M9 - Waterford motorway construction updates

flop · 09-09-2010 8:35pm

Drove from Damastown to Dungarvan Co Waterford this evening. Left work at 16:08, in the door at 18:10.Keeping to the speed limit all the way.

The final section is a nice smooth ride. Surface is pristine, and little surface water collected after the showers.

Tool me 16 mins to drive from the end of the old carlow bypass to the exit at Danesfort, this journey used to take me 35 previously.

Can't believe i'll never have to drive through Thomastown/Dugarvan/Gowran again. (Although i will miss the chipper in Gowran)

Though the scenary on the final section was non-descript though. ;-)

It's been a good thread for the past year that i've been reading it. Thanks for Sully et al for their updates and Photos.

Safe driving to you all
Flop

murpho999 · 09-09-2010 9:38pm

flop wrote: »

Drove from Damastown to Dungarvan Co Waterford this evening. Left work at 16:08, in the door at 16:10.Keeping to the speed limit all the way.......

Wow, Dublin to Waterford in 2 minutes, I didn't think the new M9 would be that good!

patrickc · 09-09-2010 9:44pm

I drove from Newpark in KK to Carlow town in 23 mins today, sticking at the speed limit, there was no traffic coming into Carlow or getting onto the KK link road.

two things I was surprised at, it's broken white lines the whole link road and there are some curves that would not be safe to overtake on.

also the slip road onto the M9 north bound seems to have a very sharp gradient/incline to the side on it, *cannot think of the name of that for the life of me*

over all though I'm well impressed with it, and it should shave 10/15 mins of my commute each way, (now to way up petrol costs M9 vs the old road !!)

murpho999 · 09-09-2010 9:47pm

patrickc wrote: »

I drove from Newpark in KK to Carlow town in 23 mins today, sticking at the speed limit, there was no traffic coming into Carlow or getting onto the KK link road.

two things I was surprised at, it's broken white lines the whole link road and there are some curves that would not be safe to overtake on.

also the slip road onto the M9 north bound seems to have a very sharp gradient/incline to the side on it, *cannot think of the name of that for the life of me*

over all though I'm well impressed with it, and it should shave 10/15 mins of my commute each way, (now to way up petrol costs M9 vs the old road !!)

If it will save you 10/15 minutes every day how could there be any question of what will save more petrol?

Either way, I would always drive on the motorway as they are so much safer than normal roads, that's the most important thing.

Bards · 09-09-2010 9:47pm

patrickc wrote: »

also the slip road onto the M9 north bound seems to have a very sharp gradient/incline to the side on it, *cannot think of the name of that for the life of me*

adverse camber perhaps?

patrickc · 09-09-2010 9:50pm

murpho999 wrote: »

If it will save you 10/15 minutes every day how could there be any question of what will save more petrol?

Either way, I would always firve on the motorway as they are so much safer than normal roads, that's the most important thing.

well your right with the safer option, I dunno I usually only got to travel at 80kph on old road, vs 120kph on new one, probably much of a muchness

Bards wrote: »

adverse camber perhaps?

Thanks Bards since electric picnic last week my head is fried!!

Mean't to say the Gardai were out doing a speedcheck that time also, they didn't leave it long.

bemak · 09-09-2010 10:42pm

anyone timed a full length trip yet from waterford to red cow etc

redalicat · 09-09-2010 10:50pm

Woo hoo! Going to use the M9 on Sunday, starting from Kilcullen all the way down to the bottom. So very glad.

Thanx to all on the thread, it's been most helpful and entertaining.

Freddie59 · 09-09-2010 10:56pm

Our daughter's boyfriend left Newland's Cross at 5:30pm today. Could only manage 100k as far as M9 slip at Kilcullen due to rush hour. Arrived Waterford 1hh 25m later. Sweet!:D

flop · 09-09-2010 11:54pm

murpho999 wrote: »

Wow, Dublin to Waterford in 2 minutes, I didn't think the new M9 would be that good!

he he it was 2 hours 2 minutes

flop

Ren2k7 · 10-09-2010 1:58am

Time to get a comment in before the thread is locked. Great to see the entire M9 finally motorway finished. According to RTE it cost something like €1.2 billion. That's an insane amount of money but I have no doubt it'll be well worth the investment in many years to come.

