N4-M50 Junction Upgrade

jimmycrackcorm

I seriously hope that the westbound road arrangement of the N4/M50 improves by the time it's finished as with the short exit from the M50 joining the N4 west is causing tailbacks and slowed traffic. Traffic coming off the M50 and onto the N4 needs a long stretch to merge properly.

jimmycrackcorm

jimmycrackcorm wrote: »

I seriously hope that the westbound road arrangement of the N4/M50 improves by the time it's finished as with the short exit from the M50 joining the N4 west is causing tailbacks and slowed traffic. Traffic coming off the M50 and onto the N4 needs a long stretch to merge properly.

According to the m50.ie website http://www.m50.ie/pages/planyourjourney/n4-interchange.html

From 10pm on Tuesday 22nd January 2008, the N4 outbound carriageway to the west of the N4 Interchange will be reduced to 2 lanes with the M50 northbound to N4 west off ramp merging with these 2 lanes. These 2 lanes will return to 3 lanes from the Liffey Valley junction.

This scheme will be in place for 6 weeks.

four down, two to go; hopefully.

jimmycrackcorm

I took a closer look on the bus home and there will be three lanes to allow the M50 traffic to flow thankfully.

Afis

Upgrading of N4/M50 interchange will this end the traffic problem for the resident of the area?

jmkennedyie

No.

Essentially this junction has been open since Christmas. It has helped, but completing the N4 Lucan Bypass upgrade will be necessary. 2009.

Other important projects and concepts include rest of M50 Phase 1, extra buses & routes, Lucan Luas, Metro West, Liffey crossing (between Leixlip & Lucan?), barrier free M50 tolling, etc. etc.

Don't hold your breath

Chris_533976

Its full impact wont be seen until all the work is done on the N4 works (Newcastle Road), the toll booths are down, the rest of the M50 done, the Red Cow finished and Newlands cross done.

jkgvfg

A good start to seeing benefits would be to sort out the bus stop outside Liffey Valley. Every evening, buses queue to pull in there and block one of the two lanes just after the merge from the M50 slip roads so, in effect, 4 lanes merge into 1.

jmkennedyie

Pics from yesterday. By today, final surface may be on all of N4 Eastbound. Line painting imminent. Bit more work to do on N4 Westbound. Still work to do on M50 Ped Bridge.

On related note, I see final line painting has begun on M50 Southbound N4 to N7...

Stimpyone

I am of the opinion that that juction will never be finished.

Things seem to happen very very slowly

@07

When I came in this morning @07:10 they had the N4 eastbound down to one lane, it looks like they were about to remove the cones from the N4E - M50S loop, it appears that all was resurfaced overnight.

Victor

Stimpyone wrote: »

I am of the opinion that that juction will never be finished.

In fairness in the third picture all that seems to be needed is cleaning, lining, signing and barriers and de-coning.

Irish and Proud

Hi,

I believe that the N4-M50 Interchange is to be completed before the month is out. In effect, Ireland will have its first spaghetti junction then, or would the N31-M50-R113 (jcts. 13 & 14) interchange in Sandyford (completed in 2005) qualify as one! IMO, I don't think it does - yes, there are a lot of bridges and slip-roads as well as parallel connectors, but there is no full free-flow movement apart from the M50 itself. That said, it’s a nicely laid out interchange complex (once you get used to it!) in that it seems to keep the traffic moving (unlike some of the other M50 rotaries).

I think that in order for a junction to qualify as a spaghetti, it has to satisfy at least the following requirements:

1) There must be at least 3 free-flow movements accompanied by same in opposite direction through the junction, whether they are connectors or mainlines.

2) There must be at least 4 road bridges involved – Directional-T junctions are not really spaghetti junctions.

3) The above must occur within a relatively small area – not like the spread out Meath style green-field interchanges (N2 South Ashbourne Interchange for example has plenty in the way of ultra long slips , but only one bridge – the M3 Kilcarn interchange will be more of the same! ).

