N21 Thread

Irish_rat · 10-06-2017 10:27pm

I go home the odd week and the traffic is absolutely mental during the summer so far. I couldn't imagine driving it every day.

Adare is Adare but Newcastle West and Abbeyfeale are getting more frustrating to navigate through. Usually resort to the road up by the thatch pub around to avoid Adare.

marno21 · 10-06-2017 10:43pm

Irish_rat wrote: »

I go home the odd week and the traffic is absolutely mental during the summer so far. I couldn't imagine driving it every day.

Adare is Adare but Newcastle West and Abbeyfeale are getting more frustrating to navigate through. Usually resort to the road up by the thatch pub around to avoid Adare.

The issue is that after the Adare bypass opens in 2023 or so, Newcastlewest will become the new Adare because it's now the first bottleneck encountered by traffic after leaving the motorway/dual carraigeway. Abbeyfeale will be worse again because it's a **** of a place at the best of times. The N21 needs full offline dualling between the County Boundary and the end of the new Limerick-Foynes scheme.

Understandably, the politicians in Kerry are focused on getting the Adare and Macroom bypasses done first as they understandably take priority. Next up then for Kerry are the N21 dualling as above, N22 dualling Macroom-Ovens and the Killarney bypass (N22 & N71).

lottpaul · 11-06-2017 11:09am

marno21 wrote: »

To me the N21 is similar to the N7/N8 in the 1990s.

Reasonably straight road with hard shoulders festooned with junctions and accesses linking small towns and villages with the odd bypass. Grand for a quiet road but not for a busy one like the N21.

Badly, badly needed upgrades. The N21 from Tralee to the border is now decent quality with high speed running and good overtaking opportunities. Funny that it stops around 400m into Co. Limerick.

Agree completely about the N7 in the past, and the improved section from Tralee to the county bounds which is mainly down to the Castleisland bypass and the section from the Feale bridge to Headleys Bridge. Once you get into Limerick things can come to a halt. Abbeyfeale can be bad at any time of the day but especially at school times. Whoever gave permission for a secondary school with over 650 students to open directly on to the N21 - and opposite the church also - needs to have a serious chat with themselves!
Newcastlewest is much the same and why waste time with Adare -- a beautiful village ruined by traffic - the tourists, the drivers and the locals all lose out!
Short solution has to be bypasses all round, but I fear we'll have to wait a while - and some of us will have the free travel pass by then ......

road_high · 11-06-2017 12:50pm

Don't know why we don't make more clever use of the existing road too- so much of the N21 as you note is a very wide road, actually very good in sections but only circa 50% of the road space is actually used- is there not a more efficient way of using the space ie climbing lanes and lay by areas intermittently.

mossieh · 14-06-2017 1:58pm

marno21 wrote: »

There was a plan to build a 2+2 from the end of the then proposed N21 Adare bypass to the Limerick border at Feale Bridge, where the 2006 N21 Castleisland-Abbeyfeale scheme ends. This was suspended by Leo Varadkar in 2011 and is now obsolete.e

Bypasses of Abbeyfeale and Newcastlewest are a priority for TII at present, but are not active and there is presently no political interest in progressing them.

Patrick O'Donovan so far has expressed very little interest in doing anything for the roads in Co. Limerick, with much needed N20, N21 and N24 upgrades sitting on the shelf. I'm happy to be proven wrong by him but so far I have no faith that will change.

Remember his signs on the approaches to Adare last year saying he had secured funding for the Adare bypass and it would only be delivered if he was reelected. However he forgot to mention that the Adare bypass is being progressed as an EU TEN-T Core road and is independent of his false promises. He, being Junior Minister in the Department of Transport, has also given no desire to accelerate the progress of the scheme, but of course he won't be long claiming credit when its built. He could take a very big leaf out of Senator Kieran O'Donnell's book re: the M20.

Yeah, I did laugh at his signs in Adare alright. Chancer. It would seem to be an advantage in general terms though, to have a local minister to lobby for infrastructure. He hasn't made much of an impression so far, barring his poorly-informed rant against 'open source browsers' a few years back. He's a good man to get his photo in the Weekly Observer.

Back on topic...I'll admit to some nimbyism here, I wasn't a fan of the proposed route for the N21 to the south of NCW as it would have had a negative impact on my locality. (That said, I know roads have to go somewhere and sometimes you just have to suck it up). I think the recent work they did from NCW to Barna shows how much you could improve things without major new road construction. Most of the remaining old N21 could be widened relatively easily. We need those bypasses asap, though.

mossieh · 14-06-2017 2:01pm

road_high wrote: »

Don't know why we don't make more clever use of the existing road too- so much of the N21 as you note is a very wide road, actually very good in sections but only circa 50% of the road space is actually used- is there not a more efficient way of using the space ie climbing lanes and lay by areas intermittently.

This. A bit of imaginative redesign, without major rebuilding would at least be an interim step..

marno21 · 05-08-2017 1:38am

A note for anyone using the road, there are wind turbine blades being transported nightly along the N21 from Barnagh near Newcastlewest to Castleisland, leaving at 10pm every night. The blades seem to pass Adare at around 1am nightly on their way to Barnagh and are transported to Castleisland the following night. There is long queues behind them and traffic is also stopped going eastbound so this may delay you some bit.

marno21 · 26-12-2017 12:27am

http://www.limerickleader.ie/news/home/288415/new-plan-designed-to-ease-traffic-problems-in-county-limerick-town.html

New traffic plan for Abbeyfeale.. includes changes to on street parking and the addition of 2 signalised junctions in the town.

