Limerick-Cork, Limerick-Waterford road

Hazy64

As someone with a keen interest in roads and transport. I have an idea how to get both Waterford and Cork linked to Limerick in a very cost effective way. Instead of building three roads (1) N20 cork to Limerick 60miles, (2) proposed link road from Glanmire through Whitechurch on to the Mallow road. (3) the N24 from cahir to Limerick 36 miles. I suggest building one road from Kilbeheny on the N8 to Limerick roughly 30 miles of new motorway. So for someone driving from the Jack lynch tunnell in Cork to the new Tunnell in Limerick via Kilbeheny and my new proposed road it would be shorter than going by Mallow. Tjis would take all the traffic from West Cork, East Cork and parts of Waterford to Limerick and the west. This would also help free up the N72 Fermoy Mallow road. IF this road was built it could also take the N24 traffic with only an extra 10 miles of motorway driving required to join up with this. Any body have any ideas of this suggestion

DWCommuter

Hazy64 wrote: »

Any body have any ideas of this suggestion

YES.

Make sure that the land required for your new road, is in the hands of landowners that are staunch members/supporters of Fianna Fail (a lot stauncher that the lads along existing routes;))

That should get it noticed.

Do you want me to explain why?:D

Zoney

All very well except that squeezing all that traffic into Cork on the one route (M8) is a lot less future-proof than having a separate M20, and does not spread the national primary road network across the country as comprehensively. Our existing route network is quite a reasonable layout, despite some midland gaps and the parallel routes entering Dublin (although we may see all of them become three lane in the future - so it is probably just as well to have traffic distributed between them). Actually upgrading our national secondary network would ensure a very comprehensive route network.

rekrow

Zoney wrote: »

All very well except that squeezing all that traffic into Cork on the one route (M8) is a lot less future-proof than having a separate M20

In Galway they are proposing to do this on not two, but three routes. The N6, 17 and 18 will converge in Athenry and come into the city on a single road. To make matters worse the road will end on a roundabout. If there is ever a crash on that road and they have to close it for investigation Galway will be practically isolated.

fricatus

Zoney wrote: »

All very well except that squeezing all that traffic into Cork on the one route (M8) is a lot less future-proof than having a separate M20, and does not spread the national primary road network across the country as comprehensively.

rekrow wrote: »

In Galway they are proposing to do this on not two, but three routes. The N6, 17 and 18 will converge in Athenry and come into the city on a single road. To make matters worse the road will end on a roundabout. If there is ever a crash on that road and they have to close it for investigation Galway will be practically isolated.

This begs the question: what is the national road network for? Is it for enabling swift long-distance travel between cities and regions, or to have good roads everywhere for short local journeys and commutes from the likes of Mallow?

The existing N20 and N24 (maybe with a few safety improvements) are perfectly adequate for short local journeys; what they don't do is allow people to travel from the Limerick area to the Cork/Waterford areas sufficiently quickly and conveniently.

If we can have the M8, M7 and M9 (basically all the Dublin-bound traffic from Munster and much of south Leinster) all feeding onto the Dublin-Newbridge stretch of the M7/N7, then I don't see why we can't "double up" around Cork and Galway.

corktina

Most of the land between Kilbeheny and Limerick is near vertical...

BluntGuy

I pretty much agree with the current plans for the road network, I think it distributes traffic better and future proofs the system well.

The problem is, the NRA haven't a clue how to:

(a) End motorways properly so they feed back into the local road network

(b) Connect motorways together.

These combined reduce the efficiency of the network. For example, you'll be able to zoom at 120 km/h from Dublin to Cork in around two hours. Two hours on lovely, smooth motorway. And how does it end? At one of the most congested roundabouts in the country.

The same will happen with the M20 in Cork. It will connect to the North Ring Road at a... *shudder*... three-level roundabout stack. And let's not even bring the M9 at Waterford into this. Short-sighted or what...

And then there's the junctions. From the lame restricted junctions: M7/M8, M6/M4, M7/M9 to tacky junctions with MSAs glued on: M6/M17/M18, to just plain awful: M8/M22. There are very few major motorway junctions in Ireland that aren't dreadful.

Zoney

The N20 (soon to be M20) approaching Limerick provides some example of how to terminate a national route. There are four escapes near to the city - the N21 junction, the R526 at Patrickswell, the free-flow trumpet junction for Raheen (rather over-capacity now unfortunately), and the junction for Dooradoyle. The terminating junction on the N7 will also be freeflow. The current roundabout actually performs adequately except for a peak time of maybe 20-30 mins either end of the working day.

