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The road-building archive thread: a record of a changing Ireland

Comments

  • #2
    Chris_533976
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,082 ✭✭✭Chris_533976


    Good idea :) One suggestion would also be to save all the pics in each thread, as over time web hosts change and die. Given a few years, most of the pictures wont work at all unless they get saved.


  • #3
    Irish and Proud
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,735 ✭✭✭Irish and Proud


    Seems like a great idea man!!! :)

    ...and you're dead right about RTE and the media - They seem to have no pride in this country! :mad:


  • #4
    Wild Bill
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 3,129 ✭✭✭Wild Bill


    I think it's an ideological thing. The "trendy" D4 types who infest RTE and the meeja are vaguely anti-roads (just look at the coverage roads protests get!)

    In their circles getting excited about any building project (unless it's small and 'arty') that wasn't completed before independence is uncool. :cool:


  • #5
    serfboard
    Registered Users Posts: 4,668 ✭✭✭serfboard


    Furet wrote: »
    In decades to come, the first few years of this century will be looked back on by Irish people as truly transformative, not least in terms of the dramatic improvements made to road transport connectivity across this island.

    Boards.ie has played an important role in recording that transformation as it happened. The interurban motorways were built one section at a time, and, for various reasons, many people felt a compunction to catalogue construction works textually and pictorially on these forums. The threads they created and added to record something of the zeitgeist of our times - and they document the remaking of the physical geography of Ireland in the process. Because of the relative disinterest shown by RTÉ and the print media in the road-building enterprise, the posts found here on Boards.ie take on a greater significance and don the mantle of a cultural archive.

    100% agree with this and have said so myself on occasion. I'm glad you're taking this tack. I would suggest 2 other options:

    1. A separate (i.e. non-boards) website dedicated to this.

    2. Contacting any of the universities to see if they would be interested in having this stuff in their archives. If so, they could either print it off, or keep an online copy on their own servers/backups.

    I think that the comments made by people in watching the roads development is also a very important part of the content, and boards has played a wonderful part in facilitating that participation.
    Furet wrote: »
    It is my intention to close and preserve those of the most important threads which have now, in September 2009, fulfilled their primary purposes. The road schemes whose construction progress they documented are now complete.

    Agree with this also. There is no need for continued commenting on completed schemes. This is what Commuting & Transport is for.


  • #6
    Tanner Icy Servitude
    Posts: 0 ✭ Tanner Icy Servitude


    Good idea, most of the pictures I have linked to are attachments, if some of the existing links could be replaced by attachments then the chances of preservation increase.


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  • #7
    Amtmann
    Closed Accounts Posts: 6,093 ✭✭✭Amtmann


    serfboard wrote: »
    100% agree with this and have said so myself on occasion. I'm glad you're taking this tack. I would suggest 2 other options:

    1. A separate (i.e. non-boards) website dedicated to this.

    I believe BluntGuy is giving some consideration to this!


  • #8
    BluntGuy
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,468 ✭✭✭BluntGuy


    Furet wrote: »
    I believe BluntGuy is giving some consideration to this!

    Indeed I am. I've been thinking about a road website for quite a while now, and would be fantastic to have all of this stuff securely archived. I already have a domain in mind and I'm steadily learning about the tools I'd need to construct such a website. However, this is obviously a while off, I'd like to have the 4 MIUs done and dusted before I made such a website live.

    For now, I am actually going through each thread and saving the entire contents to my own hard drive, as a make-shift archive, before we eventually have something more permanent. Any missing links, I'll document and see if I can retrieve copies of the photos from the original takers.


  • #9
    L1011
    Moderators, Business & Finance Moderators, Motoring & Transport Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 67,523 Mod ✭✭✭✭L1011


    If you really want a pictorial record, I've spent many hours on the OSI map viewer looking over the "2000" and "2005" aerial photos, and they've recently added black and white "1995" photography also. I'm guessing the years given are when the survey ended as some photography is clearly older.

    For instance on the 1995 photography you can see works on one of the junctions of the Balbriggan Bypass have begun (but the rest of the site hasn't even been cleared - there is a house sitting right at where the northern end of the mainline was!).