The misery for N21 drivers continues. There is currently no plan to bypass Abbeyfeale.

road_high · 26-12-2017 11:16pm

marno21 wrote: »

http://www.limerickleader.ie/news/home/288415/new-plan-designed-to-ease-traffic-problems-in-county-limerick-town.html

New traffic plan for Abbeyfeale.. includes changes to on street parking and the addition of 2 signalised junctions in the town.

The misery for N21 drivers continues. There is currently no plan to bypass Abbeyfeale.

So more deck chairs on the Titanic then...

Benildus · 27-12-2017 10:14am

Headline: "New plan designed to ease traffic problems"

Text: "The plan also proposes new traffic signal controls at Joys Corner and at the Fire Station junction, with pedestrian crossings at both."

Idiots

Mc Love · 02-01-2018 5:31pm

Benildus wrote: »

Headline: "New plan designed to ease traffic problems"

Text: "The plan also proposes new traffic signal controls at Joys Corner and at the Fire Station junction, with pedestrian crossings at both."

Idiots

Traffic lights at those junctions would be a right PITA! A mini roundabout a Joys Corner would probably be more suitable.

marno21 · 02-01-2018 8:48pm

Mc Love wrote: »

Traffic lights at those junctions would be a right PITA! A mini roundabout a Joys Corner would probably be more suitable.

The one thing they may achieve is driving congestion to the point where a bypass becomes absolutely critical.

Meanwhile down the road Listowel is getting its bypass.

Kevwoody · 07-04-2018 11:00am

TII contractors have been resurfacing small sections of damaged road up around the old Captains Table between Abbeyfeale and Castleisland this week.
Just after driving through, and its almost like speed ramps! The new surface is an inch or two higher than the existing surface, and at one section they replaced 3 squares of road, leaving gaps in between, resulting in a series of bumps. Really poorly done imo.

marno21 · 25-07-2018 1:38am

https://irl.eu-supply.com/app/rfq/publicpurchase.asp?PID=132756

More ****ing roadworks.

The constant requirement to strengthen pavement and resurface this road should be a wake up call to the fact that the N21 is carrying far more traffic than it was designed for and the glorified boreen needs replacement.

marno21 · 07-08-2018 11:56pm

Any N21 regulars think the road is actually getting worse?

It seems to me to be.

mossieh · 08-08-2018 11:38am

marno21 wrote: »

Any N21 regulars think the road is actually getting worse?

It seems to me to be.

I've given up on it. I take the R520 + N20 instead.

Kevwoody · 08-08-2018 11:41am

mossieh wrote:

I've given up on it. I take the R520 + N20 instead.

I dread using the N21. I actually think its a busier road than the N20, and it seems to go on forever!

Mc Love · 09-08-2018 4:34pm

marno21 wrote: »

Any N21 regulars think the road is actually getting worse?

It seems to me to be.

What part?

marno21 · 10-08-2018 1:31am

Kevwoody wrote: »

I dread using the N21. I actually think its a busier road than the N20, and it seems to go on forever!

It is. N21 is busier than the N20, in Limerick that is.

Mc Love wrote: »

What part?

North of Feale Bridge where the N21 Castleisland-Abbeyfeale 2006 scheme opens. Immediate slow down all the way to the M20.

Mc Love · 10-08-2018 8:38am

marno21 wrote: »

It is. N21 is busier than the N20, in Limerick that is.

North of Feale Bridge where the N21 Castleisland-Abbeyfeale 2006 scheme opens. Immediate slow down all the way to the M20.

Abbeyfeale really needs a bypass (I'd lob it in with what Mountrath used to be like) There is an alternative route but is a bit dodgy and at most can fit one car on the road.

I do use an alternative Limerick city to NCW route as I simply cant be bothered going through adare.

road_high · 11-08-2018 7:18pm

It's a shame. There's huge domestic potential in Kerry as a weekend destination but really people don't want to spend 4/5 hours each way getting to the likes of Killarney for a night or two. You can get to places like Kilkenny or Galway in an hour or two from Dublin by comparison

marno21 · 12-08-2018 4:38pm

I think it's time to start pushing for a new road, either 2+2 or motorway, from the end of the future M21 at Rathkeale all the way to Feale Bridge. The existing road is not for purpose and relief roads aren't going to solve the issue.

The type of relief road apparently being planned for the two towns is the type of half baked job that was built in Ireland in the 1980s for one simple reason: it was all we could afford. Those days are gone now and there is little point in repeating the same mistakes made in New Ross, Killarney, Limerick, Galway, Castlebar, Clonmel, Dungarvan, Tobercurry, Roscrea, Mallow etc

If only we had a Minister in this constituency who was most recently in the Department of Public Expenditure and Department of Transport?

The N17 from Collooney to Tobercurry averages 6,400 vehicles per day and is being replaced with a dual carriageway. The N21 through Co. Limerick carries 13,000 vehicles a day and is getting "relief roads" for the 2 towns.

billbond4 · 09-11-2021 3:39pm

Preferred routes of the N21 by-passes will see the route corridors South of Abbeyfeale & North of Newcastlewest.

https://www.n21abbeyfeale.ie/?trk=public_post_share-update_update-text

https://n21newcastlewest.ie/?trk=public_post_share-update_update-text

marno21 · 09-11-2021 3:40pm

MOD: Those two schemes have their own threads and this was already posted there. Continue discussion in those threads please

N21 Thread

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