Unfortunately it will be slightly marred by the lack of city-bound escape from this junction - either they'll have to have escaped onto the R526 (old N20) at one of the earlier 4 junctions, or else go onto the N7 to the pathetic N24 or N69 junctions.

Anyway, the point is that apart from good terminating junctions (i.e. freeflow onto another route that goes somewhere) the best way to get people onto the local road network is a couple of junctions for various places on the approach to the cities.

The M6 for example is not quite as bad as described, because there is the option of escaping at the second-last junction to take the current N18 north and come in via the current N17, or take it south to the current N6/N18 junction. The last junction will be on the current N6. There will be an intermediate junction for the Galway bypass if that ever gets built - which would mean not one but three final junctions entering Galway, which isn't quite as bad.

Hazy64

hi great to see some interest in the roads. One thing to remember the existing roads wont be closed so Cork will still have access on the existing limerick road and my idea is that my new road would be more suitable for traffic heading to east cork. My main idea would be to build this road instead of the N24 Cahir limeick road.. safe driving to all.

mysterious

It would of been suitable and cost saving to build the M20 along the old Cork to Limerick road and join the M8 near Mitchellstown. It would greatly ease traffic on the N24 also. So it's doubly effective to actually build the M20 towards the M8.

The shorter distance to build such a route over the M20 by Mallow would save billions, time and man hours, which COULD be spent on other road projects. But no we have NRA who can't plan their way out of straight road.

The M8 to Limerick (branch M20 at mitchellstown) would mean at least 500 milli0n could be spent on a Cork limerick railine, or improve the N24 perhaps.

If they are not going to go along with common sense, then I suspect or at least expect the NRA to incoporate the Adare bypass scheme into the M20 then.

Amtmann

mysterious wrote: »

It would of been suitable and cost saving to build the M20 along the old Cork to Limerick road and join the M8 near Mitchellstown. It would greatly ease traffic on the N24 also. So it's doubly effective to actually build the M20 towards the M8.

The shorter distance to build such a route over the M20 by Mallow would save billions, time and man hours, which COULD be spent on other road projects. But no we have NRA who can't plan their way out of straight road.

The M8 to Limerick (branch M20 at mitchellstown) would mean at least 500 milli0n could be spent on a Cork limerick railine, or improve the N24 perhaps.

If they are not going to go along with common sense, then I suspect or at least expect the NRA to incoporate the Adare bypass scheme into the M20 then.

I actually agree with you Mysterious, and I'm sure the toll operators on the Fermoy Bypass would agree with you too. But the Dunkettle interchange would have to be made freeflow in tandem with an M8/M20 interchange at Mitchelstown.

mysterious

Furet wrote: »

I actually agree with you Mysterious, and I'm sure the toll operators on the Fermoy Bypass would agree with you too. But the Dunkettle interchange would have to be made freeflow in tandem with an M8/M20 interchange at Mitchelstown.

Well if this scheme did go ahead, I'm sure a large chunk of the Billion + euro on the M20 scheme could cover to at least upgrade the Dunkettle scheme. The Mictchellstown M8 - M20 corridor is less than half distance than that of the M20 Mallow LImerick route.

To me it just make's more sense to build from Mitchellstown.

BluntGuy

mysterious wrote: »

Well if this scheme did go ahead, I'm sure a large chunk of the Billion + euro on the M20 scheme could cover to at least upgrade the Dunkettle scheme. The Mictchellstown M8 - M20 corridor is less than half distance than that of the M20 Mallow LImerick route.

To me it just make's more sense to build from Mitchellstown.

I can see your point, but I actually prefer the way the NRA are doing it for once. I think those two cities need a completely direct motorway link. Going from Cork to Limerick via Mitchelstown is a deviation that would add 20 to 25 minutes to the journey.

I also have no doubts that the M20 and M8 would be connected together by some sort of half-assed roundabout system.

No, I reckon the current M20 is probably the best choice at this stage. If they wanted to rationalise this route they should've slipped off the the M8 from the M7 nearer to Limerick so that the M8 could cover the Cork-Limerick route as well as the Cork-Dublin. I wouldn't have necessarily agreed with this, but that's the way they should've rationalised if they wanted to.