State of roads in Cork City

who_ru

I was struck by how bad some of the roads are in cork city while driving around it recently. I have to say that it gave me the impression of a city uncared for. That might sound over dramatic but it really was an eye opener. I don’t think I’ve driven on worse roads in a major town or city in the country. It’s in stark contrast to a lot of the stories I read in the media about how cork is on the rise, there are some impressive developments underway no doubt, but the road surfaces tell a different story.

McCurtain street’s road surface is very rough, although I accept a lot of work is going there at the moment but it really is awful. Along St Patrick’s Quays, heading towards the turn for Heineken brewery is a very poor surface too. But worse was to come when I drove the north ring road which can only be described as appalling.

I really had thought that the local authorities should be doing an awful lot better, particularly if they are trying to push the city as a tourist destination. I live in limerick city, a blow in, but the roads here are far better. Where the roads were in very poor condition the local authority has resurfaced them by and large. This does not seem to be happening in cork at all.

I like Cork city but it was disappointing to see how poor the roads are in some areas.

Xertz

Some of them are in bad a bad state of repair, but I think I would give them a break on the MacCurtain Street area as the are still on going works there. The Lower Glanmire Road was resurfaced after they were finished but was in a very bad way during the works. I would assume (hope) they’ll be surfacing MacCurtain Street soon.

The state of street surfaces both in Cork and Dublin isn’t great though. There’s a vast amount of traffic on some very inappropriate roads and they fall to bits. You see it around Cork in areas like the North Ring, which should have long ago been replaced with an equivalent to the South Ring but also some of the quays seem to be literally sinking. Try driving along by Jury’s in for example or that link road onto the South Link that runs from the Park and Ride. Seems to be more of a problem with the substructure and foundations than with the surface.

In Dublin the state of the roads in the so called Silicone Docks would nearly cause you to have to get dental work if you were to ever drive through without yeilding to pot holes.

What annoys me is both of those cities generate a huge % of Irish GDP, yet they have very little effort going into maintaining roads and so on, and that’s due to lack of funds.

To be quite honest, giving out to the council about it is probably pointless, as they’re only working within their budgets. If you want to press for serious reform of local government, putting it on a sustainable footing, it would make more sense. We really need to put a lot more pressure on the political parties to take urban Ireland seriously in terms of infrastructure. We’ve cities that can’t compete because they’ve no budgetary autonomy or control or services.

Without radical changes to how our cities are run and financed, they’ll always have lousy infrastructure and bad surfacing. That’s just the reality of how we’ve chosen to do local government.

Until we start facing up to the fact that it’s a broken system, it’s not going to be fixed.

.red.

You think that's bad, come outside the city.
I hit a pot hole at about 55/60kph last week and the car shook so bad the window wipers came on.
I had 2 canvassers for the election, complained about the roads to both, one to be fair wrote to me a few days later saying he had contacted the council, the 2nd lad laughed, I was genuinely shocked at his response. Obviously he didn't get a vote.

Xertz

I’ve banged my head off the ceiling driving at less than 50km/h on some of them.

bingo9999

Its really bad. Some of the potholes that appear overnight near Leemount Cross are baffling. That I can understand to some extent given the sometimes heavy surface water and trucks bashing along - but I do agree with your initial point that certain parts of the city centre are very very bad, for what is a much slower zone. It does feel like the city is not well cared for in many regards, with road surface, but also sometimes the repairs they do for it - just sling down a bit of tarmac which becomes a bump instead of a hole. Given out climate there could be a layer of tar spead of most roads at this time of year to heal up after rough winters. I'm sure I would be told thats not feasible or affordable, but there you go

whisky_galore

Fur coat - no knickers economy. All these fancy new buildings and roads and streets like Cuba. We are back to 1980s size potholes, clattered into one earlier, and you can barely see the road markings and double yellows in places they're so worn away. The speed bumps you can't see anymore in low light.

corks finest

whisky_galore wrote: »

Fur coat - no knickers economy. All these fancy new buildings and roads and streets like Cuba. We are back to 1980s size potholes, clattered into one earlier, and you can barely see the road markings and double yellows in places they're so worn away. The speed bumps you can't see anymore in low light.

See this bull**** ref it's not the councils fault etc by some posters it bloody is,they have a budget yes but are feckin inept and wasteful

mikeecho

whisky_galore wrote: »

Fur coat - no knickers economy. All these fancy new buildings and roads and streets like Cuba. We are back to 1980s size potholes, clattered into one earlier, and you can barely see the road markings and double yellows in places they're so worn away. The speed bumps you can't see anymore in low light.

