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M50 Congestion

First Up

I had to go from Dalkey to just off the N81 towards Blessington yesterday at about 5pm. The obvious (only?) route was via Cherrywood to the M50 and off at Firhouse. I expected it to be busy but nothing could prepare me for the experience.

No problems getting to the M50 but as I approached the Carrickmines junction the signs were flashing about delays and I could already see the tailback ahead. It then took well over an hour to cover the few miles to Firhouse. There was no sign of any accidents and the traffic programme on Dublin City FM just casually mentioned it was slow but it sounded like they considered this normal.

Is this normal? The motorway on that section is at least 2 and mostly 3 lanes and the only "complications" are a couple of exit and entry points. Is that all it takes to reduce traffic to 5k an hour in first gear? (It seemed to be equally bad further on.)

Do regular users have to put up with this every day?

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mugsymugsy

First time driving on m50 in a while. Left dundrum at 4 and it took about 45 mins to blanch exit.

Combination of idiots lane changing to get one car ahead and people using the slip ways for late re entry. Rain probably didn't help.

Glad I no longer use it on a regular basis.

Markcheese

Honestly there's relatively little to be done, without trying to bring in some form of effective public transport...
Any improvement made without extra public transport is going to just put more cars on the m50...

AlekSmart

ifElseThen wrote: »

Any red cow incidents, it all bottlenecks through Junction 10 alongside the Luas. This is a 1 lane road so ideally they could turn that into 2 lanes.
Bottlenecks at the turn-in to the Kingswood estate. Couple of houses there at that junction though, look like they couldn't afford to lose any back garden.

Bothár Catherine Tynan is not "just" a 1-lane road...but,it appears that the professional roads engineers,planners and administrative elite were largely ignorant of the fact that the road in question links two of the historically busiest Industrial Estates in Leinster (Ballymount & Cookstown) with the State's Motorway Network as well as allowing access to the greater Tallaght region.
Add to this,a further dollop of lunacy,in the reduction of the Belgard Road from a Dual Carriageway to a single lane as it meets the N81,and you begin to suspect that Irish Universities and Administrative centres have been subject to Alien Intervention.

With the current grá for returning us all to the Pony & Trap and High-Nellie,it is probably how the future will pan out,as attempting to pass through Tallaght at even off-peak times can be a revelation....

Idbatterim

Better off building the eastern bypass! Large amount of traffic would then be taking a far shorter route to the airport or north of it ... or heading southwards , going to ucd, Sandyford, Leopardstown , carrickmines , Dundrum etc.
Transport here is just appalling. Ah hour from rathcoole to the City Centre , you get a tour of west Dublin first and they wonder why the place is gridlocked !

So much is routed through the City Centre and the roads can’t take it ... I get that you build more roads. You get more traffic. But the planners here for a large part, have build a very car dependent city. We can’t even get DU or The metro built for god sake !

The population of Dublin must be increasing by what? 30-40,000 a year ?

I just wonder is it more practical and beneficial to build eastern bypass , than metro west.... du and Dublin metro are no brainers ...

magicbastarder

Idbatterim wrote: »

I just wonder is it more practical and beneficial to build eastern bypass , than metro west.... du and Dublin metro are no brainers ...

a stat i'm fond of repeating. if you were to take a three lane road and apply a three second rule to it (which i know motorists in general ignore, which is what leads to the crashes on the m50), the road can carry one vehicle per second, or 3,600 vehicles per hour. if they were all cars, and you apply the 1.2 occupants rule, that's 4,320 people per hour (in one direction) on a three lane road/motorway.
a luas green line tram has a capacity of 358, and if you have a tram once every three minutes, a max capacity of 7,160.
so a light rail system has one and a half times the safe carrying capacity of a three lane motorway, unless you can convince more people to car pool.

in short, it should be rail we're building, not roads.

Carawaystick

AlekSmart wrote: »

Bothár Catherine Tynan is not "just" a 1-lane road...but,it appears that the professional roads engineers,planners and administrative elite were largely ignorant of the fact that the road in question links two of the historically busiest Industrial Estates in Leinster (Ballymount & Cookstown) with the State's Motorway Network as well as allowing access to the greater Tallaght region.

Theres also the luas which runs the width of a road away from TV3, but has no stop there, so loads of people working in Ballymount who could get a tram, drive instead.

AlekSmart

Carawaystick wrote: »

Theres also the luas which runs the width of a road away from TV3, but has no stop there, so loads of people working in Ballymount who could get a tram, drive instead.

It's almost as if the designers of LUAS were not public transport users themselves........surely not ? :rolleyes:

Kermit.de.frog

The M50 urgently needs an extra 3 lanes each way and new flyovers to resolve the problem.

The sooner the better. There is enough room for an extra 2 lanes each way within existing footprint.

