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How much did Motorways improve the driving times

2

Comments

  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,540 ✭✭✭plodder


    I guess nobody should "have to" but I often stop there, to walk the dog on the Greenway. These sleepy places are all immeasurably nicer, since being bypassed.

    My overriding memory of the bad old days was Friday evenings leaving Dublin or Sundays returning, the line of crawling traffic, and the yahoos tearing up the wrong side of the road, not knowing if they'd be able to get back over to the left when they meet traffic coming the other way. Crazy stuff. Accident rates were much higher in those days.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 178 ✭✭Tippman24


    Years ago i remember going to a Tipp/Limerick match in Cork on a whit Sunday. We made good time until outside Fermoy where we lost a least an hour. Reason was a religious procession up the main street of the place. The priest got some amount of abuse from people as they passed.

    What is the with the Cork/Limerick motorway? Is it proceeding or has that great intellectual of a green transport minister, Eamon Ryan, put an end to it.

    Every morning on Lyric I still hear of tailbacks around Adare. Has the great intellectual put the Adare By-Pass on hold also?



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 8,013 ✭✭✭10-10-20


    I remember being stuck in Bray before the N11 opened past Loughlinstown. I think it was 3.5hrs from Dublin to South Wexford at that time; mind-numbing boredom and your legs would be cramping before you even got 20% of the way to Wexford. There used to be a chipper in Newtownmountkennedy called "Yankie Doodle", we all used to laugh at such a funny name. Enniscorthy was hell too - that bridge.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,259 ✭✭✭Rowley Birkin QC


    My homeplace is at one of those passing points outside Mitchelstown. I grew up with the sounds of sirens and literal bangs and smashes from car crashes. It used to be absolutely lethal there where people would do exactly what you mention, mash the loud pedal at first sight of a potential gap. Not to mention the Friday evening traffic which would stretch maybe 2km outside the town in all directions.

    I worked on the Motorway construction at the time, the difference in the days after it opened was staggering. Motorway infra is a game changer for this country.



  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 50,768 CMod ✭✭✭✭magicbastarder


    several times when i've not been in a rush, i've bailed off onto the old main roads. dead quiet and very wide, a more relaxing drive.



  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 50,768 CMod ✭✭✭✭magicbastarder


    this being the internet, you know someone is going to fact check you.

    according to google maps, it's 175km from dublin airport to rosslare harbour. doing that in 1h35m is an average of 123.5km/h; and the M50 is mostly 100km/h limits.



  • Moderators, Politics Moderators Posts: 41,160 Mod ✭✭✭✭Seth Brundle


    Whilst motorways have ben great at making long distance driving much easier, safer and less stressful, it has allowed us to live further away from the cities meaning way more people now commute long distances to their workplace. This also means that the likes of the dual carriageways in and out of the cities become quite congested in the mornings & evenings. I presume that this need to travel further is, in part, a reason why we have two and a half times more cars now then we did when we had a few short stretches of motorway.



  • Posts: 0 [Deleted User]


    Yeah, it's why I have such a hate of HGVs being tolled. That Fermoy/Rathcormac example is just a horrendously giid example



  • Posts: 0 [Deleted User]


    Motorways allowed the government to push people into rural development instead of facing down NIMBYs and developing living cities with well providioned high density living. Motorways are necessary, commuter towns are not


    Motorways keep traffic away from towns and villages, reduce accidents, reduce pollution from vehicles idling for hours and accelerating/braking constantly, keep pollution away from towns.



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  • Moderators, Politics Moderators Posts: 41,160 Mod ✭✭✭✭Seth Brundle


    Motorways allowed the government to push people into rural development instead of facing down NIMBYs and developing living cities with well providioned high density living. Motorways are necessary, commuter towns are not

    Not sure if you are correcting me but I didn't say otherwise. Motorways have been great in so many ways for the country. It's just a pity that they enabled more urban sprawl.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,510 ✭✭✭✭Red Silurian


    In your example a car is €2 and a HGV is €6.30 on that road

    I have no problem with them being tolled in an effort to raise funds to maintain the road... But I can't get over why they are being tolled triple what a car is tolled



  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 50,768 CMod ✭✭✭✭magicbastarder


    partly due to wear and tear, maybe? a HGV causes thousands of times more wear and tear on a road surface than a car does.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 11,461 ✭✭✭✭salmocab


    I do think that if there is an easy alternative then HGV’s should be encouraged to use the motorway if it’s by cheaper or free tolls that’s fine.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,143 ✭✭✭blingrhino


    Dundalk to Dublin with my dad in the late 70`s was at least 2 hours.