You've never driven in Cuba..

I have .. our roads are nothing like their roads.

kub

whisky_galore wrote: »

Fur coat - no knickers economy. All these fancy new buildings and roads and streets like Cuba. We are back to 1980s size potholes, clattered into one earlier, and you can barely see the road markings and double yellows in places they're so worn away. The speed bumps you can't see anymore in low light.

Private enterprise is paying the money for these fancy new buildings, it is public money that pays for road maintenance.


I fail to see the connection between the 2, especially that not one of those new buildings being constructed or constructed in Cork was paid for by the public purse.

whisky_galore

mikeecho wrote: »

You've never driven in Cuba..

I have .. our roads are nothing like their roads.

Ah one of those ah shur twill be grand merchants, that pothole and many others like it I hit must have been figments of my imagination.

ShamoBuc

Thread about the roads, picture heavy, in the motor forum.

https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057877716

Xertz

corks finest wrote: »

See this bull**** ref it's not the councils fault etc by some posters it bloody is,they have a budget yes but are feckin inept and wasteful

They genuinely don’t have the budget.

When it comes to actually resurfacing they don’t do it themselves anymore anyway. It would be contracted out to a competent company who have the right gear and expertise. The days of the Council trying to do halfassed jobs on roads are long gone.

I agree though they make a complete mess or small patching up jobs. I think the worst I’ve ever seen was two guys throwing hot asphalt from the back of a flat bed pickup truck into holes on one of the bridges a few years ago. You’d think they’d have access to the right gear to fill the potholes.

Also I would suspect some of the streets probably need to have their foundations resolved. There are definitely some that seem to sink and crack.

Getting the utility companies to coordinate work with resurfacing and getting in some neutral ducts for fibre would he a huge improvement too. There’s far, far too much digging stuff up at random. I mean why wasn’t duct work put in for fibre while MacCurtain Street was dug up for water?

I bet you it’ll be resurfaced and Eir, Virgin or Siro will want to lay fibres and it’ll be full of cuts again.

leahyl

Roads are an absolute shambles - a huge hole appears in the road and they might fill it in....within a week or two, we get torrential rain and it's back to the way it was before.

The North Ring Road is something else - one of the busiest roads on the northside and it's embarrassing. In fact, the vast majority of roads on the northside aren't in very good shape.

Flesh Gorden

who_ru wrote: »

McCurtain street’s road surface is very rough, although I accept a lot of work is going there at the moment but it really is awful. Along St Patrick’s Quays, heading towards the turn for Heineken brewery is a very poor surface too. But worse was to come when I drove the north ring road which can only be described as appalling.

The roads you've mentioned here have lots of HGV useage and patch-up repairs after the likes of Irish Water have been through


North Ring Road is probably the best example of this.

I grew up in that area and lived there a long time.
The number of HGVs heading from Tivoli docks or from the M8, towards the N20 is unreal.

That's all day and even through the night.

The road gets fully resurfaced in parts about every 10 years, but it comes apart again after about 2 years.


McCurtain street was tore up for the past year or even longer and will have plenty of HGVs heading to the multiple construction sites nearby for a fair while.


And of course the Heineken Brewery has trucks full of kegs going in and out every day.

Up where I'm living now, there's a local transport company and the road outside their base has dips that turn into deep pools when it rains, as the road is sinking a few places.



If I'd a magic wand, it would be to get the infrastructure in place to keep the HGVs out of the city, when they are only going from depot to depot.
Or having no other option to go cross city from one main road to another.

You don't see similar road degradation on the likes of the M8, which was built to withstand those types of traffic.

ShamoBuc wrote: »

Thread about the roads, picture heavy, in the motor forum.

https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057877716

That's the OP from the Murphy's Chipper thread, best not to encourage/engage with them :pac:

Xertz

Ah sure they couldn’t be building proper infrastructure on the north side, or facilitating access to one of the largest generators of GDP in the state ...

Flesh Gorden

Also, are we one of the only countries who randomly sticks manhole covers and access points at random parts of the road surface?

I know the brits do it, so it's probably the blind leading the blind.

I'd a quick look on Google Maps at some of the cities I've been in and I don't remember ever seeing (or feeling) the hit of a sinking metal cover that's been randomly placed in the road, outside of our two islands.

leahyl

Flesh Gorden wrote: »

The roads you've mentioned here have lots of HGV useage and patch-up repairs after the likes of Irish Water have been through


North Ring Road is probably the best example of this.