The problem with the M50 is fundamentally it is too small scale. Needs to be far wider with much bigger, well designed, flyovers.

u140acro3xs7dm

Kermit.de.frog wrote: »

The M50 urgently needs an extra 3 lanes each way and new flyovers to resolve the problem.

The sooner the better. There is enough room for an extra 2 lanes each way within existing footprint.

The problem with the M50 is fundamentally it is too small scale. Needs to be far wider with much bigger, well designed, flyovers.

I much prefer driving to getting puiblic transport, but the last thing it needs is more lanes. That space should be turned into a bus connect lane or a train line. The problem with doing either one of them is the bus or train needs to stop safely somewhere at every junction, and there needs to be another mode of reliable public transport to take people away - no point in leaving them stranded along side the M50 as a lot of the jobs off the M50 are a good walk away. There also needs to be free park and rides, West Dublin is urban sprawl, if someone has to walk 30 mins to get a train or bus in Carrickmines, then walk another 20 mins at the other end, it won't work, not with our climate. There is no point cutting out cars altogether, use them to drive to public transport. You this all over the continent, huge multi-story car parks beside busy transport hubs, all free.

magicbastarder

Kermit.de.frog wrote: »

The M50 urgently needs an extra 3 lanes each way and new flyovers to resolve the problem.

The sooner the better. There is enough room for an extra 2 lanes each way within existing footprint.

this would be an astounding, awe inspiring, criminal waste of billions.
have you heard of induced demand?

sharper

Kermit.de.frog wrote: »

The M50 urgently needs an extra 3 lanes each way and new flyovers to resolve the problem.

The thing is all that traffic is going somewhere that doesn't have the capacity to handle it either.

I see this all the time in my morning commute. If the roads into Dublin flow pretty freely everything gets choked up on the quays and traffic has to queue all the way back.

It would be pretty fun to have a Dublin City traffic simulator to play around with but I'm pretty sure you'll always hit a chokepoint unless you're willing to start building and expanding roads all over.

crossman47

Carawaystick wrote: »

Theres also the luas which runs the width of a road away from TV3, but has no stop there, so loads of people working in Ballymount who could get a tram, drive instead.

Ah now. The Kingswood stop is a ten minute walk from TV3. How close do you have to make a stop?

First Up

I raise the problem about bad driver behaviour causing accidents and 99% of the replies are about extra lanes etc.

That says a lot.

Idbatterim

I don’t agree with more lanes on m50 due to cost. But I stand by the Eastern bypass. It could bring commuters to the major trip generators north and south by bus , of course it avoids City Centre. But you have the metro for that , if it ever gets built ...

Magicbasterder, I agree with a lot of what you say. But the way a lot of west Dublin has been built , particularly west Dublin, I don’t think there is a chance in hell you’ll get people out of their cars in serious numbers. They can’t even provide the backbone of a most basic public transport here. By comparison what you propose and would be the case in any other European country with proper infrastructure, is lie in the sky stuff here in my opinion ...

markpb

Idbatterim wrote: »

I don’t agree with more lanes on m50 due to cost. But I stand by the Eastern bypass. It could bring commuters to the major trip generators north and south by bus , of course it avoids City Centre. But you have the metro for that , if it ever gets built ...

Magicbasterder, I agree with a lot of what you say. But the way a lot of west Dublin has been built , particularly west Dublin, I don’t think there is a chance in hell you’ll get people out of their cars in serious numbers. They can’t even provide the backbone of a most basic public transport here. By comparison what you propose and would be the case in any other European country with proper infrastructure, is lie in the sky stuff here in my opinion ...

Why do you think building a road to the east of the city will solve congestion in a way that building more work to the west of the city won't? It will have exactly the same problem. It will add extra road capacity, give people more options for places to drive, the new motorway will fill up and we'll be talking about whether we should build another motorway somewhere or add more lanes to the existing motorways.

The reason we can't build decent public transport is because people keep thinking that building more roads is a viable alternative. There's nothing stopping us building a metro except political will.

loyatemu

First Up wrote: »

I raise the problem about bad driver behaviour causing accidents and 99% of the replies are about extra lanes etc.

That says a lot.

the driving on the M50 may be bad, but it's the volume of traffic that increases the statistical likelihood of accidents - more traffic, more cars, more frustration, more drivers making stupid decisions = more accidents, and the cycle starts over. I'm not advocating extra lanes btw - at the end of the day, cars are driven by humans, and humans are idiots fallible.

First Up

loyatemu wrote: »

the driving on the M50 may be bad, but it's the volume of traffic that increases the statistical likelihood of accidents - more traffic, more cars, more frustration, more drivers making stupid decisions = more accidents, and the cycle starts over. I'm not advocating extra lanes btw - at the end of the day, cars are driven by humans, and humans are idiots fallible.

so what's easier to do? Build another motorway or improve how people drive on the existing one?

loyatemu

First Up wrote: »

so what's easier to do? Build another motorway or improve how people drive on the existing one?

as others have said, it's over capacity - minor accidents are inevitable, it's not exclusive to the M50 or even Ireland.

