Traffic Congestion.

With all the bus lanes there are now, there is no valid excuse for the buses to be slow.

There are too many stops and it takes far too long for passengers to get on.

Apart from the many trucks, vans and cars that park in the bus lanes "just for a few minutes" and the construction companies that use bus lanes for queuing up their deliveries, there are no valid excuses.....

It seems worse but there's 2 things I can point out

(IMHO) There's been substantial vandalism of traffic lights and junctions to impede cars movement.

The standard of driving has plummeted, even now with many people back driving for a while you really have to watch yourself.

Almost crashed into by a lad very late running red light, he genuinely fvcked up and profusely apologised.

Yesterday I was turned in on (maybe deliberately, there's a lot of mental health issues out there) and had to stick the car to the road to barely avoid a collision.

People randomly changing lanes... "la dee da" swing in swing out.

The poor driving results in more accidents = more delays. M50 a car park going north today.

So far this thread has blamed road design, junction design, bus lane design, poor drivers and mental health issues for congestion. If any of those are actually the cause , there must be a city somewhere they doesn’t have those issues and congestion isn’t a problem?

I agree with @[Deleted User] here. The LUAS should have either been elevated at junctions or tunnelled under. It causes absolute mayhem where I live when it cuts diagonally across a major junction and stops traffic from 4 directions. Before the LUAS, there were rarely traffic snarl ups in this area unless someone had an accident (and I am aware that traffic volumes were lower 17 years ago, however when the LUAS signalling was officially switched on here, the traffic problems started immediately and have not been resolved since).

As with everything in this country, there is no real forethought on how to build something and future proof it. Getting people out of their cars only works if there are viable alternatives and that is not the case for a lot of the "commuter belt". I am lucky in living 15 minutes from where I work but I know people coming from places like Carlow, Portlaoise and Cavan who sit in traffic simply because there is no alternative for them. For these individuals to take Public Transport, it would take over 2 hours (and not just because of traffic but because they would have to change bus/train a couple of times on the journey) whereas the car takes a little over half that. That time and effort saving is nothing to be sniffed at and I don't think that any measure short of banning cars and only having public transport on the roads during the morning commute will solve this.

Stats are showing that our traffic is not at peak levels and we are a little below what our Pre-Covid peak was, however from my experience and that of others I work with and my own family, there has definitely been a pick up of traffic on urban roads as more people are taking the car these days. One only has to look at the number of passengers on the LUAS or bus services. They are not back to full load so how are those who are not using the services getting to work? By car, on the same roads.... that is how.

There must also be something else at play as quite a lot of my colleagues are still working from home or only commuting 2 days to the office. If everyone was doing it, then the traffic should be much lower than it is. Perhaps there have been a lot of traffic signal, junction layout and one way system changes during the various lockdowns that are causing this issue now and people will have to get used to it (as I doubt anything will be changed back.... we don't do that, as a general policy for some reason). I have certainly come across some traffic lights that have had their sequences shortened so that only 3 or 4 vehicles can get through. Staggering of traffic lights seems to be a lost art as well, seeing as you can have a green in your favour, only to be put to a red about 100m down the road and have to stop while the traffic piles up behind you. I think a lot of the traffic flow measures are dreamed up by people who have no idea what the local area is experiencing and a lot of the "traffic modelling" done in the past 18 months has been with greatly reduced volumes. Perhaps we will see a change soon but I won't hold my breath.

That 30% is amazing.

We live 1km from the local school.

At least half the estate drive their kids to the school.

There's a ginormous footpath and cycle lane with zebra crossings at every junction.

My mother also lives 1km from the national school. Nice wide path to it. In the countyside. Nobody walks/cycles to that school. Nobody!!

What is it that you expect drivers to do in all honesty?

Yep.

Impossible price a job before it's designed.

But AFAIK Jacobs are designing it these days so there should be some some of estimate

But to put the luas underground would cost a multiple of the 10 billion