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The NRA must be stopped
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Thanks Sponge Bob, I'll put them into a slide in the next few days (do you need UK SSC in as well?) and if you give me your email (if that is allowed) I'll send it you. For the moment this is what I already had:
Sorry regarding the WS2 I think we were at cross purposes indeed it is cut from the NRA schedule but still available in the UK. I'm in contact with the Safe Roads Design team in the UK and will try to find out more about their experiences of WS2 and any pilots or barriered variants. I'm sure this has already been done but if I can bring anything new I will.
Regarding the ongoing rant about 2+2's not being magicked into motorway the reality is I was emailed by the communications director of the NRA that they had been. He is well informed, believes passionately in his work and is now thanks to a certain Monday Drive Time episode is completely pissed off with me. Although I did not do the radio slot I did brief the man who did although what annoyed Sean was not in my brief. I can understand why he is annoyed and I can hardly approach him back to clarify said above information at the moment but one thing I would say he knows his stuff and if he says 2+2 metamorphosed into motorway then thats good enough for me. I hope I used correct terminology regarding the ROADS ACT 2007 (DECLARATION OF MOTORWAYS). I would hate to offend MYOB's sensibilities on the matter. Regarding UK D2AP and NRA type 2 the majority of the difference is in the verge and central reserve. You might drive on those bits I don't there coloured green for a reason you don't drive on the.
Regarding Antoobrien's comment the joke is on all of us because we use this data to make decisions costing us our tax contributions. We cannot go half arsed at prioritising roads and specifying their size any more all the low lying fruit of the MIU routes are gone. We need more traffic counters and lots of them to know where to go next and to what extent. New counters are popping up on that list all the time I compiled the excel that showed falling traffic in July 2010. Speak to the CSO in Cork their data comes out soon but again methodologicly it has problems we need better data before we invest billions.
What is your vision on future investment? I get a lot of negative **** for hours of work trying to save the country billions and get a better network. If this is what the NRA has to put up with, **** that for a game of soldiers.0 -
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By and large, posters here are under no illusions about the need to scale back the road-building plans of the NRA. I think certain schemes need to be re-prioritised or dropped. I outlined my own suggestions here, as did several other posters. You'll also find some money-saving suggestions here and here. Have a really decent read through the forum and you'll see a lot of arguments about rationalising routes, detrunking secondary roads, and scaling back certain projects. Use this thread to help you find your way around
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Here's a novel concept - without a proper transport system and road network (and relative to other developed countries, ours are still some way behind), you do not create good conditions for business, and as such the tax take is reduced below what it could be, meaning LESS MONEY FOR SCHOOLS AND HOSPITALS.
Think about it....
You're right, it IS novel!!!! Because A) for the size and population of our country, we are NOT behind other developed countries, in fact we have more road per head of population than most, and
if the whole country was just one massive, flat, piece of tar, it takes a whole lot more than that to attract FDI's. 0 -
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You're right, it IS novel!!!! Because A) for the size and population of our country, we are NOT behind other developed countries, in fact we have more road per head of population than most,
Measuring road distance by head of population is meaningless, beancounting rubbish. Qualitatively our national road network is very poor. E.g. Travelling between Cork, Limerick & Galway (the 2nd, 3rd & 4th cities in the country) takes an inordinate amount of time because of the poor road s (structureal design & route). A friend of mine worked in Cork until Christmas, traveling to Galway reasonably frequently. It never took less than 4 hours (and since he was going west of town, he was lucky with that, cross town traffic is a mess until well after 7 in galway). A quick look at google maps using the route he takes says that this is about 200 km and should take about 2h 45m.
Or to put it another way, it easier to get to Belfast (371 km via m50, taking 3h 46m - i believe this time figure because it's almost all multi lane road) from his family home in Galway that it is to get to Cork.and if the whole country was just one massive, flat, piece of tar, it takes a whole lot more than that to attract FDI's.
