project update scheduled next Monday
Sounds like the final design is going to be published. We could be going to ABP soon!
You're jumping the gun !!
At the Webinar last November, the project co-ordinator promised an update in June 2024 and a further update in November 2024, with the fence line to be available by the end of 2024. 2025 was the timeline mentioned for the application to ABP.
Will this just be a further narrowing of the route corridor or preliminary fenceline with road layouts prior to a finalised design in late 2024?
Good news I guess.
https://www.irishtimes.com/transport/2024/06/24/n20-cork-limerick-road-to-be-upgraded-to-full-motorway-at-estimated-cost-of-2bn/
So, its going to be a motorway, with 100km of active travel infrastructure built.
It is also going to be tolled.
https://corklimerick.ie/n-m20-cork-to-limerick-project-update-24-06-2024/
The level of tolls to be paid will determine how much it is used. If it's a couple of Euro, it'll be worth it. Anything over a fiver I can see a large amount of people not using it.
Tolling from Mallow to Cork and Charleville to Limerick would be stupid as the majority of traffic on those sections would be commuters.
They're after the commuters money just as much as anyone else's. The M50 is tolled and the majority of users are commuters.
The problem is that for the M50, there's no real alternative. If they toll it to go after the commuters, I can see a lot using the current road instead
Looks like an M3 multi toll based on distance travelled.
What current road? Most of the project is on same route as existing road - the current route as it exists today will not exist any longer.
Toll dodgers will be trading a lot of time if they opt to stay off the M20
You'll save nothing by skipping one or two junctions. The staged tolling is very different to a single point toll of, say, €3.
Oh ya, forgot that a lot of the road will be gone but I imagine that there'll be a LOT of people living along the route getting onto their local politicians. A single tolling point I think would be a better "sell".
I expect the M8/R513 would be used a lot more. If I was going from Cork to Limerick, I'd have to weigh up what I was driving, how much time I had and then decided on the route and cost. I do that all the time when deciding on whether to pay the toll at Portlaoise (and 24 times out of 25, I'd pay the toll).
I know of people from Mallow head cross country to Watergrasshill to connect with the South Ring Rd to avoid the North Ring but that's a different discussion.
Anyone have any info on what happened to the Blarney Transport hub? It was supposed to be a major P&R with the train station but now there are multiple small bus based park and rides.
From what Irish rail came out with a few weeks back the train station is still planned so it seems stupid to not leverage it as much as possible. Also think car users would be more willing to jump onto a train than a bus since the buses will still hit congestion from Blackpool into the city
AFAIK where they are taking existing roadway they are putting a local roadway alongside it. Again AFAIK it an EU requirement to have an alternative route if you Toll a roadway
Motorway with cycle lanes lol.
Maps of the current design are available in the scheme website. You can see what section is online and offline
Full details of the update are available on the following link including a summary map showing the entire route on one page, a file containing 50no. 1:2,500 maps showing the details of the road and a third file showing the details of the Active travel proposal. Far more info than expected at this stage.
https://corklimerick.ie/june-2024-update/
Overall it looks like an excellent proposal. Active travel now fully detailed, transport hubs and freight hub detailed, junctions detailed and toll strategy clarified. It ticks all the boxes for me, in particular the approach to tolling.
Only fly in the ointment I can see is the absence of a Charleville North junction - so it will either be an early exit at Bruree or a late exit at Charleville South. Doesn’t bother me but will concern some. May also become a political issue. The success of the Buttevant junction will depend on the upgrading of the link road.
The following is the one page summary of the full route. The other two PDF files are too large to upload to boards.ie, but are available for download from the link above.
Will the road between Blarney and the City Centre remain as the N20, so?
The road will remain as is and presumably the N20 designation will not change. It was out of scope for the current project. This was clarified last year.
The active travel scheme will be in parallel, not 'on' the motorway. It's a great idea, to be honest. Bundle them both together.
This really is a fantastic plan. Fair play to all involved. Will be an absolute gamechanger for the N20. The M20/M21 junction will barely even be noticed when driving on it.
