Commute times to Kildare tonight (2/02/2009)

Riskymove

Hi all,

My missus is on a bus around 2.5 hours and is only half way home to Celbridge.

Has anyone any ideas (perhaps you or someone you know has made it home!) where blockage finishes/time to complete the journey

regards

Risky

jmkennedyie

At 7pm N4 was crawling to about Maynooth...then started flowing. Suspect bus will crawl all the way to Celbridge, especially if heading into Lucan village. All hills including N4 offramps were dodgy...passed several where cars were stuck at the bottom, or taking it one at a time. At one point around 6pm no outbound traffic was making it up the mainline incline at the new underpass at Newcastle road...though bus probably not on that route you can imagine the mayhem back to town.

L1011

Father - 3 hours from Ballsbridge to Maynooth (car).

regedit

Wife:Left City West at 17:00 on her way to Newbridge and has has managed to reach Avoca at 20:28

slavetothegrind

Wife 2.5 hours on bus from quays to spa hotel, can't remember that happening before over weather!

Propellerhead

Riskymove wrote: »

Hi all,

My missus is on a bus around 2.5 hours and is only half way home to Celbridge.

Has anyone any ideas (perhaps you or someone you know has made it home!) where blockage finishes/time to complete the journey

regards

Risky

The train proved its worth this evening. Arrived at Hazelhatch off the 18.35 train at 18.55 and the longest part was the drive back to the Maynooth Road. I'd go insane if I was stuck on a Dublin Bus for over an hour, never mind two and a half hours, and tonight's reported bus journey times is proof why I'm well pleased I almost never travel on DB.

Riskymove

thanks for your replies

unfortunately it took 4 hours........yes thats 4 hours...around 3 miles an hour I reckon:mad:

DWCommuter

Well for that you can thank the various Councils for having absolutely no plan whatsoever to help alleviate the build up of snow on the roads. In international terms tonights snowfall was rather pitiful. We just make it look like the apocalypse.

HonalD

DWCommuter wrote: »

Well for that you can thank the various Councils for having absolutely no plan whatsoever to help alleviate the build up of snow on the roads. In international terms tonights snowfall was rather pitiful. We just make it look like the apocalypse.

That's not entirely fair IMO - Should we have covered roads?????? Even the airport was closed for a time...........................What plan would work to alleviate the snow, giant heaters???? Come on, its not often we see this - enjoy Take the day off, have a choc ice and make a snowman :D:D

Lucutus

Left Sandyford at 6pm, arrived in Kilcullen at 23:45pm.

Buffman

Looking out the window now, looks like a duvet day tomorrow if your relying on the busses.

medoc

DWCommuter wrote: »

Well for that you can thank the various Councils for having absolutely no plan whatsoever to help alleviate the build up of snow on the roads. In international terms tonights snowfall was rather pitiful. We just make it look like the apocalypse.

I left the square in Tallaght at 6.40 pm, got past the poitin still pub on N7 at 11.35 pm and arrived in Tullamore at 12.40am. While the councils could and should do a better job people need to learn how to drive properly in snow/ice. I saw three crashes caused by driver error ( in my opinion), I noticed plenty of people revving the car each time they moved off and spinning the front wheels or driving too close and breaking suddenly and skidding

Blogger50

Other half left Balbriggan at 5pm and got to Rathangan at 11.30!. He was at city west at 9pm and by 10pm was just passing avoca! Seems the sliproad at the Poitin Still was the issue!

Colm R

I left Beresford place on the bus at 6:30 and arrived in Ashbourne at 8:20.

Driver did a good job on the old N2 as it was fairly bad.

thebman

Propellerhead wrote: »

The train proved its worth this evening. Arrived at Hazelhatch off the 18.35 train at 18.55 and the longest part was the drive back to the Maynooth Road. I'd go insane if I was stuck on a Dublin Bus for over an hour, never mind two and a half hours, and tonight's reported bus journey times is proof why I'm well pleased I almost never travel on DB.

+1, got a seat and everything

Sleep for an hour on train and wake up in Maynooth and walk the 5 minutes home

Zoney

DWCommuter wrote: »

Well for that you can thank the various Councils for having absolutely no plan whatsoever to help alleviate the build up of snow on the roads. In international terms tonights snowfall was rather pitiful. We just make it look like the apocalypse.