You're in the roads sub forum of the infrastructure forum, go read the threads about broadband, rail, water metering etc to get a flavor of what we discuss here - nobody is advocating anything as silly as that, so if you'd like to be taken seriously don't spout rubbish like this.
But, just to address that point - roads is a reason why factories & business are not locating to the west of Ireland (and are leaving it), so that's one reason why I'm firmly for the right roads being built.
You've said:
We've enough hospitals around the country - what we don't have it the transport network to allow us to put services where they are needed and can be medically effective.I'd rather see my money being spent on hospitals and schools thank you!
I'll give two examples on this - the cancer care situation in Sligo & the North West where patients have to travel to Galway & the hospitals in Athlone - Ballinasloe & Roscommon.
Galway & Sligo - we don't have the rail or roads system to make this care situation practical. This alone, regardless of the other considerations that come into play, make this reorganisation a silly idea because it's making it harder for patients to get the treatment they need.
We have hospitals in Roscommon, Ballinasloe & Athlone (41, 28 & 20km away from each other, hardly 20 minutes by car) - but we can't reorganise this system to be effective because the areas they are covering have even worse transport links. So regardless of personal beliefs of the medical or economic necessity for reorganisation of hospitals to provide Better patient services (and I'm not trying to start this debate) we can't do it for practical reasons - it's hard to get the patients to these services.
Building any new hospitals won't help improve this part of our health system (and what will is not an argument for here) - I won't speak for the national situation, but i suspect we can find similar situations across the country. Indeed, tallaght hospital is an amalgamation of a the Adelaide & Meath hospitals in Dublin. This new hospital from planning to opening took 17 years (from a wikipedia article, so i'm not sure about it's trustworthiness), so don't expect new hospitals to spring up overnight either.
Schools are needed, both improvement/rebuilding and entirely new facilities. Building them will give a short term economic boost and provide employment (or prevent unemployment). However, they do not provide long term prospects, which, sadly our country needs.
Personally I think we should cut spending on public wages to pay for the capital infrastructure we require (roads, rail, broadband, water, electricity etc) - because short term spending that we have to borrow to provide for isn't going to get us out of this mess.0 -
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That was Type 3, now RIP save for a potential refit of a WS2.miles deas wrote: »Thanks for that reading now. Still haven't found a mid sized road option.
If you knock up the S Road slide just post it in here for reference. I thought the D2 slide was a damn fine representation even if we are quibbling about 'standards' just a bit. Slapping every UK and Irish S2 and D2 variant into 2 graphics is most helpful especially when Frank McD and the misc NIMBYs start their asinine ululatiing about millions of acres disappearing on us...which is not the case at all.
This forum is not in the least fractious...save where an implication is made that the regular posters have not thought about something AT ALL. That is not the case as Tremelo pointed out. Furthermore quite a lot of regular posters have represented their views directly to the NRA at various times in the past.
I would ask the mods to maybe slice the end of this thread out into a "Post IMF Road Design Standards" thread where it belongs, starting with the graphics of the design standards themselves.
Then we can have a nice natter about what it all means in reality <cough> Going Forward </cough>
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and if the whole country was just one massive, flat, piece of tar, it takes a whole lot more than that to attract FDI's.How dare you dismiss my point as rubbish just because you disagree. Thats the height of ignorance.
I just don't agree with you - you seem to be saying that we're intent on tarring the entire surface of the country. That is spouting rubbish, and to call somebody up on writing drivel like this, especially when they are not making reasoned arguments is far from ignorance. In fact where I come from thats regarded as fishing for insults.
So what I'm not allowed disagree with the OP and thread title (as many people on here have)? As I said before (in this thread), I think we need these roads and now is the perfect time to get them built - while costs should be lower, not waiting several years until cost rise and traffic builds past unbearable levels again.Excuse me, but the title of the thread is "The NRA must be stopped". I happen to agree.
