N3 to R147 to N3

chewed

I see on the M50/N3 junction southbound they've erected a big sign with "City R147" for traffic going into Dublin on the new junction (this is where it is http://goo.gl/maps/m2pBk). Yet, 100 metres previous to this it refers to it as "N3 City". Then on the Auburn junction is refers to it as N3 again! This would be so confusing to anyone not familiar with the route as you would expecting to see "N3" not "R147"!

Are they going to downgrade the N3 to R147 from City Centre all the way to Clonee?

L1011

All the N roads inside the M50 with the exception of the N11 and N31 were downgraded early this year.

Victor

Sure, but I think the existing signage should have stayed.

doolox

They should also be bigger as the freeflow junction at Blamchardstown is very confusing since with full grad seperation you have to keep left to go eventually right towards town if appoaching from the M50 northbound from the southern suburbs.

The amount of time given to react to lane changes in this junction is also very short especially when surrounded by traffic doing well over the posted 30 and 50 kph limits which are about right for new drivers encountering this junction for the first time. Try telling that to the experienced locals who zip through at twice the speeds allowed.

coolmangg

Yeah quite confusing. If they are changing it, they should do all signs at the same time, or not bother at all. Seems like they are making work for themselves in pointless exercises that don't actually benefit anybody but instead waste valuable finances.

icdg

coolmangg wrote: »

Yeah quite confusing. If they are changing it, they should do all signs at the same time, or not bother at all. Seems like they are making work for themselves in pointless exercises that don't actually benefit anybody but instead waste valuable finances.

The reason they are changing it is that it is the outcome of a turf war between Dublin City Council and the NRA largely over O'Connell Street.

The problem now is how these roads will be signed within the M50. since TSM mandates that the destination to be signed is the next significant destination. For example taking the R147 (was N3), it would now be signed inside the M50 as "Ashtown" or "Castleknock" rather than "Cavan" if the TSM were strictly followed.

etchyed

icdg wrote: »

The reason they are changing it is that it is the outcome of a turf war between Dublin City Council and the NRA largely over O'Connell Street.

Really? Any source for that?

Chris_5339762

This kind of turf war is an example of one of the stupidities in this country. There should be no turf war; it should just be a way of properly signing the area in Dublin for ease of use of motorists.

For an absolute start we need people to be able to navigate easily TO the M50. A load of new signs have been put up in the region of J12, from Whitechurch to Ballyboden, and NOT ONE of them references the M50, just the suburbs that most people have never even heard of.

icdg

etchyed wrote: »

Really? Any source for that?

Here you go:

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/30kmh-limit-to-protect-cyclists-and-pedestrians-1050307.html

etchyed

icdg wrote: »

Here you go:

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/30kmh-limit-to-protect-cyclists-and-pedestrians-1050307.html

No indication of a turf war there. Based on that article alone, it would seem to have been quite an amicable handover. I wasn't aware that this had already been planned way back in 2007, and it seems to have taken until February of this year for the legal changes to have taken place. It's a shame that in the intervening five years, an alternative solution was not found.

As I said in the previous thread on this topic, it makes no sense that trunk status and national route status are necessarily one and the same thing in this country. In the UK, A-roads are not necessarily trunk roads. There is no reason, besides an evidently overly inflexible law, why these routes couldn't have retained their N-numbers with a 30km/h speed limit and responsibility for their maintenance passing to the relevant Dublin councils.

I don't know whether a change in these rules would require a bill to pass through the Dáil, but I can't imagine how the cost of drafting a bill and the few minutes of Dáil time required to rubberstamp it could be higher than the cost of replacing all signage within the M50.

etchyed

The more I think about this, the more absurd it seems. From icdg's link, we now know that this reclassification of all the national routes within the M50 had been in the works since 2007.

Yet, between then and now, the M50 upgrade took place, and along the length of the M50, and at each of its many junctions, hundreds of expensive new signs were erected, many of them gantry-mounted, and all of them referring to route numbers that were soon to be obsolete. Really quite special.