Do you want to pay more taxes? Or, for example, income-based domestic rates so councils aren't so cash-strapped as they are? You do realise I hope that your tax burden as a motorist doesn't all go to roads? It goes towards allowing our low income tax and corporation tax, and generally low tax burden. Highway services even in boom times would probably be a pipedream with the taxation we have. Hence one reason for toll roads in places (of course we would all be better off paying a little more tax instead and having a State-run highways service, rather than be inconvenienced with direct payment of tolls, pay for profiteering and grossly inefficient administration - computerised or not).

In any case, even with more funding, contingencies for the very occasional snow would not be the best use of taxpayers money.

goodlad

I left dundrum yesterday at 4pm and got to kilcullen at 8:30pm.There was 11 trucks stuck on the N7, they couldn't get up the slight slope.

There was just about enough room for a single lane of traffic to get past them. And most cars were then stuck on sheets of ice and couldn't move.

I ended up getting out of my car and helping push the car in front of me.
Even after the truck it was insane although it was kinda fun at the same time :eek: :rolleyes:

Miss Minnie

I left Tallaght at 5pm yesterday and reached Kildare at 10.35pm. The N7 was a disgrace and I wouldn't blame any driver who had a tip, the conditions were terrible.
My main complaint is that when I finally reached the problem spot (the icy hill at the Poitin Stil, that the trucks couldn't climb) there wasn't any garda presence or gritters. Only one car could pass the stranded trucks at a time, it was awful, I had to snake in around trucks at funny angles, I got stuck myself as the hill was so iced at this stage. Us drivers had to coordinate this ourselves, three lanes down to one and then through the trucks and their dispondant drivers. The more people whos wheels spun on the track through, the icier it got.
One squad car marauded his way through the tail back before we reached the scene but wasn't there when we got there.
I am a responsible driver who had to set out 3 hours early this morning in case there was more of the same, is it too much to ask that the council provide gritting and the garda roadside assistance when the decent hard working (and car pooling) citizens badly need help? It is a joke and downright embarrasing that one of the major commuting routes became impassable last night, a knowledge economy I ask? Highly skilled workforce? Whos going to believe that we have any of that if we can't even get basic infrastructure and public service working?
Rant over...but I am very very tired today!


Oh and I don't believe we should have to pay ANY extra tax for basic community service like road management!

Cookie_Monster

Miss Minnie wrote: »

I left Tallaght at 5pm yesterday and reached Kildare at 10.35pm. The N7 was a disgrace and I wouldn't blame any driver who had a tip, the conditions were terrible.
My main complaint is that when I finally reached the problem spot (the icy hill at the Poitin Stil, that the trucks couldn't climb) there wasn't any garda presence or gritters. Only one car could pass the stranded trucks at a time, it was awful, I had to snake in around trucks at funny angles, I got stuck myself as the hill was so iced at this stage. Us drivers had to coordinate this ourselves, three lanes down to one and then through the trucks and their dispondant drivers. The more people whos wheels spun on the track through, the icier it got.
One squad car marauded his way through the tail back before we reached the scene but wasn't there when we got there.
I am a responsible driver who had to set out 3 hours early this morning in case there was more of the same, is it too much to ask that the council provide gritting and the garda roadside assistance when the decent hard working (and car pooling) citizens badly need help? It is a joke and downright embarrasing that one of the major commuting routes became impassable last night, a knowledge economy I ask? Highly skilled workforce? Whos going to believe that we have any of that if we can't even get basic infrastructure and public service working?
Rant over...but I am very very tired today!


Oh and I don't believe we should have to pay ANY extra tax for basic community service like road management!

+1
Well said

Redsoxfan

Leopardstown to Maynooth-6 hours.

Cookie_Monster

Dun Laoghaire to Greystones, 35 mins







Hahahahaha:pac:

nordydan

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

Dun Laoghaire to Greystones, 35 mins







Hahahahaha:pac:

Work from home. No commute!!!

rhyland

Just wondering if anyone headed into Dublin on the N81 today from Baltinglass. I didn't go in to work yesterday or today, luckily did have some work from home but need to be in the office tomorrow and very nervous about driving in. All reports say Baltinglass, Blessington & N81 in general very bad - I presume that means there was no gritting?

Cookie_Monster

nordydan wrote: »

Work from home. No commute!!!

Nothing to do with work actually:)
Getting back the other way an hour later took a bit longer but that's cos I went via the back roads to have some fun;)

Getting home from work was a mere 8 minutes on the bus:D

Sponge Bob

That guard Miss Minnie saw was told to go and speed gun on the N7 and that is what he did . Shame he caught nobody all evening.

Shure why would he bother with them oul trucks...they were not speeding were they .

godtabh

I left town at 6 yester. Got to Chapelizodat 7:45. Left Chapelizod at 9 and got to Leixlip at 11:30

Miss Minnie wrote: »

Oh and I don't believe we should have to pay ANY extra tax for basic community service like road management!

