New barrier to be placed nationwide

Fool 5000

New barrier to be placed nationwide

The National Roads Authority has revealed that a pilot safety project introducing a new type barrier had potentially avoided eight fatal accidents during a nine-month period.

The barrier which has been placed on the main Cork-Limerick road stopped motorists from crossing a two-plus-one road and crashing into vehicles travelling in the opposite direction.
A two-plus-one road sees two lanes going in one direction and one in the other. The NRA revealed that over 750km of these roads will be introduced over the next 15 years.

When these roads are being constructed, the barriers will be placed in the middle to stop vehicles from crossing over and meeting oncoming vehicles.

murphaph

It's actually pretty sad that we have to do this but we really do. Irish motorists simply won't stop the dangerous overtaking because of a couple of white lines or indeed they won't stop misjudging the overtaking on perfectly straight bits which result in horrendous head on collisions.

Chris_533976

Fool 5000 wrote:

A two-plus-one road sees two lanes going in one direction and one in the other. The NRA revealed that over 750km of these roads will be introduced over the next 15 years.

**sigh**

Built proper dual carriageways and stop faffing about. Its crazy.

nordydan

But are they not upgrading the n20 from blarney to croom to dual carriageway anyway? i saw talk of a plan from croom to charleville to mallow on cork coco website.

Sleipnir

Chris_533976 wrote:

**sigh**

Built proper dual carriageways and stop faffing about. Its crazy.

Just wait, they'll put a bicycle line in the middle.

Aidan1

Mallow to Croom, and its in planning. The idea being that the road would be DC from the Limerick Bypass to Mallow. The 2+1 section is between Mallow and Cork. That road, or large parts of it, was upgraded in the early 1990s, and it involved a lot of work given the topography of the area. In essence they built a new road next to the old one on a new alignment. Its relatively decent, with climbing lanes (ie its already 2+1) on a lot of it. Not easy to make DC out of it. Either way, it will have to be done in the medium term, given the size of Mallow.

MrPudding

2+1 roads are great. Obviously not as good as a dualler but cheaper and easier to build.

They use them a lot in France.

MrP

nordydan

I think they are potentially a cheap and cost effective alternative where dualling is too expensive (not on the n20 however - n4 longford to sligo eg). I see all the n24 is planned for this and also some new stretches in the north (eg omagh to co monaghan). They could have the bollards in the respective county colours!

Benster

I drove on some of these 2+1 type roads in Australia and I found them to be dangerous in other ways, to be honest.

When you're on a two-lane stretch, you see the sign ahead to tell you to merge with the slow lane as your side is now to become one lane. At this point the idiots who are trying to overtake put the boot down to get ahead of the driver near the end of the two-lane section. Quite often they'd be in the lane for oncoming traffic before completing their manouvre (sp?).

I didn't find drivers in Oz to be generally impatient (ok, in Sydney they could be), but with the track record of Irish drivers, I can see this becoming a regular sight.

corktina

unfortunately some of the 2 lane bits are DOWNHILL which negates the point of crawler lanes ...not that most people use them any way, being, i suspect, of the opinion that they are for Lorries...
..i dont like them...they are unnecessary if Car Drivers had some common sense, but ask my Paramedic Wife about soem of the Horrific crashes that were on that stretch and it really does make sense....most common was when someone was trying to turn right and some dipstick thought it was acceptable to overtake across a junction.......how do some people get licenses?
oh I forgot, this is ireland where we give them away free and dont mind if people never take a test.....

John R

Chris_533976 wrote:

**sigh**

Built proper dual carriageways and stop faffing about. Its crazy.

**sigh**

proper dual carriageways cost a lot of money, take up a huge amount of land and are not necessary for the traffic volumes on many of the N roads.

The road building budgets are already huge and there is a large network of recently upgraded dangerous wide 2 lane + hard shoulder that can be converted to 2+1 cheaply and quickly.

John R

corktina wrote:

unfortunately some of the 2 lane bits are DOWNHILL which negates the point of crawler lanes ...not that most people use them any way, being, i suspect, of the opinion that they are for Lorries...
..i dont like them...they are unnecessary if Car Drivers had some common sense, but ask my Paramedic Wife about soem of the Horrific crashes that were on that stretch and it really does make sense....most common was when someone was trying to turn right and some dipstick thought it was acceptable to overtake across a junction.......how do some people get licenses?
oh I forgot, this is ireland where we give them away free and dont mind if people never take a test.....

