N24 - Cahir to Waterford [design and planning underway]

KrisW1001

Nothing to complain about on this, really. Any other routing at Clonmel would have needed a big detour, and traffic would probably have continued to use the existing N24 anyway as it would be more direct.

marno21

Strong Back to the Future vibes from this. Single carriageway bypasses on busy roads, together with online realignments in the style outlined in the document, were what we did in the 90s. We stopped doing things this way for good reason. Many of these upgrades have had to be reupgraded because they weren't enough to address the issues in the first place.

Traffic volumes between Cahir and Clonmel, and between Clonmel and Kilsheelan are already above the safe level for an engineered Type 1 single carraigeway, let alone what is proposed here. (Stated in the dcoument: The traffic volumes vary significantly along the N24 within the study area. There are sections of single carriageway that do not have sufficient capacity to cater for the volume of traffic. Heavy Commercial Vehicles (HCV) represent 6% to 11% of the total traffic volume on any given day which is particularly relevant given that the N24 passes through several urban areas mixing with other modes such as public transport and vulnerable road users.)

I don't use the N24 much at all so I have no skin in this upgrade but this to me from a neutral point of view is a colossal outlay on a half baked upgrade to placate a small minority.

(I completely agree that a 55km dual carriageway through planning would also be a terrible idea as it would be too big to proceed in one project. A well planned phased project of c. 10-15km phases would be much better).

BagofWeed

Proof if needed that they have no intention of upgrading the N24. This pathetic route selection along with the mess of the route selection between Oola and Tipp Town on the Oola -Cahir N24 scheme will see to it that this won't go any further than the drawing board.

The N24 at Clonmel is also an inner relief road for the town containing lots of exits and roundabouts so where exactly is Clonmel's traffic supposed to go if the IRR is displaced by a new N24 ? Or is this new N24 going to contain 8 + separate junctions ?🤣 No space next to the existing road for auxiliary roads either.

Doing things the Irish way again. We never learn.

steeler j

Clonmel relief road roundabout junctions to be replaced with overbridge and no direct access .Cahir 2+1 to remain unaltered, I'm guessing that the 2 +1 Piltown/Fiddown bypass may remain as it is also .

KrisW1001

Okay, where is the source for this being single carriageways? All I see from the public docs is an intention to "reuse" some of the existing road sections. In a route selection report, that is not the same as leaving them as-is. If people know better, links please...

Clonmel has its own traffic, but none of the other towns along here do: their traffic problems are almost all to do with through traffic, and any kind of bypass will fix them.

BagofWeed

The decision to use the Frank Drohan Inner Relief Road at Clonmel gets worse the more I think about it. Lots of businesses along that route need and/or rely on the IRR for access and trade, the shops and industrial area at the Cashel Road roundabout, the Tesco and the retail units nearby, the sports clubs, even two halting sites and a bowling alley. I can't see any politician from the town or TDs that rely on votes from there agreeing with that route.

For decades the people in Rathronan, Redmonstown and Giantsgrave have expected a bypass to be built there so it wouldn't have been unexpected if the road went that way but the people along the IRR would never have expected this.

This is the third or fourth by pass that has been planned in my time so just like the previous ones that were never built this too seems very unlikely to be built.

Extremely short sighted decision.

Pete_Cavan

I have said before that taking these ultra long sections of road through design and planning as a single project is a waste of time and I think this proves it. The most difficult section becomes a limiting factor for the entire length, even where that limitation does not apply. The N24 here could be improved much faster and to a much higher quality if done in sections.

KCC confirmed CPOs along the stretch as far as Mooncoin last year;

https://consult.kilkenny.ie/en/consultation/kilkenny-county-council-compulsory-purchase-order-no-5-2022-n24-carrick-road-improvement-scheme

That will obviously involve a combination of on- and off-line upgrade. Those works could be combined with upgrading the existing road to 2+2 as far as current Pilltown bypass upgrade in a single project. That would give about 8km of continuous 2+2. This could be followed by a Mooncoin bypass and new road to the end of the M9 which would give about 18km of DC. Going west, building the CoS bypass and as far as where the new road would rejoin the existing N24 north of the rail line would give another 9km. Now up to 27km and certainly achievable to have completed before 2040 in reasonably sized, uncontroversial sections.