This isnt baisc. This happens once every 10/15 years. I'd galdy suffer a couple of hours in traffic every 10/15 years than not have to pay extra tax for something that wont be used every year.

Cookie_Monster

kearnsr wrote: »

This isnt baisc. This happens once every 10/15 years. I'd galdy suffer a couple of hours in traffic every 10/15 years than not have to pay extra tax for something that wont be used every year.

Seems to me it happens every year at some point and every time all the "experts" say it's a once every 5/10/20/50000000 year thing:rolleyes:

godtabh

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

Seems to me it happens every year at some point and every time all the "experts" say it's a once every 5/10/20/50000000 year thing:rolleyes:

When was the last time this happened in Dublin? 2001/2002?

I'd be more inclined to listen to the "experts" than people on boards

Miss Minnie

Tell me, what did I request that isn't basic? Garda presence at the scene of an accident / road blockage? Road gritters to reduce the ice on the road? Pretty basic in dangerous road and snow conditions I'd have thought.

You're right, I'm no expert, but I am a tax payer which gives me the right to an opinion. I am a road user for about 18,000 miles a year. Yesterday was a complete muck up and it wasn't my fault, the truckers' fault or mother nature's fault. It was the fault of those who are being PAID to manage our roads! :rolleyes:

Dodge

but they're not being paid to solely manage your roads and the amount of gritters they have is obviously going to be limited for what absolutely is a freak occurence.

godtabh

Miss Minnie wrote: »

Tell me, what did I request that isn't basic? Garda presence at the scene of an accident / road blockage? Road gritters to reduce the ice on the road? Pretty basic in dangerous road and snow conditions I'd have thought.

You're right, I'm no expert, but I am a tax payer which gives me the right to an opinion. I am a road user for about 18,000 miles a year. Yesterday was a complete muck up and it wasn't my fault, the truckers' fault or mother nature's fault. It was the fault of those who are being PAID to manage our roads! :rolleyes:

It snowed. I'm pretty sure that’s mother nature's fault unless some mad scientist has come up with a new device for world domination.

Garda can’t be in at every single junction that was affect by snow. There resources are limited. I saw them managing the M50/N4 free flow junction, an accident on the N4 (x2).

Same as the road gritters. There was one working on the N4/M50 and in Leixlip around the M4/Leixlip west interchange.

The was managed based on resources available for normal expected conditions.

Dodge wrote: »

but they're not being paid to solely manage your roads and the amount of gritters they have is obviously going to be limited for what absolutely is a freak occurence.

Exactly

syngindub

i take it there are no public cameras so we can see what traffic is like?

godtabh

syngindub wrote: »

i take it there are no public cameras so we can see what traffic is like?

DCC have them. They were on the news last night

syngindub

DCC?

godtabh

syngindub wrote: »

DCC?

Dublin City Council

syngindub

actually these aren't bad
http://www.dublincity.ie/dublintraffic/

han68

You should not have posted that link, now everybody is watching and their server very slow in responding (apart from that nice pic of the naas road on the 15/12/08)

Same for the aaroadwatch.ie btw, "Service Unavailable"

syngindub

yep, slashdotted the server. that'll teach them, more servers required or mirroring.

syngindub

NAAS camera stuck on 15.12.08. the only one i was concerned about. jaysus

L1011

2:55 to get home on a journey thats taken 16 minutes before! Getting on to the Belgard Road was nigh on impossible and took the bulk of that time.

A guard enforcing the junction at Airton/Belgard would have cut that down heavily, but they can't be everywhere...

Redsoxfan

MYOB wrote: »

2:55 to get home on a journey thats taken 16 minutes before! Getting on to the Belgard Road was nigh on impossible and took the bulk of that time.

A guard enforcing the junction at Airton/Belgard would have cut that down heavily, but they can't be everywhere...

Was this the time taken this evening?

Once you were on the M50, how long to the M4?

HonalD

Miss Minnie wrote: »

Road gritters to reduce the ice on the road?

It was the fault of those who are being PAID to manage our roads! :rolleyes:

Only giant heaters would help with the snow over the past 2 days, any amount of salt would be useless and expensive to spread......

Not sure who you think is being PAID to manage our roads? Any ideas?

L1011

Redsoxfan wrote: »

Was this the time taken this evening?

Once you were on the M50, how long to the M4?

This evening yes, left the office at 16:17. I went cross country, N7/L2007/R408.

