M21 - Limerick to Rathkeale/Foynes [Adare bypass under construction; remainder pending]

But there is plenty of time to build that. They have two and a half years, the M3 project involving the construction of a 50km motorway/dual carriageway, 11km of single carriageway, a further 24km of road widening/realignment, 6 GSJs and the Boyne bridge took three years.

The length of the project will generally determine the number of structures involved so certainly is relevant. The structures in this case aren't overly complex. The Maigue bridge is mid-size and the enabling works mean it is fairly accessible from the beginning.

The M28 will involve large scale works and connections with very heavily trafficked roads which will require delicate phasing and traffic management. It is also 75% longer than the M21 project. It being scheduled to take 3 years would suggest that 2.5 years for the M21 isn't onerous.

My prediction is that in early 2026 the project is well ahead of schedule and on course for late 2026 completion (possibly runs into 2027 if there are some unexpected difficulties along the way). The seamless tie-in with the existing motorway section of the N21 then gets included in the contract (not doing so would seriously undermine the road and cause issues for the Ryder Cup). Finishing the motorway to Rathkeale is likely too big to be included in the current contract and would have to be tendered separately.

As far as I can tell from the tender notice, the area inside the pink outline is what is being built. That's a mainline length of about 7 km (Chainage +55k to +62k), and includes the two structures named in the tender.

The Green line is the existing N21 dual carriageway.

The Red line is the existing N21 single carriageway, 3.5 km. Just over half of this length is to be widened online.

The blue box is this road bridge, over the existing N21 single carriageway:

I think this is the reason why the tie-in work was left out of this project: first, the road is in a cutting here, so widening is more disruptive, and second, the bridge also needs to be widened to accommodate a Type 1 DC motorway. Works here could make traffic delays worse, and if the goal is to not grind the Adare road to a halt, then it makes sense to wait.

However, once all the golf circus is gone, it wouldn’t be a problem to get going on at least some of this work.

Yes and no! The European TEN-T funding requires good roads to ports, so the N69 qualified because of Foynes. The councils and the TII did a very un-Irish bit of common sense thinking and lumped the Adare bypass in by changing the way that Foynes is accessed to the N21.

The Ryder Cup changed the sequencing of the project unfortunately.

The works to the bridge could be done early, leaving an easy tie-in later. That would remove the risk relating to that.

The current plan of having everyone (both those entering Adare for the Ryder Cup and those wanting to bypass the town) first merge into a single land and then use a roundabout is going to cause traffic delays.

It is madness to create that situation unnecessarily, it may be forced upon them later but baking it in now is crazy. It is accepting as a given that that should be a fallback situation. If, as I suspect, the works progress quickly and they are on track for completion well before the RC, hopefully sense will prevail and they connect the two motorways.

If I understand correctly, every single vehicle coming off the M7 for the newly created M21 bypass of Adare will be greeted by a roundabout before they can either join the bypass or exit for Adare village? While I know this is a temporary measure prior to the full M21 tie in, isn't it likely we'll see several kms tailbacks queuing at the roundabout on particularly busy periods (Friday evenings etc) for the duration of this more than a year measure? It really does take the gloss off the development in the short term.

The exact amount of road to be built, and how it will temporarily tie in to the existing N21, is not known. The tender documents only say “approximately 7 km of motorway”, it does not mention tie-ins with existing roads and there were no specific drawings provided. The entire motorway has planning permission, so what gets built is just a matter of agreeing time and costs with the contractor. It may be possible to provide a tie-in with the existing N21 for traffic that is not going to or from Adare itself.

Most of the delays in Adare are caused by traffic for points west of Adare that is being forced through the village right now - once all of that through-traffic can divert onto the motorway (which can take far more traffic than the existing road can feed it) things will be a lot smoother than at present.

As for the “gloss”… who cares? The current road is actually quite scenic, but I don’t think anyone will miss having to take it.

Definitely time saved going east. If you are going further west than NCW, then much of the gains will be eaten into by a longer queue in NCW.

Is that from a source, or are you talking about the most likely case? Obviously the contractors know, but I meant the public, like us. I’m not arguing with you, by the way, as I also think that is the most likely case, but the published request for tenders was unusually ambiguous about how much of the mainline is to be built. The wording doesn’t rule out a temporary, non dual-carriageway, link. It’s unlikely, though, and I do think that the planned junction will be fine westbound. Eastbound, it could back up a lot, but that’s going to happen until the final eastern motorway stretch is done.

@lordleitrim - I don’t think anyone will complain. Consider this:

The current route from existing N21 on the intended Adare junction to existing N21 on the intended Croagh junction is 9 km long, and Google reports this as having a travel time of 9 minutes… if you’re driving at 4:00am. Choose 18:00 on a Friday, and it says it could be up to 22 minutes. That shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone.

The new way to get between those points will be 7 km long, with an estimated travel time of around 4 minutes under best conditions, or maybe 6 minutes if it gets really busy.

Meanwhile, travel times along the old N21 will drop towards that 9 minute minimum value, as far less traffic will be using the route.

2 km shorter, and up to three times faster should be enough while the rest of the project is done.

If your argument is that they should have just started at M20 and done the on-line M21 build too, then I do tend to agree with you, but that golf tournament complicates the timing. Any major delay on that online section could cause the whole N21 corridor to jam solid during that week or two - and that is too much of a risk. It’s not the big event that causes the issues, but the street closures that will need to be made within Adare to prevent some of the spectators ignoring the requests of the Gardaí and organisers and trying to drive their cars right up as close to the first tee as they can.

I’m fairly confident that the rest of this project will be lined up for construction to start as soon as the circus has folded up and fecked off.