What is it we have in his country against providing spare capacity anyways? It's not as if it's actually wasteful - what is wasteful is building a system (not just roads) that has just enough spare capacity to seem prudent but when when things actually kick off end up being not enough (M50 is a case in point with this).0 -
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Regarding tremelo's point that N11 Oilgate to Rosslare project could be shelved completely. It makes the point that not cutting our cloth will affect areas differently and unfairly. Coca Cola, Celtic Linen and Danone are based there and unemployment is high. A more modest on-line mid sized road could fit. If Oilgate to Rosslare don't get shelved but get a 2+2 with finite resources the problem pushes on to some other forgotten back water that gets nothing. I'm not against roads but I am for reason. Industry makes jobs that offers people security obviously this is vital. But to keep on specifying roads from parameters derived in the economic boom will leave everybody shafted. Those who get a big new road through or near their home will be left scratching there heads as to why and then the real poor sods somewhere out in the sticks that get nothing at all while their children can watch Daddy quietly self destruct as he has no job. Parameters need to change from the boom the idea of continuing on the same projects without any cognisance to the economic collapse is somewhat perverse and surely cannot help society as a whole.
Regarding the guy who quoted, my published facts again, that we have 2.5 more km's of motorway per head than in Britain. Your missing the point entirely. That presentation highlighted that motorways have grown by 430% from 2001-2009. Who do you think is going to pay for this? the PPP fairy? We pay for it. Astronomical growth in such a short time comes at a price and when the economy goes belly up it much harder to pay for.
Regarding the thorn in my side, Mr MYOB. The point about the recent work that is ongoing with Prof. Edgar Morgenroth. We looked at the UK costs of Dual carriageway and WS2. We then used O'Cinneide's accident rates for the 2. After that you can show that with finite resources for a road network in dire need of upgrade more road is built and more lives saved using WS2 than DC before funds are exhausted. A little of the best is not necessarily as good as a lot more of something that is 2nd best or even 3rd. The tipping point where in fact DC offers more lives saved is a long way off so even if NRA costs are different it is unlikely they will change the overall conclusion. We used WS2 not because we wanted to push for that but because it was a useful surrogate for hopefully a better mid-sized road option.
MYOB you maintain 2+2 has not been "made up" to motorway (notice my use of official terminology to please you) I have shown my source and the email quote from the NRA. So far pal you've shown nothing. Would you kindly provide evidence yourself to corroborate your contention, I have, an NRA quote you beat it or I win.
Regarding the road types between UK and NRA once again you added up the grassy bits to win the point the difference in cross section is minimal the max. AADT for the UK design is 143% greater than the NRA's design. Hence I think we jump to early to motorway and for every other road type the same story. I see no value for money in the LOS of D stipulations. Those where aspirational targets that need revision with new world economics. Besides the EU are debating cutting motorway speeds as optimum car emissions occur at a lot lower than 100 kmph and this will have an effect that should also be factored in especially as even this years EPA CO2 forecasts accounting for economic downturn have us paying the EU piper for carbon credits come 2020. That forecast is the additional measures scenario that includes Smarter Travel policy being met and no increase in car traffic from 2009 to 2020. I would rather invest now in our own infrastructure and policy and meet the targets than come 2020 pay money to the EU to give to another nation and still find ourselves at a deficit on carbon emission measures to meet the 2030 target. Missing those targets and giving away money to end up with even further to go to meet the next set of targets is not a good value for money option.
