What's the story with the M50 lately!!!???

PH01

It's the summer holidays and everywhere the traffic if much much lighter than usual, but on the M50 up to the toll bridge it's heavier, much much heavier than usual!!!
What's going on?

Might the opening of a second easy-pass lane have something to do with it?

LFCFan

I would love for someone to commission someone to take ariel photos of the entire M50 at different times during the day and prove, once and for all, that the Toll Bridge is the reason there's so much congestion. I'm sick of NTR telling us the Toll has nothing to do with it. The sooner they introduce electronic tolls and remove the tolls there now the better!

ismynametoolong

Whats the problem i got a parking space on the M50 this morning no problem !!!!!

Kersh

Its ppl rubberneckin.
Traffic on m50 was ****e on saturday... and when i got to the incident - it was a guy changing a flat tyre on his jeep in the hard shoulder. Has happened many times over past few weeks. Traffic comes to a standstill, then suddenly takes off again, once the incident is passed.
Madness.

Mick L

Kersh wrote:

Its ppl rubberneckin.

Have to agree, sure just look at the stupidity when that ferris wheel is being put up!! Saw someone doing a u-turn on the M50 on yesterday (Sunday). There's a gap in the median between the liffey valley and Red Cow exits. Why they didn't just continue to the Red Cow and turn there I just don't know.

Jumpy

Mick L wrote:

Have to agree, sure just look at the stupidity when that ferris wheel is being put up!! Saw someone doing a u-turn on the M50 on yesterday (Sunday). There's a gap in the median between the liffey valley and Red Cow exits. Why they didn't just continue to the Red Cow and turn there I just don't know.

Not everyone lives in Dublin... its not exactly a city that caters for those that dont live there.

Mick L

Jumpy wrote:

Not everyone lives in Dublin... its not exactly a city that caters for those that dont live there.

I'm not 100% sure what you're getting at but I'll assume you mean that they might not have known that the red cow exit was next?? (I'm open to correction though) If that's the case then it's irrelevent, a motorway is a motorway, you don't do a u-turn on it. There'll be an exit further on or the motorway will end, you don't need to know what exit it is.

Jumpy

Mick L wrote:

I'm not 100% sure what you're getting at but I'll assume you mean that they might not have known that the red cow exit was next?? (I'm open to correction though) If that's the case then it's irrelevent, a motorway is a motorway, you don't do a u-turn on it. There'll be an exit further on or the motorway will end, you don't need to know what exit it is.

Agreed, I was more referring to the comment 'why they didnt go to the red cow is beyond me'

DubTony

Jumpy wrote:

Agreed, I was more referring to the comment 'why they didnt go to the red cow is beyond me'

Maybe they knew the Mad Cow junction was up ahead .... and got just a teeny bit scared. Of course there's always the possibility they were just complete ignorant f**king bastards, who think that the rules of the road don't apply to them.

eh ... sorry for that bit of a rant thing there. Couldn't help myself

PH01

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Traffic

The 2nd easypass lane was suspended late last week.

Stimpyone

Traffic wrote:

The 2nd easypass lane was suspended late last week.

Twas still there on the southbound side this morning

PH01

Traffic wrote:

The 2nd easypass lane was suspended late last week.

WHA!!!???
Aaaaaah FFS! This is unreal!
First they open a new lane which ****sup the traffic. Then as people are getting used to the new layout they've changed it back! Now it'll be another two****ingWeeks before things are back to normal (chaos) again.

What a country!?

Traffic

ah they must be 'experementing' with it so..... lol

Balfa

Do you still have to stop in eazypass lanes? With tolltag (www.ntta.org), the three left-most lanes (think right-most for ireland) are all tolltag only and you just zip through at full speed. I don't know why that can't just do that with eazypass. It'd help congestion a lot.

preilly79

PH01 wrote:

WHA!!!???
Aaaaaah FFS! This is unreal!
First they open a new lane which ****sup the traffic. Then as people are getting used to the new layout they've changed it back! Now it'll be another two****ingWeeks before things are back to normal (chaos) again.

