N22 - Macroom to Ballyvourney (Macroom Bypass) [open to traffic]

https://www.radiokerry.ie/news/parts-of-new-n22-kerry-cork-road-could-open-early-285346

Anyone willing to make a prediction on the potential partial opening date?

I'm going to go even more optimistic and say October. For no technical reason other than it looks so far advanced already, and the difference it will make to everyone's journey and the general quality of life in Macroom.

Motorists warned of major disruption on N22 Macroom/Ballyvourney bypass

Road users travelling to Cork are being warned of major disruption on the N22 Macroom/Ballyvourney bypass which is due to last for several months.

For the next two weeks, starting from Monday, there’ll be a 24 hour stop/go system between Coolcower and Two-Mile bridge.

Cork Fine Gael councillor Eileen Lynch is advising motorists to be mindful of delays and to allow thirty minutes extra for their journey.

https://www.radiokerry.ie/news/motorists-warned-of-major-disruption-on-n22-macroom-ballyvourney-bypass-286990

Just two questions.

First, is the west-bound side of the old N22 being left in place as a segregated straight-on lane to facilitate west-bound traffic not entering the new bypass.

My second question is why no similar segregated lane for east-bound traffic coming off the new bypass

There is a 0.5 m hard strip at the left-hand side, where a car can pull in in an emergency, and that leaves enough space for other traffic to go around them (and in many places cars can park up onto the verge and be completely off the road). The reason for hard shoulders on motorways was so that a breakdown didn't leave a car in the traffic lanes (remember that when motorways were first built across Europe, they had no speed limits). But this is not a motorway, it has a 100 km/h speed limit, and breakdowns really aren’t something that happens these days.

A hard shoulder would make the road far more expensive, not very much safer, and would almost never be used.

N71 has the same minimal hard shoulders as the new N22 road, and there are parts of the Northbound “carriageway” that have none at all. See for yourself: N71 - Google Maps , N71 - Google Maps. This road is inadequate for the volume of traffic along N71 (around 20,000 a day), but it’s going to be really, really expensive to improve it. For comparison, this new stretch of N22 will carry around 10~12,000 vehicles a day when open.

N18 Limerick-Cratloe has average daily traffic of 40,000 vehicles. That’s why it is built to a higher standard. N22 will have just over a quarter of that volume.

The old N1 Swords bypass was built as the main Dublin-Belfast road with expectations of 30~40,000 vehicles per day, that’s why it’s wider. It’s the oldest of the schemes you mention, as it was designed in the early 1980s, and opened in 1984.

(N71 was bodged together in the mid 1990s: Nortbound is the actually the old road, Southbound is new; Northbound was heavily reworked in the early 2000s because the old “just use the old alignment” approach was lethal. Swords opened in 1984; N18 Bunratty bypass is the oldest part of this road, dating from 1992, but it was reworked in the late 2000s as part of the M18 and Shannon Tunnel approaches)

Northern Ireland really is not relevant, as the NI Roads Service uses completely different design standards (which are different in some ways to the rest of the UK too - each nation has its own independent Highways Agency), but you might look at the recently-dualled A6 to see what is considered best-practice up there these days. The Google car hasn’t got there yet, so here’s a picture - note the shoulders, or lack of:

Officially, they call this type of road “high quality dual carriagway”, incidentally. Down here, we only use that term for Motorway-standard roads, but that’s more because we have very few “low quality” dual carriageways left on the national network for comparison. (N25 Carrigtwohill-Midleton is the only one I can think of, with its multiple median crossings)

And Electric Vehicles are not in any way less reliable than traditional cars. They have less than a dozen moving parts, compared to over a thousand in a combustion-engined vehicle - there really isn’t much to go wrong: the fact that a company like Tesla can get away with such sloppy assembly tells you just how fundamentally reliable an EV drivetrain is. Sure, they can run out of battery - but again, your car running out of fuel is not an accident, regardless of what the fuel is.

"My guess is that it’ll open with one lane each way, with two rows of cones down the middle to reserve a through-way for construction traffic."

We don't do this that much (at all?) in the South, but up North, they do it regularly - it was done around Castledawson on the A6 during the recent construction, and further along the A6, it is currently being done on the Dungiven->Derry section.

It’s worse than it looks. The drone camera is compressing the difference in heights. If you’ve driven near there it’s a pretty steep incline from the re-routed old road up to the new mainline. They’re not doing temporary tie-ins at Dunkettle because they think it’s good, but because have no choice. Also, that’s a 60 km/h limit, with traffic lights and enough traffic movements in place to keep the real speed close to that. On this scheme there is an alternative to a temporary tie-in, and that temporary tie-in wouldn’t be on a controlled junction, but in a remote area with a high chance of people driving far above the posted speed.

If they did do a tie-in, I fully expect it would result in some fool driving their car through a barrier late one winter evening, and then the cost of the inevitable court-case against the council and the contractors will delay the project, and guarantee there will never be another partial opening of anything, ever.

The N30/N25 New Ross Bypass is another fairly new road that has no hard shoulder for most of its length. Only the slightly busier section on either side of the bridge at the western end of the route is HQDC - the remainder is 2+2. I’ve travelled it many times and it is a perfectly safe design for the relatively low traffic volume.

Thanks for that info!

Roundabout at Coolcower is 90% complete and I would expect it to be fully functioning shortly.

As for the Macroom section of the bypass, It looks like surface is almost ready with tidy ups to do.

Works on the dividing barrier has started but early stages as well as lining yet to commence.

Has it been confirmed what will happen on the western end? Will traffic be brought back onto the existing route via Millstreet cross or will a temporary solution be put in at Carrigaphooca?