Irish vs UK roads policies

Jimmy Bottles

Noticed quite a few things from driving in the North and the UK.

1. The UK still are doing on-line builds, creating dual carriageways out of single carriageways and leaving them as A roads. Case in points being the current dualing of Belfast to Larne Road.

2. Unlike down here, at grade junctions on dual carriageways are still seen as perfectly acceptable. I find it hard to believe that Newry to Belfast still has plenty of at-grade junctions with drivers having to turn across two lanes of traffic travelling at them at 70mph.

3. Bus lanes on inter-city A roads. Again, present on the A1 between Newry and Belfast. Using the hard shoulder as a bus lane. Hell, some sections of this road don't even have a break down lane.

4. National speed limit. We got away with this back in 2005. Just about any road outside of a city has a 60mph limit. All dual carriageways where not stated have a 70mph limit. Some of these dual carriageways are of a poor standard and yet still have a 70mph limit.

5. Speed limits through villages. Where in the ROI, we'd have 50kph limits through all villages and towns, the same is not the case in the UK. 40mph (64kph) limits are readily used through villages. The 60kph limit is hardly ever used here through villages.

Anyways, some questions have to be asked. What will ever happen to the A1 in Northern Ireland. Those at-grade junctions are incredibly dangerous IMO. Will it eventually be all replaced with an 0ff-build motorway.

I'm simply shocked at the UK preference for at-grade junctions to save money. There were a number of at-grade junctions on the Midleton bypass which were blocked years ago for safety reasons. In terms of road builds our designs seems miles ahead in terms of safety concerns.


Oh and one more thing. Can someone explain to me why traffic levels are so low in Northern Ireland compared to ROI. Hardly any traffic one side of the border and bang, you cross to the other side and you almost always hit a convoy of 6 cars travelling at 80kph. Can't understand what's going on.

Jayuu

The A1 may not the best example of current NI road policy given that it was built back in the 60s (or 70s). Somebody can probably say exactly when.

At the time it was perfectly acceptable to have at grade junctions on dual carraigeways. The Naas Dual-Carraigeway in the ROI would have been similar. It had numerous at grade junction and traffic lights as well. It was only upgraded to fully separated junctions in 2006.

I know having driven the A1 on numerious occasions between 2008-2010 that it has been slowly improved. The Newry By-Pass was completed in that timescale and a number of the at grade separations have been either closed off or made fully separated during that time. I would imagine more improvements will be carried out on it over time but I don't ever see a new A1(M) offline build being done.

http://www.wesleyjohnston.com/roads/ is a great site for information on Northern Ireland's roads (past, present and future).

Jimmy Bottles

All the same, appears to me that the A8 dualling scheme is going ahead with some at grade junctions. Left in left out almost certainly.

2+2 is the max an N road would be upgraded to here.

Chris_5339762

The UK are appalling at road policies, regularly being browbeaten by the environmentalists/hippies/no-roads/no-cars brigade.

Two examples of chronic bottlenecks that there are no plans to do anything with. Bracknell, Stonehenge, Lyndhurst. The first two would be solved by motorways, the third by 1km of S2. But there is no political will and far too much anti-roads mentality that none will be touched.

Look also at the Aberdeen bypass proposals for terrible design. D2s linked by offset roundabouts. With the words "queue projections" stated in the planning documents.

formerly scottish paddy

Keeping with the Aberdeen theme, the A90 Dundee to Aberdeen DC has numerous at-grade junctions and all too regular fatal RTA's. The latest last Wednesday http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-23697935
Yes these roads are death traps! People drive on them like they are motorways, in fact I have even heard people referring to them as a motorway!!
I am glad there are none in Ireland.

marmurr1916

At-grade junctions, roundabouts, crossings, LILOs, private entrances/exits are all common on UK dual-carriageways which have a general speed limit of 70mph, the same as on motorways.

The AADT figures required to upgrade a route to dual-carriageway and/or motorway are also much higher than in Ireland.

For example, the A1 between Newcastle and north of Berwick on Tweed is mainly single carriageway even though it's the main route between the greater Edinburgh area (population over 500,000) and the Newcastle/Tyneside area (population over 1,000,000) and on down to London.

In fairness, most of the A1 between south of Gateshead and its junction with the M1 is now motorway (A1(M)).

Although there is still a section of dual-carriageway between Leeming Bar and north of Scotch Corner (A1/A66 junction).

nordydan

Jimmy Bottles wrote: »

Anyways, some questions have to be asked. What will ever happen to the A1 in Northern Ireland. Those at-grade junctions are incredibly dangerous IMO. Will it eventually be all replaced with an 0ff-build motorway.

http://www.wesleyjohnston.com/roads/m1a1link.html

http://www.wesleyjohnston.com/roads/a1gradesepfinal4.html

AFAIK there will always be a 20 mile stretch between Dromore/Hillsborough and just north of Newry that will always be D2 (albeit safer than now). The links above describe how all central crossings will be closed and minor roads closed off entirely but there are clearly serious problems remaining (ie bus stops/houses with direct access etc.)