What a country!?

i think what theyre doing is opening the second easypass lane during rush hour, then when rush hour passes they turn the lane back into a coin-only "express" (snigger) lane.

ciarsd

cant be as bad as the grannies i had to contend with on the southbound over taking lane of the M50 yesterday afternoon just after merging on from the airport direction.

they were facing the wrong way (yes towards me!) with 2 wheels on the motorway and 2 on the grass verge. there was also a CRV pulled in (fully) onto the grass verge and another car over out of the way on the hard shoulder. Not entirely sure what happened, but it sure made me laugh after I navigated around them!

happened about 3pm

Stimpyone

It has to be said that IMO as an eazypass customer that the tag and reader system is a joke!. The amount of cars/tags that have trouble at the barriers make the whole system worthless, not to mention the folks without tags staying in the eazypass lane until the last possible moment in the hope that they skip a few cars and then noone will let them out thus blocking the lane.

And where did they find these tags anyway? pretty they ain't

spockety

I just got an eazy pass last week, cos I was sick of sitting waiting for the coin op.

I used it 4 times over the weekend, and 3 of those times, I Was left sitting in a queue of cars, because some dozy f****g pleb at the front either didn't have an eazy pass, or didn't have it displayed, or didn't have a functioning one etc. THREE times out of FOUR! Cars that were BEHIND me coming up to the bridge ended up going through the coin op one quicker, while I sat looking over into their lane at the sign that says "if you were using EazyPass you'd be gone by now!".. what a farce!!

Why do they not have someone there full time monitoring the eazy pass lane to get those fools out of the way within seconds of it being obvious there is a bloody problem?? Open the barrier and sheperd them into a "stupid morons bay" where they can get out of their car and pay up , without holding up eazy pass holders.

Do they have ANY provision in place to get people out of the way quickly?
Bit much to ask, at least if you go through one of the normal lanes they rarely get stuck, cos everyone arriving at it knows they have to pay up, and so generally have the money ready.

cormie

The fastest moving lanes are the far left that you see about 5 40 foot trucks in. Everyone thinks trucks move slow don't go there, however, because of the fact only about 5 can fit in the lane, that means only 5 money transfers, some don't even give money, where in the other lanes there are about 10 cars all piling up for the "exact change" route.

PH01

cormie wrote:

The fastest moving lanes are the far left that you see about 5 40 foot trucks in. Everyone thinks trucks move slow don't go there, however, because of the fact only about 5 can fit in the lane, that means only 5 money transfers, some don't even give money, where in the other lanes there are about 10 cars all piling up for the "exact change" route.

Thanks for the tip.

I wish those animals who run the WestLink toll bridge were as smart.

kevmac

Balfa, I think you'd find Irish chancers just zipping through if there was an open gate for tags.

Toll people are asking government for new law that lets them chase people for fines who do that before they start that type of toll system.

Alun

For someone like me who only uses the thing maybe once every three months or so it'd be handy if they put up some signage before the toll plaza to give a general indication of where the EZPass, no-change and change-given lanes are so you could get in lane. I can never remember, and usually end up having to negotiate across 2 or 3 lanes of chock-a-block traffic to find the right one.

cormie

I was just going to suggest they should make a slip road for EasyPass cars, this would pass the main road and lead out onto it later on, this would encourage allot more people to use easy pass and the only people going on this slip road would be easy pass meaning they would get through allot easier and only people who have to pay would stay on the main road and this would move things along allot faster. Of course it would mean they'd have to spend money on a new sliproad, they could afford that with an hours toll (well I know they couldn't but anyway).

It's just a pitty they put the toll at the bridge then ey?

kleefarr

Is the toll charge still €1.80? I'm going up to Dub airport in an hour or so.