    On the 2000 one you can see the scratchings of the path (cleared land, fences) of the Drogheda section of the M1 towards and the advanced site works at the northern side of the Boyne bridge

    On the 2005 one you can see the Dundalk Western Bypass under construction


  • #10
    serfboard
    Registered Users Posts: 4,668 ✭✭✭serfboard


    BluntGuy wrote: »
    Indeed I am. I've been thinking about a road website for quite a while now, and would be fantastic to have all of this stuff securely archived. I already have a domain in mind and I'm steadily learning about the tools I'd need to construct such a website. <snip>

    For now, I am actually going through each thread and saving the entire contents to my own hard drive, as a make-shift archive, before we eventually have something more permanent. Any missing links, I'll document and see if I can retrieve copies of the photos from the original takers.

    Great work.
    BluntGuy wrote: »
    I'd like to have the 4 MIUs done and dusted before I made such a website live.
    Agree.


  • #11
    Wild Bill
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 3,129 ✭✭✭Wild Bill


    After they started on the N18 Ennis to Gort section late last year the following sections were under construction:

    N3 - from Clonee to Trim
    N6 - Athlone - Ballinasloe
    N6 - Ballinasloe - Galway
    N7 - Limerick Tunnel
    N7 - Limerick - Nenagh
    N7 - Nenagh - Castletown
    N7/N8 - Toll motorways in Laois
    N8 - Cashel - Culahill
    N8 - Mitchlestown - Fermoy
    N9 - Kilcullen - Carlow bypass
    N9 - Carlow bypass - KK
    N9 - KK - Waterford bypass
    N18 - Ennis - Gort
    N25 - Waterford bypass
    N52 - Tullamore bypass

    That's 15 major schemes (assuming I haven't forgotten any).
    The strike-throughs are since complete and by the end of January all but those in bold will be finished. With no plans to start any other scheme we are looking at the decimation of the road-building infrastructure, are we not? :mad:


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  • #12
    Wild Bill
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 3,129 ✭✭✭Wild Bill


    I forgot the Jackie Healy-Rae Road...but that won't keep too many earthmovers employed! :D


  • #13
    Chris_533976
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,082 ✭✭✭Chris_533976


    If the four PPPs get started then yes, we will see more building. If they fail, nothing for 5+ years AT ALL.


  • #14
    L1011
    Moderators, Business & Finance Moderators, Motoring & Transport Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 67,523 Mod ✭✭✭✭L1011


    Chris_533976 wrote: »
    If they fail, nothing for 5+ years AT ALL.

    There will always be a few schemes done to cover TDs in marginal constituencies or those that shout loudest in a small government (see the Castleisland BP...). The NRA also has quite a lot of relatively small schemes planned.

    I wouldn't be overly surprised if we see the next round of N56 upgrades - a 5km S2 realignment, design finished - and possibly a few quid sent downstream to Donegal CC to finish their aborted half-completed realignment of the R262 (land is bought, very low layers of road bed laid, no work done in over a year) before the bye-election for instance.


  • #15
    Tech3
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,010 ✭✭✭Tech3


    MYOB wrote: »
    possibly a few quid sent downstream to Donegal CC to finish their aborted half-completed realignment of the R262 (land is bought, very low layers of road bed laid, no work done in over a year) before the bye-election for instance.

    I didn't know that! I've used this road several times now and wondered what is going on at the side of it. The junction to the N56 south of Glenties seems to be half upgraded as well :confused:


  • #16
    L1011
    Moderators, Business & Finance Moderators, Motoring & Transport Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 67,523 Mod ✭✭✭✭L1011


    tech2 wrote: »
    I didn't know that! I've used this road several times now and wondered what is going on at the side of it. The junction to the N56 south of Glenties seems to be half upgraded as well :confused:

    They've been playing around there for I'd give a guess at three years at the very least. Between the junction and the current works has been minorly realigned and resurfaced, as has the N56 a bit further towards Glenties. But from what I've been told, the money's run out completely now.

    The money having been estimated at 1.27M euros (a nice round million quid Irish, I notice...) in NDP1: http://www.donegalcoco.ie/NR/rdonlyres/CBC30F71-4EE7-49B2-ABC1-7D069811C330/0/CoProfileChap2.pdf


  • #17
    transylman
    Registered Users Posts: 599 ✭✭✭transylman


    You can track the changing infrastructure to some extent through this site.

    http://ims0.osiemaps.ie/website/publicviewer/main.aspx#V1,600000,750000,0

    It has aerial maps for 1995,2000 and 2005. If you want to go way back you can also see maps from the 1800s.


