Seamus Quirke roadworks merge

biko

Everyone, back on topic please.

zarquon

biko wrote: »

Everyone, back on topic please.

There are certain posters who need to be banned from threads like this because they turn every specific roadworks information thread into a generic debate on transport and thus manage to derail every thread. Please keep posts on here relevant only to Seamus Quirke updates.........and now of course will be the responses from those same posters below chastising me for not wanting to hear their opinions on public versus private transportation, completely ignoring the request to stay on topic.

Sponge Bob

Had a look at the section near Corrib park today and it looks like there will be no wall along those trees that were seemingly saved. That means there is room for a footpath and a cycle path.

what_traffic

Sponge Bob wrote: »

I note that the cyclist only box arrangement at the front has not been provided at the new Newcastle Road lights...unlike in Moneenageisha. It should be there at the 2 Newcastle Road ends .....where there is no cycle path and where two lanes are shoehorned into not enough road space at the lights basically.

The other two ends should have a red light at visible bicycle height with a red bicycle and green bicycle sort of theme the better for the avoidance of gobsh1tery.

Both are good ideas Sponge Bob and the ASL would at least be consistent with other junctions i.e those on the Dublin Road in Renmore. Are there any HOOK Turn boxes(for cyclists) installed on N6/N59; I believe in the plans for the junction these where meant to be installed/painted onto the road?

what_traffic

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Had a look at the section near Corrib park today and it looks like there will be no wall along those trees that were seemingly saved. That means there is room for a footpath and a cycle path.

True noticed lack of wall here; what do you make of the dual carraigeway lane width here and elsewhere along the scheme? Looks they will only be a 3m wide bus lane and 3m wide road lane?

what_traffic

galwaycyclist wrote: »

It might be something felt worthy of ridicule but anyone who ridicules the idea of having induction loops that detect cyclists is forever precluded from slagging cyclists who run red lights.

We have in this country several generations of traffic engineers who have been training several generations of cyclists to ignore red-lights.

Indeed I once came upon a technician on Lough Atalia who was adjusting the Raddison lights.

"Do you tune them to detect cyclists?" asks I

"No" says he "these are only for cars"

Indeed if I stop in the induction loop at the back of the Huntsman, the lights never change. And we all wait there patiently and the queue of cars behind gets longer and longer and longer.

Business as usual in Newcastle so?

Brillant post and so very true of many of the newer traffic light junctions in the city! Have had to more than once in Galway turn around at lights when on the bike and bekon motorists to come closer to me to go over the induction loop. When cycling late at night one have no other choice but to break lights if there is no motor vechicle traffic about when going from a minor road to a major road as the lights are configured for the major road.

Sponge Bob

Seems a tad wider everywhere else....eg up near Westside. I'd be fairly certain that cyclists will use the SQR bus lane anyway...like An Bord Pleanála ordered..... and I cannot see how the corpo can bring in a bylaw to ban them out of buslanes seeing as the current bus lane design is illegal.

The (only)one good thing about Moneen was the Bike Box at the front at each light.

Now while we do not need the bike boxes on Dual-Dual thru bits with offline cycle ways alongside they are a great idea on the Newcastle road itself or at any other signalised junction if it is being redone and if a lot of cyclists use the route.

Compliance with them is extremely high, you basically don't see divvy drivers in them very often and it protects the peds from the cars..whatever about the bikes.

You set off induction loops by using an old hard drive....not a bike Search here for Neodymium and Hard Drive willya.

galwaycyclist

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Seems a tad wider everywhere else....eg up near Westside. I'd be fairly certain that cyclists will use the SQR bus lane anyway...like An Bord Pleanála ordered..... and I cannot see how the corpo can bring in a bylaw to ban them out of buslanes seeing as the current bus lane design is illegal.

I am already in possession of a legal opinion to the effect that the bus lane will remain open to cyclists. If we are talking about the Corrib park end the cyclists will have to be on the road anyway if they are lining up for the roundabout.

