M6/4 Motorway Galway to Dublin (for discussing completed sections)

KevR

EAFC_rdfl wrote: »

but the more that do this the less are in the left hand lane, so let them off I say !!

Yeah I know, I didn't have to queue either evening for the roundabout - the left lane was totally empty while there was a queue in the right hand lane.

The danger is someone could hit into us when they are using the wrong lane and coming off the roundabout. Need to watch out for that.

KevR

There are 2 tyres dumped several junctions apart in the median on westbound side, one of which has been there since before Christmas.

Are there never any patrols to check for and remove debris like this? They're not on either of the driving lanes but they're still a hazard because usually there's a margin for error with the 1 metre gap between the white line and the concrete barrier. You don't have that margin for error with the tyres there; if you go into the gap and hit one of the tyres you would lose control of the car.

flazio

I was saying in the thread in the Infrastructure forum that the Galway crests on the Beagh Roundabouts have been covered over in Black Tape by what looks like the workers rather then some Roscommon activists.

veryangryman

KevR wrote: »

Yeah I know, I didn't have to queue either evening for the roundabout - the left lane was totally empty while there was a queue in the right hand lane.

The danger is someone could hit into us when they are using the wrong lane and coming off the roundabout. Need to watch out for that.

Is been 2 weeks and they still do it. Complete morons, i can allow for this once or twice, but surely all commuters have used it by now. Ok, the odd person whose out on a day trip or whatever may be on it for the first time, but what the hell is she (its always a she :rolleyes:) doing on the main roads if she cant figure out roundabout lanes on a VERY straightforward roundabout. There are even road markings for the intellecutally challenged

Morons. And yes my username is finally apt

KevR

Yeah I was thinking the same - you'd imagine it would have dawned on them by now which lane they should use.

It's clearly marked and it's the same as what you would usually do if there were no markings. You might be able to understand the confusion if the markings were instructing something other than the usual practice but they're not.

KevR

The Google Street View car passed me on the N6 when I was on the way home from work yesterday evening. Not sure if it was recording at the time because it was about 6km outside Athlone and I thought they were only doing towns and cities. Hope it was recording, would be cool to be on it - I saw it coming and gave it a wave.


This morning's drive to work was probably the worst ever, I'll have a good long rant about it later when I get time.

flazio

Well the Beagh and Ard Carn roundabouts have been claimed back for the People's Republic of Roscommon. Roscommon County Crests have now been over laid on the Galway Crests on both Roundabouts.

KevR

On the way home yesterday I saw and got a picture of this at the N6 crossover near Aughrim (Ballinasloe-Galway scheme). Was there again this morning. Looked like a pile driver machine but I didn't get too good a look so I'm not sure.


Sorry for the poor quality of the picture. It was taken on my phone from inside my car while I was stopped in traffic.



On the Athlone-Ballinasloe scheme there was a machine hard at work washing down the surface a few kms from Ballinasloe yesterday morning and evening.

murphaph

Yup, pile driver.

Carawaystick

There seems good progress there, looks like the edge of a bridge support behind the pile driver. There wasn't much there at the May public holiday weekend.

mysterious

So how is work pace on this road, which scheme is likely to open sooner or what.

L1011

Torrential rain meant the traffic eastbound this evening (I was in Galway for work) was so bad around Oranmore and beyond that I decided to take the old road - the three structures where the M6 crosses over or under the Rwhatever (former T5 for people much, much older than me) all look very complete at this stage. Was a one way system in operation under one of them as they were realigning/relaying the R road.

KevR

Saw them using a couple of underbridges for construction traffic for the first time a few days back.

KevR

Filmed my drive on the N6 from Athlone to Oatfield today. The 3 video files are massive and are taking ages to upload - no chance of them being ready before I head to bed tonight. But I'll post them up tomorrow for sure.

Made a bit of a balls of recording them. I wanted to record seperate 10 minute clips so they could easily be uploaded to YouTube but all 3 videos ended up being more than 10 mins so I had to cut some bits out unfortunately.

KevR

Have tried uploading those videos several times and they keep failing. Not sure why - they're below the 1GB filesize limit, below the 10 minute runtime limit and are in a format that YouTube accepts.

Will see if I can get some software to convert to a different format and maybe reduce the filesize and hopefully it should work then.

Amtmann

KevR wrote: »

Filmed my drive on the N6 from Athlone to Oatfield today. The 3 video files are massive and are taking ages to upload - no chance of them being ready before I head to bed tonight. But I'll post them up tomorrow for sure.

Reduce them in size by using Windows Movie Maker, Kev. That's what I always do. You can get a 900MB video down to 65MB by opting to compress it to a "VHS Quality" size.

KevR

Furet wrote: »

Reduce them in size by using Windows Movie Maker, Kev. That's what I always do. You can get a 900MB video down to 65MB by opting to compress it to a "VHS Quality" size.

Windows Movie Maker doesn't seem to support .MOV format which is the format my camera videos are in. YouTube does support that format and I've uploaded a video from that same camera before (albeit a lot smaller in size).

I'm googling for something that can either convert or reduce the filesize of .MOV files. Hopefully I'll come across something that will do it for free..

BluntGuy

KevR wrote: »

Windows Movie Maker doesn't seem to support .MOV format which is the format my camera videos are in. YouTube does support that format and I've uploaded a video from that same camera before (albeit a lot smaller in size).

