be fixed with a minimum of fuss. But the lighting (particularly approaching junctions), I will concede from my own experience, is certainly the primary issue...

Lennoxschips

Loads of motorways in Europe have non-lit junctions, it's no biggie. I don't see why it should be necessary, especially on low-use rural motorways like in Ireland.

HQDC in Ireland is better than most motorways in Europe. Some people will never be pleased though.

BluntGuy

Lennoxschips wrote: »

Loads of motorways in Europe have non-lit junctions, it's no biggie. I don't see why it should be necessary, especially on low-use rural motorways like in Ireland.

HQDC in Ireland is better than most motorways in Europe. Some people will never be pleased though.

Well I already mentioned how our motorway is of quite a high standard, I was just replying to a previous post that listed the "problems" with our motorways.

My main issues are the lack of service stations (which is soon to be addressed) and junction lighting (I'll get to that in a second)...

Many of the "problems" can be fixed, as I said, with a minimum of fuss. But junction lighting is actually a legal requirement on motorways (as are phones), and I'm glad of it, I do think junctions should be at least partially lit regardless of what our European and American counterparts may do. I'm not asking for the ridiculous amounts of lighting we have on motorways such as the M1: just eight large lights (four if the junction is more compact - but our decceleration slips tend to be quite long), two at each slip road so it's easy to make your way on and off the mainline. And at least have some illuminated ADSs. That isn't much to ask IMO. If you're going to spend billions building high-quality motorway/HQDC, you may as well spent that extra bit to ensure that they are as safe as they possibly can be.

BluntGuy

Closing date for submissions was today...

Let's hope not too many people made complaints!

On the basis that this gets approved, I would expect the instrunment to be passed in January, coming into effect in April/May...

Chris_533976

I hope all this goes through well, but you never know after the N9 fiasco.

The only potential problems I can see -

People whinging about the Athlone bypass.
The fact that noone seems to notice that it'll be almost impossible for anyone travelling to Galway from the south on a provisional to do this (there'll be no alternative route for about 400m worth of carriageway until the old N18 bridge is built at Barefield).

Neither of them are major. Lets get this done and have a third tranche please.

BluntGuy

Chris_533976 wrote: »

Lets get this done and have a third tranche please.

Especially for the sections like the N25 Waterford bypass...

If that's built without being redesignated, then within the space of a few months, about 753 retail parks will be sellotaped onto it, ruining the road and utterly defeating its purpose...

I can't believe the section didn't go ahead with a motorway-order in the first place TBH...

As for the N9, there seems to be a certain group of people who seem determined to oppose it being made motorway... even though it makes the most logical sense... and as crappy as the old road is... tractors/cyclists/pedestrians etc do NOT belong on such a high-spec new DC... I hope it's included in the next tranch.

Other sections? Possibly bits of the N4, bits of the SRR, the Ballincollig bypass, the N7 Limerick Tunnel (if possible, just to join up to the N18 which will hopefully be M18 at some stage).

Chris_533976

N18 between Limerick and Shannon would need a complete rebuild, even moreso than the N25 Carrigtwohill - Midleton. It is riddled with local access and houses, had utterly crap junctions and in places the geometry isnt even up to 100kmh, let alone 120! Tho the Limerick Tunnel should be motorway though, I dunno why they didnt include it in #2.

I'd make the whole of the south ring (except between the roundabouts) motorway. If the Athlone bypass is up to it, so is the SRR. Get tractors and other nonsense off the Douglas viaduct. 80kmh speed limit too please!

AugustusMaximus

No thanks to the 80kph speed limit on the SRR.

There are plenty of inappropriate speed limits in this country as stands.

Zoney

Chris_533976 wrote: »

N18 between Limerick and Shannon would need a complete rebuild, even moreso than the N25 Carrigtwohill - Midleton. It is riddled with local access and houses, had utterly crap junctions and in places the geometry isnt even up to 100kmh, let alone 120! Tho the Limerick Tunnel should be motorway though, I dunno why they didnt include it in #2.