Smaller projects can fly under the radar and get through planning much easier, just keep CPOing like KCC above. It's interesting to look at the N24 in the LDA State Lands map, it shows that a fair bit of the existing N24 has already been acquired for online widening. Keep quietly buying up what is needed (including for parallel access roads as necessary), then the planning process becomes a lot easier. Might also get to buy a few houses on the road on the open market, meaning they can be demolished without issue later.

The next section would be from the above western end point to east of Annerville, approx. 11km (so offline Kilsheelan bypass plus a combination of online improvement and offline new build for the rest). Then you are onto Clonmel which is undoubtedly the most difficult section. If you have most/all of the N24 east of there already upgraded to 2+2, there is little choice then other than a full 2+2 bypass. It would be incredibly expensive but this will be post 2040 and it is probably one of the few towns in the country without a proper bypass.

I actually understand the current project not looking at a Clonmel bypass given the terrain both sides of the town. The disappointing thing is that it doesn't even include a new road of Annerville, bypassing Bulmers, etc. and then rejoining the existing N24 south of where it crosses under the rail line. This should be achievable, even if some of the orchards are lost. That really speaks to the lack of ambition and is proof that certain sections of the road will have to be looked at again separately in the not too distant future.

marno21

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121666781#Comment_121666781

Given the fragmented nature of the interventions noted in the pdf, it would appear to be single carriageway planned, certainly for the small local realignments.

Bards

1 billion circa for a complete new offline motorway like the m9 should be considered.. 4 sections at 30km each as a Design and build contract.. We give 6bn to NGOs each year ffs.. This infrastructure will last 100 years minimum.. Govt wants Ireland to have 10m population by 2040.. How are we supposed to travel inter regionally?

KrisW1001

No it shouldn't, west of Cahir is already being planned, we dont, it won't, they don't, and same as you always have.

KrisW1001

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121667435#Comment_121667435

There's nothing there to say the 2+1 sections will not be widened, or the Clonmel relief road.. And nothing is said about the new build stretches. I'll wait until the design is shown.

The safety issue here is private entrances. For on-line stretches, removing these entrances will need a lot of work and new access roads, at which point you're nearly a lot of the way througb the work needed to widen to 2+2.

To be honest, either side of Clonmel, there's not much traffic and a wide single with very limited junctions would solve the problems here... just leave enough space under any bridges (as they do now) for future widening. Wheher Clonmel will work depends as much on the off-line link roads to the north as the N24 mainline.

hans aus dtschl

I'd like to see the design. Some sections definitely will need to be 2+2 but I'm struggling to understand the overall needs here.

Proposing a motorway from Limerick to Waterford, while Cork to Waterford still has a 1+1 (and no upgrade plan) would seem on the face of it to possibly be overkill.

The obvious thing everyone agrees on here is to futureproof any new works with enough CPO to cover 2+2 (or motorway).

BagofWeed

So they didn't decide what type of road it would be before they chose a route ! This is the 2020's and it's backwards we are going.

If it's to be any more than a two lane or WS2 on most of the chosen route then good luck with that, heaps of houses and businesses would have to go.

The design team have stated that there will not be any houses demolished or CPO'd on the Clonmel IRR therefore we can assume it will be a two laned road like it is today. The largest town on the route !

https://www.facebook.com/100000733743519/videos/1072816700632458/ Some interesting commentary from a road activist from near Limerick Junction here. D Moloney, he is an activist regarding the N24 Cahir to Pallasgreen project.

road_high

Logistically how would they even upgrade the Clonmel bypass? It’s a very busy route and would cause extreme disruption for little enough gain. This scheme baffles me in its lack of ambition and will. Not forgetting the N24s very poor safety record

KrisW1001

Online widening has been done, and it can still be cheaper than an offline build. In Clonmel especially, there's really no better route for a Bypass than the existing N24. Anything else is too much of a diversion or starts to get into difficult terrain.

And converting this road to 2+2 would be a lot more than "little enough gain". Even closing direct entrances and grade-separating one of the roundabouts, as indicated, would be a huge benefit to through traffic.