Two hours to Newlands X more or less and 55 minutes home via a pit stop in Kill.

godtabh

Some good quotes in the Heard AM today,

"we're not in russia here. We don't have an infrastructure for constant snow." TfL spokesman Guy Pitt.

"You can grit and you can salt it but the snow comes down again"

"you can make an investment..... in snow plows for London and then not use them for a couple of decades" - Boris Johnson

fuzzy12

Anyone drive from Maynooth/Leixlip to town this morning? Did it take much longer than normal?

godtabh

fuzzy12 wrote: »

Anyone drive from Maynooth/Leixlip to town this morning? Did it take much longer than normal?

Get the train! Its gona be a nightmare out there. Having said that I'll be getting the bus in tomorrow as I have to do something for work so that should be fun!

syngindub

was kind of hoping this wouldn't stretch into wednesday but it might you know

fuzzy12

kearnsr wrote: »

Get the train! Its gona be a nightmare out there. Having said that I'll be getting the bus in tomorrow as I have to do something for work so that should be fun!

Will be coming off nights so I'll be trying to get home, prob take the car, should be interesting.....

DWCommuter

To HonalD and Zoney

You truly represent the pitiful attitude displayed by the state bodies to simple problems that cause unecessary inconvenience to commuters in this country.

The only encouraging thing in this thread is the sharing of stories of woe and the pain felt by people who were abandoned in yesterdays mayhem. There was no management of any kind by state bodies. It was a mickey mouse snowfall that caused chaos due to complete and absolute incompetence on the part of County Councils. An incompetence that has been ingrained over many years from Government to the smallest town council.

Last Summer heavy rain brought Dublin to a standstill. Fortunetly it was a Saturday. Once again there was no coordination of any kind between any service. If you can tell me that it's acceptable to have no plan in place to deal with adverse weather conditions on commuter routes, then you must exist in Ballymagashland, like so many other public representatives.

Acceptance fuels the problems and I fear that there is so much acceptance in Ireland that we might as well switch off the lights now.

Last one out, please put a post on C&T defending the decision.

Lucutus

Have to agree with the post above from DWCommuter. Having experienced the mayhem on the N7 @ Rathcoole on Monday night, there was not a Garda/Traffic Corps/coco representative in a high vis vest to be seen and it was left to the drivers themselves to cope with conditions.

A Guard directing traffic flow with a coherent plan for that motionless stretch of motorway would have shaved half the time off my 6 hour journey home.

Even a tractor could have helped drag some heavier vehicles out of the way.

There was nothing, clearly no plan, no presence, only angry phone calls to radio stations. I accept to a degree that Gardaí can't be everywhere, however, even the single Garda car that did push through the traffic disappeared off into the distance.

The fact that this sort of traffic disruption can/will only happen once every 10 years is no excuse for a complete lack of a contingency plan for when it does occur.

Zoney

DWCommuter wrote: »

To HonalD and Zoney

You truly represent the pitiful attitude displayed by the state bodies to simple problems that cause unecessary inconvenience to commuters in this country.

The only encouraging thing in this thread is the sharing of stories of woe and the pain felt by people who were abandoned in yesterdays mayhem. There was no management of any kind by state bodies. It was a mickey mouse snowfall that caused chaos due to complete and absolute incompetence on the part of County Councils. An incompetence that has been ingrained over many years from Government to the smallest town council.

Last Summer heavy rain brought Dublin to a standstill. Fortunetly it was a Saturday. Once again there was no coordination of any kind between any service. If you can tell me that it's acceptable to have no plan in place to deal with adverse weather conditions on commuter routes, then you must exist in Ballymagashland, like so many other public representatives.

Acceptance fuels the problems and I fear that there is so much acceptance in Ireland that we might as well switch off the lights now.

Last one out, please put a post on C&T defending the decision.

I agree about the incompetence, I am as sick of it as the next person (well, apart from "breakfast roll man"), but we do not actually pay enough for proper services either. In fact the reason we seem to pay for everything is because we don't pay enough income tax to pay for things properly - hence the resorting to tolling, VRT, direct charging for medical services, "voluntary" school contributions, etc. Even the briefest examination of the situation in Germany for example will show that we don't remotely pay the same amount of tax (especially to make up for the low corporation tax), somewhere where mostly things are properly organised.

But people here would rather have disposable income for the McMansions, SUVs and 42" flat panel TVs than actually keep themselves in a fairly humdrum fashion but with decent services that make life in this country pleasant rather than a constant battle, and more social mobility that allows more than just the very rare "get rich quick" and more a gradual improvement in everyone's fortunes.