NRA have this morning advertised for engineering consultancy to design medium to long term solution to the junction!
:):)
Alternatively, if you want to avoid crossing the city, you could join the M8 at Mitchelstown or Fermoy. From there you go straight through the Dunkettle Interchange, take the first left on the N40 westbound, take a right at the lights and then right at the third set of lights and you're there. Downside of this is getting from Clare/limerick to the M8, upside is the almost certainty of no delays at the end of your journey.
If you're coming via the Limerick road then you can avoid the Dunkettle altogether by just following that road into the city centre, crossing the Christy Ring bridge, driving up the quays and then getting onto the South link road from there which will bring you to Mahon. Any sat nav will be able to sort you out there.
I emailed the road construction email listed on the previous page about how inaccurate and confusing some of the signage is at the scheme and this was their response:
”Thank you for your email below and thank you for taking the trouble to contact us and bringing this item to our attention.
As you may be aware, a detailed directional signage approval process is in place for National Roads and this process was followed on the Dunkettle Interchange Upgrade Scheme. However, your comments are noted and we have brought these comments to the attention of Transport Infrastructure Ireland who operate the approvals system.
We will be in contact with you again on receipt of their follow up comments.”
What is the signposting like? Coming from Clare to get to MATER in near future.
Must have been a very bad crash to have closed the M8 from about 4pm through to 10pm and counting. The usual Bloomfield/N28 shunts are cleared within an hour or so.
Hear hear!
For some reason (to protect the toll income I imagine) you actually can't enter the M8 northbound at Rathcormac. You can only enter it southbound. So for this diversion people will have to go through Rathcormac and either pay a toll at Fermoy or go through Fermoy town and get on toll-less at the north side of the town.
Crash at J17 on the M8. Based on the digital signs, you are to get off there to go into Watergrasshill, and I assume back on at Rathcormac
Has the opening of Link C had a demonstrable effect on traffic levels hitting the Dunkettle roundabout from the east?
Looking at cameras, there are very few vehicles on the N25 east to M8 north movement. I’ve questioned this movement in the past. To me, it’s potentially the least used of the 12 major movements. I can’t see how it is more trafficked than M8 south to City for instance.
N25 Westbound, from my commuting experience, is very bad at peak times.
Unfortunately at peak times heading to Dunkettle roundabout and doing a U turn is probably the way to go if you want to get thru the tunnel, especially with Dublin bound traffic no longer hitting that roundabout since the final links opened.
The greatest benefit appears to be from the M8 Southbound.
For N25 Westbound, I suspect the benefit is less so, particularly at peak times. That is my own observation and I have no stats to back that up.
What does that mean?
DENtv drive through new link
TII have also published an overview of the project, including a lot of stats - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tl3Uh7scLA
Dronehawk posted a video showing his first drive over Link C today, plus two others, a retrospective on the construction of the Rail overpass and a Link C taster posted at the weekend
Once again, I'd like to salute Dronehawk for bringing this project alive over the last few years, and hope that they continue the amazing work with coverage of the M21, M28, M20 (hopefully), the Killaloe Bypass, the Foynes freight line reopening, Midelton to Glounthane double tracking, other CART work, the Midleton to Youghal Greenway and anything else that comes along.
For anyone that would like to acknowledge the time and effort that Dronehawk has put into documenting this and other projects, they have posted a "buy me a coffee" link on a number of their videos and now might be a good time to show appreciation.
... its also on a bend. And before it is another bend. Sightlines aren't great, especially at night. And because that part of the SRR isn't lit.
They should delay the merge until it straightens out before the actual Douglas Viaduct. Would at least force people to merge on a straight bit.
They have data on over 100,000 movements a day. You have personal anecdotes of one driver. I'll trust them.
I used to work with traffic data, and the one thing you see straight away is that it's very random: you can be "delayed" while someone just three or four minutes behind you will sail through. The only way to get sense from it is to look at thousands of journeys at a time.
My own anecdotes, just as worthless as yours, are that N40/N25 is far faster both ways than it was before. My previous experience was of tailbacks before Mahon, then stop-go through the tunnel lights. Now it's a steady if slow progress at busy times.
Coming the other way, there's just no comparison to before.
I see from their PR that TII are now in the misinformation business, claiming that "journey times during peak hours have been reduced by almost 50% on average as a result of the upgrade project". I'd be very interested in which 'average' they are using for this calculation - mean/median/mode - and how it was calculated as I'd be very hesitant to believe that everyone using the interchange is experiencing an average 50% reduction. In particular they claim "journey time savings of almost 60% are being achieved on the N40 to N25 route during peak hours, whilst time savings of over 50% are being achieved on routes accessed via the M8 Southbound" - scrupulously avoiding mention of journey times from the N25 eastbound which carries far more traffic than the M8 southbound and which have seen little improvement, and in fact possible worsening! Also, what exactly does "journey time savings of almost 60% are being achieved on the N40 to N25 route during peak hours" mean? I suspect it's measured from after the Mahon junction and through the tunnel which has undoubtedly improved - but ignoring the mile long tailback before the Mahon junction doesn't reflect the real life journeys of people using the tunnel.
According to TII "Traffic volumes through the interchange are at an all-time high approaching 120,000 vehicles on the busier days of the week". Holy God.
New Link just open
Especially when Bus Connects is advising those outside the N40 in the City South East to stop driving on the R610 to the City Centre and instead use the J7 and J9 on ramps to get to the N40 and N27!
The roads in question were designed a very long time ago when traffic was nowhere near current levels and nobody imagined that the city would expand the way it did. Current designers are now firefighting a distributor/bypass mess. The primary way these roads are being used incorrectly is by thousands of short-distance commuters, and "N40 upgrades" will struggle to deal with that.
This 100%. Such a change could be done over night and I can't imagine it would do anything other than cause less dangerous merges. Surely the people who designed these roads are aware they're not being used properly (and crashes occur as a result) and as such something should be done about it.
Once they can be driven over by a vehicle, any van or truck is going to regard them as fair game. Look at the quantities of them that have been driver over, broken or ripped out where they have been used as "segregation" for bike lanes.
Use of https://www.pittman.ie/collections/rubber-bollards would facilitate emergency vehicles to change lanes when necessary
It’s really frustrating that we can all come up with these potential solutions to the N40 problems, which could be implemented and rolled back easily, but the people who can actually make these changes don’t seem to be doing anything (publicly, at least)
The main issue I see at Bloomfield is you have traffic merging at different points, some across continuous white lines, all along the 500m stretch bringing traffic to a standstill on the N25.
Added to this as soon as they merge many drivers are looking to get into the right hand lane as soon as possible, aggressively - causing the crashes we see constantly.
Adding to the existing bollards as follows ensuring correct merging at the end of lane wouldn't entirely fix the issue but would certainly help.
The queuing at this junction should be on the N28, not on the N40 (in my opinion)
No, but I am aware of the concept and its use to provide an interrupted route for through traffic.
I think one big thing people would claim is an issue to prevent this are ambulances/fire engines not being able to swap between lanes in an emergency. Otherwise, I think it would solve a lot. Also, people coming from the N28 onto the N40 in the right hand lane don’t realise to the last second that the left hand lane has priority when they become one lane, and so they try to merge onto the N40 before it’s even allowed. That probably slows traffic down too. I always drive to the end of the slip lane (or as close as I can get) and it’s so much smoother merging in
Collector Distributor? Ever driven the 401 in Toronto?
:):)