It's going to be weird not having much to talk about once the M7 is finished in a few weeks, apart from M17/M18 and M11. I doubt we'll see a year of motorway openings like 2010 ever again.

Anyway, time to start enjoying them. Can't wait to check out Waterford down the line.

Munurty · 10-09-2010 2:15am

Fantastic new section. Very smooth and quite. Drove home late tonight and the cats eyes light the whole thing up like a runway.
We really have an amazing piece of infrastructure that will probably outlive all of us here on this thread.

One thing I thought looked like a disaster waiting to happen was junction 8 - M9 Northbound to N10.
Very sharp sudden slip with a big drop off onto the single carriageway below. If somebody got it wrong here it could be a big mess. I think a barrier here is a must.

Slightly worried with lack of maintenance on the already opened section. There was a big impact on the metal barrier at Knocktopher southbound, must be there more than 3 months and no sign of a repair.
Also looks like trucks wander off the road and throw stones onto the hard shoulder with no sign of any clean up happening. I wonder will the non PPP sections of Inter-urbans be maintained to as high a standard as the PPP ones.

All in all an historic day for the South East

Ren2k7 · 10-09-2010 3:13am

Saw this pop up in my news feed. Some good news: No new tolls on M9, and some bad news: no service stations. Here's the piece:

THE GOVERNMENT says it has “no plans” to toll the new M9 Dublin to Waterford motorway which opened to traffic yesterday.

Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey confirmed that the M9 would be the only inter-urban motorway in the State entirely free to use by motorists. He said a plan to impose tolls had been judged not “commercially viable”.

A spokesman for the National Roads Authority said that “private investors had put up the money” for some of the other motorways “which they would get back over a 30-year span by tolling”.

However, the projected light volume of traffic on the M9 had failed to attract any private investment and the road was funded “entirely by the taxpayer”.

The Minister yesterday opened the final €467 million 40km section of the motorway which traverses Co Kilkenny and reduces the journey time from the Red Cow roundabout in Dublin to Waterford to about 90 minutes.

Asked why the new motorway had been built without rest areas or service stations, the Minister said “there are facilities off all of these roads” and that he had asked the authority “to look at ways and means of doing that that’s not going to cost the taxpayer anything”

However, the NRA spokesman told The Irish Times there was no plan to build a services area on the M9 because: “unfortunately. . . the money’s not there”. He said the NRA was however “implementing a national signage programme to mitigate the lack of services so that when you are driving on a new motorway you’ll know exactly where to go for petrol, food etc.”

Source: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2010/0910/1224278570188.html

Looking at how much it cost, was entirely tax payer funded and has such low traffic volumes I'm surprised it was built TBH. I guess future motorways will be put through far more scrutiny than this did.

fricatus · 10-09-2010 6:28am

Munurty wrote: »

One thing I thought looked like a disaster waiting to happen was junction 8 - M9 Northbound to N10.
Very sharp sudden slip with a big drop off onto the single carriageway below. If somebody got it wrong here it could be a big mess. I think a barrier here is a must.

I thought the same when looking at the southbound slip (the Dublin-Kilkenny one) at the same junction. It seems to tighten up very suddenly. I was staying straight on the mainline but it looks like it tightens around to the left very suddenly and once again there's no barrier, only signs. :eek:

At least there's no big drop behind, but it looked like a place where someone who wasn't paying full attention could easily lose it.

Anyone who's taken that slip able to comment?

fricatus · 10-09-2010 6:46am

Ren2k7 wrote: »

Looking at how much it cost, was entirely tax payer funded and has such low traffic volumes I'm surprised it was built TBH. I guess future motorways will be put through far more scrutiny than this did.

There's a point of view out there that the M9 will have traffic volumes substantially in excess of the old N9. The reason is that the old N9 was so crappy that people would often take another road in preference to it, but now that the motorway is there, it's clearly the obvious route now and alternative routes are a thing of the past.

