2 tolls on the M3

stoneill

I had to travel to Oldcastle from Dublin the other day.
I went up the N3. Paid my toll and carried on only to find another feckin toll booth a few miles up the road! Pay twice? On a poxy road?
Rip off Ireland how are ya!

Now ordinarily I hate paying tolls and will do anything to avoid them, but if your going somewhere that you are not used to then you use the main roads.
Tolls are pure greed - But two tolls on such a short stretch, that is the next level of avarice.

saywhatyousee

stoneill wrote: »

I had to travel to Oldcastle from Dublin the other day.
I went up the N3. Paid my toll and carried on only to find another feckin toll booth a few miles up the road! Pay twice? On a poxy road?
Rip off Ireland how are ya!

Now ordinarily I hate paying tolls and will do anything to avoid them, but if your going somewhere that you are not used to then you use the main roads.
Tolls are pure greed - But two tolls on such a short stretch, that is the next level of avarice.

Well the cost of building a road has to come from somewhere!

veryangryman

stoneill wrote: »

! Pay twice? On a poxy road?
Rip off Ireland how are ya!

Im fine, and yourself? Now give me your money pronto - theres a queue forming behind ya.

Seriously though, you should drive Dundalk to Watergrasshill some day. 4 tolls!

Krusader

Most roads leading into Dublin now have tolls or tolls are being planned, it's a ****ing disgrace

saywhatyousee

Crosáidí wrote: »

Most roads leading into Dublin now have tolls or tolls are being planned, it's a ****ing disgrace

Thats because there PPP's

Thatnastyboy

OP i take it you have never driven on the continent?

Take France for example, toll booths every few miles, aint cheap neither, I dont remember off hand but its more than any single toll ive paid on any of our roads. Also Our tolls are few and far between in comparison to other countries.

Why do people assume that everything that costs them money is solely an Irish problem?

Rip off republic rabble rabble rabble

WHISHT UP :mad:

saywhatyousee

Thatnastyboy wrote: »

OP i take it you have never driven on the continent?

Take France for example, toll booths every few miles, aint cheap neither, I dont remember off hand but its more than any single toll ive paid on any of our roads. Also Our tolls are few and far between in comparison to other countries.

Why do people assume that everything that costs them money is solely an Irish problem?

Rip off republic rabble rabble rabble

WHISHT UP :mad:

True that i drove from Rome to Florence(same distance cork to dublin)and it cost 12.80 in tolls

MagicSean

The first toll is from Dublin to Navan and the second is from Navan to Cavan. It's a long stretch and takes at least a half hour off your trip. You can also use the old national routes which are still there. And to my knowledge the tolls are quite low in comparison to others.

Kess73

saywhatyousee wrote: »

Well the cost of building a road has to come from somewhere!

And what happens when the cost of building the road (along with a nice profit) is met?

Or when there are stupid deals done like the Limerick tunnel where a deal is put in place that if the toll company does not hit targets in terms of income from tolls that the shortfall gets made up by the government (ie the taxpayer)

Thatnastyboy

Kess73 wrote: »

And what happens when the cost of building the road (along with a nice profit) is met?

Would you build a road for cost price?

Royal Seahawk

saywhatyousee wrote: »

Well the cost of building a road has to come from somewhere!

Car tax?

MagicSean

Kess73 wrote: »

And what happens when the cost of building the road (along with a nice profit) is met?

Or when there are stupid deals done like the Limerick tunnel where a deal is put in place that if the toll company does not hit targets in terms of income from tolls that the shortfall gets made up by the government (ie the taxpayer)

Maintaining a motorway is expensive

biko

From After Hours.

Kess73

k_mac wrote: »

Maintaining a motorway is expensive

So is keeping a private company in profit.

stoneill

saywhatyousee wrote: »

Well the cost of building a road has to come from somewhere!

I understand that - don't agree with it but understand it.
What irks me more is two greedy tolls on a short stretch.

stoneill

Thatnastyboy wrote: »

OP i take it you have never driven on the continent?

I did - drove from Cherborg to St Jean DuMont and travelled about a bit.
Never had to pay a toll there. Also drove a lot in the US. Never had to pay a toll, even on the Golden Gate Bridge as they have sensible toll collections.
HOV's are exempt from tolls. I did have to pay 1 quid on the Humber bridge, but that's only one way, it free to travel south.

Aard

Royal Seahawk wrote: »

Car tax?

I take it you mean Motor Tax? It doesn't fund roads, actually. It all goes into the one big Tax Pot, much like most other taxes.

Hootanany

stoneill wrote: »

I did - drove from Cherborg to St Jean DuMont and travelled about a bit.
Never had to pay a toll there. Also drove a lot in the US. Never had to pay a toll, even on the Golden Gate Bridge as they have sensible toll collections.
HOV's are exempt from tolls. I did have to pay 1 quid on the Humber bridge, but that's only one way, it free to travel south.

Same here no tolls both ways got lost in Nantes twice

Stroke Politics

Actually, this particular road apples a toll on each individual taxpayer as a result of the contract cooked up at the beginning to compensate the operators of the M3 if traffic falls below what was planned. AFAIK, it's already well behind the projected traffic level anticipated. But that won't bother the toll company.....

http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/taxpayers-to-compensate-m3-toll-firm-for-light-traffic-422008.html

marketty

no toll on the N3 but there is an 80km/h limit on the R147...

