N3 - Belturbet Bypass

withless wrote: »

Annagh lake has been diverted around for at least a week. Hope they finish that part soon and the regular road opens again. Going to Cavan/Dublin is a nightmare at the moment.

its only till tomorrow aparantly

Notice is hereby given that Cavan County Council has made an order to close to public traffic the roads described hereunder from 0800 hours on Tuesday, 20 March to 1700 hours on Friday, 30 March 2012 inclusive for construction works for the N3 Butlersbridge to Belturbet Road Improvement Scheme.

Road Closed: N3 Butlersbridge to Belturbet Road from its junction with the N54 Clones Road at Butlersbridge to the junction with the R197 at Sugarloaf, Belturbet.

Alternative Route: Access from Cavan will be via the N54 Butlersbridge to Clones road to Gannon’s Cross and the R197 Drumalee road to the N3 at Sugarloaf, Belturbet and vice versa.

All enquiries regarding the above road closures should be directed to Cavan Area Roads Office, on 049 437 8700

http://www.cavancoco.ie/cavanweb/publish/domain/cavancoco/Default.aspx?StructureID_str=255&guid=676

Staying on the original topic of all things N3 outside of the motorway (which was the original thread title before someone came along and renamed it), it seems that the 46km stretch from the Kells Bypass to the Fermanagh border is now reactivated and is again in planning.

http://www.nra.ie/RoadSchemeActivity/CavanCountyCouncil/N3NorthofKellstoCavan/SchemeName,16536,en.html

The Virginia by-pass is needed, but to investigate that they probably needed to reactivate the entire existing project to be able to work on planning of the Virginia section.

Actually if its considered a fact that the N4 north of Mullingar needs upgrading then on that basis the N3 north of Virginia actually is more in need and should have priority seeing as traffic levels there are 20% higher than on the N4 and are even higher than some sections of the M6 or M8 or M9!

Chris_5339762 wrote: »

I highly doubt a 46km, presumably 2+2 scheme will be going ahead anytime soon!

have to agree theres places more in need of work, but unlike the Longford or Monaghan planned bypasses of the bypasses and associated works which are offline and of questionable merit in the first place, the majority of the 46km study area would be an online upgrade from very good wide offline single carraigeway with hard shoulders and limited enough local access to a 2+2 with even more limited local access. The problem with the current road is similar to many others in Ireland that it just takes one muppet doing 30mph on a busy day with lots of oncoming traffic and the benefits of such a monster of a road are out the window.
And again, to put it in perspective this road north of Virginia is busier than sections of the M6 M8 and M9 so traffic can build up behind slow cars.

Heres a section that shows a long straight that has no entries and at the end a few local accesses that could be merged into one if the old parallel road was reinstated just as an example of what most of the road is already like.
https://maps.google.de/maps?q=N3,+County+Cavan,+Ireland&hl=en&ll=53.888035,-7.151349&spn=0.001203,0.003076&geocode=FYo4NwMd7reR_w&hnear=N3,+County+Cavan,+Ireland&t=h&z=19&layer=c&cbll=53.888035,-7.151349&panoid=uQs4f9Fe1pX5aBEXuyA-iQ&cbp=12,318.32,,0,22.8

The only real major work needed offline is the actual Virginia By-Pass and the couple of km either side of the town that hasnt been touched in the past decades but unfortunately thats all wrapped up in the super major upgrade project so it means that Virginia must be done as part of the bigger project, or is split from the bigger project - but either way the bigger project has to be reactivated or modified to allow just Virginia to proceed.