That's not strictly accurate. Between N19 junction and Bunratty bypass, the road was upgraded to HQDC with full grade separation, conversion of the old Shannon Town junction to a pair of slips on the northbound carriageway, and GSJ at Hurler's Cross. The Bunratty bypass (ordinary DC opened 1990) has a curve, but it is fine at 100km/h at least, and there are only one or two accesses onto it.

Between there and Setrights is pretty much straight but there are some left-in/left-out accesses to local roads. There's a bad curve just at Setrights and it is there that there are properties fronting onto the dual-carriageway, about a half-dozen houses. Between Setrights and Limerick is the bad part of the road for bends, and there are some private accesses onto this short stretch before where the new N7 SRR will connect (just before the Radisson).

So it is really only from the Limerick side of bunratty, to the Radisson that would present an obstacle to upgrading the N18. It's probably an obstacle big enough that it will remain so for the long term - but it is only about 5-6 km of road, not a vast section of N18.

Sponge Bob

Agreed Zoney, that and the Athlone bypass are 100kph roads in my mind at the most because of design constraints . 120kph is too much , in fact 90kph is probably overcooking it .

The section east of Bunratty is 1970s road design at its finest

jd

There may have been objections to upgrade of n11 sections to motorway by Wicklow Councillors.

http://www.wicklowpeople.ie/news/n11-speed-changes-slammed-as-crazy-1502615.html

http://www.wicklowpeople.ie/news/councillors-and-officials-on-collision-course-over-n11-1539545.html

ELECTED members of Wicklow County Council are on a collision course with council officials over plans to upgrade the N1 to Motorway status.
While the council executive support the move by the NRA, local councillors have made it clear that they will be objecting to any such proposals.
The elected members of the East Area Council of Wicklow County Council, under the Chairmanship of Cllr. Conal Kavanagh, have submitted their own objection with the Department of Transport in time for Friday's deadline.
The main problem revolves around the fact that the Rathnew and Arklow road improvement scheme is still on hold. The councillors feel that the increased motorway speeds would result in higher speeds entering the existing dual carriageway between Ballynabarney and Cooladangan.
'It's very premature of the NRA to try and go ahead with this change to motorway status at this time, and we are also surprised that the county council officials support it. I just can't see the logic,' says Cllr. Kavanagh.
'It indicates that there might be a lack of understanding by the council officials about local people's feelings.
'How would anyone feel it you are adjacent to a busy road that you can't cross because of the speed and levels of traffic, yet you see the NRA going ahead with motorway plans without any further safety measures? It can only increase local frustrations.'
The members are also unhappy that road users such as cyclists, agricultural vehicles and vehicles under 50 cc would be forced to travel through Arklow and Wicklow town if the change was introduced, contributing to even greater congestion.
It's also felt that the stretch of road from Kilmacanogue to Wicklow already contains different speed limits ranging from 100 km to 60 km.

BluntGuy

PROPOSALS TO upgrade sections of the N11 to motorway status have been described as 'crazy' and the NRA have been accused of 'putting the cart before the horse'.

Next to it, they have a picture captioned: "The bad bends on a stretch of road after Barndarrig on the N11" - with a picture of a stretch that doesn't have anything to do with the stretches being redesignated. They could've at least put a picture of the Gorey bypass or something. The way they've presented it, on first glance, it would seem that they are considering upgrading the twisty S2 shown in the picture to motorway. :eek:

Anyway, their main rationale in the article is:

It's ridiculous to say go faster at 120 but then slow down to 80 in a very short space of time

How is it ridiculous? Surely if we are to use this logic then all roads should be 120 km/h, because it's ridiculous to say that when one comes off a motorway they should slow down. A stupid point...

The decision will be made by the NRA

No it won't. The decision will be made by the minister.

