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M1 needs 3rd lane

Praetorian

The M1 undoubedtly needs a 3rd lane in both directions from the Airport at least as far as Lissenhall (Junction 4). The daily traffic jams are amongst the worst in the country and there is no end in sight. The re-opening of the train line shortly will make very little difference to rush hour mayhem. The completion of the junction at the M1 / M50 will also make little difference. The M1 is just simply handling above capacity traffic at peak hours from Swords onwards. Once again, the powers that be knew that the population along the East coast was going to increase dramatically, and we have a road that is insufficient. M50 take two anyone?

Are there any plans to fix the problem?

It would seem that unlike the M50, a good deal of room was left for an additional lane in each direction. A complication maybe the Broadmeadow Estuary Crossing. I suppose the big problem is that no new projects are starting, and where will the money come from?

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JodTT

I completely agree with you. The last 2 weeks in particular have been absolute nightmare. No matter what time of the morning, I leave home at it's taking me an hour and a half to get into the City Centre.

They have started roadworks between Donabate and the Balbriggan exits heading south, and it seems the ground to the left of the hardshoulder is being dug up. I can only assume this is for road-widening?!?!

Posher

JodTT wrote: »

They have started roadworks between Donabate and the Balbriggan exits heading south, and it seems the ground to the left of the hardshoulder is being dug up. I can only assume this is for road-widening?!?!

I don't think so. I understand that it's for a service area which I assume means a fuel service station. But I'm not 100% on that.

JodTT

Oh okay! Thanks. I did wonder why it was necessary to start it there when it's obviously needed a lot more on the City side of Lissenhall.

Cionád

Posher wrote: »

I don't think so. I understand that it's for a service area which I assume means a fuel service station. But I'm not 100% on that.

Yep, it's going to be one of the motorway rest areas.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2009/1008/roads.html

http://www.face.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?threadid=2055439234

http://www.face.boards.ie/vbulletin/attachment.php?attachmentid=68362&d=1229019829

Tech3

Praetorian wrote: »

I suppose the big problem is that no new projects are starting, and where will the money come from?

There is absolutely no money for new roads after the MUI's are completed. The government are proceeding new roads through the PPP mechanism where the road will be paid back over a period of 30 years on average using toll plazas or shadow tolls. The M1 widening is not top priority either so that will set it back even more. Maybe a decade at least.

Next PPP's to go ahead to construction:
M17/M18 Q4 2010
M11/N7 Newlands X Q4 2011
N11/N25 Q2 2011
Galway Bypass n/a
M20 Cork to Limerick n/a

Those dates are very optimistic too maybe give it +2-5 years for most of them.

Praetorian

tech2 wrote: »

There is absolutely no money for new roads after the MUI's are completed. The government are proceeding new roads through the PPP mechanism where the road will be paid back over a period of 30 years on average using toll plazas or shadow tolls. The M1 widening is not top priority either so that will set it back even more. Maybe a decade at least.

Next PPP's to go ahead to construction:
M17/M18 Q4 2010
M11/N7 Newlands X Q4 2011
N11/N25 Q2 2011
Galway Bypass n/a
M20 Cork to Limerick n/a

Those dates are very optimistic too maybe give it +2-5 years for most of them.

Yes that's true, but if you consider we're apparently borrowing 400 million per week just to run the country, then what, 200 million? for a long term investment seems like it would be well worth the price. Not to mention it would probably provide 500 jobs for a year. It's a massive bottleneck on what must be the second busiest motorway in the country after the M50.

Irish and Proud

Praetorian wrote: »

Yes that's true, but if you consider we're apparently borrowing 400 million per week just to run the country, then what, 200 million? for a long term investment seems like it would be well worth the price. Not to mention it would probably provide 500 jobs for a year. It's a massive bottleneck on what must be the second busiest motorway in the country after the M50.

...not to mention the economic costs in delays - bet a good reason for not upgrading the M1 is that...

...it will make life far too easy for those travelling North to do their shopping!

Regards!

