Why are they high-quality dual-carriagways?

Victor

If they are being built to a motorway standard, why are they high-quality dual-carriagways?

(a) Provisional licences?
(b) Tractors?
(c) Don't enrage the voters with traffic tickets?
(d) Don't enrage the anti-motorway lobby?

mackerski

Victor wrote:

If they are being built to a motorway standard, why are they high-quality dual-carriagways?

(a) Provisional licences?
(b) Tractors?
(c) Don't enrage the voters with traffic tickets?
(d) Don't enrage the anti-motorway lobby?

(a+b relabelled) "We've just obliterated bits of the old road, so there's no longer a non-motorway alternative route for the prohibited users."
(e) "Jaysis, look at the cost of these emergency phones"
(f) Reluctance to roll out a 120km/h limit (you'd like to think this wasn't it)

Also, I'm not sure whether "motorway standard" is always strictly observed on these - so while I'm sure the paving and junctions are up to scratch, and I know they won't let you build a house along it, but are they a bit lax about fencing and agrigultural access to land?

Dermot

murphaph

It's definitely a keep the farmers happy thing I reckon. Has anyone seen that N-something between Limeick and Adare I think-Christ it's the best bit of road in the land with a freeflow junction at the end and it's a dual-carriageway! This isn't a real country. Not by a long shot.

vector

Victor wrote:

If they are being built to a motorway standard, why are they high-quality dual-carriagways?...

It is cheaper

Lennoxschips

Hey, the EU is paying for the most of it.

Andrew Duffy

Often the terrain is difficult, leading to sharper bends or gradients than would be allowed on a rural motorway. There may be a limited number of sharp left-turns, usually to provide access to agricultural or military land (in France these are common on motorways). Finally, to my knowledge none of the recent intercity routes have involved replacing the old route*, but in many cases the old road is so poor that it's essential to get as much traffic as possible onto the new road, including non-motorway traffic.

These roads demonstrate that a motorway order is pretty pointless - in the UK "Special Roads" legislation was introduced in the thirties to prevent people from building private accesses, but before any motorways were built, councils were given the power to prevent private accesses on any road. Councils have the same power here (in fact, new accesses to rural national routes are nationally prohibited here), and they also now have the power to introduce the 120 km/h speed limit on non-motorway dual carriageways.

* The N2 dual carriageway that has just started construction will actually sever the old route at the M50 interchange.

impr0v

As per my post in the 'Cullen gives go ahead...' thread, quoted below for clarity, they aren't being built to motorway standard, they're being built to high quality dual carriageway standard.

me in N9 thread wrote:

They do call the scheme a high quality dual carriageway in the EIS, and previously that spec would have been very close to Motorway levels, but as you can see here the cross section is significantly narrower than a motorway, with a new jersey style concrete barrier in the median.

Specifically the carriageway is 0.5m narrower than the corresponding motorway width (7.0 vs 7.5m), the hard shoulder is similarly 0.5m narrower (2.5m vs 3.0m) and the central reservation is 3.0m wide as opposed to 7.0m on a motorway. Also, there is a 5.0m working strip acquired on each side on this scheme, when 8.0m is the usual size of the strip with a motorway cross section.

As you can imagine, the above differances account for a substantial decrease in the amount of land needed to be acquired, and can lower the cost of the scheme significantly. The lower design speed of 100km/h also gives more flexibilty with the design of the horizontal alignment as the curve radii don't need to be as high as those needed on a motorway, which can aid in the reduction of severance of farm holdings and the avoidance of other constraints, which again can help to reduce the costs.

Lennoxschips wrote:

Hey, the EU is paying for the most of it.

Hey, no they're not. European structural funds account for 10% of overall investment in the NDP, and finish in 2006.