N25 - Midleton to Youghal [planning and design to commence 2023]

Ah! That makes sense, actually. Sorry about the confusion. Mogeely-Castlemartyr-Ladysbridge would make a good zone for development, but only if the rail link was in place first. Without it, they’d just be creating another Carrigaline and adding to Cork City’s traffic problems.

Yep I think we're all aligned. The County Council is missing a lot of big-picture planning here though. East of Midleton, Mogeely, between Carrigtwohill and Midleton are all poorly planned, not well exploiting the location at all. Youghal's very poorly exploited too. It has a beach, a port, it could easily have a rail line, they should be encouraging investment into the area IMO.

What's planned between Carrigtwohill and Midleton is currently quite poor, more a sprawl of both towns than an overall integrated plan. What's now planned North of Carrigtwohill is a good bit better in fairness. I think the current development plan is up in 2028 so maybe there will be a new round of public consultation in 18-24 months.

Sweden is a very different country to Ireland, though. Outside of the urban areas, the country is very sparsely populated - especially the northern half. There are far fewer roads in rural areas, but they’re good, consistent roads, with very few side entrances. This is inherently safer than what we have: a large number of small lanes with inconsistent width and profile, with many domestic and commercial entrances directly onto the road.

Ireland’s unique rural settlement pattern, where people live as far from each other as they can while staying near to the local town/city makes that approach to road provision impossible. In Sweden (and other continental countries) where rural housing is clustered into villages of 20~100 houses, once you’ve built a good road between two villages, the engineering part of the safety problem is fixed; here, between two villages there are probably three routes, all with houses along them, all with vocal proponents, all of whom demand a fully serviced road to their house; and then there’s all the people living on the roads off those roads…

We’re starting from the worst possible place when it comes to road safety. I’m surprised at how highly we actually rank in road safety (we’re in the second tier of countries, with NL, DE, FR), given how poor most of the road network is.

It would be a lot easier to add a station ~1km west of Midleton than ~7km further west, not only is there the construction costs but also operational consideration s. Mogeely is a tiny village, it doesn't have anything like the infrastructure required for the population to justify a train station.

The eastern side of Midleton and Ballinacura are probably close to justifying the train traveling two minutes further already and function as a P&R for people further east , plus there is potential for further growth around an already large town. It could be done by 2030 if they wanted, Mogeely would be more like 2040.

Main Street, Midleton, runs roughly north-south. To the east, the major expansion of the Irish Distillers plant has more or less cut off any residential development to the east of the town.

Development to the south of the town in the Ballinacurra area is currently severely restricted by bad congestion at the Lakeview Roundabout, from which there are up to 3km queues on the R630 during commute times every day. A major redevelopment of the R630/N25 roundabout would be necessary to facilitate further expansion south of the town.

A high-capacity feeder bus from Ballinacurra to the existing rail station, with a dedicated bus lane if space can be found, could form part of the solution.

Expansion east of the town would need to be east of the Irish Distillers plant in the direction of Mogeely, which brings the extension of the railway eastwards to Mogeely back into the equation.

Existing rail will serve the expansion westwards.

A caveat on including rail as an effective solution to commuting from East Cork, and overcrowding on the N25, in any solution is effective and reliable onward bus connections from Kent Station to all areas of the city.

A major upgrade of the Lakeview Roundabout isn't going to be possible without significant CPOing on all sides. I honestly don't think it will ever happen. A more realistic solution is a new road east of the town going north and south of the N25. That opens up plenty of development land, serving existing and new populations of Midleton and Ballinacura plus acts as a P&R for people further east, accessing the station via the new road.

The only "upgrade" I could see at Lakeview would be the N25 being put on an overpass with no junction, leaving the R630 to run north/south below. That would only be possible if alternative access to the N25 is provided, which is back to a new road to the east. A high-capacity feeder bus from Ballinacurra to the existing rail station will not be possible without major restrictions on other traffic, making it pretty much impossible. You could however have a high-capacity feeder bus to a new rail station if a new road with bus lanes is built.

