M11/N11 - M50 (J4) to Coyne's Cross (J14) [options published]

And yet, despite all that, the 133 has capacity issues. I probably wasn't clear - I wasn't proposing just the 133/ Wexford Bus, showing that buses are the solution in the relatively short term.

Despite the handicaps, the 133 is full, and a private company can make a success of two routes on the N11.

The potential with enforced bus lanes instead of hard shoulder is there now. And yes, it probably requires separate buses from the villages/ park and rides, at least at peak times. It'll still be cheaper and more effective than more roads.

josip wrote: »

How would you go about surveying the users of the N11 at commute times about where they are coming from/going to, and if they would switch to bus public transport, were it available.
How reliable would the results of such a survey be?

Surely any decision will have to estimate the percentage of cars that could be taken off the road by carrotting an additional lane for buses only.

Just walk up to the car and ask them, they'll be stopped anyway. Set up shop around Kilmac, Barrys Bridge....

Mindset has to change from one mode door to door - it should be N11 bus to connecting services (Dublin Bus/ Luas/ Dart). From bus connects, we can see that the public aren't evolved enough for that concept yet, and there's no political will to do it, or create an office with enough power to enforce it.

https://www.wicklow.ie/Portals/0/Documents/Business/Business-Environment/Wicklow-Facts-Figures/Commuter%20Study%20Report.pdf

Here's a link to the commuter survey Wicklow coco did last year. Might be some figures in there relating to your question josip.

Has there ever been a situation where private car use has dropped even with the introduction of public transport? With all the proposed developments and people being squeezed out of the Dublin housing market will the volume ever decrease. Buses may stop it getting worse but would we see a reduction in actual car numbers.

Pete_Cavan wrote: »

If the bus service is fast and reliable people will use it. Bus lanes on the hard shoulders is the only thing that can be done with the N11 in any reasonable timeframe, offline road sounds great but is a decade away. The beauty with buses is that capacity can be ramped up fairly quickly to match demand.

They also need to look into bus lanes on Windgates and Southern cross to encourage people from Greystones to ditch the car but unfortunately thats not covered in this project.

Kian Fast Photography wrote: »

Too much messing around, it needs to be fast or convenient or people won't leave their cars. E.g. Leave the house, drive to P&R, wait for the bus, get bus to another bus stop in Dublin, wait for bus, get 2nd bus then walk from bus stop to work. Direct busses into the centre of Dublin, preferably out to the airport, is the only way to go.

People in London seem to cope. Actually on reflection, when I was going to school as an 11 year old in Manchester, I managed just fine with a bus, change to a train and another bus.

Depends on frequency of the connections, but again, you sum it up - the mindset hasn't evolved to modern Public Transport. So we're caught in a vicious circle, as the money won't be put in due to the negative publicity of actually making people think.

We need a truly independent transport authority for the greater dublin area, that can implement and enforce without reference to politicians.

Why not start a bus thread:)
Seriously though this should not be a case of putting buses and double tracks in place instead of fixing the road.....they all need to be done, having a motorway ending outside a village a few miles from the end of the M50 needs addressing.
As for double rail line, it’s badly needed but would only add to current capacity issues which need to be tackled on existing lines north of Bray.

First of all, the is the hard shoulder wide enough throughout the N11 section to be turned into a bus lane?

In short, no certainly not in the Glen of the Downs section. But I don't know how a bus lane will work practically along the road with slip roads etc. Cyclists use this route a lot too so their safety has to be taken into account (and rightly so) if they go down the path of just turning the hard shoulder into a bus lane.
Some of the comments on social media are throwing some creative ideas around such as suggesting extending the Luas down the central median as a real solution without any consideration for the safety issues, real life integration or even how it would effect the capacity issues the green line already has.
Ultimately, even if they take the red online upgrade there are going to be changes and lifes effected. I just don't know if the people shouting against the offline routes really appreciate this or is it if a case of nimbyism.
There needs to be a pragmatic approach because as SeanW suggests the offline routes in the long run could offer the better solution.

donvito99 wrote: »

But what exactly is a motorway spec road on a new alignment going to deliver in reality?

A slightly speeded up commute by car? A marginally easier/comfortable drive thanks to motorway spec?

I am failing to see what the enormous benefit of it will be over the existing dual carriageway such that a new alignment is justified.

A more appropriate type of road for a variety of traffic, including long distance travel.