Regarding the safety. Which bit was I wrong on was it the safety BCR of motorway showing greater cost than benefit from the handbook of road safety measures edited by Rune Elvik? You know that books editor is world renowned and a thoroughly nice guy to speak to, I might add. I sent him some figures on a road local to me and he was unimpressed with the idea it needed the road design likely to be specified. But anyway Fred Wegman thought the book as "indispensable" an lots more nice comments when he reviewed it. You know Fred he was the one we asked to report on the safety of our roads in 2002 an official government report. Or was it the fact that EuroRAP considers 50% of our non-motorway roads are at the lowest 1 star rating when NI has only 5% and GB 2% 1 star roads. Or was it the official figures on rate of return on low cost safety improvements offering and annual rate of return of on average 502%. What are you talking about? I offered a good value for money alternative to get more funding. What is your beef on a change in emphasis to favour more investment on an existing policy measure that has shown good economic returns when a clear infrastructural deficit has been demonstrated. Even Fred Barry recognised that in the Dail Transport Committee on the 12th of Jan.:
Someone mentoined Grada and RSA investment offers highest rate of returns on safety. I agree Ireland won a PIN award last year with not a mention of motorways all praise for the above and lots of evidence education and enforcement offer best rate of returns on safety. But that is not to say that driver behaviour the major problem cannot be mitigated against in certain circumstances by road improvement it too has a roll as stated above. I think something good might be going on in the NRA that is moving forward but bugger me its only a vague notion if there is some thread about post IMF standards I cannot find it. If they already have it in the pipeline I'm rattling the NRA's cage for no good reason and wasting a lot of time to boot. So someone take pity and fill me in.
Regarding prices of different road types can anyone point me to facts on that? It would be really useful. I know all that guff about depends on conditions but for a broad presentation on the mater of decisions for developing a mid-sized road it would be useful. I would like to start with reasonable assumptions on cost of SSC WS2 Type 1,2 & 3 and the motorways.
Regarding value for money on buying land now a building later what about the ongoing maintenance cost of road. What about the fact the politicians will get crucified by the public buying land and leaving it fallow when any service that is cut or tax that is risen will be juxtapositioned with it. Or the ongoing ghost road situation gets worse. Not just by the environmental lobby but by any guy with a gripe. What is worse, say when you came to build but appraisal in the future says the best route option would actually be something else. Your then left with a choice stick to the original land and route option giving poor value to the state or sell back the land. The public uproar would be huge. Some of you guys do this for a living, I guess, what do you think?
Sponge regarding the economic seppuku and wackamole comment. No one has all the answers not you or me but a bit of information sharing and dialogue and maybe some new ideas can be nothing but useful. I'm putting that slide together did you see the SSC slide I posted last, I'll add to that.
I'm looking for a little help to put together as robust a case as I can to the NRA particularly re a mid-sized road option. I don't know for sure what they are already doing so I won't risk not pushing this forward but I'll do it in a formative way. Some help with relative costs of road types will be really useful it will save me having to change the figures on the fly when I meet them.0 -
Quite right too, since Belfast and not Cork is the second biggest city in the country. Marvellous how these threads bring out Mé Feiners anxious to elevate the status of the places where they happen to live. The problems with hospitals in he North West are also largely down to this narrowminded thinking.
Many people from the Republic are very a la carte about Irishness, as regards to NI.
Note the whinging on another thread about not getting salt out of the Carrickfergus mines. All of a sudden, Antrim is part of the nation. We must have that salt!:mad:
Then when it comes to boosting the importance of connecting Cork & Galway, its the 2nd & 4th cities (as opposed to the 3rd & 6th). The scope of the nation is defined again.
The border appears and disappears a la carte, depending on the argument.antoobrien wrote: »...but it's not right or acceptable that we can leave this country and drive to a main regional center in another country quicker than we can drive between 2 of the main regional centers in this one
Nonsense argument. Should it be quicker to drive from Sligo (main regional center) to Cork (main regional center) , than from Sligo to Derry (main regional center "in another country")?
Actual physical distance between cities must be of some importance, regardless of their size0 -
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Many people from the Republic are very a la carte about Irishness, as regards to NI.
Note the whinging on another thread about not getting salt out of the Carrickfergus mines. All of a sudden, Antrim is part of the nation. We must have that salt!:mad:
Then when it comes to boosting the importance of connecting Cork & Galway, its the 2nd & 4th cities (as opposed to the 3rd & 6th). The scope of the nation is defined again.
The border appears and disappears a la carte, depending on the argument.