Sponge Bob

Did An Bord Pleanála not specifically mandate cyclists be 'on road' at traffic lights and not specifically at roundabouts ....that from memory now. The project that An Bord P decided on is bookended at 2 roundabouts which still exist of course. I'd wager the Corrib Park roundabout is on on a Traffic Engineers version of death row somehow.

antoobrien

galwaycyclist wrote: »

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Seems a tad wider everywhere else....eg up near Westside. I'd be fairly certain that cyclists will use the SQR bus lane anyway...like An Bord Pleanála ordered..... and I cannot see how the corpo can bring in a bylaw to ban them out of buslanes seeing as the current bus lane design is illegal.

I am already in possession of a legal opinion to the effect that the bus lane will remain open to cyclists. If we are talking about the Corrib park end the cyclists will have to be on the road anyway if they are lining up for the roundabout.

Not sure if a bye law is required but in Dublin all the bus lanes I've seen are open to cyclists.

3m should be wide enough for a combined bus/cycle lane. The ones I've used in Dublin are 2.25m-2.5m (see the Malahide rd on Google earth)

Iwannahurl

what_traffic wrote: »

Brillant post and so very true of many of the newer traffic light junctions in the city! Have had to more than once in Galway turn around at lights when on the bike and bekon motorists to come closer to me to go over the induction loop. When cycling late at night one have no other choice but to break lights if there is no motor vechicle traffic about when going from a minor road to a major road as the lights are configured for the major road.

According to today's Sentinel, the Elmore Group and Swarco have been awarded the tender for installing the Urban Traffic Control Centre and related signalling system.

With regard to induction loops/traffic detectors for cyclists, they have the technology.

http://www.elmore.ie/content.asp?contentID=172

http://www.swarco.com/en/Products-Services/Traffic-Management/Urban-Traffic-Management/Traffic-Detectors/IG746

The question is, does their brief include it? Has this issue arisen before? I wonder whether it was ever specifically mentioned in any of the plans or tender documentation. It hadn't occurred to me before to ask...

Sponge Bob

Iwannahurl wrote: »

It hadn't occurred to me before to ask...

It wouldn't, would it?

galwaycyclist

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Did An Bord Pleanála not specifically mandate cyclists be 'on road' at traffic lights and not specifically at roundabouts ....that from memory now. The project that An Bord P decided on is bookended at 2 roundabouts which still exist of course. I'd wager the Corrib Park roundabout is on on a Traffic Engineers version of death row somehow.

The ABP ruling specified that the cycle facilities be on road at the "junctions". The GTU head, Joe Tansey states his position as being that since the junctions at Corrib park and Fort Lorenzo are not officially part of the scheme then there is no requirement to be on road approaching, or leaving, those junctions.

Not forgetting of course that Mr. Tansey's original position was always that cyclists would be required to "dismount and become pedestrians" at all the junctions.

Sponge Bob

galwaycyclist wrote: »

Not forgetting of course that Mr. Tansey's original position was always that cyclists would be required to "dismount and become pedestrians" at all the junctions.

Not required if there is a bike box is it? Bike Boxes are known as "Advanced Stop Lines" in the road design manuals and a cycle lane (whether on or off road) should end in a bike box at a junction thereby permitting filtering to the front.

It is entirely possible that new road design manuals issued from the UK since the SQR scheme was approved by An Bord P 9 years ago .We generally adopt UK design standards here ( DMRB ) within a few years via the NRA. Word for word normally they are...and whether we implement them or not is up to the caprices of officialdom.

Earliest description of an ASL I can find is 2005 indicating to me they were standardised ( if indeed they were standardised) around or later than 2005. You need to do some digging.

http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/roads/tpm/tal/cyclefacilities/advancedstoplines.pdf

But I am a fan of bike boxes I am and I would say the peds are too.

galwaycyclist

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Not required if there is a bike box is it? Bike Boxes are known as "Advanced Stop Lines" in the road design manuals and a cycle lane (whether on or off road) should end in a bike box at a junction thereby permitting filtering to the front.