I'm googling for something that can either convert or reduce the filesize of .MOV files. Hopefully I'll come across something that will do it for free..

Windows Movie Maker wouldn't support them.

Try this:

http://www.magix.com/us/music-maker/?partnerid=9015

It's music software, and I have the pro edition. But... the demo is unlimited and supports .mov > .wmv/.avi or whatever common video formats you need.

You could also make them smaller... you can manually adjust size and quality.

KevR

Went for a long walk on the M6 (East) from the N18. Not a huge amount of progress here but these photos are different in that I never before went down onto the actual mainline at this location before.

Click for full size images

First 3 pictures are looking East:




It looks really curvy in this picture but the camera was on high zoom; it's not actually as bad as this photo makes it look.


Looking West towards the N18 junction. A lot of work still to be done here.

BluntGuy

Thank you for the pictures Kev...

I think this pretty much confirms that that stretch will be wide-median. Just how much of it will be that wide?

KevR

BluntGuy wrote: »

Thank you for the pictures Kev...

I think this pretty much confirms that that stretch will be wide-median. Just how much of it will be that wide?

From what I have seen it will be wide median from Athenry/Rathmorrissey to where the future Galway Bypass will branch off from the M6 near Galway Airport.

Anything I have seen East of Athenry is narrow median and (at the Western end) that short stretch between the Bypass branch-off and the Doughiska roundabout terminus is narrow median also.

Chris_533976

That all makes a lot of sense. I really hope you're right Rathmorrisey - Galway will be reasonably close to capacity from day 1 (based on a dodgy estimate of numbers), so that needs to be wide. Having it narrow from bypass branch-off to the terminus also makes sense, as it'll be a lot less important when (if) the bypass is built.

KevR

I'm probably wrong but from looking at the wide median bit it looks like there's a lot more work involved in doing the 2+2 wide median than there would be if they did 3+3 narrow median. If they did 3+3 narrow they could lay both carriageways in one go and stuff like that. If it ever does get upgraded it will be a painful and very costly job.

When you consider:

• It's more difficult to do wide median because the carriageways are laid seperately.
• The cost of putting grass and hedging into the median and maintaining it; especially considering it will all be ripped up if the motorway is ever upgraded.
• The cost and difficulty involved in ripping up a motorway while maintaining a live traffic flow if it's ever upgraded.

I'd love to know:

1. The initial cost difference between a 2+2 wide median and a 3+3 narrow median?
2. The overall cost difference (after an upgrade to 3+3) of a 2+2 wide and a 3+3 narrow?

Anyone have any estimates?

BluntGuy

I haven't seen any new-build D3 narrow medians here, so I couldn't tell you.

I like the wide-median for reasons other than just having future-proofing. The aesthetic quality is a big plus for me. After driving for ages with an ugly concrete/steel barrier in your face, it's refreshing to drive on a wide median segment. I'm very glad that 8 km of this scheme is going ahead as wide-median.

serfboard

KevR wrote: »

Looking West towards the N18 junction. A lot of work still to be done here.

Thanks for the photos. In fairness, I'd say most of the work here will take place after the new N18 bridge is finished. For those who don't know, you can see it under construction in Kev's last photo.

KevR

serfboard wrote: »

Thanks for the photos. In fairness, I'd say most of the work here will take place after the new N18 bridge is finished. For those who don't know, you can see it under construction in Kev's last photo.

Two pictures from early April:


Not a lot of progress that I could see when there yesterday. They must be concentrating their efforts more on other parts of the scheme at the moment.

Yeah as soon as they can get the bridge open they can start bulldozing the 'old' N18.

spacetweek

Anyone able to hazard a guess at the opening date for Athlone - Ballinasloe? It must be only about 4 months at this stage.

veryangryman

spacetweek wrote: »

Anyone able to hazard a guess at the opening date for Athlone - Ballinasloe? It must be only about 4 months at this stage.

That soon? Nah i doubt it. Look at the surface around Elan (Athlone West) area. Cant see that being finished in 4 months.

Ill say an October/November opening (maybe)

Recall that the Athlone-Kilbeggan section looked as good as done for ~6 months (from the exits anyway) before the actual opening

spacetweek

spacetweek wrote: »

Anyone able to hazard a guess at the opening date for Athlone - Ballinasloe? It must be only about 4 months at this stage.

I'd say August, the only major works left to do is the Athlone tie-in and that works flying along!

KevR

spacetweek wrote: »

Anyone able to hazard a guess at the opening date for Athlone - Ballinasloe? It must be only about 4 months at this stage.

As far as I know the final layer is already down in some places now and they are in the process of laying the final layer of asphalt on the rest of it. They've started putting in the barrier also (from looking at Kaizersoze's pictures in the other thread). Bear in mind it's a steel barrier that's going in - there's probably more manual labour involved in a steel barrier but they can probably do it quicker than a concrete barrier if they want because they can just assign more men to the barrier (whereas with concrete the machine they can't go any faster).

West Athlone near Elan has a lot of work still to do but that's because they couldn't start tie in work with the Athlone Bypass too soon or there would be too much disruption. I'm sure they're concentrating a lot of their efforts here so things there will take shape quicker than you might think.

All other sections are a lot more advanced than near Elan.

It should be a lot easier to estimate an opening date in a few more weeks as we can monitor their rate of laying the final layer of asphalt, installation of the barrier and progress near Elan.