  • #18
    Amtmann
    Closed Accounts Posts: 6,093 ✭✭✭Amtmann


    Road Needs Study (1998) attached.


  • #19
    marmurr1916
    Registered Users Posts: 2,091 ✭✭✭marmurr1916


    Furet wrote: »
    Road Needs Study (1998) attached.


    Interesting that "the five major inter-urban routes linking Dublin to Cork, Galway, Limerick and Waterford as well as the M1 Dublin/Belfast road" were identified as requiring HQDC/Motorway (with a preference for motorways) standard routes as early as 1998.

    Also good to see the rationale behind the construction of completely new roads, rather than the upgrading of the existing mainly single-carriageway network:
    Can existing Roads be Widened to Provide Motorways?
    As a result of the design features of high quality dual carriageways and motorways, the option to build the new route along the line of the existing road network is usually not feasible.The reasons for this are:
    • The new road design standards adopted by the NRA to meet the NDP policy objective could not be accommodated within the existing road reservations.

    It would be necessary to acquire adjoining land and demolish property, including numerous private residences for the full length of the new schemes.

    • Access would no longer be permitted onto the new dual carriageway national route from property and farms located along the existing road. One-off properties with frontage onto the existing national primary road would
    require new access roads to the nearest county or regional road thereby increasing the footprint of the road network.

    • Properties and homes remaining in situ would in many cases be closer to the upgraded road network with consequent implications for quality of life (air, noise, etc.) and safety.

    • By-passes of villages and towns along the existing road would be required resulting in the ‘rosary bead’ alignment.

    • Community impact would be greater for ribbon type development as there will be no access permitted across the new road.

    • The construction phase of on-line projects would involve extensive and complex traffic management in order to seek to maintain live traffic flows
    on the national routes concerned.This would result inevitably in longer construction periods, additional costs and increased journey travel
    times for the public for the duration of the works.

    • The significant disruption to traffic movements on national routes over extensive sections of the network would have serious implications for economic activity and the efficiency of the network, as well as creating
    safety hazards for both road users and road construction personnel.

    • The development of the new routes off-line means that the existing roads can be used for incident and emergency responses, particularly when it becomes necessary to divert traffic off the main line.This is a common procedure used in most countries for the management of major incidents and emergencies.

    All you have to do is look at the Nenagh bypass upgrade (built as on offline road in the first place) to see the truth of this.


  • #20
    L1011
    Moderators, Business & Finance Moderators, Motoring & Transport Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 67,523 Mod ✭✭✭✭L1011


    transylman wrote: »
    You can track the changing infrastructure to some extent through this site.

    http://ims0.osiemaps.ie/website/publicviewer/main.aspx#V1,600000,750000,0

    It has aerial maps for 1995,2000 and 2005. If you want to go way back you can also see maps from the 1800s.

    *cough* see post 9 of this thread ;)
    marmurr1916 wrote: »
    Interesting that "the five major inter-urban routes linking Dublin to Cork, Galway, Limerick and Waterford as well as the M1 Dublin/Belfast road" were identified as requiring HQDC/Motorway (with a preference for motorways) standard routes as early as 1998.

    Sure the MIUs were meant to be *finished* in 2004 under original plans!


  • #21
    JayeL
    Registered Users Posts: 385 ✭✭JayeL


    Any chance ye could stick in the extremely handy but rather short M2 in Co. Meath.

    One of the few places learners could do 120km/h when it opened, a very efficient trumpet interchange at exit 3 and toll-free, thank the Lord.

    Maybe some day, decades from now, it will be the start of a motorway to Derry. But for now it's about the only thing Ashbourne has going for it (bar Johnny Logan, obv).


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  • #22
    stoneill
    Registered Users Posts: 3,610 ✭✭✭stoneill


    Just wondering about the non-boards.ie roads website project?
    I'd be interested in seeing that developed. (as a passive supporter as my IT skills are almost non existent)


  • #23
    Amtmann
    Closed Accounts Posts: 6,093 ✭✭✭Amtmann


    I have no plans to launch such a website any more. Not until I fall on better times anyway :(


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