Chris_533976

In fairness now the likes of Claregalway and Adare need bypassing far more than anything needs widening.

Absurdum

I'm hopeful that the M1/M50 interchange will improve the flow somewhat when completed. A little bit of courtesy for traffic merging onto the M1 from J3 and J4 would go a long way to keeping things moving too.

BrianD

I don;t think the addition of a third labe would make any difference. You'd just be adding a third line to the traffic jam.

The problem is that traffic is being backed up from the restrictions ahead. Those restrictions are the end of the M1 and the roadworks at the M50 junction. Add in bad lane discipline and bad road signage and it's why the jam is there.

The N7 has the third lane and it can be a car park durng rush hour.

Aard

I think the solution here is not "build more road", but rather "build more rail".

Bluetonic

Aard wrote: »

I think the solution here is not "build more road", but rather "build more rail".

If only a metro to the city center with a large park and ride facility was planned for the area around Lissenhall where the the traffic congestion occurs starts.

amacachi

BrianD wrote: »

Add in bad lane discipline and bad road signage and it's why the jam is there.

Bad lane discipline is the main cause from what I've seen. Particularly in the mornings Southbound it's ridiculous, I once counted 15 cars in the outside lane and 2 in the left lane outside Balbriggan. Surprisingly the traffic jammed about 3km further on. :rolleyes:

T Corolla

Roll on metro north and metro west to take away some of the traffic and make life at bit better. I thought expansion of the Northern line to Balbriggen is required. I have heard in previous threads that there is no room for a third line from Connolly to Balbriggen to seperate out the Dart from the Enterprise and increase commuter services from Dundalk to Dublin. I believe the introduction of an hourly Enterprise sevice in the morning would be a help. Currently the first enterprise leaves Belfast at 6:50 arriving in Dublin at 09:05
This services needs an extra train at 5:40 in the morning arriving in Dublin at 8am taking the pressure of the morning commuter trains and Dart services. I am surprised that IR and NIR did not introduce an early bird service similar to all the services currently operating on the IR network.

antoinolachtnai

Widening a motorway into the city isn't really going to make much difference to congestion. Improving the junctions might help by getting cars off the road faster onto the M50 in particular.

As I understand it, adding extra lanes can actually worsen the situation, because it results in more lane changes. It is the lane changes that cause the delays (because every lane change results in a chain reaction of slowing down in the change-from and sometimes also the change-to lane). There is a literature about this - see http://www.springerlink.com/content/n0476j254041g114/ for example, also a book called 'critical mass' which has a chapter on the subject).

If it were up to me, I would widen the M50 in this area alright, putting a 75mph coach lane in the centre. You could combine this with a park and ride or two and have a pretty effective alternative to driving into the city centre.

amacachi

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

Widening a motorway into the city isn't really going to make much difference to congestion. Improving the junctions might help by getting cars off the road faster onto the M50 in particular.

As I understand it, adding extra lanes can actually worsen the situation, because it results in more lane changes. It is the lane changes that cause the delays (because every lane change results in a chain reaction of slowing down in the change-from and sometimes also the change-to lane). There is a literature about this - see http://www.springerlink.com/content/n0476j254041g114/ for example, also a book called 'critical mass' which has a chapter on the subject).

If it were up to me, I would widen the M50 in this area alright, putting a 75mph coach lane in the centre. You could combine this with a park and ride or two and have a pretty effective alternative to driving into the city centre.

An extra lane could make a difference around the M50 junction though, the amount of traffic looking to get onto it is what usually causes the hold-ups there, one lane for the city would be enough if it was kept clear which an extra lane on the right could do.

antoinolachtnai

It's actually the cars coming onto the road at the junction that cause a lot of the hold-ups. What happens is that people brake to let cars onto the road. When cars behind see the person in front braking, they brake too, opening up a wider gap between themselves and the car in front. The next guy back in the queue then breaks as well, and it carries back through the lane for up to a mile.