I grew up in that area and lived there a long time.
The number of HGVs heading from Tivoli docks or from the M8, towards the N20 is unreal.

That's all day and even through the night.

The road gets fully resurfaced in parts about every 10 years, but it comes apart again after about 2 years.





.

Absolutely, which is why we need that Northern Ring road urgently - would take all the HGVs away from Mayfield, Ballyvolane etc.

PreCocious

Flesh Gorden wrote: »

Also, are we one of the only countries who randomly sticks manhole covers and access points at random parts of the road surface?

I know the brits do it, so it's probably the blind leading the blind.

I'd a quick look on Google Maps at some of the cities I've been in and I don't remember ever seeing (or feeling) the hit of a sinking metal cover that's been randomly placed in the road, outside of our two islands.

There's one in the middle of the road here in St Luanire (France).
https://www.google.com/maps/@48.6336865,-2.1085817,3a,75y,135.96h,67.15t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sQvvUpUBruSDcpvT7vMAdSg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

Fabio

The area around the bus station and sections of Blackrock and Mahon are an absolute shambles. I ride a motorbike through the city every day and it amazes me just how bad the potholes are. As the OP said, it stinks of a council which doesn't care about the city over which it presides.

corks finest

Fabio wrote: »

The area around the bus station and sections of Blackrock and Mahon are an absolute shambles. I ride a motorbike through the city every day and it amazes me just how bad the potholes are. As the OP said, it stinks of a council which doesn't care about the city over which it presides.

Just went into a large enough pothole before ballygarvan GAA club,sonecrdo holes in road all-around Carrigaline also

timmyjimmy

Nearly cycled into a hole at the corner of bridge street and MacCurtain st. It was pretty tough to avoid and lucky for me, I just about did. I'm not sure if I would have been as lucky if there were more traffic about.

.red.

PreCocious wrote: »

There's one in the middle of the road here in St Luanire (France).
https://www.google.com/maps/@48.6336865,-2.1085817,3a,75y,135.96h,67.15t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sQvvUpUBruSDcpvT7vMAdSg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

How long were you searching Google maps for that?

PreCocious

.red. wrote: »

How long were you searching Google maps for that?

Not long at all - it's where we go on holiday so I'd remember rattling over French drain covers in the car.

I was in Luxembourg yesterday and whilst waiting for my free bus I noticed that they too put manhole covers in the middle of the road. Surprisingly for them the surface around that area was reminiscent of crap Irish roads.

D'Agger

Was in the city this weekend - past the Elysian heading towards city hall - massive pothole

Turning on to Gran Parade by Singers corner - ridiculously poor surface

Turning into Merchants Quay car park entrance - massive pothole, though I assume that's a private one.

Going straight on past the bus station - that road is atrocious with potholes

All in all, the city roads are a shambles and a really poor reflection on Cork as a city

Curb Your Enthusiasm

If you think it's bad driving on them, try cycling on them! Centre Park Road in particular is a disgrace, as is the Marina. Both well used by cyclists and walkers heading to the Greenway. Where's the money going?

Cork Trucker

Curb Your Enthusiasm wrote: »

If you think it's bad driving on them, try cycling on them! Centre Park Road in particular is a disgrace, as is the Marina. Both well used by cyclists and walkers heading to the Greenway. Where's the money going?

To pay 6 workers to watch on while a 7th shovels loose tar into a pothole which lasts all of a few hours at best.

chalkitdown1

Drove down Grand Parade for the first time in years on Sunday and my god, that street is in bits, the section between Western Road and Electric at the corner in particular. Bumbs & hollows everywhere and lazily filled in potholes with tar spread everywhere, cracked concrete and broken bricks at every pedestrian corssing. It's genuinely embarrassing for one of our main streets. :mad:

To be perfectly honest, every single street in and around the city centre needs to be completely resurfaced. Every one of them is in various states of degradation.

Cork Trucker

chalkitdown1 wrote: »

Drove down Grand Parade for the first time in years on Sunday and my god, that street is in bits, the section between Western Road and Electric at the corner in particular. Bumbs & hollows everywhere and lazily filled in potholes with tar spread everywhere, cracked concrete and broken bricks at every pedestrian corssing. It's genuinely embarrassing for one of our main streets. :mad:

To be perfectly honest, every single street in and around the city centre needs to be completely resurfaced. Every one of them is in various states of degradation, bar maybe.