@BagOfWeed - route cross-section is never fully decided at this point. There is, somewhere, a target of what it will be, based on the need. Here, that would be 2+2 - anyone suggesting a motorway on this corridor has been helping themselves to your bag. Once the corridor is decided, then the decision is made about whether that cross-section is required for the full length, and then the design starts.

Until you know where the road is going exactly, you don't know exactly how much traffic it will need to take. Sometimes a new road ends up carrying both local and though traffic, and sometimes the route ends up splitting through traffic from local. When you split traffic, a single might be fine - especially if it has no intermediate junctions, but if you go closer to towns, then you could end up needing a dual.

But, the through-traffic along this route doesn't need anything more than a high quality Type 1 Single. The safety issues and congestion are down to the excessive number of entrances on the existing road, and its lousy alignment in South Kilkenny. Clonmel needs additional capacity, because there's no better way past it than the current N24, but if the rest was up to same standard as N25 through Co. Waterford, there'd be no issues,..

Jayuu

I think most would agree that the preference would be for 2+2 to allow for some future proofing. There might be terrain issues around a potential new Clonmel section and some consideration might have to be given as to where the N76 would merge with the new road (or whether it would merge with it). However Kilsheelan, Carrick-on-Suir and Mooncoin should be easily bypassed and I don't see any reason why you might not want to incorporate the 2+1 section at Piltown/Fiddown into a 2+2 option depending on how you bypassed Mooncoin.

Maybe we should all wait until we see exactly what is proposed before we make any final judgements.

road_high

Would imagine the 2+1 piltown and cahir bypass sections could be converted to 2+2 fairly easily

road_high

It’s probably not a bad ideas to use existing land and alignments so long as it is down to a high standard. It’s common enough in the U.K. to have A roads that mix single and dual carriageway sections

steeler j

17% of traffic on clonmel inner relief road is bypass traffic . It was felt it would be too expensive to build a new bypass for only that amount of traffic. Kilsheelan is 90% of traffic is bypass traffic ,Carrick on suir is 51 %. Carrigeen roundabout to remain , Cashel Rd or Fethard rd are to be removed and replaced with a bridge. Some sections of the CIRR to be widen .An offline section between Cahir and Clonmel between Moorstown and Rathkeevin .

road_high

Will the Clonmel bypass itself be upgraded to 2+2 sections?

FGR

Is the speculation on TII going back to the bad old days of single carriageway routes primarily based on our current Minister for Transport?

The Green Party in general have a very frustrated view on road infrastructure - future proofing is the last thing they will consider unless it's a deterrent to road use.

Is there any likelihood of another reshuffle coming up, or at least one where the greens will concede this dept?

steeler j

7.5 million is required for phase 3 and 4 of this scheme. Council officials are worried that it will be put on the back burner because of the lack of funding this year.

marno21

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122029907#Comment_122029907

May as well put it on the back burner. It's far down the priority list and it can be revisited when a scheme that would actual merit being funded can be put back on the table.

steeler j

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122029967#Comment_122029967

The council seem to be trying to secure funds for the other section as its more advanced section which, I understand. There is little money available so spend it on something that will get something further ahead , get some part of it to phase 4 .

Christy Browne

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122029967#Comment_122029967

I don't understand how the main road between our 3rd and 5th cities can be so far down the priority list compared to some of the rural roads that have been developed and pushed forward recently?

Hibernicis

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122030227#Comment_122030227

I drove Limerick city to Waterford city and back last week. Was shocked when I looked at it on Google maps in advance to see that the M9/N77/M7 was only 10 mins slower, and probably a lot more reliable as it's largely dual as opposed to single carriageway. Refusing to progress the upgrading of this route on environmental grounds is having the the opposite of the intended effect if people end up driving 187km instead of 128km.

Christy Browne

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122030355#Comment_122030355

It's a disgrace, especially when you consider the opportunity for onward travel from Limerick to Galway on the M18. Essentially a primary road linking our 3rd, 4th and 5th cities has been mothballed in favour of far less critical projects. Carrick-On-Suir, Clonmel and Tipp Town are all major bottlenecks that need to be addressed urgently. It's absolutely stunting regional development.

Limerick74

not sure if too many would drive the longer route as fuel costs would be significantly higher