Some of those alternatives would have been as follows:
Waterford-Dublin N9-N10-N9 - this route via the KK ring road was the route that HGVs were supposed to take, because the streets in Thomastown were too narrow.
Kilkenny-Dublin N77-N78-M9 (at Kilcullen) - this route made a lot of sense before Carlow was bypassed.
Tullow/Bunclody-Dublin N80-N81
Waterford-Dublin N25-N30-N11 - I'd estimate that between 30% and 50% of all Waterford-Dublin journeys used this route. It was a no-brainer if your destination at the Dublin end was Stillorgan, Sandyford, Shankill, etc.

Only time will tell now what sort of traffic volumes are on the new motorway, but in my own view, the M9 makes at least as much sense as the M6, since it links Dublin to an area of similar size population to Galway, and what's more, there are two major population centres along the M9 (Kilkenny and Carlow) both of which are bigger than the only significant one on the M6 (Athlone).

Bards · 10-09-2010 8:20am

fricatus wrote: »

There's a point of view out there that the M9 will have traffic volumes substantially in excess of the old N9. The reason is that the old N9 was so crappy that people would often take another road in preference to it, but now that the motorway is there, it's clearly the obvious route now and alternative routes are a thing of the past.

Some of those alternatives would have been as follows:
Waterford-Dublin N9-N10-N9 - this route via the KK ring road was the route that HGVs were supposed to take, because the streets in Thomastown were too narrow.
Kilkenny-Dublin N77-N78-M9 (at Kilcullen) - this route made a lot of sense before Carlow was bypassed.
Tullow/Bunclody-Dublin N80-N81
Waterford-Dublin N25-N30-N11 - I'd estimate that between 30% and 50% of all Waterford-Dublin journeys used this route. It was a no-brainer if your destination at the Dublin end was Stillorgan, Sandyford, Shankill, etc.

Only time will tell now what sort of traffic volumes are on the new motorway, but in my own view, the M9 makes at least as much sense as the M6, since it links Dublin to an area of similar size population to Galway, and what's more, there are two major population centres along the M9 (Kilkenny and Carlow) both of which are bigger than the only significant one on the M6 (Athlone).

...........and the M9 is the shortest of all the motorways, yet has one of the graeatest time savings - just goes to show how bad the original N9 was.

Future generations will be thanking this generation for the legacy of the road network - the one good thing to have come out of the Celtic Tiger

pegasus1 · 10-09-2010 9:27am

fricatus wrote: »

I thought the same when looking at the southbound slip (the Dublin-Kilkenny one) at the same junction. It seems to tighten up very suddenly. I was staying straight on the mainline but it looks like it tightens around to the left very suddenly and once again there's no barrier, only signs. :eek:

At least there's no big drop behind, but it looked like a place where someone who wasn't paying full attention could easily lose it.

Anyone who's taken that slip able to comment?

drove it last night..
i believe going on the kilkenny link rd to go to/come from waterford, is just a waste of time and fuel...far better and safer to go to the danesfort junction...
Imo if you took the link rd from the motorway northbound by mistake then legally you would have to go all the way into kk... the link rd is an accident waiting to happen.. should have a central barrier all along the route to prevent a head on scenario, esp. at the end of the bollards

Amtmann · 10-09-2010 10:28am

I'm heading to Dublin from Tipp in twenty minutes. I'll take the M8/M7 to get there, but I'll take the M9/N24 to get home. Just to see the new motorway. I might manage to get some pics.

AngryLips · 10-09-2010 11:28am

Bards wrote: »

Future generations will be thanking this generation for the legacy of the road network - the one good thing to have come out of the Celtic Tiger

Unless those future generations start using it in numbers in excess of projected volume then it would still essentially be a waste of money.

mackerski · 10-09-2010 11:35am

patrickc wrote: »

two things I was surprised at, it's broken white lines the whole link road and there are some curves that would not be safe to overtake on.

So don't overtake at those sections. You may only overtake where both the markings allow it _and_ it is safe to do so.

fricatus · 10-09-2010 1:11pm

AngryLips wrote: »

Unless those future generations start using it in numbers in excess of projected volume then it would still essentially be a waste of money.

Ehhh, no...

There are certain benefits that the motorway will bring:

It will reduce the cost of moving freight between the areas it serves.

It will bring faster journey times, so that a Dublin-based business may be able to start serving Waterford, or offer quicker delivery times, or have their executives do a day's work without needing to be away for the night.