Then some genius decides to move to the inside lane, because it seems to be going faster, because it doesn't have all this merging going on. Then this causes a similar kind of chain reaction in the inner lanes. Then people start moving between lanes all over the place, and it gets worse and worse.

But this all carries back to where the cars are coming off the M1 onto the M50.

Obviously, the M50 junction often completely backs up as well. This shouldn't really happen any more when there is a free-flow junction. But the other lane problems will still happen.

sdanseo

What the M1 needs is a third lane all right, but it should be for public transport only between peak hours. It would cripple Iarnród Éireann of course though, so it will never happen.

DART to drogheda every 5 minutes would be ten times better, with free parking and a few multi-storey carparks along the train line but common sense just doesn't bloody well apply in this godforsaken country.

arthie no no

scarey stuff out there with 3 lanes almost 4 close calls heading for sallins clane nass road direction tonight crazy merging inside line stuff mad

Praetorian

sdonn wrote: »

What the M1 needs is a third lane all right, but it should be for public transport only between peak hours. It would cripple Iarnród Éireann of course though, so it will never happen.

DART to drogheda every 5 minutes would be ten times better, with free parking and a few multi-storey carparks along the train line but common sense just doesn't bloody well apply in this godforsaken country.

A joint bus and car pool lane, may not be a bad idea. It seems to work quiet well in the states.

antoinolachtnai

It's actually not cheap to put in a park and ride, particularly near a train line. It's a challenge to lease the land, put in the road network and manage it for less than 5 euros per car per day.

HOV lanes in the US are sometimes used in order to deliberately reduce the number of lanes in general use and thereby reduce lane changing maneuvers.

You couldn't safely use it as a high speed bus/coach lane if you also had cars in it.

Praetorian

Well come to think of it, the carpool lanes in the states didn't have buses in them alright! There aren't many bus services using the M1, so a carpool only lane or just an additional lane would be the way to go.

antoinolachtnai

That's mostly because there are not that many buses on many US highways.

The idea would be to generate extra bus journeys off the back of park-and-ride.

The cost of building an extra lane would be enormous. If you make it a general lane or even a carpool-only lane, all you will do is deliver cars to the congested junctions quicker.

Praetorian

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

That's mostly because there are not that many buses on many US highways.

The idea would be to generate extra bus journeys off the back of park-and-ride.

The cost of building an extra lane would be enormous. If you make it a general lane or even a carpool-only lane, all you will do is deliver cars to the congested junctions quicker.

The major congestion at the M1 / M50 will soon be much improved. I also think with construction of extra lanes, the port tunnel car toll should be reduced to encourage a better balance of cars going through it. The tunnel is practically empty 90% of the time. Drumcondra is a disaster and will never be improved.

The problem on the m1 is the addition of a massive quantity of cars in the morning from the Lissenhall junction. In the evenings, again when you pass Lissenhall the traffic always clears up.

I don't think the costs of an upgrade would be prohibitive. As I said before, there is the space already there for the lanes. Cost per KM compared to the upgrade to the M50 will be cheap.

Why not take advantage of the recession in building, and get the thing done ~40% cheaper than we would have 3 years ago?

HydeRoad

Here we go, somebody rehashing arguments that were had here months ago.

Why does somebody always insist that because the tunnel is not jammed up with cars too, that there must be something wrong with it?

Similarly, because bus lanes are mostly empty, they should be jammed with cars too?

It is an abuse of the privelege of private motoring that causes all this congestion, both people who drive when they have other options open to them, and people who drive when they clearly have not had the right education to do so properly.

Jamming up the few remaining pieces of road infrastructure available to other forms of transport is not the answer.

Getting the NCT to read the odometers of private cars every year and tax people according to the mileage they drive, would be far better than filling the port tunnel with yet another massive traffic jam.

And car pool lanes are no solution at all. Just an excuse for some selfish private motorists to jump the queue, at the expense of everyone else, particularly public transport users.

munchkin_utd

One alternative to spending gazillions of euros on extra lanes + hard shoulder + tossing bridges to facilitate widening (for the sake of maybe only a couple of hours in the morning or evening), is to allow the controled use of the hardshoulder as a regular driving lane during peak times.