The mix in Ireland of a large amount of aggressive "good drivers" without proper danger perception and brutal drivers that will hog the white line at 45mph without any thought to anyone else on the road means our current primary roads are perfect for overtaking crashes.

There is an unwillingness from drivers to learn and an inability from the authorities to make them learn and police them when they don't so the only solution is to alter the roads to make head on collissions impossible.

corktina

John R wrote:

The mix in Ireland of a large amount of aggressive "good drivers" without proper danger perception and brutal drivers that will hog the white line at 45mph without any thought to anyone else on the road means our current primary roads are perfect for overtaking crashes.

There is an unwillingness from drivers to learn and an inability from the authorities to make them learn and police them when they don't so the only solution is to alter the roads to make head on collissions impossible.

yep...it's a sad indictment of ths countries drivers isnt it...
..spare a thought for the poor souls who live on a 2+1 though...not nice to have to drive a km in the wrong direction and then do a U turn nearly every time you want to go
out in the motor.....

Calina

The 2+1 down the N20 has chicken wire dividing the 2 from the 1. As far as I recall, this isn't the case in France where they're used heavily, so that issues about forcing you to turn in one direction coming onto the road don't arise there. On the other hand, getting across the traffic if the volumes are heavy will make it hard.

In truth, it shouldn't be necessary here, but the vast number of drivers in this country who either don't understand what a solid white line means, or just ignore them makes it an attractive way of stopping them from being stupid at least some of the time.

murphaph

It's sad but true, 2+1 is a necessary evil because irish drivers are so damn dangerous. The 2+1 realigned section of N20 was built wide enough to allow dualling later on. Take a look at google earth and you can see the road has a couple of really wide flyovers going over it with the carriageway affset to one side. Classic future dualling layout. You see this a lot in the UK, but I reckon the 20 will actually be dualled throughout someday. It will make sense if they can develop the towns and cities along it to do so.

corktina

Calina wrote:

The 2+1 down the N20 has chicken wire dividing the 2 from the 1. As far as I recall, this isn't the case in France where they're used heavily, so that issues about forcing you to turn in one direction coming onto the road don't arise there. On the other hand, getting across the traffic if the volumes are heavy will make it hard.

In truth, it shouldn't be necessary here, but the vast number of drivers in this country who either don't understand what a solid white line means, or just ignore them makes it an attractive way of stopping them from being stupid at least some of the time.

high tensile steel cables actually......

murphaph

corktina wrote:

high tensile steel cables actually......

That sh!t is particularly nasty for us bikers. In my most recent issue of the Motorcycle Action Group magazine it claims that Austria has banned it and most other EU states are moving away from it, back to conventional armco barrier type solutions. The NRA seem to be the only roads authority still pushing it as being 'safe'.

Chris_533976

John R wrote:

**sigh**

proper dual carriageways cost a lot of money, take up a huge amount of land and are not necessary for the traffic volumes on many of the N roads.

The road building budgets are already huge and there is a large network of recently upgraded dangerous wide 2 lane + hard shoulder that can be converted to 2+1 cheaply and quickly.

But what this country has done so many times is not planned for the future.

Roads are built here when teh traffic gets so bad that theres hours of jamups. Roads are NEVER built to solve a problem before it happens.

Just look at Corks south ring. They put 3 roundabouts on it to save a bit of money. They new damn well the traffic would increase. Now they're spending a fortune putting flyovers over those roundabouts. Much more money that if they'd done it in the first place.

They need to spend a bit of extra money futureproofing roads here. If its costs more to dual it now, then dual it now and dont worry about wasting money dualing it later. Thats the way I see it.

Seems crazy to me to build a 2+1 now and carve it up in 10 years to make it dual then.

nordydan

I think you are overly critical of the NDP. The plans going on in the south are pretty much for the future. Take a look north where they plan for yesterday.

Soon the south's road system will be on a population:road quality on of the best in europe. Never lose sight of what the roads were like 20 years ago:

Dunleer
Dundalk
Mullingar
Bray
Drogheda
Port Laoise
Kildare
Naas
Dundalk
Glanmire
etc.

dingding

Drove on a 2+1 before Christmas near Cork, I found it dangerous as the poles were gray and they would be helped if reflectors were placed on the poles, otherwise a very good idea.