Do people commute from Limerick to Naas? (The length of the M7) Not many, one suspects. How about all the other motorways? Most of them have little/nothing to do with commuting, they are needed for other reasons. What about all those railways, all that Intercity line. Do we maintain that because of all the commuters between Dublin and Galway? I don't think so. Because there's more to life than commuting.

Specifically, a new, offline motorway - in and of itself - will offer very little to commuters, as in, it would be basically just replacing a 2+2 with hard shoulders, with a 2+2 with hard shoulders, motorway designation and fewer junctions. The gains would come in two main areas:

1) Long distance travel (e.g. trucks to Rosslare) would be segregated from local travel on a safe and appropriate mode.
2) Handing 2/3s of the old road over buses and cyclists would be good for non-car travel. One lane each way left for general traffic on the current route might deal better with local travel.

SeanW wrote: »

A more appropriate type of road for a variety of traffic, including long distance travel.

Do people commute from Limerick to Naas? (The length of the M7) Not many, one suspects. How about all the other motorways? Most of them have little/nothing to do with commuting, they are needed for other reasons. What about all those railways, all that Intercity line. Do we maintain that because of all the commuters between Dublin and Galway? I don't think so. Because there's more to life than commuting.

Specifically, a new, offline motorway - in and of itself - will offer very little to commuters, as in, it would be basically just replacing a 2+2 with hard shoulders, with a 2+2 with hard shoulders, motorway designation and fewer junctions. The gains would come in two main areas:

1) Long distance travel (e.g. trucks to Rosslare) would be segregated from local travel on a safe and appropriate mode.
2) Handing 2/3s of the old road over buses and cyclists would be good for non-car travel. One lane each way left for general traffic on the current route might deal better with local travel.

prunudo wrote: »

Takes local traffic movements off the mainline, opens up the existing route for dedicated public transport, safer cycling routes, reduces traffic through a special area of conversation, takes 55k vehicles out of Kilpedder and Kilmacanogue, allows existing local roads not to lose access. To name a few reasons, I'm sure more will come to me.
I saw one ex local councillor saying on social media that there was 20-30m of scrub at the side of the Glen of the Downs that could easily be taken for extra lanes, this simply isn't the case. Any upgrading of the existing route whether to bus lane or 3rd driving lane is going to be difficult. The space is very limited along the whole route.

But we are talking about an existing stretch of dual carriageway that is approx. 15ish kilometres, maximum, that is an issue (apparently).

Would we be talking about this bypass of a bypass, worth hundreds of millions, if you removed the commuter traffic nightmare element? Is it really necessary to put massive sums of money in to make 'long distance driving' slightly easier, given that it only improves a fraction of the Belfast - Rosslare (as an example) drive? It is a good use of resources to make it life slightly easier for local traffic and leisure cyclists to navigate the area?

donvito99 wrote: »

But we are talking about an existing stretch of dual carriageway that is approx. 15ish kilometres, maximum, that is an issue (apparently).

Would we be talking about this bypass of a bypass, worth hundreds of millions, if you removed the commuter traffic nightmare element? Is it really necessary to put massive sums of money in to make 'long distance driving' slightly easier, given that it only improves a fraction of the Belfast - Rosslare (as an example) drive? It is a good use of resources to make it life slightly easier for local traffic and leisure cyclists to navigate the area?

Even if you could - somehow - remove every single car commuter - all of them, the route would probably still justify motorway on the basis of its long distance usage, that's why there's motorway as far South as Enniscorthy. Second, I hope you are not seriously suggesting that the proposals here are for a "bypass of a bypass" because frankly that would call any credibility of your arguments into question. As I understand it, the N section was simply a single carriageway that had another carriageway built beside it. At any rate, I hope you aren't seriously suggesting that you can fix this mess with a bus lane.

SeanW wrote: »

As I understand it, the N section was simply a single carriageway that had another carriageway built beside it.

This is not what happened, the dual carriageway was built over the existing road, taking some land to the west and more to the east in the Glen, and more land to the west nearer Kilmac

None of the original road remains

Before continuing, I think it is important to clarify what is a street, what is a road, what are the purposes of each, and what happens when a planner tries to make one route serve both purposes. A street is a place to capture value, basically, with homes, shops, parks etc being complex environments for people, where motor traffic should be limited to local usage if needed at all. A road is a high speed conveyance getting people from one place to another as quickly as possible. It needs to a simple environment with forgiving design for humans driving vehicles at high speed.

