Eircode design

plodder wrote: »

Sam Russell wrote: »

I am always surprised by the normal negative attitude displayed by many people. 'Glass half full' is trumped by 'Glass is nearly empty' even though it is half full or half empty.

Look at the success of the 'Young Scientist' or the uptake of 'Transition Year' and how much this has been a force for good in this country. The future of this country should be in the hands of the young and they could and would take up such a project with enthusiasm. Imagine if they were given the project of finding the local history and coming up with appropriate names for their local roads.

I cannot believe this would not capture the enthusiasm and imagination of those involved. It is not all about money and budgets. To quote a well known rugby player near the end of a particular game where we trailed by a few points in the last few minutes - 'Where is your ******* pride?' We won the game.

Simple plebiscites like this would be easy to set up, and it has to be said Eircode would make the job easier. You send out a PIN to each eircode in an area and you login to a voting page using your eircode and PIN. Each household gets one vote. The same PIN could be used for multiple votes on different questions (not too controversial, as this is not e-voting). People could send in ideas for names, and the councillors could shortlist them.

I'm up for a bit of divilment, so are the majority of my neighbours. We propose the name the Feck The Lot of Ye Road.

Are the councillors going to bypass the democratically expressed wishes of the majority of the residents on this bit of road and give it a different name?

Go to google, search for roadex.org ireland drainage report pdf

Click on the second result to open a pdf file.

On page 8 of the pdf:

"Road N56 runs from Donegal town to Letterkenny and is 156 km long. This road was selected for a demonstration of a full drainage survey and a rehabilitation plan."

"Road N59 commences in County Sligo, south of Sligo Town and circles around the west of Ireland, passing west from Sligo into County Mayo. The road then continues on to Westport and then through Maam Cross to Oughterard, from where it proceeds southeast to Galway city, a total length of 297 km."

I have no idea how many rural houses are on these two roads but I'd imagine there are thousands. And there must be tens of thousands along all the other national roads and regional roads in Ireland.

These roads are sometimes a few hundred kilometres long, or tens of kilometres long in the case of most regional roads, passing through multiple townlands and often different counties.

Unless you divide these roads into short segments (ideally corresponding to the names of the townlands they pass through), you'd end up with thousands of houses and other addresses having the N18 as part of their address, for example,

John Gallagher
1507 N18
Gort
Co. Galway

What happens to people who live along the N18 between Gort and Galway when the M18 is finished and the road is reclassified as a regional road, probably numbered R458?

If a system of addresses using road numbers was already in place would all the N18 addresses have to be changed?

Sam Russell wrote: »

sondagefaux wrote: »

I'm up for a bit of divilment, so are the majority of my neighbours. We propose the name the Feck The Lot of Ye Road.

Are the councillors going to bypass the democratically expressed wishes of the majority of the residents on this bit of road and give it a different name?

More negativity.

I would think there would be a short list and then a plebicite. Clearly inappropriate ones would be eliminated. However, Dustin made it to Eurovision.

I'm asking you why you feel the need to spend more time and money addressing a problem that's already been solved? How is that negative? There's no need for numbers and road names in rural Ireland. Every Irish postal address has a unique Eircode which forms part of its postal address. Why do you need to add house numbers and road names to already unique addresses? What's the point of this exercise?

And who decides what's an inappropriate name? If some residents of a road in Co. Cork want to name a road after a local republican who was killed in the War of Independence but other residents object, who decides if the suggested name is inappropriate? Is there some general principle in Ireland that it's inappropriate to name roads after people who used violence to help achieve Irish independence? That's a rhetorical question by the way...

Sam Russell wrote: »

sondagefaux wrote: »

I'm asking you why you feel the need to spend more time and money addressing a problem that's already been solved? How is that negative? There's no need for numbers and road names in rural Ireland. Every Irish postal address has a unique Eircode which forms part of its postal address. Why do you need to add house numbers and road names to already unique addresses? What's the point of this exercise?

If every house displays its Eircode at the gate, then yes problem solved.

If you are looking for A26 F9C3, how are you going to know where it is?

If you are looking for 450 Dundoolin Road, Dundoolin, Co Whatsit, then if you are in Dundoolin townland because you saw a sign saying that, and there is a street sign saying Dundoolin Road, then you look for a house 450 metres up that road and you are there.

Clearly there are plenty of examples where such a scheme would not work, but there are far more where it would work. For example all new estates could be catered for - it just requires the planning authority to insist on it.

Where did I see this sign? I'm on the M18 near Ennis. Is there a signpost to Dundoolin on the motorway? Let's say there's not. Now I need to know where Dundoolin is. How do you suggest I find out? Perhaps an app that will allow me to navigate there? If only there was one for Eircodes...

There's even a Moy Road in Cardiff.

A friend of mine grew up in a rural townland near Castlebar in Co. Mayo.

The townland has a national school and three houses.

There's one signpost to the National School but there are no signposts to the townland itself and, apart from the sign at the school, no signs at all to indicate that you've entered (or left) this townland.

Let's say that Mayo County Council, for some bizarre reason, decided to erect signposts directing people to a townland with one national school and three houses.

How far a radius around the townland should they erect the signposts?

Let's say 2km is reasonable.

How much would each signpost cost to design, make, install, maintain and replace after 20 years?

How much would it cost to name the roads in the townland (let's sat it's done through the local plebiscite setup suggested earlier) and what would be the point?

How much would it cost to design, make, install and maintain signs for each road in the townland?

Let's say the townland has a big increase in population and it's now got 20 houses, perhaps more typical of most Irish rural townlands.

There are 58,923 townlands in Ireland (49,314 in the republic) according to townlands.ie

That's a lot of signs.

Co. Donegal had a population of 161,137 according to the 2011 Census.

It has 2,614 townlands.

The average population of each townland is less than 62 people.

Obviously most rural townlands will have much smaller populations since some townlands near towns like Letterkenny and other towns and villages will now have become densely populated or even suburbanised.

Let's say we pick 2,000 rural townlands in Co. Donegal to trial this system.

We'll put up an average of five signposts per townland and ten signs showing the new names of the various roads in these townlands.

That's 10,000 directional signposts and 20,000 signs showing the new names of the roads in these townlands.

Have you got a rough idea of how much that would cost? Who's going to pay for it? Donegal County Council? Where is Donegal County Council going to get the money? From business rates? From LPT?

Let's be very generous and say it only costs 2,500 per townland for signage. And let's only put signage up for 40,000 townlands.

That would cost 100,000,000.

One hundred million euros - what a bargain!

I hope that puts the cost of Eircodes into perspective.

One blank fingerpost sign costs 179.00, plus 23% VAT from RSPD.ie, excluding the cost of a pole, delivery, putting the sign up, designing the text for the sign etc.

Let's be generous and say that all those extras are included, so the total cost per fingerpost sign is 220.17.

We'll say an average of five signs per townland, instead of ten.

So that's over 1,100.00 per townland on directional signs alone, plus the cost of signs with the names of the roads in the townlands on them.

The previous estimate of a cost of 2,500 per townland for signage looks to be about right if we're realistic about the extra costs on top of the cost of the blank fingerpost signs.

Multiply that by 40,000 townlands (there are over 49,000 in the republic but we'll assume that about 20% of those are now urbanised and already have streets with names, including signs, and house numbers) and you get a total of 100,000,000.

And that's before we factor in the cost of the public consultation process to assign road names to the tens of thousands of un-named roads, the cost of updating databases and maps and the cost of eventually replacing these signs.

From the RSPD.ie website:

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