    Castlebellingham, Dunleer , Drogheda - over west st and down shop st , no bridge of peace (Drogheda still the worst town in ireland for traffic today ) through Balbriggan and through the north Dublin suburbs but at least you could park outside the ice cream shop in o connell st !



  • Posts: 0 [Deleted User]


    Just highlighting more inadequacies of our government in taking the short-term lazy option



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  • Posts: 0 [Deleted User]


    And, honestly, who cares. Should be factored into the budget in planning.

    Getting HGV away from rural towns and villages, with their danger/pollution/building damage, should be a no brainer. It's one of the main reasons for the network in the first place



  • Posts: 0 [Deleted User]


    The real problem, with that road, is that during Off-Peak you can come through the tunnel, get off at WaterGrassHill, go through Rathcormac and Fermoy, rejoin the motorway and not pay a toll until Laois. You lose, maybe, 10 minutes. It's absolutely not worth it for many companies to pay that toll. Others rather face Urlingford-Abbeyleix than paying the toll there.

    I'm against HGV tolling, altogether, as our rail network is so poor (Ringaskiddy will never get a link) an this is just a perfectly awful example.


    *I am not involved in haulage*



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 18,963 ✭✭✭✭kippy


    This is very true. It's no coincidence that road deaths and injuries have been significantly reduced over the past couple of decades per capita. A combination of better roads and one could argue better/safer cars.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,510 ✭✭✭✭Red Silurian


    I remember 2006 I was doing my leaving cert and the figure of 395 road deaths occurred in our country in 2005, more than one a day. Fast forward to 2019 (ignoring the COVID years) and we are at 140, a 62% decrease

    Better cars help for sure but the main reason, I believe, is better roads



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,485 ✭✭✭Padre_Pio


    Dublin city to Cork on the bus was 5 hours, with a pee break in the middle. Now it's 3 hours or so, and the last 30 minutes is from Heuston to O'Connell St.



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  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 50,768 CMod ✭✭✭✭magicbastarder


    massive falloff in drink driving, and hugely improved safety standards in cars are the two reasons i see mentioned most, i think.



  • Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 12,439 Mod ✭✭✭✭Cookiemunster


    The Dublin Port Tunnel is a prime example of this. Free for HGVs and a charge for cars.



  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 50,768 CMod ✭✭✭✭magicbastarder


    would be worth offering a single luas ticket in the price, so passengers could hop off at heuston and get the luas to o'connell street, which could save the bus (and driver) being tied up for that extra time.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,193 ✭✭✭Eircom_Sucks


    70 mins recently , used to be about 2hrs on the old roads through thomastown etc



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,510 ✭✭✭✭Red Silurian


    Drink driving was never much of an issue, in fact you could argue that with a reduction in public transport and Taxis our drink driving rates might be higher (although still very low) than it was 20 years ago



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,070 ✭✭✭Charles Babbage


    The Bridge in Drogheda was built around 1976. Before that, a passenger could probably get out and buy an ice cream and walk up the street and catch up on their car. Two HGVs meeting while turning from West Street into Shop Street could jam things up.


    People in those days often chose not to face Drogheda but took the R169 from Dunleer to Collon and proceeded on the N2. Slane was a delay, but no queue. Ashbourne was a village then, and while there were lights at Finglas there was a relatively quiet dual carriageway to Glasnevin.



  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 50,768 CMod ✭✭✭✭magicbastarder


    not sure if i agree with you that drink driving was never much of an issue!

    even recently, i found a report stating that in something like 800 fatalities, alcohol was measurable in over one third of the bodies. from people i know maybe ten years older than me, driving home with quite a few pints in you would barely have raised an eyebrow in the 90s.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,733 ✭✭✭Hibernicis


    from people i know maybe ten years older than me, driving home with quite a few pints in you would barely have raised an eyebrow in the 90s.

    100% agree. Was thinking about this earlier while reading some of the posts on driving Cork-Dublin and the other long drives. People thought nothing of stopping off in Morrissey's of Abbeyleix or The Silken Thomas in Kildare or similar for a few scoops to break the journey, driver included.

    And it wasn't just the drivers on the long runs that contributed. One of the big cases of accidents was drunks emerging from a pub after midnight and hopping into the old banger to head two miles over the road and driving, often on sidelights or one headlight, onto or across a main road. Had some close shaves of this nature on the N8 in places like Horse & Jockey, Kilbeheny, Rathcormack and the like.

