What is being done to address the M50 problem?

kirk.

There has to be something

No reason everyone has to want to use road the same time

salmocab

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121528012#Comment_121528012

A company changing its opening hours has knock on effects on child care for staff. Lots of other things would likely be affected with unintended consequences. Building sites tend to start and finish earlier but lots of businesses trade with other businesses in one way or another and it might cause issues.

Beta Ray Bill

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121527920#Comment_121527920

So this has already been done in many ways.

People used to leave the house early (say 6:45am) to beat the traffic and were able to go home early. Those days are gone now, even at 6:30am the traffic is very heavy on the M50.

I don't think there are more cars in the city nor are there people making different types of journeys. I think the issue we have is one of bad planning, bad policy (fixing things that aren't broken) and people's incompetence in driving.

chicorytip

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121447073#Comment_121447073

More lanes = More accidents = More Delays.

Irish motorists can hardly cope with two lanes, let alone five.

veryangryman

Normally I regard kermit as fanciful and a man who forgets were on a small island with a small pop density.

But... wrt M50 yes we should be having shedloads more lanes regardless the cost as it will more than pay for itself in efficiency.

I say that as both an Ev driver and a fan of the bicycle salesman

markpb

It’s nearly 2024 and we still have people claiming that more lanes on the M50 will help reduce congestion 😔

It’s just over a decade since we spent a billion euro widening the M50 and removing the barriers from the toll. How long did that help for? You could generously say it gave us five years, most of which coincided with a recession.

A billion euro back then could comfortably have paid for a large part of a metro or new Luas lines or an upgrade to the suburban rail system. That would have been money well spent.

When we were throwing money into our M50 blackhole, LA did the same by widening the 405 and adding HOV lanes. And they’re in the same boat as us now but at least they are actively building several rail lines and have already finished the equivalent of our DU tunnel project.

KrisW1001

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121528417#Comment_121528417

The traffic count figures are there online for you to look at. There are more cars in Dublin. Not an enormous increase, but it's an increase that has brought traffic closer to the hard limit that the street network can accommodate.

When you get toward the absolute capacity limit of a system, service levels collapse dramatically, because even small delays or short blockages can ripple out into major jams.

There are only two ways to fix this: widen the streets in the city (which will require demolition of a lot of properties, and you have to be prepared to do it all again in ten years), or reduce the number of cars using the streets. The second option is massively cheaper, leaves you with an actual city that's worth going to, and has the advantage of fixing the problem permanently.

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121528012#Comment_121528012

It's really the reluctance of people to change. We just had two years of lockdown, remote working, which had the effect of removing a lot of traffic. A year or two past the lock down we've just gone back to old habits. Let's drag everyone back to the office 9-5 because it works so well. Even though all the stats say otherwise.

I think at this point you just have to let gridlock build to the point where it's impossible to move.

Meanwhile all rail projects are just stalled here. Resistance to any change to roads to facilitate faster trains. So much resistance to cycle lanes and cycling.

You've people on this forum who literally spam any thread where anything other than cars is suggested.

jams100

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121528816#Comment_121528816

I dont know anyone against the metro or indeed the dart underground, we've been going on about these projects for over 20 years, we still haven't got a shovel in the ground. It's a complete lack of imagination and shocking oversight generally speaking when these projects do begin. (E.g. Children's hospital).

The main short term solution for M50 and general congestion would be to try encourage/force tech and office jobs to do more remote working.

The fact is, most people who use the M50 and commuting to / from jobs and have no public transport options (within any reasonable time vs car) for their journeys. Many examples...Palmerstown to CityWest or Swords to Tallaght etc.

Where public transport does exist its at capacity a fair amount of the time, I'm thinking both Luas lines, the C spine of bus connects etc.

Even the planned metro terminating at Charlstown shows the lack of long term vision it should be rolled all the way out to sandyford and we should already be in the planning stages for the second line, but we will probably end up with a delayed, overbudget small metro

Jayuu

I'm normally in favour of improved road infrastructure where possible but the idea of adding more and more lanes to the M50 as a solution to the problems is just ludicrous. It would be incredibly expensive to implement because it would require the redesign of almost all of the existing junctions, some of which simply don't have the space to accomodate a redesign. It would also require the provision on a new M50 bridge crossing as otherwise all these new lanes would have to merge again on the existing bridge thus creating logjams similar to those that used to exist when the barriers were there. We almost doubled the space availailable on the road in the last upgrade and yet as traffic volumes increased all of the benefits from that upgrade have dwindled away.

