N25 - Carrigtwohill to Midleton [route options published]

I agree with you that N25 should be higher priority than N24.

But I think the previous poster is right: it was a local development facilitation project, dipping into the national roads budget. The N25 is definitely important and needs to be upgraded, but the piece that's least in need of an upgrade from a national perspective is the bit between Lakeview and Dunkettle.

Ballyadam site is accessible from the other side for the interconnector and from Hedgy Boreen: it's construction traffic only, so it shouldn't need an interchange at all. So that's not an important development on the site. More important are the Waterrock UEA and industrial park at Ballyadam. They're the traffic generators. But it's catch-22 because their plans are based on them "not generating road traffic".

The council were trying to have it both ways by allowing two fairly car-oriented developments and saying that "the rail line means that nobody will drive". What would have resulted was the same thing that has resulted everywhere else in the area: 75% of people commuting by car. That's not really OK in 2021, particularly not on an active rail line. They need to design integrated transport infrastructure between Carrigtwohill and Midleton, and stop "unlocking lands for development" onto the national corridor. It needs a distributor road network, because the Carrigane road is not fit for that purpose, and the N25 is not (and should never be) a distributor. They were hoping to feed multiple developments directly out of this new proposed junction. It would have ended up with the same traffic jams as currently occur at Cobh Cross (Carrigtwohill West) and Oatencake (Midleton West).

They played more games by dressing it up as a "safety" project. Call it what it is - development facilitation - and get the LAP updated accordingly with a dedicated section for this. It's neither Carrigtwohill nor Midleton, it's a big chunk of land between both, about 4km wide, but they just put the new developments 50/50 into one town and the other. It deserves a proper transport plan, surely.

Edit: If you're looking for the money to spent elsewhere, then look no further than Castlemartyr!

Very comprehensive! Thanks but still feel there are many examples of national roads facilitating land unlocking or access for what could be deemed local projects. Isn't that the purpose of some national roads in some instances but really this is politics, a local TD kicks up, funding diverted to some other project and a slap back from the public agency by stopping another project locally!

It doesn't change the fact though, that the N25 is a TEN-T route and a comprehensive upgrade of it has never been on the cards, unlike all the other TEN-T routes in the country, pretty much. Where is the plan for 2+2 from Cork to Rosslare? Most of the sections aren't even in planning.

That said, here we are thinking of replacing a dual carriageway with a.... dual carriageway and a side road. Its not much. They aren't even properly fixing the merging issues westbound at Midleton. They completely ignored Lakeview. This is just to facilitate development. Yes, I would like to see it built, but there are far more deserving schemes/bypasses on the N25. Castlemartyr, Killeagh, Dungarvan - in that order - if we are cheaping it out and only going for town bypasses (Though there is no cheap option for Dungarvan). But a proper plan for, say, "N25 Midleton to Waterford" and "N25 New Ross to Wexford" need to exist, a la N24.

Yes they are big schemes but they are no more ambitious really than the N24 projects.

"Piecemeal hack jobs" is a bit harsh of me.

But if you look at what they plan for Carrigtwohill, and Midleton, and compare it with what they have planned to connect to this new interchange, they're worlds apart. It comes back to the same thing: don't just plop in a new interchange with no plan for where the traffic will go, the local/distributor road tie-in is surely as important as the interchange itself.

They're in the process of zoning the land, and putting an asterisk on it, saying "we shouldn't allow the development until the infrastructure is done", but we've seen that endless times in the past: the development gets permitted onto the existing infrastructure because "new infrastructure is coming soon" and then it's just put out on the never never.

Anyway, as I say, if they bring this one back with a proper infrastructure plan for the area, I'll be in favour of it.

The N25 has nothing to do with TEN-T, it's on E30 but that doesn't mean that it is earmarked for funding. I've said it before but Ireland should be looking to get E30 rerouted via the M8 and N24. An upgraded N24 would linked up the southern third of the island and tie together the M7, M8, M9 and M11 plus indirectly the M18, M21 and future M20. It achieves far greater connectivity than upgrading the N25.

N24-N8 is significantly longer — and will get slightly longer as N24 is realigned — and has worse gradients. It also approaches Cork the wrong way: A large amount of the N25 freight traffic goes no further West than Little Island, so a Routing of Waterford traffic via M8 puts additional load on Dunkettle for no good reason.

The idea is a non-runner, and has been rejected every time it as been proposed. Freight will still use N25 as it’s shorter and more efficient - distance is the biggest factor in road haulage costs, and N25 would end up around 5 km shorter than it is now if the long-term upgrades go ahead.

Agreed with the previous two posts. So the N25 traffic isn't really going anywhere. It probably needs an upgrade in the future.

Again, I'm in favour of a Milebush interchange too, just would like to see it connected to a distributor network that doesn't consist of one new road pinned up against the N25, and the Carrigane road on the opposite side.