When you try to have route serve as both a street and a road simultaneously, you get what US advocacy group Strong Towns calls a "Stroad"). A stroad, simply put is a hybrid of a street and a road, trying to be all things to all people and failing to be either. All the local access etc makes a road very slow and unsafe for the through traffic, but all the traffic makes the environment very unwelcoming for people, shops, general local urban usage.

(In case you can't see the video, it's here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6jFnOnjzrk).

Ireland built a lot of stroads as cheap-and-nasty fixes back in the 1980s and 1990s that may have solved an immediate problem, but at the expense of creating as many problems more. The nearest example to me is in Carrick On Shannon, where "back in the day" the N4 would have gone right through the towns' narrow core streets. The solution was to build a new inner relief road type thing, which took the through traffic off the core streets but separated the town from its Shannon riverside amenities, and still directed Sligo bound traffic onto a narrow, centuries old bridge over the Shannon that pedestrians would have to share with trucks. (There is now a pedestrian bridge attached to the side of the old road bridge but still it's a kludge, not a fix).

To be fair to the stroad builders of yore, back in the day traffic volumes were very low, the population of the country was lower, and there was no money to do anything properly, further planning was so bad that councilors would allow anyone to degrade any road by building a house or shop fronting it, especially if there were brown envelopes involved. But the legacy of these things is that there are still towns choked by through traffic on routes with unclear purposes. Half-assed jobs that never should have been built and which cannot be fixed, at least not as roads.

donvito99 wrote: »

This is the part I still fail to understand, what is the problem with this road that justifies a motorway?

Traffic volumes over a certain threshold justify motorway for safety, speed, efficiency and other reasons.

If this was a single carriageway, old fashioned N road, I would completely agree with the construction of a motorway, on any of the routes presently suggested.

In parts, such as Kilmacanoge, it was a dual carriageway that should never have been built. In the case of that village, I would actually suggest removing the central median and converting it to an S4 (well S5) with footpaths that is, cycle lane, bus lane, traffic line, white line, traffic lane, bus lane, cycle lane. Then put a traffic light with pedestrian crossing in the middle of it, to facilitate locals using it as a street on foot. Oh and direct all the through traffic onto an actual motorway.

But it's not, it's a dual carriageway. It may have at-grade elements, but it still functions perfectly well as a means of getting vehicles from end of the M50 to the beginning of the M11.

I linked earlier to Kilmacanoge. The situation there is beyond a joke. Your so-called "motorway in all but name" tries to serve as both a conveyance for long distance traffic and also as a village main street. It has a half a full grade separated junction, the other half a LILO, an overbrige, an unbroken median, but also a stupid amount of local accesses, some right next to the GSJ, a 60kph speed limit, houses fronting right on to the dual carriageway and a nice sign for Kilmacanoge just to drive home the point that you're going through a village. Is it a street? Is it a road? Whatever it is, you're not going to upgrade it to proper international standards for either with a bus lane and any suggestion to that effect ... to be kind about it, needs to be explained.

Of all the half-arsed stroad projects that were built in Ireland, the N11 through Kilmacanoge must be one of the most ridiculous and bizarre.

To my mind, this looks like a joining-the-motorways-on-the-map exercise. Of all the places in the country that need an investment in roads infrastructure, the area that already has the motorway in all but name does not seem to me to be the most deserving.

Even if that were true, works carried out for the purpose of upgrading roads to motorway are not as a rule unwarranted, the Scottish government paid for a section of DC in England to be upgraded, that being the Cumberland Gap on the M6/A74(M), and they also in recent years upgraded their A8 Glasgow-Edinburgh road to M8. Of course works to facilitate "paper upgrades" should not be top of the priority list, but if you want to claim that this is happening here, you need to spend 5 minutes looking at Kilmacanoge on Google Maps Satellite and Street View and explain how the N11 is a "motorway in all but name" because on the face of it, your claim is just transparently absurd.

Well the mess is certainly not going to be fixed by facilitating even more traffic!

As has been pointed out, the "facilitating even more traffic" would be minimal, the key here is separation. Separation of long distance traffic onto an appropriate route (i.e. a motorway) and taking said traffic out of villages like Kilmacanoge where they never should been in the first place.