    I think there are five factors which have contributed to lowering the death toll:

    • NCT improving the roadworthiness of cars, especially tyres (No more remoulds, regrooves, rethreads, or just plain bald tyres)
    • Better (more skilled) driving
    • Better roads
    • Better/safer cars
    • Complete change in attitude towards drink driving

    It's difficult to guess at which of these has had the biggest impact. There are of course new factors which have the opposite effect: Using hand held mobiles while driving, faster cars, a lot more cars on the roads etc. But I definitely feel safer on the M7/M8 today than I did on the N7/N8 thirty years ago.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,733 ✭✭✭Hibernicis


    It's perfectly fair that all road users should pay tolls, no category should be exempt other than perhaps emergency vehicles. And it is logical that the toll charge should to some extent at least reflect the wear and tear on the road surface. The issue of trucks driving through villages to dodge the toll should be addressed by penalising those that do so - by charging a higher penalty toll for this behaviour. The technology exists to do this.



  • Posts: 0 [Deleted User]


    You cannot remove untolled routes. Roads through towns/villages are National roads.


    Having heavy goods out of population areas is worth the trade off with some extra wear on the road.



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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,328 ✭✭✭hans aus dtschl


    I actually don't think it's a big issue. I cycle Watergrasshill to Rathcormac a lot. Most of the toll-dodgers are commuters, not HGV's.



  • Posts: 0 [Deleted User]


    Commuters are a large issue but MicroBio send chemical trucks through Fermoy and Rathcormac several times a day. Glennon Brothers send loaded lumber trucks. They're two habitual users I see on the road a lot as they're distinctive but they're far from alone



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 30 Gold7


    I remember travelling Dublin to Belfast in the 80s it sometimes took nearly 4 hours, Swords, Balbriggan, Drogheda,Dundalk, Newry. Now I have done it in 2 hours 20 Minutes on the Aircoach bus from O'Connell street.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,733 ✭✭✭Hibernicis


    “You cannot remove untolled routes. Roads through towns/villages are National roads.

    Having heavy goods out of population areas is worth the trade off with some extra wear on the road.”

    I agree 100% that HGV’s should be strongly discouraged from passing through populated/residential areas unnecessarily.

    I didn’t suggest removing anything and I didn’t and don’t dispute that roads which pass through villages may be national (or regional or local) roads.

    I cannot agree with your approach of rewarding HGV operators or anybody else for their current ignorant behaviour. The motorway bypasses were built at great expense, not just for the convenience of the few who are willing to pay the tolls, but equally if not more so for the benefit of those whose lives were made miserable and unsafe by large volumes of through traffic. The current toll regime is arbitrary and downright illogical however this is neither here nor there as it is what it is and should either apply to all road users equally or be scrapped and replaced with something more logical.

    It would be fairer and better all round to apply a toll, being at least the same amount as the Motorway toll, preferably higher, to vehicles leaving the motorway at a junction immediately before the toll gates and re-joining within a short period at the next junction after the toll gates. This could apply to all vehicles and not just HGVs.

    Not wishing to derail an otherwise interesting thread, I’m more then happy to disagree on this, but I can’t see any reasonable grounds for your approach.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,049 ✭✭✭Chris_5339762


    To add to the temptation, if you skip the Fermoy toll you have the cheap garage for Diesel in Rathcormac, and if you skip at Abbeyleix, you can get the really cheap Diesel in Urlingford. It doubles the saving.


    If I'm doing a Cork - Dublin - Cork run on a Sunday, which I do have to do sometimes, I'd always skip one toll out of the four. And top up.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 19,621 ✭✭✭✭road_high


    They are one of the biggest reasons irelands poor road safety record went from bottom to top of the class in a short time in the late 2000s. We need to complete the puzzle now though. The N20, parts of the N4, N17, N14 etc are still not acceptable



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 19,621 ✭✭✭✭road_high


    It used to be a pretty regular thing to hear on the news of multiple deaths on the old inter Urbans. That’s thankfully rare now



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 19,621 ✭✭✭✭road_high


    Carlow and castledermot were pretty bad. I drove the old N9/10 from Kilkenny to Waterford recently just for nostalgia and Christ what an awful road that was for a national road. Only thing is now there’s no traffic on it and it was actually a kind of a pleasure to do.

    North of Thomastown and Carlow it was an ok road in parts and had been improved through the 80s and 90s but certainly wouldn’t handle the traffic on the M9 now.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 70,976 ✭✭✭✭L1011


    The good bits of the N9, Moone bypass for instance, were fine but south of Thomastown was a goat track. Was always expecting to come around the corner and find a HGV in the side of Jerpoint Abbey.



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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 545 ✭✭✭Ninap


    Yes, pre motorway national roads were notorious for crazy overtaking - fellas trying to overtake whole streams of cars at a time. And all fairly pointless too, as the cars would concertina at the next town anyway. Head-on collisions were a major component of road deaths.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 17,558 ✭✭✭✭MEGA BRO WOLF 5000


    Cork used be a dose for me pre motorways. I'm in Tipperary, or I was at least. It was a two hour trek. Now it's a rough old road as far as mitchelstown and all motorway after that, I can do it in an hour even from my home place to the centre of cork city which is amazing.