If the NRA go ahead with the move, it would also have an affect on many different aspects of the road

*Sigh*

A badly written article with incredibly vague points IMO.

professore

mysterious wrote: »

Irish motorways are in fact different to the Uk's model

regardless of how many lanes. UK have lane widths of 3.75m
Ireland lane widths are 3.5m (european standard)

This would also explain why Uks motorway could be deemed safer. Not to mention the fact the alot of Irish people still don't know how to drive on motorways.

It's still really appalling here. No matter what the spec of the motorways are. Blunt our motorways are ok, there is nothing special about them.

It's scientifically proven that the wider the lanes the faster people will drive as they percieve they are going slower than they actually are. So you would expect the wider lanes to be less safe. I think it's our younger population coupled with lots of people who have no clue how to drive on motorways that might make ours less safe. Are there any stats to prove that ours have more accidents per km of motorway than theirs (purely motorway accidents not back roads in Donegal and the Wesht) ?

professore

Zoney wrote: »

Here in Ireland the attitude of a lot of people is to make it up as you go along and never admit any ignorance or fallability. Sensible people look for advice. I'm not talking about hiring a bunch of consultants either, who are simply paid to do exactly as I describe so that politicians don't even have to do the "making it up as you go along" part.

Instead I question why the government could not have investigated for themselves as to how things are done on the continent or elsewhere, and what mistakes have been made by others.

The truth is, our government wasted billions and wasted years of opportunity as well (interurbans *should* have been finished by 2006 as originally promised). I do not think anyone should be making excuses for that, and certainly I don't understand why anyone but Fianna Fáil politicians *would* be making such excuses.

I think that compared to other big projects undertaken by the government in the last 10 years the motorway programme is the ONLY one that can be considered a success overall. Sure, mistakes were made, but on the whole it's a good job.

Alun

BluntGuy wrote: »

A badly written article with incredibly vague points IMO.

It's the Wicklow People .. what did you expect? The same crap appeared in the Bray People and also in the local free rag, the Wicklow Times.

Chris_533976

Well, yeah I guess. The roads are being built which is good. However if you want to nitpick -

There should be no need for motorway redesignation as they should all have been M from day 1.
Nothing should have been built as Standard DC (eg: Cashel & Ennis bypasses)
The whole programme should have been rescheduled by demand, not by political muscle (eg: Why the M20 and M17 Claregalway arent done)
All the motorways should be M right up to the M50.
The NRA are ok at building motorways, but heaven help us if two or more join together. There is not one M-M junction in the country that isnt daft. (Think Red Cow + Turnpike farce, think M9/N25/N24, think M6/M17/M18)

BluntGuy

Alun wrote:

It's the Wicklow People .. what did you expect?

Not much tbh...

Alun wrote:

The same crap appeared in the Bray People and also in the local free rag, the Wicklow Times.

That figures... :rolleyes:

Many of the Galway papers made the same silly mistakes about the N18 Gort-Crusheen scheme...

Amtmann

I think one of us should email the "journalists" of all these regional newspapers and tell them to get their information here.

loyatemu

I think the councillors in Wicklow have a point here - part of the problem with the single-carriageway section of the N11 is that its sandwiched between 2 very fast dual-carriageway sections. Redesignating these to Mway won't make a huge difference to the safety of the bit in between, but it certainly won't help.

By all mean the NRA should apply for the redesignation, but they should hold off raising the limit until the missing piece is built.

L1011

I drove the section of N4 to be upgraded over the weekend - its not really suitable in my opinion for one main thing - the surfacing. Its horrendously bouncy, really feels like it was done on the cheap.

murphaph

MYOB wrote: »

I drove the section of N4 to be upgraded over the weekend - its not really suitable in my opinion for one main thing - the surfacing. Its horrendously bouncy, really feels like it was done on the cheap.

So does much of the M50 Western Parkway 'upgrade'.