Ok the thing is that you can only use ASLs at traffic lights you can't use them at priority junctions. So insisting on ASLs is no good to you if you are dealing with an engineer who insists on putting priority junctions, laid out according to inter-urban arterial principles, in the middle of a small university city (town really)

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Earliest description of an ASL I can find is 2005 indicating to me they were standardised ( if indeed they were standardised) around or later than 2005. You need to do some digging.

Without doing any digging at all I can state that ASLs were explained in UK Institute of Highways and Transportation literature as far back as 1996.

EDIT: Examples are available in the Irish literature since 1999 - the source - the DTO cycle facilities guidelines were flawed to the point of being demonstrably dangerous so its a source to avoid recommending.

The issue of ASLs is difficult to discuss without qualification so I will put something up in the Cycling in the City thread when I get time. It is clearly also relevant to other road schemes and not just the SQR.

Sponge Bob

By "priority" I take it you mean that roads off the SQR will get a green to go onto the SQR ONLY if a car is detected on them, otherwise the SQR will always be green to go.

galwaycyclist

Sponge Bob wrote: »

By "priority" I take it you mean that roads off the SQR will get a green to go onto the SQR ONLY if a car is detected on them, otherwise the SQR will always be green to go.

Sorry no - I descended into technobabble possibly - priority controlled means based on yield/stop signs and yield/stop road markings. So one road having priority over the other, so unsignalised t-junctions, roundabouts, slip-roads etc. You can't use ASLs in any of these situations.

antoobrien

KevR wrote: »

The Newcastle Road/Quincentenary Bridge lights were switched off and Eastbound was down to one lane through the junction this morning at 07:45. Traffic was starting to back up at that time - can't imagine what it was like at 08:30..

zarquon wrote: »

Traffic was a disaster this morning from both directions across the bridge at the new lights. FFS, it's like moneenigesha all over again each time they put new junction lights in, the timings are all messed up and it creates gridlock in traffic flows where it wasn't an issue before.

It would appear (according to the article on page 10 of the Sentinel - no link sorry) that "minor teething problems" caused these - among which was a faulty push button.

THE first set of new ‘intelligent’ traffic lights in the major upgrade of the N6 corridor have failed twice in their first week, causing chronic traffic backlogs across the city.

Red-face Council officials have described the malfunctions on the lights at the junction of Newcastle Road and Quincentenary Bridge as “minor teething problems”.

And last Thursday, there was also traffic chaos surrounding the junction, when the lights – which only ‘went live’ last week, failed.

A Council spokesperson said yesterday’s fault was caused by a faulty push button on the lights, and said traffic cones had to be placed on approaches to reduce traffic to one lane for “road safety reasons”.

“These are minor teething problems which are being resolved as they occur. With a complicated set-up like that, in the first week or so, issues will arise,” the spokesperson said.

Last Thursday’s failure was caused by bad weather – a circuit board became damp as it was being installed and caused the lights to malfunction.

The junction is the second in the city to have ‘intelligent’ lights installed – Moneenageisha will also be linked to the new Urban Traffic Control system which is expected to be up and running by next Easter.

fago

I noticed yesterday evening and this morning, pretty typical wet evenings, that the queue of traffic going back up the Moycullen road to the junction seemed to me to be a lot shorter.

Even without the integrated traffic management, I wonder just by detecting the flows, are the lights are already improving things?

Or are the timings wrong and traffic on the east/west route is being held up.

I hope the pedestrian lights are more intelligent than the old 4 way green - so traffic going straight through from the bridge can continue towards westside even if someone is crossing at the university side.

In general though I think the contractors did a fair job in keeping the traffic moving whilst replacing the lights.

at1withmyself

fago wrote: »

I hope the pedestrian lights are more intelligent than the old 4 way green - so traffic going straight through from the bridge can continue towards westside even if someone is crossing at the university side.