Chris_5339762

Unfortunately a new build between Newry and Hillsborough is just never going to happen I'm afraid. It would be nice to have, as the current A1 north of Newry is not of great quality (especially the 60mph section around Banbridge) but no dice.

What they need to do is get the Sprucefield upgrade done, but I can understand that the A8 upgrade and more importantly York Street are top of the list.

Jimmy Bottles

What exactly is the plan with York Street. I presume you're referring to the A12 - M3 interchange. It's quite shocking how bad this junction is at the moment.

betistuc

Just to digress slightly, I've always wondered why the M1 from Dungannon to Belfast was not called the M4 especially as it runs almost parallel with the A4 which originates in Enniskillen.

Must be confusing for tourists to find two M1 s ( north and south) within a 100km of each other

nordydan

Jimmy Bottles wrote: »

What exactly is the plan with York Street. I presume you're referring to the A12 - M3 interchange. It's quite shocking how bad this junction is at the moment.

Free flow in all 3 directions A12/M2/M3

You can find all the info HERE

Leonard Hofstadter

The biggest problem with the UK road network BY FAR, is the congestion. You can be on the M1 (in England) on a Saturday afternoon and you will be going at 5 mph in parts, despite the fact that the road has four lanes in each direction in parts (such as near Nottingham and close to London).

This is a result of bad design on their part; for example, close to London, the M1 is handling traffic coming from Sheffield (500k inhabitants), Birmingham (1 million in the city, around 3 million in the West Midlands conurbation), Leicester, Northampton, Derby (300k), Nottingham (400k) and Greater Manchester (about 4 million)! It's insane.

The Irish approach to road building is far superior. If we copied the British approach to road building, we would have one road from Dublin to Galway, Cork, Waterford and Limerick, with spurs at say Portlaoise for Athlone and Galway, and another spur at Cahir for Limerick and Waterford. That does not work, as anyone who has to travel on 'mainland' motorways will tell you.

Another problem with thier road network is as mentioned, the dual carriageways. Even I, someone who as the username suggests, is not exactly one for driving slowly, find it odd how some DCs have 70 mph limits - roads with no hard shoulders and the lanes can often be quite narrow. They would never be allowed to be 120 km/h back at home for sure. I do think in Ireland we are too fond of 100 kph on dual carraigeways when at least 110 and ideally 120 would be perfectly fine.

In general though their roads are far smoother and of course, at least they don't drive like Grannys on the motorways (when there isn't a lot of traffic of course).

Geogregor

captainspeed wrote: »

The biggest problem with the UK road network BY FAR, is the congestion. You can be on the M1 (in England) on a Saturday afternoon and you will be going at 5 mph in parts, despite the fact that the road has four lanes in each direction in parts (such as near Nottingham and close to London).

This is a result of bad design on their part; for example, close to London, the M1 is handling traffic coming from Sheffield (500k inhabitants), Birmingham (1 million in the city, around 3 million in the West Midlands conurbation), Leicester, Northampton, Derby (300k), Nottingham (400k) and Greater Manchester (about 4 million)! It's insane.

The Irish approach to road building is far superior. If we copied the British approach to road building, we would have one road from Dublin to Galway, Cork, Waterford and Limerick, with spurs at say Portlaoise for Athlone and Galway, and another spur at Cahir for Limerick and Waterford. That does not work, as anyone who has to travel on 'mainland' motorways will tell you.

Another problem with thier road network is as mentioned, the dual carriageways. Even I, someone who as the username suggests, is not exactly one for driving slowly, find it odd how some DCs have 70 mph limits - roads with no hard shoulders and the lanes can often be quite narrow. They would never be allowed to be 120 km/h back at home for sure. I do think in Ireland we are too fond of 100 kph on dual carraigeways when at least 110 and ideally 120 would be perfectly fine.

In general though their roads are far smoother and of course, at least they don't drive like Grannys on the motorways (when there isn't a lot of traffic of course).

Well the problem of congestion on British roads comes from the fact that there are way too few of them considering the 60+ mln population of that country.

UK has only something about 3500km of motorways while Ireland (with population just about 4.5mln) has probably about 1000km. The huge disparity in traffic levels is obvious.
Even with many 3+3 (or even 4+4) motorways in Britain, there just isn't enough of it considering its population and much bigger interconnection with European traffic (mostly trucks)
Design wise I think UK roads are really good (as are Irish, by and large)

Marcusm

captainspeed wrote: »

The biggest problem with the UK road network BY FAR, is the congestion. You can be on the M1 (in England) on a Saturday afternoon and you will be going at 5 mph in parts, despite the fact that the road has four lanes in each direction in parts (such as near Nottingham and close to London).

The M40 would be an equally attractive motorway for most heading from Birmingham and points north to head to London. In fact, in my experience, it is preferred by car traffic (esp irregular motorway users) as there is a significantly lower incidence of trucks (who prioritise the M1 due to the network of distribution centres around the east Midlands).

The greater congestion and bottlenecks are experienced on the M6 between Manchester and Birmingham where you have a single motorway feeding traffic onto 3 (M50, M5, M1).