Chris_533976

nordydan wrote:

Soon the south's road system will be on a population:road quality on of the best in europe. Never lose sight of what the roads were like

But you still cant say the roads are brilliant. Just compare the Irish roads now, and even their plans, to roads on the continent, especially in Germany.

German roads are well designed, with freeflow junctions wherever possible, a minimum of traffic lights and are properly maintained and cleaned constantly.

Irish roads are badly designed, with roundabouts thrown in everywhere, traffic lights everywhere, badly maintained by the man with the truck and the spade of tar, and are never cleaned.

No matter what they do here they cant get it into their thick heads to futureproof roads, especially the junctions between national routes. The Red Cow is in a crazy state and they are paying a fortune to have it upgraded. In any other country in Europe that junction will be completly freeflowing without any problems. IN the new design here there will STILL be a set of traffic lights floating about on the N7-M50 section.

nordydan

Germany has 90 million tax payers and (depsite the war) a history of 60-70 years of building good roads. They are the pioneers of transport networks and a nation of respected engineers. For its population density Ireland is doing a good job. Credit where credits due. At least they have a plan in the south. It may not be running as quickly as we all would have hoped (as someone who was born in kerry and lives in south down and has made many trips to relatives will testify!) but its a lot lot better. There will be D2M/DC from north of newry to patrickswell and 2:1 to tralee afterwards and a tralee bypass with all towns bypassed on that route. I would never have dreamt of that in the early 90's

2:1 for me is a sensible online option where traffic volumes would not warrant DC, as long as all excavations etc are futureproofed for DC ipgrades in certain sections on an ongoing basis. It is unrealistic to expect DC from Longford to SLigo for example

Bamboozled

That 2+1 from Mallow to Cork would work properly if people drove properly. I'm on that road 2-4 times a day and more times than not there's some idiot at the top of the traffic queue that decides to pull into the overtaking section and do the same speed as the one in the driving lane.

There's some dangerous overtaking manoeuvres made towards the ends of the lanes as mentioned previously.

And they definitely could do with reflectors on those grey poles.

Those barriers are going up on the Silversprings dual carriageway as well.

Chris_533976

Anyone got a pic of these fancy new barriers?

Fool 5000

Sorry not a great pic but you can see it on the right
http://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/gallery/displayimage.php?album=search&cat=0&pos=0

or here
http://www.fema.kaalium.com/crashbarrier/img46.jpg

Bamboozled

That link brought no image.

Try this. Its blurry but you can see the poles with the 3 cables running along through them.

http://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/gallery/displayimage.php?album=268&pos=14

Better photo here
http://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/gallery/displayimage.php?album=150&pos=53

Fool 5000

They are puting them on the old Midleton to Carrigtwohill road too.

murphaph

Fool 5000 wrote:

http://www.fema.kaalium.com/crashbarrier/img46.jpg

Interesting where that pic comes from! That's the FEMA website (the European motorcycle riders representative body). The text that accompanies that picture is;

4.3 A special case: the cable barrier (Wire Rope Safety Fence).

Little data exists on this type of barriers, and few motorcycle accidents against them have been reported. They are however widely criticised by motorcyclists as being a human scale «cheese cutter» roadside furniture.
As posts have been identified as the main danger to motorcyclists impacting roadside furniture, WRSF theoritically represent the same danger as the standard metal barrier. However these lend themselves more readily to the addition of protective system mentionned in 4.1 & 4.2. Thus WRSF represents the worst choice in a motorcyclist's viewpoint: it seems difficult to improve their safety with regards to a motorcyclist at a reasonnable cost.

My own emphasis.

It's cheap and nasty stuff. I'd much prefer continuous concrete barrier alongside me than that cheese cutter.

parsi

Bamboozled wrote:

That 2+1 from Mallow to Cork would work properly if people drove properly. I'm on that road 2-4 times a day and more times than not there's some idiot at the top of the traffic queue that decides to pull into the overtaking section and do the same speed as the one in the driving lane.

There's some dangerous overtaking manoeuvres made towards the ends of the lanes as mentioned previously.

And they definitely could do with reflectors on those grey poles.

Those barriers are going up on the Silversprings dual carriageway as well.

The 2+1 annoys me. Plenty of people drive on the single lane section at around 80kmh and then speed up when the road opens up and you're trying to get ahead. And of course you have the muppet who thinks the best way to overtake a truck that is doing 85 is to do 86....