The section west of Midleton has no tailbacks ever, whereas Castlemartyr has 15-20 min tailbacks for large chunks of the day. From a national route perspective, the difference is significant.

You're saying "a necessary upgrade of an existing DC" but that's not really borne out on the ground. It's not a particularly unsafe stretch of road. And there was a proposal to deal with the unsafe pieces, which was turned down in favour of a full new interchange.

Nobody here (to my knowledge) has said that it shouldn't proceed due to increased traffic, rather that it shouldn't proceed as a national infrastructure project: it's a development facilitation project. On the other hand, the "planned development focused on vastly improved rail services" as you've put it received no funding for those rail services and consists of around 50-60%% low-density dwellings and industrial estates. Nobody's cribbing about it, but it's not quite focused on the rail line in the way that you describe. The Council don't even pretend that it is, if you look at their own LAP. Some land parcels will focus on the rail line and will be considered sustainable, but a significant number (possibly a majority) will not. And they don't hide that fact at all in their LAP, in fairness to them. Significant amounts of the land parcels marked for development are focused on Carrigane Road and Midleton Northern Ring Road. There is no distributor road network designed for these developments. Their traffic will necessarily join the Midleton Northern Ring Road or Carrigane Road. That's what I'm complaining about.

I don't fully agree with the statement that "if the goal is modal shift then Carrigtwohill-Midleton should be the priority" because it's currently possible to develop the pieces of that land parcel that will centre on the rail line. For instance Waterrock UEA phase 1 has approval, but no rail station. And on the other side, Elmbury is currently under construction 250m from the rail line, with no prospect of a future rail stop on that side of the village. So the two things don't necessarily go hand in hand at all. Yes in a perfect world, they'd develop that area sustainably, but as I've been saying over and over, that's not currently happening. Developments are approved and under construction right now and there's neither a train station nor distributor road network. So in a perfect world, they'd be putting in a distributor road system in the area. And we're back to square one: that's not a national infrastructure project!

They were just "unlocking development land" onto the N25 as I keep saying.

So yeah, back to my first point: if you're putting in an interchange then put in the distributor roads that connect to it too.

That will never happen thankfully (E30). N25 (E30)links our 3 Southern Ports, one of them the only multi modal port outside of Dublin and connects Rosslare to the main tourism markets in the South of Ireland (Cork & Kerry). It links Kerry, Cork, Waterford and Wexford and provides the national linkages to a significantly greater population and economic base than the N24. The N25 between Youghal and Cork has greater volumes of traffic than some motorways, the above proposal would mean a large volume of traffic entering Cork City on the one road/entrance. There is only one motorway in and out of Cork City. There are serious capacity constraints on a significant number of roads around Cork City due to no investment in the national road network in the region in decades. As the link above illustrates it is affecting investment decisions and needs funding to bring it to a ready to go stage and support local, regional and national planning policy and investment decisions.

Even if the population didn't increase and no houses were built in the area, this section needs to be sorted out. Doubly so if they really intend increasing road capacity east of Midleton, that will only add to the problems.

The Oatencake junction for Midleton heading West is a shockingly bad design, and needs improvement. There are also still median crossings on this road, and even if they’re rarely used, they pose a danger. I’d argue that the rarity of traffic using them makes them more dangerous: certainly scared the shite out of me early one dark morning to see a car dart across my path.

But these would be relatively small jobs, and didn’t need a project of the scale of the proposed works, and it’s rich for councillors to moan about delays and safety, because as Hans pointed out, it was the Council themselves who expanded the scale of this project toward land-development, and in doing so they delayed it.

Oh absolutely. Its a product of the 1980s though really, when the Midleton bypass was built. Really, getting a dual carriageway back then was a huge thing for Cork. Ok the bridges aren't wide enough for hard shoulders, but its a fantastic piece of road. Except for Oatencake west. Thats constrained by the massive old house to the south of the carriageway - you can't CPO land I don't think there without undermining the house!

I think the selected option for Carrigtwohill - Midleton involves tweaks only - possibly by relocating the carriagway a few meters to the north to fill in a slight gap between the west and east carriageways, and making the slip road slightly bigger. But it still isn't fantastic.

When you piggyback your development plans on goverment funded national infrastructure, don't come whining when the government changes its priorities.

Cork has been doing this parasitical development for decades, and it's a big reason why it's so hard to get from one side of the place to the other. How about building a new local road for once, instead of loading everyone onto the N25?

Cork County Council are planning on building local roads under the Carrigtwohill Urban Regeneration and Development Fund (URDF) Initiative – Urban Expansion Area (UEA) Infrastructure. Drawing package is here;

These roads can't exist in isolation and have to connect to adequate N roads. The N road in question is already a legacy mess and needs upgrading regardless.