Carawaystick

Thatnastyboy wrote: »

Take France for example, toll booths every few miles, aint cheap neither, I dont remember off hand but its more than any single toll ive paid on any of our roads.

It's only the most common toll I pay in France is 60c for about 10km across the pyrenees, over about 4 viaducts which are all far bigger (taller, longer and wider) than the westlink, which is 5 times the price for half the distance.

Thatnastyboy

Well i drove from Nice to Monaco and on to Ventimiglia a good few times, and the toll each way amounted to over 20 euro (iirc but it was a lot), but in saying that, you go through a lot of incredible tunnels and some really impressive passes, all at very high altitudes. The roads are absolutely incredible they are something worth seeing! the tunnels over there make the port tunnel look like a sewer pipe.

I personally dont mind paying tolls, i do a good bit of driving too, i suppose being in the construction industy, in particular civils, i can understand the cost of building and maintaining our motorways so it doesnt bother me, also it annoys me when people talk down our very good motorway infrastructure, when you compare it to a few years ago..


Also i came across a bit narky in my earlier posts, apologies for that.

Aard

Tolls in France are expensive. Nice >> Marseille costs about €15. It's a shorter distance than Dublin >> Cork.

1huge1

Remember driving in Austria and had to pay €7 for one toll, and it wasnt the only one thats for sure, one thing in their defense though was that they built motorways through mountains! I'm talking about tunnels that were sometimes over 10km in length through a mountain, impressive engineering thats for sure and I guess that justify's the price, would make you glad we live in such a flat country.

dubhthach

Mod

Moved from Infrastructure to Roads

stoneill

Stroke Politics wrote: »

Actually, this particular road apples a toll on each individual taxpayer as a result of the contract cooked up at the beginning to compensate the operators of the M3 if traffic falls below what was planned.
http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/taxpayers-to-compensate-m3-toll-firm-for-light-traffic-422008.html

How do these people negotiate contracts like this?
They get paid if people use the road, and they get paid if they don't.

Victor

Royal Seahawk wrote: »

Car tax?

We don't have one. Hmm, theres an idea.

Motor tax goes on general local government spending, part of which is regional and local roads, not (private) motorways.

stoneill wrote: »

How do these people negotiate contracts like this?
They get paid if people use the road, and they get paid if they don't.

Meath County Council also lumped in a load of other roads into the contract and the toll company gets nothing from the vehicles on those roads, unless they actually use the section of motorway that is tolled.

Jayuu

The reason there are two tolls on the M3 is that it carries a lot of commuter traffic between Navan and surrounding areas and Dublin. In order to encourage them to use the road the toll had to be set at €1.30 which is lower than the normal toll for most motorways. However for longer distance travellers using the entire M3 they wanted to get more money so a second toll was put at the other end of the motorway. The totals for using the full road is €2.60 which is cheaper than some tolls such as the M50.

And its a more progressive way of tolling to have lower tolls and toll more sections of the road. Aren't we considering that for the entire M50? As somebody who uses the M50 southbound from Junction 3 to Junction 9 quite a bit it annoys me that I pay the same toll as somebody who uses the full motorway or that people who don't cross have to cross the bridge get to use their section of the motorway for nothing.

L1011

Jayuu wrote: »

Aren't we considering that for the entire M50? As somebody who uses the M50 southbound from Junction 3 to Junction 9 quite a bit it annoys me that I pay the same toll as somebody who uses the full motorway or that people who don't cross have to cross the bridge get to use their section of the motorway for nothing.

...the only section of the M50 that was *ever* tolled was the Westlink. The entire rest of the motorway was paid for from taxation!

Stroke Politics

CHing ching! Ching ching!

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/state-paying-euro111000-a-week-to-toll-road-operators-2672986.html

The NRA last night admitted it paid almost €1.8m over a four-month period last year to the private operators of the N18 Limerick Tunnel motorway and the M3 motorway in Meath.

The money is being paid because the NRA guaranteed a certain number of vehicles would use each privately-funded road when they opened.

Because the numbers have not always been reached, the roads authority has had to make up for the loss of tolls. And unless traffic volumes in the Limerick Tunnel and on the M3 motorway improve, the NRA faces the prospect of paying more than €5.7m in 2011 to the private operators.

New figures show payments to the operators of the Limerick Tunnel between September and December last year amounted to €1.24m, while payments for the M3 Clonee-to-Kells motorway between October and December came to €547,000.

This works out at an average of €111,000 per week.

# Serious questions now need to be asked about the negotiation of this contract.....

marmurr1916

a. these motorways would not have been built at all if the private companies weren't paid and allowed to charge tolls. The choice was between having motorways with tolls or no motorways at all.

b. It's not compulsory to use the tolled sections of motorways - you can use the old, crappy roads if you like. Don't know the area? Maps, satnav, ask directions...

c. Irish toll charges are generally much lower than in most other western European countries. The charges for a car using the UK's M6 Toll motorway (vary from £3.80 (between 11pm and 6am) to £5.30 (Mon-Fri, 6am to 11pm). The M6 Toll is only 43km (27 miles) long.

A one-way journey by car from Paris to Lyons in France (about 450km), using the A6 autoroute would cost €31.50 in tolls*.

The total cost in tolls for a return journey from Naas to Cork (about 450km) using the M7/M8 would be €7.20*.

*cash prices.