Shortcutting through Dunnes carpark

quietsailor

I use the Bandon roundabout a lot coming to & going from work, between halfway and Wilton. Since the dual carriageway road works started I've noticed the light sequence at the Dunne's store exit seems to be prioritised for the car park exiting as I always have to stop - even in the mornings when there may be no traffic.

In the last few days I've see people coming from the Wilton side using the entrance into the car park off the dual carriageway, much more traffic than before. is anyone out there using this as a rat-run around the traffic lights or am I imagining things?

Finally, does anyone have an email address for the people in county hall who control the traffic lights, I want to get in touch with them to find out why the car park has such a high priority

pwurple

There is an email for the works on the bandon road. N25@ccc-site.com. That is the email address where the sarsfield/bandon road updates come from so maybe try that.

On the rat running, i think it would be a pretty awkward one, but maybe.

sasol

I travel from Sarsfield Rdabout to Bandon Rdabout and onwards towards Macroom each morning. I have seen people do this rat run through the Dunnes car park and they exit left coming out of the car park, towards Bandon.

They definetly gain an advantage - it is faster to go through the Car Park than continue onto the Bandon Rdabout and take the left there. i have seen several cars do this in the mornings.

neddynasty

Seen plenty of people in the evenings using that rat run. All it takes is one person and a load follow.

GERMAN ROCKS

I do it myself if theres a que infront of me. its handy then when the lights in dunnes are green to get a straight run :P

gowley

neddynasty wrote: »

Seen plenty of people in the evenings using that rat run. All it takes is one person and a load follow.

arrest them all.

Outkast_IRE

There are people using it for that purpose, i seen an old woman crossing the road with her trolley nearly knocked down last week, because someone doing it was racing through.

Ludo

Typical. Improve access for people and idiots abuse it. This will force them to change it to prevent this in some way penalising everyone. Selfish bastards trying to save a minute of their so important time.

.red.

This will all stop when the new fly-overs open. There will be no need to do it as there shouldnt be any traffic built up.
Thanks for the tip off on the short cut until they do open lol

Ludo

That is true of course. Good point red.

hoodwinked

Outkast_IRE wrote: »

There are people using it for that purpose, i seen an old woman crossing the road with her trolley nearly knocked down last week, because someone doing it was racing through.

wow how did they even manage that? :eek: i had to slow right down going in there (was meeting my mother in law in Dunnes) with all the curves in the entrance (which i assumed was to slow incoming traffic down)

Outkast_IRE

hoodwinked wrote: »

wow how did they even manage that? :eek: i had to slow right down going in there (was meeting my mother in law in Dunnes) with all the curves in the entrance (which i assumed was to slow incoming traffic down)

They didnt stop properly at the yield line when you get into dunnes , and once you go past the yield line, your driving straight into the pedestrian/trolley walkway where people cross, they just raced through no proper slowing down/observation.

TINA1984

Outkast_IRE wrote: »

They didnt stop properly at the yield line when you get into dunnes , and once you go past the yield line, your driving straight into the pedestrian/trolley walkway where people cross, they just raced through no proper slowing down/observation.

Shur me feiner drivers don't give a toss about the temporary speed limits in place, why would they care about lane markings in the Dunnes car park? Gotta get to where they're going 30 seconds quicker, **** everyone else...

quietsailor

Ludo wrote: »

Typical. Improve access for people and idiots abuse it. This will force them to change it to prevent this in some way penalising everyone. Selfish bastards trying to save a minute of their so important time.

I'd argue the contrary to this, to me it looks like some one in Dunnes/friendly with Dunnes in the authority pulled a stroke and gave the Dunnes car park priority at the lights.

I often pass this junction at very early / late hours of the day and there would be no cars exiting the car park yet the lights give priority to the car park.

As a working example I came into cork yesterday morning at 0750 heading from Bandon road to Wilton - that was Sat morning. I had to stop at the lights, no cars came out from the car park. After I passed through this junction and while I was waiting at the lights to enter the roundabout I watched the lights at the car park junction in my rear mirrors. They cycled through two changes, no cars came out of Dunnes for either cycle yet there was people waiting on the Bandon side of the lights to follow me onto the roundabout.