I find it dazzling at night-time as well with the flicker effect caused by the poles..

GoneShootin

murphaph wrote:

It's cheap and nasty stuff. I'd much prefer continuous concrete barrier alongside me than that cheese cutter.

Youve not seen the video of those barriers in operation then. The idea is that soaks as much force as possible, thus tyring to prevent the vehicle going back out onto traffic at the same speed and force that it went it. True for motocyclists it's not going to be pretty, but on average isn't there more deaths on the roads for non-motorcyclists?

murphaph

GoneShootin wrote:

Youve not seen the video of those barriers in operation then. The idea is that soaks as much force as possible, thus tyring to prevent the vehicle going back out onto traffic at the same speed and force that it went it. True for motocyclists it's not going to be pretty, but on average isn't there more deaths on the roads for non-motorcyclists?

Not per-capita, no. For example, last year (or the year before, can't remember) 29% of fatalities in the Garda Dublin Metropolitan Region were PTW (Powered two-wheeled vehicles) while making up only 2% of registered vehicles! You are SIX times more likely to die as a motorcyclist as a car driver. There are lots of reasons of course (idiocy being one of them), but the energy absorbing properties of tensile wire rope can be matched or bettered by armco deforming steel barriers etc. They are just a lot more expensive than the cheaper wire rope. It's the support poles that do all the damage to bikers you see, and that wire rope has no real way to make it's posts safe, whereas deforming steel armco barriers can have their posts shrouded in such a way as to make sure a sliding biker doesn't come from 120km/h to 0km/h in 0.05s by hitting one. It's purely an expense thing AFAICS. Even looking down on TSW as you ride past makes you think, a smooth concrete barrier (whilst having virtually zero energy absorbtion properties for cars) is a much less frightening prospect from my point of view. Just imagine a biker coming off at 120km/h due to a diesel spill or something, he has leathers/back protector on so is sliding in some form of safety along a smooth concrete barrier, imagine the same acident where he slides into the wire support posts. I'm not saying the entire road network should be designed around bikes (I drive cars too) but a balance should be struck. There is a satisfactory solution to all but it's the expensive option and the NRA apppears to want to keep costs down no matter what.

GoneShootin

It would be interesting to know what the cost of the barriers vs cost of perssonel/services/courts after a fatal motor acccident has occured.

I see your point murphaph, taking the cynical view for all road traffic it would seem to boil down to NRA costs.

Victor

murphaph wrote:

It will make sense if they can develop the towns and cities along it to do so.

Eh, a city either end, one town - Mallow (kinda bypassed) and then you have the Metropolises of Patrickswell (bypassed), Croom (bypassed), Charleville, Buttevent New Twopothouse and Ballynamona (bypassed).

Chris_533976

Fool 5000 wrote:

Sorry not a great pic but you can see it on the right
http://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/gallery/displayimage.php?album=search&cat=0&pos=0

or here
http://www.fema.kaalium.com/crashbarrier/img46.jpg

Ah ok, those things. Yeah theyve put them in the middle of the dual carriageway from Cork to Midleton. They're better than just using trees to stop cars.

What does annoy me about them is this. To look somewhat good, they should always stay in the same line relative to the carriageways. But no, they cut the corners on the road whenever possible, so the barrier is on the left of the hedge for some of the time and on the right for other sections. Just to save a bit of money, it takes the shortest route round the corner. Doesnt really bother me, but it does irk me a bit.

Victor

No, you may have that wrong. The fence goes on the inside of the curve of the road and on the danger side of a bridge.

Capt'n Midnight

MrPudding wrote:

2+1 roads are great. Obviously not as good as a dualler but cheaper and easier to build.

They use them a lot in France.

MrP

If they got rid of hard shoulders and just put in lay-bys instead we could have dual carrige ways for less, and they'd be safer than 2+1's.

murphaph

Victor wrote:

Eh, a city either end, one town - Mallow (kinda bypassed) and then you have the Metropolises of Patrickswell (bypassed), Croom (bypassed), Charleville, Buttevent New Twopothouse and Ballynamona (bypassed).

Yeah, I wasn't really looking at the stretch in isolation but as part of the link from Cork-Limerick-(Shannon)-Galway.

murphaph

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

If they got rid of hard shoulders and just put in lay-bys instead we could have dual carrige ways for less, and they'd be safer than 2+1's.