Solutions which try to get people out of cars and use of the road have to be the way to go here. Trying to smooth out the peak times is probably a more sustainable approach but a lot harder to achieve as many people are constrained by the need to bring children to and from school and so are locked into a time schedule for use of the road for their work.

Finally on a more left-field approach I did often wonder would it be anyway possible to have some of sort of M50 orbital public transport solution? Not directly on the motorway obviously but something that would mimic the route and then link in with existing public transport options so as to offer an alternative to car use. Maybe that's just as fanciful as a solution but I wonder has it ever been investigated.

Larbre34

Two things:

The problems of the M50 are almost all caused by the confluence of the N7 and M50.

Lane segregation on the N7 needs to happen WAY earlier than it does now, ideally west of the Newlands flyover. And once on the M50, traffic needs to be confined to its joining lane until it is up to speed, at least a two kilometer long solid divider on the merge and auxiliary lanes.

Secondly, a new Government without any green tail wagging the dog, needs to restore to the national transport strategy, the so-called 'M45' Leinster Orbital Motorway linking the N7 west of Kildare northeast and across via Enfield and south of the Navan, Slane, Drogheda corridor and via a link with the M1 into the new container port at Bremore.

The M50 must be reduced in priority as a national route, where everyone going from places like Dublin to Galway and Dundalk to Cork all pass through the same bottleneck.

And far from a new M45 adding to emissions, it will see more vehicles running more efficiently, more of the time, with its arrival coinciding with greater and more endurant EVs and HGVs switching to CNG and hybrid electrification and fuel cells.

It will be a vital link in Ireland's increasing bonded freight and break-of-bulk sector.

Jayuu

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121537432#Comment_121537432

Not against the Leinster Orbital in principle but has there been any study done or figures on a breakdown of the composition of the M50 traffic? I'd love to see traffic figures broken down in three ways - Non-Dublin source and destination (i.e. real through traffic), Non-Dublin source with Dublin destination (i.e. people come to Dublin from outside the city), Dublin source and destination (i.e. mainly commuter traffic). The Leinster Orbital would probably only alleviate some of the the first category of traffic so it would be interesting to see if removing that traffic would have any major effect on the M50 itself.

Agree though that the lane segregation on the N7 (drove it last night!) is really badly designed. There are three lanes inbound and really they should be segregated M50 North, M50 South and City Centre from after the Tallaght exit with the extra lanes then adding to those segregations as you get closer to the M50 itself. It would definitely sort out a huge amount of the lane jumping that happens here. However while this might improve the N7 inbound I'm not sure how much impact it would have on the M50 itself.

Part of the problem also with the M50 is the insistence of a huge amount of joining drivers trying to get onto the mainline almost immediately at the junction rather than staying in the auxiliary lane initially and then joining as the flow smooths out away from the junction. It's very frustrating given that the auxiliary lane is permanent and there's plenty of time to merge before the next junction where it becomes the exit lane. This behaviour causes a huge amount of braking in the left mainline lane or left lane traffic switching to the middle lane in advance of the junction to avoid slowing. None of this helps the flow of mainline traffic.

Chris_5339762

All of these problems are mirrored fairly precisely on the N40 down in Cork. Junction design lacking, generally too much traffic wanting to use it no matter the number of lanes, alternative routes not available, lack of public transport, shocking driving, shocking merging, and any further capacity on unbuilt roads likely to never happen.

There are some plans to build more transport (public and road) in Cork but none of them will address the fundamental problem that there are too many people needing to travel at the same time for what has been built, and for what has been planned. It also takes an inordinate amount of time and a simply silly amount of public discussion and political posturing to build anything. And whats usually built is just not powerful enough.

markpb

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121537432#Comment_121537432

The 1980s called, they want their transport planning ideas back.

Sam Russell

The M50 will be a much reduced source of congestion once Metrolink is in service. Busconnects will also be a contributary. Of course, P&R will need to be in place at strategic locations for both Metrolink connections and Busconnects locations.

Stark

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121527976#Comment_121527976

Tolling in general is probably a good idea but tbh, getting stuck in peak M50 traffic is such a miserable experience (and the extra fuel consumption is probably the equivalent of a typical toll payment) that I'm sure anyone who has any option to avoid it will take that option. I know myself, I have to commute from Sandyford to Palmerstown in the evening and I make a point of waiting at least an hour after work (till Google maps is no longer showing red) before getting in the car or on days when I don't that option, I'll opt to cycle that day as it's about the same length of time cycling home as driving home the M50 according to Google maps traffic predictor these days.