    I can be in Dublin in 90 mins, the same, backwards road until cashel then smooth sailing after.

    Now I live in limerick, Dublin is much the same as it's motorway from my door but cork is an absolute BALL ACHE to get to. The road from Limerick to Cork is a national embarrassment. It's at least two hours depending on if the farmer in the tractor in front of me wants to pull in or not. It's actually a scandal how it's so bad.

    From limerick city I can be in Galway in an hour or Dublin in 90 minutes but going to cork, I may as well be driving to Timbuktu.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 24,552 ✭✭✭✭lawred2


    Used to drive Cork Dublin.. Six hours was not unusual.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,297 ✭✭✭Count Dracula


    I only drive in the dark.

    But it was always a good 4 and half hours to Dunkettle from mBaile Atha Clliath. Abbeyleix was a bitch. Driving though Kildare town , Newbridge Town and Nass took some doing. It was 6 to the likes of Bantry or Dingle etc , or more.

    the weirdest one ever was the quarter final between dublin and Kerry around 2002 or so , August bank holiday weekend. It was crazy, I spent 6 hours trying to get to thurles for a 3.30 throw in. I left at 10.30 thinking I was ahead of the possie, no chance. I listened to the entire match on the radio Micheal O Muirheirtigh, Kerry led the whole way until Dublin got 2 late goals to take the lead in injury time. I was driing into Semple and parked behind the stand, I ran in , I wanted to see at least a minute. I was right under the goal when Maurice fitzgerald knocked over s sideline ball from a least 50 yards, some point.

    That is the Count himself standing behind the copper around 19 seconds. I was there.

    It was 4 hours to south Belfast from south dublin. Write through Balbriggan, Julienstown , Drogheda , dundalk - the border - Newry , Banbridge , Lisburn and in. 4 hours be jaysus, thats without stopping for a 99 or getting your car searched by the army or peelers.

    Galway was 3 hours to city, Cavan a full 2 hours from Pearse Street.

    You were allowed drink a gallon of pints and drive, everyone did it. I would love to see the stats on road deaths given the change.

    People smoked in cars then. People were happier. Birds were thankful of a snog and a rub of their tits, there was no fluting around with selfies and going commando with a landing strip nonsense. unless of course she was from west of the Corrib, guaranteed ride then and you knew all about it. Connemara has the best birds in europe. Still does.

    the best thing about the new roads is that if you get a booty call from Letterfrack you can be there far quicker, it happens.

    The celtic tiger was good insofar as it delivered the roads, they were needed. If anything it makes driving on the back roads more enjoyable. It is lovely driving cross a county like Leitrim or offaly not knowing where you are or where you are going to end up. this is a great country.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,349 ✭✭✭alias no.9


    Bought my first car a week after spending close to an hour on a bus getting from the Coonagh Roundabout to Colbert Station on a Galway to Cork trip on a Friday. Figured out a route that peeled off the old N18 south of Gort through Tulla, Bradford and O'Briens Bridge onto the N7, then back roads from Annacotty around to Kilmallock road, onto Kilmallock and Charleville.

    On a good day on the N18/N20 it might not have made much difference but it gave me certainly, on a bad day on the N18/N20 it saved hours.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,485 ✭✭✭Padre_Pio




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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,349 ✭✭✭alias no.9


    There are Dubs fans still out there, driving after all thrse years, trying to get to Thurles, still hopeful of making throw in for that game.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,297 ✭✭✭Count Dracula


    Tá athas ar mo chroí.

    Tá an samhraidh ag dul abú.

    It is coming hard and fast now.

    I had to laugh at George lee trying to frighten people by telling a country that it freezes its bollicks off for 9 months a year that it might get 2% warmer.

    Bring it **** on seorise, ya good thing. I have too many geansaí anyways.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,328 ✭✭✭hans aus dtschl


    More traffic calming in the town/village and on the intermediate stretches might be an answer maybe? I'm quite fed up of the rat-runners to be honest. 100kmh on the old now-downgraded N road, and unwilling to wait for an opportunity to overtake safely. But it's for a different thread to be fair.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,328 ✭✭✭hans aus dtschl


    "It's amazing how all these places, once they get their road to Dublin, suddenly want more".

    I think I'll never forget that quote, as I used to be on the N20 almost daily at that point.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,214 ✭✭✭jacool


    "re-enacting the crucifixion on the narrow street. A lot of cross drivers." - I see what you did there :)



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