Agreed on the previous posts. If we're putting in a new major N25 interchange East of Midleton (and I think we should), then there MIGHT be scope for a distributor network southwards to the East of Ballinacurra, allowing expansion of that "suburb" too. Maybe even a deviation to the rail network. Two new stops: the new "Midleton East" P&R and a Ballinacurra station. No need for feeder buses at all then really, and you unlock development land on 3 sides of Midleton. At a minimum anyway with a new N25 interchange we should be talking about stuff like active transport and infrastructure for a feeder bus to the new "Midleton East" P&R. Maybe develop with high density on the existing Midleton train station car park?

Back to this forum's focus, it seems obvious to me that closing Lakeview, creating a new Midleton East junction and a Midleton East distributor are important next steps. Almost as high a priority as upgrading the N25 to Youghal, for me.

Once again my justification is that I don't think the expansion of Youghal as a Cork "commuter" town is the right thing to do. People are commuting from there because there's not enough local jobs in Youghal and not enough housing further West. We need to invest directly in Youghal and in the infrastructure that unlocks large volumes of housing further West.

Back to this forum's focus, it seems obvious to me that closing Lakeview, creating a new Midleton East junction and a Midleton East distributor are important next steps.

Yep and I've said it here a couple of times here over the past few years, the issue of the Lakeview Roundabout is probably what's holding up improvements to the N25 east of there. Imagine spending €100m to increase capacity on the road and having the increased volume of cars go through that roundabout!

The focus should be on a distributor east of Midleton, that takes pressure off Lakeview, allowing something to be done there.

I could be mistaken but I believe earlier in the thread people have advised that the space simply isn't available for this. I'd also question the cost/benefit of this against a new Midleton East junction. The new junction would facilitate some more compact and sustainable development, whereas increasing capacity through the existing junction likely can't do that quite as well.

This must be all happening in the background, as we haven’t had official word on progress in some time.

Not sure if you've taken the existing N25 underpass at Rocky Road into account here but otherwise a lot of what you're describing plenty of sense to me.

But I'd even prefer not to bother with a junction at Lakeview personally. Aside from one petrol station it's all just housing until Ballinacurra. So I think I'd prefer to see the traffic really reduced to "local traffic only" and possibly use some of the available road width for a local area scheme. It's nearly 20m wide in places there. And yes of course I do realise that the local homeowners would protest in favour of keeping heavy traffic through their area, rather than having a 5 minute extra drive to the N25!

There's something to be said for building up Ballinacurra in general too. It has the feel of a little old village that's been completely lost. The big old malting factory is just falling down which is a real shame.

Yes, I keep the pedestrian underpass at Rocky Rd, but block road access and move it east to the new Youghal Road/N25 junction or to the the road underpass I indicated.

I kept limited access at Lakeview for traffic to/from Cork because the alternative is to have all drivers from Cloyne and environs drive into Midleton, then east toward the Youghal Road/N25 roundabout junction to turn back west onto the stretch of 2+2 road between it and west of Lakeview. Better to have them join at a point where the road is already widening. But keeping the main East-West traffic away will help make it easier to get between Ballincurra and Midleton. (I also brought the cycle and pedestrian way back down to ground level, so that it might be used)

I was thinking instead that the new Eastern junction could connect directly south to Ballinacurra: a Southern distributor road to match/reflect the Northern one.

I think that would have to be the case. The roundabout can then be removed and you have a local north/south only road with no access to the N25. The new road can have bus lanes meaning people can use buses to connect to a new Midleton East train station.

Is a flyover even technically possible here given the narrow nature of the Castlemarytr exit and the private dwelling so close to the existing road.

The point of a new road east of Midleton would be to relieve the Lakeview Roundabout and make public transport viable for a lot more people. The Castlemartyr bypass would only make the Lakeview Roundabout worse. They are completely different propositions.