Unfortunately due to the number of motorist who take the illegal right turn this would be dangerous but it would be a good idea if people obeyed the junction lay-out.


Judging by the width of the SQR road in certain sections I don't even see how it'll be wide enough for both a bus and a car so at junctions I wonder will it be down to a single lane at certain points?
Anyone have any idea on the time line to complete the inbound lane to the city, I'm guessing the road isn't gonna be complete this month as originally planned!!!

Malice

at1withmyself wrote: »

Unfortunately due to the number of motorist who take the illegal right turn this would be dangerous but it would be a good idea if people obeyed the junction lay-out.

Does that happen all that often though? I commuted from Barna to Parkmore and then Oranmore for over five years and in that time I saw people swinging right off the bridge towards Moycullen less than a handful of times. Surely the traffic is just too busy during the day unless the driver has some sort of death wish?

Iwannahurl

Motorists breaking the red light when turning left onto the bridge is much more common, IMO.

I wonder whether the new setup will make any difference in this regard?

Storm 10

Just on radio now the road will not open fully until the new year, Now there is a surprise, anyone could have seen that they are way behind schedule, not even transferred to the far side yet.

KevR

fago wrote: »

I noticed yesterday evening and this morning, pretty typical wet evenings, that the queue of traffic going back up the Moycullen road to the junction seemed to me to be a lot shorter.

Even without the integrated traffic management, I wonder just by detecting the flows, are the lights are already improving things?

Or are the timings wrong and traffic on the east/west route is being held up.

I hope the pedestrian lights are more intelligent than the old 4 way green - so traffic going straight through from the bridge can continue towards westside even if someone is crossing at the university side.

In general though I think the contractors did a fair job in keeping the traffic moving whilst replacing the lights.

I'm not too sure how that would work. The left lane is for going straight on and turning left so you couldn't really keep traffic flowing if someone was crossing on the University side.

Ideally there would be an additional lane for traffic turning left. I wonder if Topaz would sell the required land for such a lane??

Sponge Bob

I stand by my summer prediction that it will be fully open in October ...2012.

Das Kitty

The bridge certainly seems less backed up in the evenings since the lights were installed. Hopefully it's not just coincidental! My commute home is back down to 25 minutes now.

The lights at the magic roundabout were out of action a couple of evenings and it also seemed to help things, there was no back up on any of the roads leading on to it.

fago

KevR wrote: »

I'm not too sure how that would work. The left lane is for going straight on and turning left so you couldn't really keep traffic flowing if someone was crossing on the University side.

Ideally there would be an additional lane for traffic turning left. I wonder if Topaz would sell the required land for such a lane??

What I meant was the lights would allow the traffic travelling on the westbound lanes to keep going while the eastbound had a red light to allow pedestrians to cross at the university side.

Not ideal but it would mean westbound is getting an extra green cycle as opposed to the red when you have a 4 way pedestrian red.

As no right turns are allowed at that junction its perfect for this setup.
I am sure this is the sort of thing the junction planner thinks of anyway.

zarquon

Das Kitty wrote: »

The lights at the magic roundabout were out of action a couple of evenings and it also seemed to help things, there was no back up on any of the roads leading on to it.

I noticed that too. It's amazing how natural traffic flow eases congestion in that area when the lights are off on that roundabout

KevR

fago wrote: »

What I meant was the lights would allow the traffic travelling on the westbound lanes to keep going while the eastbound had a red light to allow pedestrians to cross at the university side.

Not ideal but it would mean westbound is getting an extra green cycle as opposed to the red when you have a 4 way pedestrian red.

As no right turns are allowed at that junction its perfect for this setup.
I am sure this is the sort of thing the junction planner thinks of anyway.

Really good idea. They should definitely do this.

what_traffic

KevR wrote: »

I'm not too sure how that would work. The left lane is for going straight on and turning left so you couldn't really keep traffic flowing if someone was crossing on the University side.

Good point - would need a national change here to get a 2 phase crossing introduced rather than 3 phase.