Not so sure, you'd still have the median crossings on that sort of road unless you grade separate and that's where the real expense is encountered and you're in a different league altogether. I don't believe that 2+1 is particularly dangerous, the figures from Sweden have been very encouraging. The 2+1 is suitable here precisely because it allows us to retrofit it to existing WS2 roads.

MT

Fool 5000 and Bamboozled, guys if you’re linking to a pic on Sabre right click on the picture and get its url through properties. As I’ve found out in previous posts if you just link to the page in the address bar the image will get shifted on to another page when someone puts a new pic in that gallery.


Chris, I wouldn’t be too hard on Ireland for the current state of road development. You have to bear in mind the size of the country and where it’s come from, as Dan pointed out. A country of 4 million people is never going to need the sort of motorway networks you’d find in the likes of the UK or Germany. You got to think proportionately, and on that score the Republic will be doing very nicely when network has been completed. Furthermore, as an island off an island off a continent, Ireland doesn’t experience the ‘through traffic’ that countries such as the Netherlands or Germany experience. Ireland just has to cater for it’s own population and freight/tourists only destined for here and nowhere else.

Then there’s the aspect of where the Republic has come from. The US, UK and Germany have been industrialised economies for more than a century and for all of the period that the car has existed. They’ve had the sort of freight needs and experienced the whole urban sprawl and commuting revolutions decades before you did. By contrast the Republic’s economy has only really made the leap from predominantly agrarian to industrialised in the past few decades and to Western standards of wealth only in the last two. So there’s only been the demand and crucially the funds for large scale road construction in the last 15 to 20 years.

I’d say the Republic has made startling progress with its road infrastructure in such a short space of time.

On the issue of maintenance and signage, however, I would agree that these still aren’t taken seriously. Currently there seems to be more of a focus from communities – and their councils/TDs - to get a nice new bypass or other major project funded. Problem is, this enthusiasm seems to evaporate once the thing’s been built and upkeep - especially of signs and road markings - goes down the pan.

Bamboozled

Thanks MT. couldn't find a pic anywhere on Google so clicked his link and posted one where i found barriers.

As for the flicker effect on the barrier reflectors, they must have cleaned them lately. I was dazzled by my own lights at 2am this morning on the 2+1. The reflectors on the poles seem to be fine, its the ones on the actual wires that did my head in.

Chris_533976

Victor wrote:

No, you may have that wrong. The fence goes on the inside of the curve of the road and on the danger side of a bridge.

Yeah inside the curve of the road. Thats what I was trying to say rather than the crap I came out with

I can see moneywise why its done, but when you're travelling over a bridge over the road with these barriers, it looks silly. For aesthetic reasons, I'd spend the bit of extra money and keep them on the same side of the curve all the time.

Victor

Nothing to do with money, everything to do with the centrifugal forces on vehicles on the inside of the curve.

Chris_533976

MT wrote:

Chris, I wouldn’t be too hard on Ireland for the current state of road development. You have to bear in mind the size of the country and where it’s come from, as Dan pointed out. A country of 4 million people is never going to need the sort of motorway networks you’d find in the likes of the UK or Germany. You got to think proportionately, and on that score the Republic will be doing very nicely when network has been completed. Furthermore, as an island off an island off a continent, Ireland doesn’t experience the ‘through traffic’ that countries such as the Netherlands or Germany experience. Ireland just has to cater for it’s own population and freight/tourists only destined for here and nowhere else.

Then there’s the aspect of where the Republic has come from. The US, UK and Germany have been industrialised economies for more than a century and for all of the period that the car has existed. They’ve had the sort of freight needs and experienced the whole urban sprawl and commuting revolutions decades before you did. By contrast the Republic’s economy has only really made the leap from predominantly agrarian to industrialised in the past few decades and to Western standards of wealth only in the last two. So there’s only been the demand and crucially the funds for large scale road construction in the last 15 to 20 years.

I’d say the Republic has made startling progress with its road infrastructure in such a short space of time.

Oh yeah, I understand that. Its only recently they've been able to do anything about it with funding.

But I still cant understand this tho. They KNOW there is a traffic problem here. Too many cars. Part of the solution is public transport, part is driver education and part is better design.