I written to the council about it numerous times on twitter, no joy

corks finest

Cork Trucker wrote: »

I written to the council about it numerous times on twitter, no joy

Council doesent give a feck

Cork Trucker

corks finest wrote: »

Council doesent give a feck

If you didn’t pay your rates or owed them anything at all other than rent on social housing they would be very fast to chase you

leahyl

Massive crater after appearing on the north ring road in Mayfield just past the credit union on the way to Silversprings - caught me by surprise on my way home yesterday :mad:

TheBoyConor

Gotta love all the armchair civil Engineers here. lol.

"spreading a layer of tar" on roads every spring? Tar? good luck trying to stop in the wet with that. And tar has very very little strength in iteself, it is just a binder.

I think people very massively underestimate the amount of work or sheer expense that renewal of a road entails. It is expensive work.

They also underestimate just how hard it is to get any bit of funding from the Government to do any piece of work. It is very difficult and applications for worthy pieces of work are very very often declined.

Manholes are certainly not plonked into roads at "random" locations. Sure, it would be desirable to have them all off road, but that is rarely possible for multiple reasons: congestion of services, a need to intercept a sewer or duct at a particular point, land ownership or consent, wayleave or access issues, and any number of other constructability issues.
Having said that, you can be sure that there are probably many instances where better locations could have been chosen.


You will find that for many roads or areas which are in the worst condition, there are plans often being advanced for complete renewal incorporating improved facilities and public realm enhancement, rather than just resurfacing.

It would be profoundly wasteful to resurface a road only for it to be ripped up and totally regenerated and enhanced 2 - 3 years later. As I said, resurfacing a road is very very expensive business and those euros are very difficult to come by.

Just because a road is very poor, does not mean it is being ignored or that the authorities can't be bothered. There is a lot going on behind the scenes, and indeed, under the road surface, that the average road user has not got any insight into.

And at the end of the day, it really comes down to money. There are many conflicting demands, with everyone insisting that theirs is the the most urgent of urgent cases and local authorities have to prioritise as best they can. It would be great if Ireland were like the UAE or Saudi Arabia and had an bottomless bank account to revamp every boreen and highway to a modern standard. But that simply isn't the case and they have to deal with budget realities.

Again, having said that about the realities of funding, there are things that could be done much better

j8wk2feszrnpao

TheBoyConor wrote: »

Just because a road is very poor, does not mean it is being ignored or that the authorities can't be bothered.

Actually, that’s exactly what it means. If it’s in a very poor state, then it’s the councils remit to have it repaired.

TheBoyConor

It is of course. But design, planning and procurement of a contractor do complete the works is not done overnight. It is a complicated process especially when it is part of a wider enhancement of the road rather than just a relatively straightforward but still very expensive resurfacing. That doesn't even account for the delays and frustrations brought into the mix by serial objectors and the like. And it would be extremely wasteful to resurface a road while a wider remodelling is in the planning stages only to reconfigure it completely a year or two later. And if that was done, there are those pundits who would complain about that too and about how wasteful it was.

efanton

Potholes in Cork are not a new phenomena

We have them so big in places that people can actually swim in them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ylsTz2DgXc

We have roads never designed for the traffic they carry. The N20 is currently at 120% of it capacity, and yet we hear arguments against building a M20.

TheBoyConor

I would not be in favour of building more or bigger roads. You build roads, you simply invite more cars in to clog the place up.

efanton

TheBoyConor wrote: »

I would not be in favour of building more or bigger roads. You build roads, you simply invite more cars in to clog the place up.

When there is no public transport provision for areas outside of Cork city, increased numbers of cars is an inevitability whether a motorway is built or not.

You argument makes no sense whatsoever, when there is no alternative to using a car.

corks finest

TheBoyConor wrote: »

Gotta love all the armchair civil Engineers here. lol.

"spreading a layer of tar" on roads every spring? Tar? good luck trying to stop in the wet with that. And tar has very very little strength in iteself, it is just a binder.

I think people very massively underestimate the amount of work or sheer expense that renewal of a road entails. It is expensive work.

They also underestimate just how hard it is to get any bit of funding from the Government to do any piece of work. It is very difficult and applications for worthy pieces of work are very very often declined.

Manholes are certainly not plonked into roads at "random" locations. Sure, it would be desirable to have them all off road, but that is rarely possible for multiple reasons: congestion of services, a need to intercept a sewer or duct at a particular point, land ownership or consent, wayleave or access issues, and any number of other constructability issues.
Having said that, you can be sure that there are probably many instances where better locations could have been chosen.