Those cars that were caught by the 2nd light cycle ( I had gotten green to go onto the roundabout at this point) didn't have enough time to get onto the roundabout when the "Dunnes" lights went green before the roundabout lights went red.

So what I'm seeing every morning is a dis-functional sequence of lights that causes traffic to backup. As it's losing people time people are queuing out onto the roundabout from the Bandon side which in turn blocks the people traveling Wilton/Ballincollig & Wilton/Bishopstown (CIT traffic).

This traffic in turn then queues across the junction blocking the next group - Bishopstown to Bandon -coming on and so and so on. But wait , the car park lights for these people going out the Bandon road are now red so they queue back onto the roundabout interfering with the roundabout traffic flow.

Mods: I've gone OT here talking about the roundabout lights but I didn't want to start a new thread & clog up the forum.

The lights are all related. If the lights are sequenced properly - going red at the start/top/upstream and then going red progressively downstream which will allow the roundabout to clear of traffic before the next stream comes on it would clear a lot of annoyance & road rage at those junctions and if the Dunnes store car park didn't have priority over the main Cork to West Cork road then traffic would flow freely.

The car park junction lights can then be timed to match the roundabout lights better and stop snarling the traffic flow

quietsailor

Outkast_IRE wrote: »

They didnt stop properly at the yield line when you get into dunnes , and once you go past the yield line, your driving straight into the pedestrian/trolley walkway where people cross, they just raced through no proper slowing down/observation.

It's wrong that the went fast through a pedestrian crossing but Dunnes are wrong to have designed the car park that way. They know traffic is coming onto the car park via a tight turn off a main road with a high speed and will be watching their right for other traffic, there shouldn't be a pedestrian crossing there at all, it's setting up an accident.

hoodwinked

quietsailor wrote: »

It's wrong that the went fast through a pedestrian crossing but Dunnes are wrong to have designed the car park that way. They know traffic is coming onto the car park via a tight turn off a main road with a high speed and will be watching their right for other traffic, there shouldn't be a pedestrian crossing there at all, it's setting up an accident.

correct me if im wrong but isn't it 60km/h thats not that high of a speed....

.red.

hoodwinked wrote: »

correct me if im wrong but isn't it 60km/h thats not that high of a speed....

its plenty fast enough to kill a person

quietsailor

hoodwinked wrote: »

correct me if im wrong but isn't it 60km/h thats not that high of a speed....

The design would have been drawn for the speed limit when the main road is finished, that'll be 100 Km/hr?

Also 60Km/hr coming around that corner is way too fast, there simply isn't enough time to register all the variables - people, other cars driving, trolleys left out on the road etc much less actually figure out what to do with them.

The entrance in off the road should be at a less busy part of the car park, it's on a bend, coming onto the internal car park main road with a pedestrian crossing nearby,

I've only driven it once so I'll use it again next week when I go to work but from what I remember if it was forced to turn more to the left and people exited the slip off the dual carriageway and were now on the "back" of the car park it would be safer as they would have time to settle themselves and orient themselves to the car park

hoodwinked

quietsailor wrote: »

The design would have been drawn for the speed limit when the main road is finished, that'll be 100 Km/hr?

Also 60Km/hr coming around that corner is way too fast, there simply isn't enough time to register all the variables - people, other cars driving, trolleys left out on the road etc much less actually figure out what to do with them.

The entrance in off the road should be at a less busy part of the car park, it's on a bend, coming onto the internal car park main road with a pedestrian crossing nearby,

I've only driven it once so I'll use it again next week when I go to work but from what I remember if it was forced to turn more to the left and people exited the slip off the dual carriageway and were now on the "back" of the car park it would be safer as they would have time to settle themselves and orient themselves to the car park

by 60km/h not being a fast speed i was referring to the speed limit on the main road to which the poster i quoted was referring to as 'high speed', by the time you hit the corners you should definitely be slower than that.