It will help tourism, in that a weekend in the Waterford area is now a much more attractive prospect to anyone based in Dublin, as they don't have a 4-hour treck through Castledermot, Carlow and Thomastown any more.

It will be safer because time and time again, the separation of traffic streams moving in opposite directions has been shown to be a major contributor to road safety. Even if one fatality is averted, the economy will benefit to the tune of about €1 million.

As of now, those benefits are accruing to people and businesses along the route. I'm sure an economist could put a figure on them; anything I say would just be speculation.

However the test of whether spending on this or any piece of infrastructure is worth the money is whether the sum of all these extra efficiencies outstrip the cost of construction within a reasonable timeframe, NOT whether the road meets some magic "projected volume" figure.

pegasus1 · 10-09-2010 1:19pm

mackerski wrote: »

So don't overtake at those sections. You may only overtake where both the markings allow it _and_ it is safe to do so.

yes it seems safe to do so but you will get some plonkers making a last minute overtake just before the bollards over that brow of hill...was there a shortage of white marking paint to make a continuous white line coming over the brow?

AngryLips · 10-09-2010 1:38pm

fricatus wrote: »

Ehhh, no...
It will bring faster journey times...
...It will be safer

I'm not arguing with that. My point is that these two benefits could have been achieved without having to construct a road that is way over capacity.

Bards · 10-09-2010 1:42pm

AngryLips wrote: »

I'm not arguing with that. My point is that these two benefits could have been achieved without having to construct a road that is way over capacity.

all the Motorways are over spece'd not just the M9

ardmacha · 10-09-2010 2:57pm

all the Motorways are over spece'd not just the M9

Not quite, the M1 has a substantial traffic volume.

Munurty · 10-09-2010 3:22pm

Just back from doing the full M9

Suir bridge Waterford 12.06pm
Newlands cross + 1hr15mins
Dublin Airport +15 mins
Back in Kilkenny city for 2.55pm

*Cruise control set to 140km/h for most of the motorway

veryangryman · 10-09-2010 3:51pm

Munurty wrote: »

Just back from doing the full M9

Suir bridge Waterford 12.06pm
Newlands cross + 1hr15mins
Dublin Airport +15 mins
Back in Kilkenny city for 2.55pm

*Cruise control set to 140km/h for most of the motorway

Did you see that old man shaking his first roaring "Slow down ya maniac!"

That was me!

Seriously though, good going.

Mr Clonfadda · 10-09-2010 5:29pm

bemak wrote: »

anyone timed a full length trip yet from waterford to red cow etc

Drove M9 yesterday from Red Cow took 91 mins through to B & Q roundabout on cork Road via the Toll Bridge. there was very heavy traffic from Red cow to M9 turn-off though.

It took 60 minutes to drive from exit 1 (M9/M7 interchange) to Toll booth on new bridge.

Fantastic !!

Amtmann · 10-09-2010 6:27pm

I'm also just back from having driven the full M9. I didn't time myself as I wanted to see the new N10 link road and I was taking my time so that I could get a feel for the road.

I have to say that the new section is a stupendous stretch of motorway, and is surely the finest single scheme to open so far in 2010. It beats the hell out of the M7/M8, M3 and the M7 Nenagh-Limerick section that opened earlier this year in terms of surfacing quality: it is totally seamless. The landscaping could be better though, though it was good to see that the contractors mowed almost all the embankments prior to the opening AND to see that all in all, there aren't too many noxious weeds along it. This will make the stretch the opposite of an eye-sore in the future (the Carlow bypass section is very much an eyesore, however).

I thought the alignment was very impressive, particularly for the 2 or 3 kilometres that pass close to the Nore. The rock cuttings are also very artful, and quite redolent of Cashel-Cullahill on the M8.

I was extremely impressed with the new N10 as well. It looked and felt fantastic when I drove it.

All in all, this last section of the M9 is a wonderful piece of infrastructure that will serve the country well for the next century at least.

STIG83 · 10-09-2010 6:50pm

Cant wait to drive it myself, if you told someone say ten years ago that eventually you would be able to drive from Dublin to Waterford in 90minutes i think they would laugh at ya!! Will not miss been stuck in a traffic jam going through the bottleneck villages, Dublin is only up the road now!!

M9 - Waterford motorway construction updates

Comments