Nordydan since the republic doesn't "own" the 6 counties, we can't spend money there - hence my rankings. It may look a la carte, but it is the political reality, wether or not we like it. If & when that changes, and derry and belfast's economic activities start filling an all-island coffer I'll change my rankings. What other people do/say is neither mine to change, not any of my concern.Nonsense argument. Should it be quicker to drive from Sligo (main regional center) to Cork (main regional center) , than from Sligo to Derry (main regional center "in another country")?
Actual physical distance between cities must be of some importance,
regardless of their size
If you're going to dismiss something at least take a right look at what you're dismissing. Here's a more detailed quote from the original post I made, which ardmacha partially quoted:antoobrien wrote: »A friend of mine worked in Cork until Christmas, traveling to Galway reasonably frequently. It never took less than 4 hours (and since he was going west of town, he was lucky with that, cross town traffic is a mess until well after 7 in galway). A quick look at google maps using the route he takes says that this is about 200 km and should take about 2h 45m.
Or to put it another way, it easier to get to Belfast (371 km via m50, taking 3h 46m - i believe this time figure because it's almost all multi lane road) from his family home in Galway that it is to get to Cork.
As you can Galway to Cork is a little more than HALF the distance of Galway to Belfast. As other posters have stated, this is not a particularly good thing economically. And if we ever do become an all-island economic entity transport links such as the atlantic corridor (Letterkenny to Cork to Rosslare, to that we could then add in Derry) will be even more vital0 -
Miles, can you add a land take per KM figure to your road type slides, eg Type 1 SC is c.18m excluding berms but adding verges so add a standard nominal berm total to all carriageway and verge widths for a total which when x 1000 = sq metre per km and divide by hectares gives a total Ha per km.
Yes I know that will be an offline figure and that online is different. Pick an assumptive number for the berms and tell us what it is for the record. I would think 4m maybe.
The green loonies seem to think that the land take for any road type is in the 1000s of acres per km which is utter hysteria but sadly also a reoccuring meme with that shower of sociopathic loolaas.
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Tremelo, I didn't make the claim on the 800km's. It was not in my briefing. I have spoken to Sean in the NRA on the matter though, on the phone if not face to face. I took it like a man so please don't infarct me. I'm not Planbetter. I give information to James Nix of Planbetter. I had tried till I was blue in the face to give it direct to the NRA, no joy. James takes the information.
Regarding Mr MYOB and the exalting (notice for your sake I use the latest official term) I think I may after looking at the first motorway on the list dubhthach kindly posted have written proof see if you follow the logic. In 2008 the M3/N3 scheme is either motorway or Type 2 dual carriageway, see below:
see, link.
we know that the exalted to motorway bit must therefore be Type 2 at this moment because you cannot exalt to motorway what is already motorway. The exaltation occurs in 2009, see below:
see, link.
See the exalted bit on the map its on the scheme, see below:
So If the first on on the list is Type 2 that is sufficient to prove the case. Lets get back to serious consideration of mid-sized road options. Sponge Bob I promise to get that slide to you but only when Mr MYOB agrees to stop bugging me on the type 2 to motorway conundrum. Notice how I always try to show the proof of what I say on the forum when I brief I do my best to be accurate when I'm in error or there is doubt as Mr Antoobrien showed I accept it although I think Mr Antoobrien has shown really they are all guessing on the figures.0 -
The Type 2 section is the section North of Kells Miles ??? The section you showed in your map is Type 1 ....and I will bet my many many pores on it
Oh look , another MAP . I will further bet that none of the bits marked in RED on that Map are designated as Motorway even though I never druv that M3/N3 .0 -
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You can see the word Clonee in the bottom right of my map and the M3 sections just on from it. If I'm wrong I'll admit it but I don't think I am, see below:
Never bet your pores you may need them. I certainly don't want them. I don't think I'm wrong on location what other quibble next? It took me 10 minutes with this response open and I can feel the sharks circling.0 -
He has a clue Seán, the problem is a misunderstanding of what a Type 2 is.