Salary Negotiator

First Up wrote: »

so what's easier to do? Build another motorway or improve how people drive on the existing one?

Neither are easy and neither are the solution. The solution, which also isn't easy, is to reduce the number of vehicles using it.

First Up

Salary Negotiator wrote: »

Neither are easy and neither are the solution. The solution, which also isn't easy, is to reduce the number of vehicles using it.

You can only do that by providing alternative means of transport, or building more roads. Providing alternative means of transport for people using an orbital motorway will take a lot of time and money. So will providing alternatives roads.

Some rush hour congestion on the M50 is unavoidable but the back ups caused by closure of one or two lanes for fender benders (which by definition take place at low speed) is cheap, quick and eminently achievable with a bit of effort - and enforcement.

Isambard

the M50 was built too close to the City. As a bypass it needs to keep bypassing traffic clear of city traffic and this it fails to do. It's basically used as a inner ring road for traffic hopping out of the city, around and then back in.

The solution would be a proper bypass from somewhere around Portlaoise or Kildare across to the M1 around Drogheda, but the cost would be huge.

c.p.w.g.w

magicbastarder wrote: »

a stat i'm fond of repeating. if you were to take a three lane road and apply a three second rule to it (which i know motorists in general ignore, which is what leads to the crashes on the m50), the road can carry one vehicle per second, or 3,600 vehicles per hour. if they were all cars, and you apply the 1.2 occupants rule, that's 4,320 people per hour (in one direction) on a three lane road/motorway.
a luas green line tram has a capacity of 358, and if you have a tram once every three minutes, a max capacity of 7,160.
so a light rail system has one and a half times the safe carrying capacity of a three lane motorway, unless you can convince more people to car pool.

in short, it should be rail we're building, not roads.

I've lived and worked in London in the past. Traffic was bad at times in London but never experienced the same kinda delays I've had in Dublin. Certainly helped by a fantastic public transport.

First Up

None of which has anything to do with the bad driving that causes the biggest hold ups.

I'm curious why posters here are so reluctant to face that.

Salary Negotiator

First Up wrote: »

None of which has anything to do with the bad driving that causes the biggest hold ups.

I'm curious why posters here are so reluctant to face that.

Because bad driving isn't the main cause, volume is.

There's less than 2 collisions on the M50 each day and yet there are delays in both directions during rush hour. There are just too many vehicles using the road each day.

Idbatterim

Mark I think they should build easternbypass, one lane for public transport only at peak hour. Do multipoint tolling on m50. Get rid of east link tolll , it’s idiocy.

What does Dublin need to spend to bring Rail up to scratch here? Ten billion? Du, Dublin metro, there’s the issue with line south of greystones. Metro west ? Few more luas lines potentially.

Eastern bypass and metro would potentially offer enough capacity to sort it the irrevocable damage and farce sprawl that is the development particularly to the west of the city...

So no need for metro west , if we can’t get Dublin metro line built. Metro west is science fiction stuff !

Idbatterim

Isambard wrote: »

the M50 was built too close to the City. As a bypass it needs to keep bypassing traffic clear of city traffic and this it fails to do. It's basically used as a inner ring road for traffic hopping out of the city, around and then back in.

The solution would be a proper bypass from somewhere around Portlaoise or Kildare across to the M1 around Drogheda, but the cost would be huge.

The outer bypass is a ludicrous idea on so many levels!

First Up

Salary Negotiator wrote:

There's less than 2 collisions on the M50 each day and yet there are delays in both directions during rush hour. There are just too many vehicles using the road each day.

Less than two a day? I'd be interested to know more about that because there seems to be one blocking the road almost every time I use it.

loyatemu

Isambard wrote: »

The solution would be a proper bypass from somewhere around Portlaoise or Kildare across to the M1 around Drogheda, but the cost would be huge.

solution to what, the traffic on the M50 is mostly going to/from places in and around Dublin. How would spending 100s of millions on an outer ring improve things?

is_that_so

First Up wrote: »

Less than two a day? I'd be interested to know more about that because there seems to be one blocking the road almost every time I use it.

If you're (stuck) on it for any length of time you'll probably meet those 1-2 accidents anyway. Most of them are minor tips but the effect on the road is rapidly cumulative.

Salary Negotiator

First Up wrote: »

Less than two a day? I'd be interested to know more about that because there seems to be one blocking the road almost every time I use it.

Taken from the Journal here

It also states that the number of collisions has increased from 39 per month pre - Jan 2018 to about 50 per month post Jan 2018 - this is a fairly considerable increase and I doubt driving standards increased or decreased in that time, so the variable is the number of vehicles.