Can someone else help out here?

Regards!

murphaph

Irish and Proud wrote: »

Can someone else help out here?

Spagetti Junctions don't have to meet any minimum standards as the term has no basis in engineering/design....it's just a nickname applied to various junctions round the world.

however I would not regard any junction in Ireland as a 'spagetti' to be honest, certainly not this one. I think you'd need more than 2 motorways interchanging with one another before you'd get anything that you'd call a spagetti junction. A 4 level stack/whirlpool linking 2 motorways look too regular and symetrical from the air to resemble intertwined spagetti IMO!

whosedaddy?

You'll recognise Spagetti when you see it... the N4 is certainly not in that category.

Irish and Proud

murphaph wrote: »

Spagetti Junctions don't have to meet any minimum standards as the term has no basis in engineering/design....it's just a nickname applied to various junctions round the world.

however I would not regard any junction in Ireland as a 'spagetti' to be honest, certainly not this one. I think you'd need more than 2 motorways interchanging with one another before you'd get anything that you'd call a spagetti junction. A 4 level stack/whirlpool linking 2 motorways look too regular and symetrical from the air to resemble intertwined spagetti IMO!

I suppose the same applies to England - there are some very big interchanges including four level stacks (i.e. M4-M5, M4-M25, M23-M25 etc), but I don't think there are any occurances where 3 motorways intersect at any one point. I guess the nearest thing to a spaghetti there would be the M60-M61-M62 complex in Manchester. The M8-M73 Interchange in Glasgow is very impressive though!

Regards!

Irish and Proud

whosedaddy? wrote: »

You'll recognise Spagetti when you see it... the N4 is certainly not in that category.

...like central LA! :eek: - it literally looks like the stuff you'd eat off a plate!

Zoney

The N3 junction will be rather "interesting" when done due to the removal of the blanch roundabout and retention of the major roundabout junction at the M50 itself, but yet with freeflow N3 planned to skirt around this.

The N7/M50 junction will be somewhat complicated by the Monastary Lane junction that will form part of the complex.

The N4 junction however is entirely straightforward, being an ordinary partially unrolled cloverleaf between two dual carriageways intersecting at right angles.

murphaph

Irish and Proud wrote: »

I suppose the same applies to England - there are some very big interchanges including four level stacks (i.e. M4-M5, M4-M25, M23-M25 etc), but I don't think there are any occurances where 3 motorways intersect at any one point. I guess the nearest thing to a spaghetti there would be the M60-M61-M62 complex in Manchester. The M8-M73 Interchange in Glasgow is very impressive though!

Regards!

Erm, they have this little one of course! Not three m-ways but deffo a spaghetti!

The first (in the UK) and the one all others try to emulate

Ice_Box

I noticed this morning that the bit between the toll plaza and blanch is painted.

Also southbound half way to the mad cow! No yellow line yet.

rameire

just passing a factory on the way to carlow from athy today and it looks like an extremely large gantry has just been loaded onto a truck ready to be transported to the m50 i think, the gantry looks like it could span 5 or 6 lanes and not the normal 2 or 3 lane gantry.

murphaph

Is that Thompson's?

rameire

i think so,

jmkennedyie

There are a few gantries due to be installed over next night or two. Some spanning the entire motorway so would make it 8 lanes wide+. They have advertised they are stopping all traffic during installation...could take 15 mins...in the wee hours.

Seth Brundle

With several of the gantries at the N4 interchange, the first gantries along your route telling you which lane to be in are at the point where the lanes have divided.
Whats the feckin point?

murphaph

kbannon wrote: »

With several of the gantries at the N4 interchange, the first gantries along your route telling you which lane to be in are at the point where the lanes have divided.
Whats the feckin point?