Taking the example of the new Red Cow junction, I still cannot comprehend why the new design still includes traffic lights. They know its a terribly busy junction, they know the traffic will be there but they still insist on putting a dirty set of lights in. Plus the fight about the Luas being on stilts? I would bet money it would have been on stilts from day 1 in any other European country. No question of putting it at-grade. I guarantee they'll have to re-work that junction within a few months of it opening.

Another example I've used before is the south ring in Cork. There are 3 roundabouts on it. The original plans for the south ring had flyovers for all three roundabouts included. These flyovers were scrapped at the last minute to save money. And now they're spending far more money, and basicially causing mayhem for up to 9 years (3 years each) to fix the blunder. Whenever I go up to Cork and see the construction site for the first one, I get irate because I know it was an idiot who decided to get rid of them from the original plans. You spend up to 30 minutes in that jam daily, I dont know how many vehicles use it, probobly around 50k.... thats 25,000 hours of peoples time WASTED daily because of a morons decision.

No, I dont deny that great progress is being made. By 2010 there'll be dc/motorway all teh way from Cork to Dublin. But what irks me like mad is the raft of incredibly bad decisions made by road/rail/etc planners in this country. Chronicly bad ideas that just keep happening. Futureproofing is the key because as populations increase, the traffic will increase, no matter how well public transport is implemented. But yet they still build ringroads/national route merges with enormous signal controlled roundabouts (Lee tunnel in Cork) instead of spending a bit of extra money to grade seperate the junction and solve jamups. Anywhere else in Europe the main routes are fully grade sperated at every intersection. Why not here?

It seems to me they'll only fix a problem here once theres a huge jamup, and the jamup gets worse for the 3 years of construction. Elsewhere they build things before the jamup starts, or at least before it gets as bad as here.

I know I get annoyed on here a lot, but the sheer level of incompetance at the design level is staggering in this country.

Victor

Chris_533976 wrote:

Another example I've used before is the south ring in Cork. There are 3 roundabouts on it. The original plans for the south ring had flyovers for all three roundabouts included.

No. I've watched the project for the last 18 years and flyovers were not initially included, much to my dismay as a 16 year old.

Bamboozled

Weren't they given the costs from whoever (its late, I cant remember) for the flyovers though and decided not to go with them in the end?

Chris_533976

There was something anyway, I could well be wrong, but I got it from somewhere that the plan was to put the flyovers in in the first place which was then scrapped.

Arguments aside, noone in their right mind can say it was a good idea to leave them out tho.

murphaph

How far along are they with these flyovers?

Chris_533976

First one is due to open by the end of the year I think. They have the bridge sections in place and are building up the road on either side of them for the runup.

The other two arent started. Presumably there'll be about 6 months to a year downtime between construction, then about 2 - 3 years of building on each of the other two.

At least on the third they've build the dual carriageway sides far apart so the flyover can fit down the middle.

The second one theres hardly any room for traffic while its being built. Will be a bit of a nightmare that one I reckon.

My thoughts on this will be that it'll be about 3 years to build the second and then 3 years to build the third. By then the other roundabout near the tunnel where the N25 & N8 meet withthe main route into Cork will be an utter disaster up to the standard of the Red Cow. They'll need to upgrade that junction to freeflow around that time I think.

Aidan1

The Kinsale Rd junction will be open before the end of the summer - the total build time will be around 2 years. The next two, Bandon Rd and Sarsfield Rd, will be done at the same time and should start early next year.

The Dunkettle interchange is also up for review, as far as I understand planners are considering their options with regard to the effects the North Ring Road will have on traffic also, when that comes on stream (2012-2015?). Among the options included is a full free flow junction.

Until now, the local authorities and the NRA have been focussed on catching up. Its only in the last while that they've been able to pay any attention to looking ahead

Chris_533976

Good to hear, you're obviously more in the know than I am

Hopefully they'll go for the freeflow option... and hopefully when they do Dunkettle they'll put a bridge in at the Glanmire roundabout while they're at it

murphaph

Good to see some progress at least being made in Cork. The city & county deserves high quality transport links given the high value the pharma (etc.) sector is to our economy. Cork has genuine potential to grow to be a much larger city. Thye north ring road may seem a little overboard nw but I reckon it'll be a neccessity in a few short years. Cork would be in the lucky position of having the only complete dual carriageway orbital road on this island. There aren't even that many cities in Britain with this claim to fame (London, Manchester & Leeds are all I can think of)