NRA have this morning advertised for engineering consultancy to design medium to long term solution to the junction!
:):)
Yes. That can only open when the roundabout to N25 on-ramp is closed though.
N8 East to Glounthaune link road and Glounthaune to Little Island link road both opening on Monday 24 Oct.
Dunkettle interchange: New Little Island access routes and cycleway to open on Monday
Missed that the Ibis slip is closing. The solution is for traffic to go into Little Islsnd and then access the roundabout by going toward the Tunnel Management Building. People are cribbing about it but that slip has to close to let the scheme proceed.
Ibis slip traffic now being sent over the bridge and onto the slip onto the N25 westbound off ramp slip road instead?
Edit: this took hours to post for some reason, confirmed by AM above. Massive perk of the Ibis slip closing will be the M8 reverting to 2 lanes southbound and the M8 -> Glounthane slip being completed soon
Much more of a journey as none of the slips off the new dumbbell are open yet.
Traffic will be directed into Little Islsnd and onto the R623. Past BASF, Eurofins and Hoffman Park and back out onto the roundabout.
This will be the final route to the tunnel for traffic that had previously used that slip-road.
Actually, that’s not far from opening - the slip into the tunnel is nearly ready.
Echo are saying this alignment will be possible in early 2023.
4 small roundabouts that will have no queues versus queuing up to join the large roundabout? Sounds like it should be faster when it's done.
I don't think it will be faster, but we'll find out pretty soon!
Good to hear this - will be interesting to see the exact wording of the newsletter tomorrow.
Given the works done, I'd say M8S to N25E won't be long behind all of this. It was contingent on closing the Ibis slip road.
I have a question as someone who is completely confused with this whole thing! How do I get to Glounthaune now? Is the old slip still open where you turn left for Glounthaune or right for little island over that bridge? I’ll be going to Glounthaune in a few weeks for a class so want to know where I’m going.
Where are you coming from?
If coming from the city you can take the new slip road. From tunnel/m8 you go to the old little island flyover, the one you've mentioned.
Cheers, coming from city, so can go straight on and follow the new road so.
I saw today the gantry for signage over the m8s to n25e is up, has that been there long? I know this week's email said about November, I assume it was in reference to this (as well as the m8 going back to 2 lanes...assume that's not immediate following Ibis slip closing due to tie in works)
Suspect there is a bit of alignment work to do once the Ibis slip is closed. Another few weeks of one lane on the M8 sadly.
Had a feeling Drone Hawk would have to go take a look.
Is that slip road onto the M8 from the N25 east bound the final version? It’s extremely short. I’ve seen a few near misses on it already and the traffic isn’t even moving fast.
That’s the city to M8 north slip?
I agree that it’s a bit short. Would hope it may be reassessed as the space is there. Traffic will be limited to only 60kph at that merger point though.
Poor reporting from Examiner and Evho who claimed the changes would open at 6am this morning. Changes are opening tonight.
New link roads to open and the Ibis slip road to close at 12 Noon today.
Farewell to the Ibis slip road. A clever solution used to facilitate local traffic flow in the area. In truth, a poor solution which is now well past its sell by date.
My first glance at this in detail, thanks. Looks like they've built quite the impressive murder strip at North Esk container depot! What on earth were they thinking!!!
This change should see a big increase in traffic hitting the tunnel from the Waterford side.
Hopefully the opening of the slip road from the Waterford road to the tunnel will help but it sounds like it will be signalised.
The car lanes are on the left of picture, contra flow with the white lines.
The bike lanes are the other tarmac path to the right, segregated by the gravel
My bad, it's not a traditional "murder strip" in fairness. Maybe it has its own buzzword when you need to dash across a wide entrance with no markings?
Edit: because this one is so easy to get right, I'm fearful of what they'll do on the N25 slip roads. One step forwards, two steps back!
What alternative is there in this case? No matter which side of the road you built the segregated bikeway on, you would always have to cross pedestrian or car ways at some point.
It's a greenway: it should be a swept-back raised marked crossing, same as they have done for the sections immediately North of there. They absolutely 100% know what they should have done, because they've done it elsewhere on the same scheme. It's arguably worse here, because it's a private destination rather than a side road! This doesn't even comply with current TII or NTA regulations. Just bizarre really.
See below:
But they have to cross the roads somewhere, not sure what they could have done there, you can raise it but I find that just gives people a sense of being safer than they are, people go straight through rather than stopping and looking around
The completed design does not confer more safety for end-users at that junction. The completed design ceases to exist at that junction, it's a basic abdication of design responsibility
You can raise etc, for added safety but the key thing is to give vulnerable users explicit priority through the junction or at a minimum give them direction to cede priority. Otherwise what's the point in putting in any infrastructure for vulnerable users at all. What you have here is HGV's crossing a greenway 300m from a school, with no direction for either end user as to how they should interact. Most HGV drivers are actually really good in my experience, and will give way to vulnerable end-users, but I'd describe this junction as a "free for all" between the most vulnerable users and most dangerous users. Which is crazy.
Would you be comfortable leaving a child use that alone as-is? I would say no, personally. It's the direct link between Little Island and the school.
Anyway, none of this is just my opinion, thankfully, it's all in the NTA docs (DMURS, National Cycle Manual) or TII docs (Rural Cycleway Design 2017), whichever they want to follow. The TII doc is most relaxed, and section 7.4.5 deals with this in a fairly firm-handed manner: "priority at these crossings should lie with the cyclists and it is preferable that the alignment of the cycleway is retained past the entrance". The NTA National Cycle Manual (or DMURS) are far more strong-worded about this particular situation.
TLDR: they didn't design according to the standards here.
:):)
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