crap roads in Ireland

ferale

I just have to admit that these roads here in Ireland are just amazing bad.
I am from Norway, and i have lived here in Ireland for 3 years now. I drive a Volvo S40, and I have seen many country in Europe, and I have also drove in many countries in Europe, but I have never seen so many bad roads as here in Ireland.

I live now in Swords, and the road from Swords to Malahide, is just a f**** old cart raod.... Pot hole all over, tarmac missing, and bumpy all over.

Why is it like this in, EU most expesive country, and where EU said that Ireland is the country people are most satisfied with their life.

I am so sick of theese roads here, and I am really looking forward to drive a car on a decent road again, where you don't have to drive slalom between the pot holes, to avoid destroying you car.

From the Pavillions roundabout towards Malahide, especially the part between the roundabout, and to the roundabout with the M1 is really, really bad.

For those who have drove that part know what I am talking about....

AAre you irish people not sick/tired of driving on such a bad road conditions ???

Well, I am !!!

Why not spend some money on raods to do them up to a 2005 standard ???

MrPudding

The state of the roads are one thing. The repairs they carry out on them are another. Potholes? Just throw in a wheel barrow of tarmac, sorted. Two weeks later pothole returns.

Does anyone use the Clonkeen Road in Cabinteely? It was in rag order. They are currently working on it. Instead of resurfacing the whole thing, it really could have done with this, they are scraping up small sections and filling them in. It is like a patchwork quilt. Now instead of potholes that you could avoid you have large sections of road at different levels that you cannot avoid. Some of the height changes are a several centimeters. Perhaps they are patching the worst parts in preperation for a full resurfacing but it does not seem like that.

MrP

weehamster

You must not forget that these roads are in fact a country laneway. The building of new housing estates around sword and malahide when 5 to 10 years ago they were just green fields in the middle of the countryside.

This whole area along with others suffered from bad planning and brown paper envelopes. When these new housing estates were constructed, no thought was put into the roads that lead to these new estates.

The Big problem now is money. Nearly all of the road funding in this country is going into the National road upgrade. The NRA handles this. Others roads like the Secondary and Regional road are looked after by the local councils who only have a tiny fraction of the budget that the NRA has. But the National Road upgrade is a higher priority so this situation wont change very soon.

Another problem is that people don’t realise, it is it possible to properly upgrade the road? It probably is, but the roads would have to close completely until the work is done. And that wont go down well with the people who live on these roads. So the preferred option is to bypass the road altogether with a brand new road. And of course this takes time and money and we are back to funding.

Sorry, but you'll have to patient and drive more slowly for the time being. If you can’t wait, then bring it up with your local council.

ferale

Yes, I have thought of it bringing it up to Fingal county council but my colleagues here in IT, just said that it is just waist of time... They will not answer you anyway.....

What kind of SERVICE is that, who not answer peoples letter to them ???

Well, I know its all about momey, but in fact that the raod tax you pay here is Ireland, (much more higher here in Ireland, than in Norway, and Norway have always had a reputation to be an expsensive country) where does this money go ??

I pay €540 a year for a 2L volvo, so should believe that some of this money should go to maintain regional/country road aswell, and not only the national roads.....

I fell so sorry for all the people that live in the country side here in Ireland, they have to live with these roads for many years in the future, or ??

Zaph0d

We are poor. You are not.

From the CIA fact book:

Norway: wealthy for the past 40 years
Ireland: wealthy for the past 9 years

Norway: govt revenues of $134 billion
Ireland: govt revenues of $62 billion

Norway: External national debt $0 ($150 billion invested in overseas funds from oil revenues)
Ireland: External national debt €26.5 billion

Ireland has no oil reserves
Norway has 170 times more natural gas than ireland

Norway's rail network is twice that of Ireland and includes 2,500km of electrified lines.

Ireland 95,000km of paved road
Norway 71,000km of paved roads

Victor

ferale wrote:

Yes, I have thought of it bringing it up to Fingal county council but my colleagues here in IT, just said that it is just waist of time... They will not answer you anyway.....

Do you do the council IT?

ferale wrote:

Well, I know its all about momey, but in fact that the raod tax you pay here is Ireland, (much more higher here in Ireland, than in Norway, and Norway have always had a reputation to be an expsensive country) where does this money go ??

Road Tax only goes to local councils and isn't spent on national roads.

I fell so sorry for all the people that live in the country side here in Ireland, they have to live with these roads for many years in the future, or ??

Those people are the problem, not the solution. If we didn't have so much road serving so few people (and I look at the residents of the Swords-Malhide Road and neighbouring roads), we might actually be able to maintain them

And finally.....

mike65

Victor wrote:

And finally.....

Nice one!

As for the roads, we are living with the fall-out from 40 years of neglect and 10 years of mad economic expansion. The roads we drive on were layed down for the most part in the 50s and 60s. Most of them have'nt been touched in any significant way since. The idea of an upgrade for decades was and to a degree still is - throw some loose chiping down and let the traffic compact it down into a "new" surface. Of course this is stone age and does'nt remotely address the subsidance over the years, much of it caused by the heavy goods and building material movement since the boom.

The NRA might have a big budget but that does'nt mean we wont be stuck with crappy ribbons of tarmac like the N24 and N30 for years to come.

Urban roads are appalling due to the wretched lack of infrastructural planning which meant that in sucessive years the utility companies would turn up and dig up then patch up the holes. I have never seen such works repaired correctly.

I'm in danger od going on a true rant so I'll leave it at that!

Mike.

Capt'n Midnight

MrPudding wrote:

The state of the roads are one thing. The repairs they carry out on them are another. Potholes? Just throw in a wheel barrow of tarmac, sorted. Two weeks later pothole returns.

Not only is this a job for life* for the pot hole fillers , it's also a job for life for those who promise to get the pot holes filled.

* well coming up to elections anyway

Also the tarmac gouged out by the first artic will now be on the far side of the pothole so the distance from the bottom of the crest of the hump will actually be more than the depth of the original pothole in a fair few cases ...

Victor

mike65 wrote:

The roads we drive on were layed down for the most part in the 50s and 60s.

Is that the 1750s or the 1850s?

spacetweek

Zaph0d wrote:

Norway: wealthy for the past 40 years
Ireland: wealthy for the past 9 years

Ireland 95,000km of paved road
Norway 71,000km of paved roads

Bingo. There are the two crucial points. To say Ireland is a rich country, so why are back roads crap, is misleading. There's a big difference between being nouveau-riche like Ireland and rich for decades like Europe, North America, etc. A trickle-down effect occurs when a country becomes rich. Over several decades, money slowly trickles down from the top until it eventually reaches things which are a low priority, such as country lanes that no-one uses. If you go to any other European country the reason everything is to a high standard is because of money being consistently available for them for 50 years or more; there was no money available for most things in Ireland until the 1990s.

The second set of statistics is also important, but less so. Although Norway is a much larger country than Ireland, it has less km's of road. Ireland has a road network designed for when the island had a population of 10 million or more. This means that the task of bring all the country's roads up to scratch is unusually large.

Personally I think non-classified roads should get no more than a bit of tar and some chippings. Anything more is unnecessary and diverts funds from regional roads. I've been to Australia and unclassified roads there are barely surfaced at all - just loose gravel. It should be the aim to have every national and regional road and every urban street in the country to a high standard. The rest of the roads can do with minimal attention.

Finally, off topic: EVERY SINGLE JUNCTION of two or more roads in the entire country should have proper signposting. The exception is where both roads are unclassified.