Couple of quick points:
Legally the new road will still be the N20 route, but under motorway restrictions (so will be designated as M20), so no reason for the road from where the motorway ends to the city centre not to stay as N20.
Pretty pleased with this. It fixes the pressing issue with N20, without encouraging ever more car commuting into Cork City. I'm happy that Blarney southward is out of scope, because it's there that the temptation to widen the existing road to "support new development" (i.e., more cars every morning and evening, worse traffic for everyone) was strongest. Northern tie-in is well done. At the other end, the three-roundabout-dumbbell solution to the mess of junctions around the Blarney business park looks odd, but should work in practice. I really like the Travel Hubs; I'm glad they were added, and I would like to see these rolled out to the rest of the motorway network. There's already unofficial carpooling parking on the hard shoulders of the approaches to Dublin, so wouldn't it be better to do it right? (And as an EV driver, I can't overstate how great it is to have charging sites available every 10~12 km). My only concern is security, especially at night in the fairly remote stretches through South Co. Limerick . The tolling is interesting, and I wonder if this will be the first implementation of Road User Charging in Ireland, but M50 is likely to happen first. Basically, you pay per kilometre as in France/Italy, but instead of payment gates on entry and exits, the operators use ANPR cameras and/or tolling tags and/or a mobile app to bill you as you travel.
Of the big pay-by-km networks, France charges €0.10 per km and Italy €0.07, so if you use that as a measure, travelling the full length of this road could mean €5 to €8 in tolls. But depending on how the tolling is implemented, there's also scope for giving discounts for off-peak or higher-occupancy vehicles, though.
On the R515, I think the poor connection is deliberate, to discourage traffic travelling eastbound on the N72 from taking the R579/R578/R515 route from Ballymaquirke to Charleville and vice versa, it's a nudge to keep longer distance traffic on the N/M roads, bad and all as the N72 is in places.
What we've all been waiting for, for far, far, far too long. The travel hubs etc will be interesting, definitely having Park and Rides, etc should be promoted - that after all is one of the advantages of roads is that they do allow for fast and reliable bus services. The tolling will be interesting as well, there is a danger that they might make it too expensive, at the end of the day, no matter what car people are driving, most people have to drive anyway, so if it's too expensive people will either use the old road, or go for the via Mitchelstown approach.
I would rather they just got on with building the road (no doubt it would have been an awful lot less than €2 billion if that was the case) but in a country as wealthy as ours, it makes sense to do the active travel as well. I am also very glad it's a proper full blown motorway with the proper 120 km/h speed limits (of course, this is a very low limit by European standards for such roads, but far, far better than what we have right now).
Timeline, Piecing this together….
From the report in the Indo:
Building it is expected to cost around €2bn. Construction of the motorway could start in 2027 and be finished by 2031.
From the report in the Irish Times:
Mr Howard said TII will be forwarding the business case for the project to the Government later this year and once approved, it will then enter planning with construction likely to take four to eight years depending on whether the work is done in simultaneous or staggered 40km stages.
2027 for construction to start sounds both realistic and achievable. I know a number of posters here expressed a view in the past that this was too big for a single contract and was likely to be split in two and this aligns with Jari Howard’s statement above. I can understand that the amount of inline upgrading could favour staggering the two contracts to reduce disruption but it would be disappointing if completion were to stretch to 2033, 2034 or 2035.
Electioneering Waffle - the whole lot of it.
The largest 2 cities outside of the east coast are not connected by even a direct road.
More tolls and a big missed opportunity to provide a motorway once and for all between the 2 cities.
For myself I'm sick of driving between the 2 cities especially during Christmas with bumper to bumper traffic the whole way.
I'ts so bad that I now go via Mitchlestown and then over via Hospital in Co. Limerick.
is that a freight hub or a park & ride or both where i've marked X
looks a very impressive plan. congrats to all those working on it.
are you on the gargle? this update is part of a planned communication strategy. its timing has nothing to do with the government.
the project will be going ahead with a planning submission expected next year. assuming we don't have another tiger meltdown spades will be going into the ground circa 2027.