Larbre34

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121537735#Comment_121537735

They can't have them I'm afraid.

The economy of this Country will continue to boom, in non-transport dependent sectors, as well as transport dependent ones. The population continues to increase ~1% per year, skewed towards the cities.

If the planning authorities want "living cities", then they must provide efficient alternatives for people and freight alike, on asphalt and rails alike.

The justification for 'M45' is even greater than the Galway City Ring-Road, and we know at this stage that that will be proceeding.

The Leinster Orbital conversation needs to begin again afresh.

KrisW1001

There's no justification for M45, but there may be for an N45, a single-carriageway similar to N33, to allow long-distance traffic to bypass Dublin, but there really isn't much of that: the old DOOR plan was a stalking-horse for allowing the neighbouring counties to re-zone land to develop car-dependent exurbs. If it stuck to its remit of connecting the primary routes, you could build the Leinster Orbital as an eight-lane highway, and it would have almost zero effect on M50.

M50's problems are pretty much all due to commuter traffic, and you don't need a traffic study to see that - just drive on it outside of peak times - everything moves just fine. The only people who have to use M50 at peak times are commuters: freight and through-traffic is not required to be on M50 between 0730 and 0900, and so drivers avoid those times - burining fuel to go slowly affects their bottom line; out-of-Dublin visitors also consciously avoid the period.

Sam Russell

If a new tolling system were introduced - say all traffic had to pay, with a premium for busy times - I think congestion would reduce.

However, Metrolink would need to be in service, with probably a second line from Tallaght to, say, Coolock and further out on the north east side.

KrisW1001

Back in 2020/2021, TII were putting out feelers about a road-use-charging pilot for M50 (I heard about it as at that time, I worked at a company that would have been able to provide a solution). It's possibly too early to say what happened about that, but there was definitely an understanding that the toll generates problems on the neighbouring junctions, as traffic exits earlier to avoid it. The other argument was one of fairness: commuters using the western cross segment of M50 pay for the maintenance of all of the road.

PokeHerKing

I don't like to give us a get of jail card but you only have to look at America, LA etc to realise that even more lanes/flyovers/metros etc still do nothing to elevate congestion at peak times.

Not say we shouldn't build more/better infrastructure.

Just pointing out it still won't get rid of rush over traffic.

kirk.

Doesn't improving the roads just encourage car use and congestion

This is not a new fact is it 😁

Jayuu

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121540092#Comment_121540092

Tolling would probably have an effect but I suspect it would help the M50 at the expense of shoving car traffic onto other suburban roads and estates all over the city as people look for car based alternatives. While Metrolink to the north-east of the city would be great, given we can't even build a first line I suspect a second line between somewhere like Tallaght and Coolock is decades away even if it was viable.

Part of the problem of course is that every infrastructure proposal seems to get bogged down in planning and consultation, and replanning and reconsulation, and so on with escalating costs all the while. There's no shortage of plans or ideas on what is necessary. I don't like to be part of the "Ireland sucks" brigade but the reality is that we do seem to have a problem with implementing major infrastructure projects despite the fact that it's obvious that we need them as solutions, if not only from a general transport point of view but also from a climate change/emissions reduction aspect.

Sam Russell

The M50 was upgraded to reduce congestion. Result: congestion was reduced for a while but it is back worse than before. That is always the way.

If tolling the M50 gives rise to congestion on alternative routes, them a Congestion Charge becomes the next step.

However, without the PT projects implemented, then we are doomed to have massive congestion in the Greater Dublin Area.

salmocab

It needs carrot and stick, without the carrot there will be no stick. If a metro is built then is the time to try force people from cars, right now it would be fanciful as the PT just couldn’t cope with much increase in numbers. With a metro in place it takes cars off the road and that in turn makes other PT run better and more reliably. Other ticketing initiatives etc will help but the carrot has to come first.

Seth Brundle

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121542001#Comment_121542001

Grand, so if you're depending on the Metro, your carrot won't be here for 20 or probably 30 years so enjoy the daily traffic congestion until then!

veryangryman

This induced demand is complete horsedoo. Increasing capacity gets more through and thus aids the economy.

As has been said we likely won't see a decent metro in out lifetimes. Lane widening would help. Not fully but the alternative is no help at all. Fk the greens and anyone who backs up them stopping us progressing as a country.

markpb

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121542698#Comment_121542698

I’m sure you can point to examples of urban motorways where road widening successfully reduced congestion after the initial bump then?

salmocab

Is there room for another lane under all the bridges? I suspect not which would make adding an extra lane a mammoth task.