N8/N25/N40 - Dunkettle Interchange [open to traffic]

Great to see the project coming to fruition and I'd echo Curiosity's comment "Credit to the planners and doers" for the amount achieved with minimum disruption. Hopefully the signposting, temporary and permanent, will be up to scratch on this occasion.

The Examiner is not known for publishing correct information!

Several link roads have opened since the first one in February 2022 took M8 southbound traffic on a new route to the tunnel—including three in October 2022, four the following month, two of which are set to be busiest when the scheme is complete, and another link road into Little Island in February 2023.

Thats just claptrap, the first link was Tivoli - M8 North.

As expected, the roundabout will also cease to exist come Sunday morning. 31 years in existence.

Yes, the existing N25W diverge will remain open after 8pm Thu until the new N25W diverge opens on Sun. However, the existing diverge will only provide access to the tunnel after 8pm Thu - you won't be able to get to the N8N.

Lots of links opening this weekend.

After this, what is left to do?

Should be well finished before Feb 24.

What does the yellow box information mean on the photo above? Why is that traffic being diverted to the glanmire roundabout - wouldn't some of it be going that way anyway? Do they mean tunnel traffic coming from that direction?

Also at the moment under the bridges on the roundabout, the new freeflow links will just... be... there. They have to tar, improve, seperate and landscape those new lanes. That'll all have to be done at night.

Closing of the R623 will allow the permanent slip to M8N to be built as well, that'll probably be the last to do. But really the big deal is getting N40N to N25E and N25W to N40S open this weekend.

I think N25W -> Little Island West needs to be finished too if I'm not mistaken. Not much left to do there either really.

And then we'll all get to see what happens at Douglas. My guess is that Dunkettle won't affect Douglas too much on its own but M28 could be the problem. We'll see: this weekend will begin a whole new chapter in Cork traffic patterns.

Well they're meant to be routed east with the Midleton traffic, around the dumbells and back down N25E towards Tivoli.

Some of the openings are surprising to me as they look like they haven't even been started.

That Link B from tunnel heading left up the ramp towards Lr Glanmire Road; I thought it was going to be newly done at a more curved angle. Unless they start tarmaccing soon, it looks like they'll just use the existing ramp up.

The N25West towards tunnel. Theres a whole chunk missing that's currently the R623. So do they bulldoze that and start again or surface over it.

The little island southern dumbell to N25W tie-in. Only done last week over what seemed a small hump ramp of tarmac. Doesn't look you could even make out the alignment, never mind have it surfaced.

I guess the actual surfacing of the above links is a breeze to be done in a few hours as opposed to groundworks.

R623 is closing from tonight and there's 24 hours working to get it ready for Sunday, so must be possible to be done. Imagine that's how it'll all be completed

I don't think that will happen. While intuitively it might seem like bad design (going East to go West), after a few times getting stuck in Glanmire regular users of the route will revert to Dunkettle because they'll discover that it's quicker.

Occasional users will follow the road signs or (updated) sat navs.

Echoing this. Dronehawk's videos have made the project so much more interesting and digestible.

I was however horrified when looking at this latest video by the drone flying at road level through live traffic flows (1:30 to 2:10 along Link E, Link G and the Dumbbell) until the penny dropped that it was Dashcam footage !

Anyone who does either once won't do it again, far more time consuming routes

Am I missing something because I can't see any mention of the route for travelling from N40 to the M8 northbound. I have watched the vids put up to explain this weekends changes but still can't figure it out.

Will be going from Kinsale to Thurles this Sunday afternoon.