You will find that for many roads or areas which are in the worst condition, there are plans often being advanced for complete renewal incorporating improved facilities and public realm enhancement, rather than just resurfacing.

It would be profoundly wasteful to resurface a road only for it to be ripped up and totally regenerated and enhanced 2 - 3 years later. As I said, resurfacing a road is very very expensive business and those euros are very difficult to come by.

Just because a road is very poor, does not mean it is being ignored or that the authorities can't be bothered. There is a lot going on behind the scenes, and indeed, under the road surface, that the average road user has not got any insight into.

And at the end of the day, it really comes down to money. There are many conflicting demands, with everyone insisting that theirs is the the most urgent of urgent cases and local authorities have to prioritise as best they can. It would be great if Ireland were like the UAE or Saudi Arabia and had an bottomless bank account to revamp every boreen and highway to a modern standard. But that simply isn't the case and they have to deal with budget realities.

Again, having said that about the realities of funding, there are things that could be done much better

Reality is no planning whatsoever goes into our road repair etc,no sooner down than eir,gais,etc are digging it up again,,,,,, having lived all over the world,I reckon bar India, Africa republic of IRELAND is the pits at housing) roads/ hospitals/ schools

s1ippy

Complete this survey to inform research about walking in the city:
https://cacsss.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_dm97ekoBfiuxv6d

I'm not affiliated with the study, just really want them to get lots of feedback because a lot needs to change in Cork in terms of pedestrianisation, cycling and use of cars.

Personally I think the Paul Street is an obvious candidate for restricted access. You can install bollards that go down for tradespeople at the points with the green dots in the map I drew below, allowing access for deliveries etc only on that section of town. It will improve the flow of traffic around the city considerably and make it safer for pedestrians.



The Marina is another place that should definitely be keep free of cars.

Cork Trucker

https://twitter.com/padraigosull/status/1265040709305974792?s=20

Cork Trucker

Height restricting barriers needed here.

https://twitter.com/CorkTruckDriver/status/1266297687344734209?s=20

ofcork

Cork Trucker wrote: »

I written to the council about it numerous times on twitter, no joy

The only road resurfacing ive seen done lately is in ringaskiddy by shanbally as the road falls apart from the hundreds of trucks up and down.

opus

I took a walk to the An Post delivery office in Churchfield yesterday to collect a package & couldn't help but notice these on the footpath leading into it. What are they expecting, a lightening panzer attack

ofcork

No our cultural cousins would park up there!!!

Cork Trucker

ofcork wrote: »

The only road resurfacing ive seen done lately is in ringaskiddy by shanbally as the road falls apart from the hundreds of trucks up and down.

And it’s going to get a heck of a lot worse.

Cork Trucker

opus wrote: »

I took a walk to the An Post delivery office in Churchfield yesterday to collect a package & couldn't help but notice these on the footpath leading into it. What are they expecting, a lightening panzer attack

As ofcork says, our cultural cousins and nice camped out on those footpaths on their mobile dwellings. Been like that for 15/20 years now and the cost to remove them is circa. €112k

opus

Cork Trucker wrote: »

As ofcork says, our cultural cousins and nice camped out on those footpaths on their mobile dwellings. Been like that for 15/20 years now and the cost to remove them is circa. €112k

Don't doubt that cost, to say they're solid defenses is an understatement!

Cork Trucker

opus wrote: »

Don't doubt that cost, to say they're solid defenses is an understatement!

Here's one of the articles

https://www.echolive.ie/corknews/Threat-to-block-the-road-to-Apple-over-a-delay-in-removing-unsightly-concrete-bollards-1a1fb2e2-7a16-4b3b-8acc-874c9c273d80-ds

City Hall director of environmental services Valerie O’Sullivan has said it may cost as much as €112,000 to remove them.

Curb Your Enthusiasm

So is there just no usable footpath at all on that road?

Cork Trucker

Curb Your Enthusiasm wrote: »

So is there just no usable footpath at all on that road?

The footpath on the opposite side of Kilmore Road is unhindered. In the industrial estate there’s no footpath to accommodate wheelchairs and buggies. They must go onto the road. It’s a very dangerous place up there where the dump is as well, a literal dump but not a landfill.

Look up John F. Connolly Road on google maps as well as Kilmore Road Knocknaheeny.

Curb Your Enthusiasm

It looks absolutely dreadful.