On the Munich ring road they do this at rush hour as is shown below. Its damn good as it basically turns into a truck convoy at 100kmh leaving the other 3 lanes to cars!

(note the safety bay after the gantry where you can pull in if you break down)

and of course the lane isnt always open, so you'll get this when you should be getting out of the hardshoulder!

HydeRoad

No, no, no, no, no, we do NOT have the culture of road craft and respect for the law in this country to facilitate this. When the M50 jams up to the point of not moving, and a truck zooms past in the 'hard shoulder,' the world and it's mother will pile in after it, unquestioned. It already happens. On the M1 last Saturday evening, there was an accident, and everything southbound was stopped for miles, and idiots were not only using the hard shoulder, but they were storming up the inside of lines of stopped cars at 120kph plus. This is beyond danger, this is absolute madness. They should be jailed. What if a car door opened, or a car pulled into the hard shoulder, or as happened, a car was stopped in the hard shoulder in complete darkness with no lights or advance warning?

Too many people propose solutions whereby they might be able to bypass all the other stopped traffic, and thereby not have to queue. Don't you see, if you are entitled to 'skip' the queue, then so is everybody else, and you end up with just another line of traffic jam?

The hard shoulder is the only access emergency vehicles have to clear obstructions and access accidents. You want to fill it up with more cars.

antoinolachtnai

i wouldn't say that it's an abuse of privilege by car users. People use cars for very good reasons, in terms of convenience and speed. It's the only practical thing for a lot of people.

Think about the problem like this. Imagine a restaurant where there are no bookings and no table allocations. Everyone who comes in the door will be squashed in and eventually served. Everyone wants to be served as quickly as possible.

It would be chaos. The crowds holding up the aisles of the restaurant would make it impossible to serve food and get people to and from their tables.

This is basically what the roads of our towns and cities are like.

Making the restaurant bigger will help up to a point, but it does not really resolve the issue. Widening the doors of the restaurant (so that people will get in quicker) certainly won't resolve anything.

Taxing people per mileage would be quite like putting a few cents on the litre of petrol. It would not deal with the core demand-side cause of congestion, i.e., everyone wanting to use the same road resources at the same time.

HydeRoad

Ah yes, but at the moment, the differential between the cost of public transport and private motoring is negligable, resulting in far too many people choosing the comfort of their own private car rather than sit on a cramped bus or train.

If somebody lives in Swords, and works in Tallaght, or Blanchardstown, or East Point, or finishes work at 8pm, or does shift work, then their car becomes essential, or at least preferable.

If somebody lives in Swords and works nine to five in O'Connell Street, then they have no business driving to work when the Swords Express is available. They have a right to drive in of course, but they should bloody well pay over the odds for it.

How do you differentiate between someone who has a bus service door to door, and somebody whose hours or workplace is a little off the scheduled bus route? Similarly, for some people their cars are working vehicles, i.e. for deliveries, site visits, meetings, etc. So there is a difference between simple commuters, and people whose cars are part of their workplace.

The reason I suggest the NCT reading odometers, rather than additional fuel tax, is because it can be targetted at the private motorist, and then those who need their cars for working reasons, can argue a rebate with their employers or the revenue or whatever.

I have no problem with people's right to drive. I just think they should pay for it, and pay a tad more than the other person sitting in a bus.

antoinolachtnai

I basically agree with you, but this needs to be done mainly through the application of carrot rather than stick. You have to give people real alternatives to get them out of their cars.

In terms of giving an allowance to goods vehicles, the best way to do it would be by reducing tolls on the ring roads, it would seem.

For people doing many calls, meetings, etc., a well regulated road system would provide enormous advantages - they would be able to get to their meetings and jobs much quicker and this would greatly outweigh any charge that would be applied. Red Ken said anecdotally that this was the case in London, but I have not seen any studies on this.

(It is by-the-way, but SE provides a reasonable service for people living in Swords but working in East Point business park, and people working until 8pm)