What is being done to address the M50 problem?

And that was 10 years after the Russians offered to build a metro in return for butter.

Maybe , but it would still be preferable to what;s there at the moment and probably for the next 10 years. Nothing !!!

I read an article recently about the Madrid metro The expansion of the existing metro began around 1995 until 2011 . In that time they tunneled 172km of new line and added 132 new stations all built in 4 phases. They were able to achieve this in that time frame thanks to some crafty legislation brought in by the Spanish government earlier in the century. The law required no planning permission, environmental impact study and public consultation for tunneling that is more than 10 meters below the surface. This reduced costly and lengthy compensation negotiations. The law also meant that if and when any problems were encountered during tunneling, they could change direction of the tunnel without planning.

Minister for Transport here at the time was Seamus Brennan. He was made aware of the Madrid experience but I imagine he found it all a little too progressive and consigned it to the rear of a filing cabinet.

If this law was applied here, who knows it could shave 2-3 years off any future tunneling projects. I'm only saying ...........

P.S Tunneling work in Madrid was carried out 24/7. That meant no expensive machinery lying idle for long periods, which often happens here .

Also, the Madrid metro was built for a fraction of the estimated cost of E 4.8 billion for the proposed Dublin metro in 2003 .

We are an embarrassment of a country run by absolute luddites

Probably the Port tunnel, Jack Lynch tunnel and Limerick tunnel. This legislation only applied to 10 meters below surface projects.

Deliveries aren't the same as private cars.

This would be more believable if we hadn't heard the same story about the Chinese, Russians, Germans, French, Spanish etc.

There's an argument to be made that while we should be delivering better infrastructure in Dublin and more public transport options we shoud also be actively trying to limit the growth of the city. Dublin (and the Greater Dublin area) is outsized for the size of country we are. Radical regional development is required to bring up population in Cork, Limerick, Galway, Waterford and Sligo. Of course that would require money too to bring the infrastructure in those cities up to par as well but we need to start thinking outside the box here.

I have to use the M50 twice every week over and back

I drive from Coolock area to Rathfarnham to Collect my kid from School and then drive back

I've to collect him at 2:30pm so I always leave at 1:30pm to be safe, they drive over at that time is not to bad. but the drive back is an absolute killer, It's often been 4pm when I've gotten home. I've tried various routes via m50 or through town, I've tried using public transport multiple times but it's insanely slow (the roads on the south side of the city are just to narrow), and it's also expensive (guts of €10), as you go past the 90 min fair. I'll come back to the town piece in a minute.

In my mind the issue is not the volume of traffic it's the flow, The problem areas for my journey are Junction 7 and Junction 9. The issue is the flyovers and on ramps are very poorly designed. The traffic at Junction 7 is trying to go from 7 lanes into 4 and Junction 7 is 6 lanes into 4.

Two of the the lanes have major design flaw in that they do not have a long enough area to speed up to motorway speed. It's the loop on ramps coming from the city centre on to the Motorway heading north bound. There's heaps of HGV's using them and they slow everything down, cause they just cannot get up to speed and in that distance.

Once you pass the toll bridge the traffic clears a bit and at least you're moving.

My solution for the M50 would be to remove those figure 8 on ramps, they are are core contributing factor.

These ^^^^^^

If they wanna keep them then eliminate the other on ramp IE in the below pic, remove the Red and expand the Blue:

That would increase the flow. (Would need to be modelled)

Double the price of petrol and half the price of public transport, the problems will resolve themselves.