They are confirmation signs......but they forgot the actual direction signs! They should have the ones they have in place PLUS ones a good distance back, perhaps 1km back. They are currently absent and you're dead right, without them some of the current signs are useless or dangerous as you either know what lane to be in already or make last dash attempts to cross lanes to get into the one you want when you finally see the sign. One hopes they will add proper advance direction gantries, but who knows.

jmkennedyie

I don't think they forgot them. E.g. for N4 inbound, there are foundations for gantries for such advance signage before the Deadman's. For N4 Outbound, there are foundations just before the Palmerstown footbridge. It is a pity they haven't installed them yet, but in fairness it is still a construction site and there is a 60kmph limit, temporary signs & VMS.

Seth Brundle

That isn't really an excuse.
With live traffic flows, they should be aiming to make the construction site safer for workers and therefore should have erected the initial gantries first so that the common idiot drivers at least have some odea of which lane they should be in.

whosedaddy?

Came down M50 this morning and yes they have put up the first 8 lane wide gantries. But hey, do we really need an overhead gantry every 500 meters approaching the N7 and on to Ballymount.... PPl will look more at signs than the road....

I also noticed that the gantries used for the N3-N4 section look different to the ones used for phase 1... And I bet the ones for the norhtern/southern section will be different again. Order smaller numbers (x3) - pay higher prices, I bet the systems operate differntly, higher integration cost, and maintenance cost will be higher too...
sigh... [I just hate to be in work this morning....]

seamus

kbannon wrote: »

That isn't really an excuse.
With live traffic flows, they should be aiming to make the construction site safer for workers and therefore should have erected the initial gantries first so that the common idiot drivers at least have some odea of which lane they should be in.

Yep, that was my thought. The very first gantry they put up on the N4 inbound was the one that tells you what lane you should be in when it's too late to change lane. :rolleyes:

They've put the mounts in (maybe the signs are even up now) at the bridge about 0.5km before the M50 junction, so that should hopefully sort things.

Idbatterim

was heading east on the n4 to m50 southbound last nite and the fact that it is now free flow is great. When the toll bridge is gone things will be even better!

jkgvfg

Deleted User wrote: »

Also southbound half way to the mad cow! No yellow line yet.

AFAIK, this month should only see a third lane opening, the auxilliary lane and the hard shoulder are not planned until the summer so I doubt they've bought the can of yellow paint yet.

But 3 lanes between Red Cow and Blanchardstown would be great to have before traffic returns next week.

The last time I went M50 South from the N4 to Tallaght last week it seemed that the southbound carriageway (between N4 & N7) was complete, with only line marking & cleanup to do.

I'll assume that they want to wait untill the whole length is complete before allowing traffic to use all lanes.

whosedaddy?

Before opening the 3 lanes on the mainline, they need to finish the tarmac northbound between N7 and N4. concrete the centre median between Ballymount and N7 and northbound at N4 junction. And probably resurface most of the N7 to Ballymount part. Gantry signs and painting is on top of that...

From looking over to the left, I thought the new left most lane looked narrower than the two existing ones. might have been an optical illusion tho....

I can only hope they will wait for the entire phase 1 bit to be complete. otherwise you'll have temp merge markings etc, that you have to patch up afterwards.

and get rid of toll barriers asap after that.

rameire

some news on the mad cow junction, i have heard that when they swap over the luas tracks to the new configuration, the luas will not go through the mad cow junction for a few days, until it is all connected up, (understandable) this will mean that the luas from tallaght will terminate at the luas depot at the park and ride on the mad cow, and the luas from town will terminate at kylemore.

joemc99

whosedaddy? wrote: »

Before opening the 3 lanes on the mainline, they need to finish the tarmac northbound between N7 and N4. concrete the centre median between Ballymount and N7 and northbound at N4 junction. And probably resurface most of the N7 to Ballymount part. Gantry signs and painting is on top of that...

From looking over to the left, I thought the new left most lane looked narrower than the two existing ones. might have been an optical illusion tho....