The NRA published this handy brochure with colour pics which is dead clear. Around here we use Type 2 and 2+2 INTERCHANGEABLY = Same Thing. From that doc it is clear that 2+2 is a Midband road architecture in preference to Type3 2+1 , neither high end nor low end.There is a large gap, in terms of capacity, cost and safety, between the standard single carriageway and a dual
carriageway with at grade junctions. This has led the NRA to develop other new divided road categories, which
provide a capacity range between that of a single carriageway and a dual carriageway, i.e. between 11,600 and
26,500 AADT.
Transport 21 sets out the development of some 1200km of the National Primary road network to
dual-carriageway/motorway standard, which some 1600 km of the National primary road network in Ireland will
remain as single-carriageway roads due to relatively low traffic volumes. Given the need to provide for vehicles to
safely overtake slower moving traffic on two-way roads in a safe and controlled environment the Authority looked
to other countries to see if different divided road types could be introduced in Ireland
Very little Type 2 has been built, notably only north of Kells and Dromod. None of it has been designated Motorway and speeds of over 100kph are not to be permitted on it owing to inherent design constraints.
It is designed to ensure reasonably constant 90-100kph speeds unlike the broadly similar WS2 where some blind doddering ignoramus in a Micra can hold the traffic back at 40kph thereby increasing driver frustration and causing accidents...because we have no explicit "move over" laws
WS2 is really a sop to a once powerful Irish farming lobby, a historic design artefact in effect. Complete waste of space to my mind given driving standards here 0 -
miles deas wrote: »You can see the word Clonee in the bottom right of my map and the M3 sections just on from it. If I'm wrong I'll admit it but I don't think I am, see below:
<--snip-->
Never bet your pores you may need them. I certainly don't want them. I don't think I'm wrong on location what other quibble next? It took me 10 minutes with this response open and I can feel the sharks circling.
Littlespace to Loughsalla was built in the early 90's. Please have a look at the 1995 aerial pictures on the Ordance Survey of Ireland website:
http://maps.osi.ie/publicviewer/#V1,703964,741490,5,5
Here's a screenshot of the 1995 Ordance survey aerial overlay.
2+2 (Type 2) didn't even exist as a design spec in Ireland in the early 90's. This road was built as wide-median dual carriageway. The motorway order you are referencing is the changing of it's status from N3 to M3.
As for sharks we are in general nice people here. However you can understand how people can be annoyed when repeated items of evidence are produce and you still keep making mistaken comments over where the 2+2 (Type 2) section of the scheme is.0 -
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Anyway this planbetter is anything but, it is a front for bog standard loony greens with a respectable name ...that's all. We do need a debate on extent of the tiger era 2+2 program, notably the N24 N25 N21 N22 N5 N15 N2 N3 N4 and N17 schemes. No Motorway is proposed save on key Intercity corridors like Galway - Cork, North of Enniscorthy and south of Ashford and less justifiably south of Enniscorthy where the argument is weak and where 2+2 Offline would appear to suffice.
However that debate should trend towards proper planning and road safety and not towards the economically illiterate idiot nimbyism we hear from the usual suspects 0 -
Sponge I'm not advocating WS2 as I said the study used it as a surrogate for some other mid AADT alternative. Look I just want you clever road chaps to put your thinking caps on for an alternative. Harness the enthusiasm and actually come up with a new road layout. They'll never listern to me anyway so humour me or I'll stop responding and you'll only have 1 comment seppuku loving surrender monkeys (Sponges descriptor I think) to kick about. I have a meeting mid March you wanted a meeting well I've got one. regarding quotes like Sponges last I got one too:
Its from the NRA in 2006. They adapted to new economics in 2007. Now its time to adapt again. The gap between SSC and Dual Carriageway needs to be filled again. We need a low cost alternative. If you humour me and design a low cost mid-sized road I'll let one of you give me a Chinese burn now you know that's why you populate this thread. Can someone just contact the NRA and get written clarification and post the email please.
dubhthach, that movie was really interesting remind me never to come over to yours for beers and a video. Lord knows what it all meant. its like having a trip on speed.
Tremelo can you point me to that Dail costings quote?0 -
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