D'Peoples Voice

Chris_533976 wrote: »

There is not one M-M junction in the country that isnt daft.

exiting the M7 onto M9 heading southbound?

icdg

D'Peoples Voice wrote: »

exiting the M7 onto M9 heading southbound?

Try going from M9 northbound to M7 southbound though...

The only motorway-motorway junction that's full access is M50/M1, and that involves navigating a signal controlled roundabout! And has the N32 thrown in for good measure.

All the others are freeflow, but also restricted access:

* No access from M9 N/B to M7 S/B
* No access from M6 E/B to M4 W/B.
* No access from M11 S/B to M50 N/B.
* (Future) No access from M8 N/B to M7 S/B.

Zoney

M7-N7/M20 will be full freeflow access between those routes, but the downside is that it is currently an access point into the city, and once the upgrade is complete, the link road will not be accessable from the M20 or from M7 westbound. However, it will still fit the profile of a motorway/motorway freeflow junction with full access between the motorways.

(This junction is between the N7 Limerick Southern Ring Road, phase 1 of which is to be reclassified as motorway, and phase 2 of which is under construction, and the N20 Limk-Patrickswell, to be reclassified to M20. It has a link road to the Childer's Road, aka Limerick's car park).

loyatemu

icdg wrote: »

* No access from M11 S/B to M50 N/B.

this is true, but its easy to access the M50 NB via Cherrywood anyway, so there's no need for full access here.

KevR

professore wrote: »

I think it's our younger population coupled with lots of people who have no clue how to drive on motorways that might make ours less safe.

I never understand how people driving at night don't realise that their full headlights will blind people on the other carriageway of a Motorway/DC. They must think that a cable barrier and a few shrubs will completely shield the blinding light :eek:.

Chris_533976 wrote: »

The NRA are ok at building motorways, but heaven help us if two or more join together. There is not one M-M junction in the country that isnt daft. (Think Red Cow + Turnpike farce, think M9/N25/N24, think M6/M17/M18)

M6/M17/M18 junction is going to a giant roundabout. What other country would link the main East-West motorway and West Coast North-South motorway with a roundabout and not a free flowing junction? Surely a free flowing junction similar to the N4/M50 junction wouldn't be that much more difficult to build - why not just do it right from the beginning instead of wasting money years down the line when it needs to be upgraded because it's too congested.

Aside from that the NRA aren't doing too bad a job.

BluntGuy

KevR wrote: »

M6/M17/M18 junction is going to a giant roundabout. What other country would link the main East-West motorway and West Coast North-South motorway with a roundabout and not a free flowing junction? Surely a free flowing junction similar to the N4/M50 junction wouldn't be that much more difficult to build - why not just do it right from the beginning instead of wasting money years down the line when it needs to be upgraded because it's too congested.

Oh yes. And wait until the NRA get their hands on the DOOR/M7/M9 junction. I can't wait to see how they screw that up.

I already posted my vision of the NRA's plan on another thread. But because I'm generous I've shoved in here as well:

D.L.R.

How can anyone in their right mind say the NRA/transport dept have done a good job, when they are the ones responsible for the ongoing fiasco that is the M50?

The choices made here have cost Ireland millions of euro in unnecessary rebuilding and disruption. This money could have had projects like Newlands or the M20 or the Interconnector under construction NOW, if it wasn't already squandered on the first ridiculous M50 dual carriageway.

What a shameful waste, especially considering we had 50 years worth of international motorway networks to look at first. And yet we are still churning out the same half-baked, under-spec ideas that will need revisiting sooner rather than later.

For a nation that was poor since its foundation until recently, you'd think our politicians would have a better sense of value for money. The one thing the NRA do well is build motorways through countryside. Now, how challenging is that exactly in a mildly undulating landscape, given the necessary funding? No, they have been found wanting where it really counts at the pinch points around the urban areas. Total lack of invention or vision. Bring in the Germans.