I can only hope they will wait for the entire phase 1 bit to be complete. otherwise you'll have temp merge markings etc, that you have to patch up afterwards.

and get rid of toll barriers asap after that.

Yeah, I thought the 3rd lane (inside) looked v narrow too. Would be suicide as this is the one the truckjs would use. Optical illusion? I hope not.

murphaph

whosedaddy? wrote: »

I also noticed that the gantries used for the N3-N4 section look different to the ones used for phase 1... And I bet the ones for the norhtern/southern section will be different again

Yeah I saw that this evening. I come home under the M50 just north of the toll plaza and saw the gantries there. They are very british looking-fully clad with a frame ready for a VMS to be mounted to the left hand side. I prefer the latticework on the ones on the N4-N81 section but one wonders if the sun is setting behind them will one be able to see the lane control signs against the sun's rays.

lynchie

joemc99 wrote: »

Yeah, I thought the 3rd lane (inside) looked v narrow too. Would be suicide as this is the one the truckjs would use. Optical illusion? I hope not.

I thought the exact same thing.. looks very narrow.

Irish and Proud

lynchie wrote: »

I thought the exact same thing.. looks very narrow.

I saw a good mainline shot of the M50 on SABRE and when one looks closely, the lanes are quite evenly divided - however, from the car, I have to concur - the 2 left hand lanes look very tight. The spec is for a minimum of: 2.5m hard shoulder, 4 x 3.5m lanes, plus a 1.0m median strip. IMO, the hard shoulder should be at least 3.0m on account of the heavy traffic that will be using the M50 - projected traffic load averages around 200k+ PCUs.

Regards!

Stark

They're going to be reducing the speed limit to 100km/hr to account for the narrow lanes.

anotherlostie

Stark wrote: »

They're going to be reducing the speed limit to 100km/hr to account for the narrow lanes.

Seriously? If it was April 1st...

whosedaddy?

More Gantry work on the M50..

http://www.sdublincoco.ie/index.aspx?pageid=939&pid=14177

South Dublin County Council have made an order to temporarily close a section of the M50, in order to facilitate the installation of overhead gantry signs on the M50 as part of the M50 upgrade works. The following section of road will be temporarily closed;

M50 northbound and southbound carriageways N4-N7 from

12.00 midnight on Friday 4th April to 4.00am on Saturday 5th April 2008.

I also noticed that work has finally commenced on the southern section (Phase II) , they started removing the hedges in the centre median.

darkman2

They are going to saturate this road with gantries......

Victor

anotherlostie wrote: »

Stark wrote: »

They're going to be reducing the speed limit to 100km/hr to account for the narrow lanes.

Seriously? If it was April 1st...

100km/h lanes carry more traffic because less space is needed between vehicles. Optimum is about 60km/h.

Victor

Strictly speaking not the N4-M50 junction, but the RPA have (inadvertantly?) put up a huge version of the image of the proposed N7-M50 junction.

Warning, image size 1MB http://www.rpa.ie/upload/images/N7%20Monastery%20Rd%20freeflow%20.jpg

Chris_533976

Saved in case it disappears.

Anyone else notice that the entire junction will be lit by three small lights

jmkennedyie

Victor wrote: »

Strictly speaking not the N4-M50 junction, but the RPA have (inadvertantly?) put up a huge version of the image of the proposed N7-M50 junction.

Cheers. Pity still no insight into what happens at bottom left of the image...presumably traffic lights will be required to allow traffic from Turnpike Road & Red Cow Hotel get onto the lanes for N7 outbound

Victor

Chris_533976 wrote: »

Saved in case it disappears.

Ditto. I'm not sure what will get to them first, my e-mail or their hosting bill.

darkman2

Seems to be a sign gone up on the M50 mainline approaching the N4 interchange Southbound. A sign on the gantry which is the first on te mainline I think. Anyone seen it yet?