N25 - Midleton to Youghal [planning and design to commence 2023]

Whole separate discussion!

Yes, the only likely rail extension would be to a new Special Development Zone between Mogeely and Castlemartyr. Beyond that, there’s no catchment for a train service until you get to Youghal, but Youghal itself is too far away from Cork to justify the cost of building a line out that far and too small to act as a hub, plus the railway alignment to Youghal doesn’t allow for any cost-effective extension into Co. Waterford.

Back on roads: with a bit of thought, a northern bypass of Castlemartyr could later serve as the main east-west access roads in that Mogeely SDZ. This would allow the problems to be treated now without the “wasted expenditure” of later bypassing the bypass.

Safety fist, then capacity. N25 is now a very safe road - it’s well engineered and the dangerous bits have been realigned or bypassed. It has a couple of bottlenecks, but there are now very few collisions or other incidents. There are far worthier candidates for works - once every other National Primary is at least up to the same standards as N25, we can look at capacity fixes. Yeah, it’s annoying to be stuck in traffic, but people have been killed on other roads due to poor sightlines, hidden junctions, bad bends or inadequate passing space. Fix those problems first.

There will be no "M25" - traffic levels don’t justify it outside of Cork City, and Cork doesn’t want one of its major commuter corridors under motorway restriction, because then it would have to pay to build alternative routes out of its own funds. With the sole possible exception of N20, we don’t need more motorways - just a network of high-quality roads.

Before anyone starts playing the parochial card - N25 is the road I drive most often by far, and any upgrade between Midleton and Waterford would be a direct benefit to me. I want to see it improved, but I don’t think it’s more important than bringing the rest of the network up to a safe standard.

I agree with pretty much everything you've said - the one problem is that there are plenty of areas along the N25 where one (often very) slow driver can dictate the speed at which all traffic must flow. From the end of the Youghal Bypass to Killeagh is often a spot I've observed this; albeit anecdotally; and the reason why overtaking isn't available is due to heavy traffic coming from the opposite direction. I've seen quite a few dangerous attempts at overtaking here.

Another bad section is Carroll's Cross for about 4km towards Kilmeaden; overtaking opportunities aside that area is notorious for dangerous manoeuvres by people pulling across in front of traffic from side roads - not to mention the disaster that is Waterford Co Co's love of roundabouts in Dungarvan with another on the way at Coolagh!

Don't get me wrong - when the roads are quiet and/or when drivers use the road correctly the N25 is one of the best national roads in the country - sadly though unless they start telling people to either pull in and let traffic flow or introduce more overtaking lanes then it will continue to be a cause for concern and dangerous driving.

Maybe not M25 but 2+2 would help a lot of this.

In my experience it’s never quicker to go through Dungarvan than use the bypass road, and I can’t accept that roundabouts would be an issue to any drivers on a stretch of road that’s under a 60 km/h speed limit.

There is an outer bypass of Dungarvan on the list of suspended projects: the preferred route from 2010 was approximately 16 km of Type 2 DC from the bend at the Sweep (the wide hairpin just west of Dungarvan) to about 2 km east of the Pike (the tight hairpin to the East of Dungarvan).

This would not be a cheap build: the two ends of this scheme involve some really difficult terrain (and the section over the River Brickey is wetland).

Either the whole route is a primary, or none of it is: use of certain sections doesn’t come into it. Even if it did, you may not be familiar with the route, as traffic picks up a lot between Dungarvan and Waterford. The only really quiet stretch is between Dungarvan and Youghal (and further east, between New Ross and Wexford), but that is already built to a high standard, and is unlikely to need upgrading for decades.

But N24 will not replace N25. From Port of Waterford to the Jack Lynch Tunnel is 145 km via N24+M8, and 125 km via N25 (from Rosslare is 204 vs 184). You won’t last long in the freight business if you pay 12~16% more than you could have to get goods from A to B. And yes, you can travel a little faster on M8, but that uses more fuel per km, so costs more again. And while the N25 distance has potential to be reduced by about 5-6 km through the various planned bypasses, there aren’t any such possibilities on N24 - the new alignment is actually likely to be longer than the current one in order to bypass Clonmel.

The N24 has an important purpose, but that purpose is not to be the main route between Waterford and Cork (or, for that matter, between Cork and Limerick) - funnelling all traffic east of Cork through this route would require making N24 into a motorway, which would have little chance of passing planning.

Yep agreed with you there KrisW1001. The N24/M8 particularly makes little sense for those journeys originating East of the M8. South of around Dungourney it's N25 every time. North of Dungourney, it's N72 and N25.

Even if the N24 is upgraded, a large number of journeys will never migrate over. I don't think the volume on the N25 is going to go anywhere but up in the medium to long term, regardless what happens with the N24.

A bit like the M20 in that regard. On the face of it, the diversion via the N24 looks reasonably sensible but it's all the same arguments again: only a small fraction of the traffic is end-to-end and a lot of the traffic originates on the corridor.

This relates back to the original thing I said, Cork doesn't matter much at a national level and East Cork less so. There's no real comprehension at a national level of the level of industrial and economic activity in the area. But the Carrigtohill / Midleton area is reasonably significant, as is Dungarvan. This is unlike the west-of-Ireland cry of "we need infrastructure to attract industry". The industry is actually there, and the traffic likely isn't going to divert to another corridor.

Eamon Ryan said the following about the Castlemartyr bypass recently:

“I can confirm that an allocation has been made by TII to Cork County Council for the N25 Castlemartyr and Killeagh bypass, which is on the N25 Midleton to Youghal corridor.”

Source:http://stanton.ie/2022/05/17/castlemartyr-bypass-2/

I can only assume thats the 100k allocated to it in TII 2020:

https://www.tii.ie/tii-library/reports-accounts/tii-allocations-2020/2020NAT_CorkCoCo.pdf

It’s just a mistake, I think. All of those are directly reachable from N25, so they should be listed in descending distance order.

The next sign of this kind along the road, just after Castlemartyr, has the destinations in the correct order: