N4 - Newcastle Road junction underpass

r3nu4l

Now that the work on the N4 Newcastle road junction has been completed, has the traffic situation in that part of Lucan improved?

I know that when the traffic lights were on that junction there was often tailbacks as far as Woodies and the Foxhunter, has that changed?

IvySlayer

Traffic is much smoother in my opinon. Those lights were a nightmare. I live in Dodsboro, near Hillcrest, if I'm going through Hillcrest and want to turn right to superquinn, ARGH! I can be waiting ages.

I haven't walked anywhere near it, just driven past, can you still walk to superquinn from courtneys/lucan village?

smelltheglove

Much better since the works started in the surrounding areas but for me traffic is worse as esker lane has been closed but as for the N4 I do agree it is much smoother.

r3nu4l

So no more crawling at 5 mph from the Foxhunter to the Newcastle road junction? Cool!

I'm from Hillcrest originally so I can see what you mean about trying to get out onto the Newcastle road (towards Superquinn). Must be even harder now that there's no break in the traffic.

Solve one problem...worsen another

robinph

The traffic does still run a bit slow from about the Foxhunter though, not entirely sure why though as there certainly isn't ant lights now once you get past Palmerstown.

IvySlayer

robinph wrote: »

The traffic does still run a bit slow from about the Foxhunter though, not entirely sure why though as there certainly isn't ant lights now once you get past Palmerstown.

There's roadworks going on at Spa Hotel, might have an effect, there is the turn into Lucan, and sometimes people swich lanes to get into it. Sometimes that trails back. Also I think there's some lights when going towards Weston?

Heroditas

IvySlayer wrote: »

There's roadworks going on at Spa Hotel, might have an effect, there is the turn into Lucan, and sometimes people swich lanes to get into it. Sometimes that trails back. Also I think there's some lights when going towards Weston?

Exactly, the reason for the tailbacks is quite simply the roadworks that extend up past the Spa. The two lanes will eventually become three lanes and this will speed up traffic an awful lot. Currently it's very hard for traffic coming up from Lucan village to merge out by the Spa - resulting in the westbound traffic slowing down - resulting in tailbacks to the Foxhunter.

Dan_B

I travel this road every day and can say Categorically that it has made absolutley no difference if you are heading west on the N4.
I get home at the same time now as before it opened.

Winger_PL

That'll change once the roadworks by the SPA hotel are completed, which I reckon may happen within the next month or so - they currently work on it quite extensively.
Once the two lane merging locations (at the underpass and at the hotel) are eliminated and the whole section is 3 lanes down the Celbridge exit, the queues will be gone. It'll still be slow I reckon, but the trafiic should be steady at around 40-50 kph during rush hours.

madds

Well does anyone have a completion date for that part by the Spa? I joined the N4 at the M50 junction at 7:15pm this evening and had to queue to get onto it. It was bumper to bumper from there until we passed the SPA. Took 30 minutes to cover those 3 miles.

doolox

I have used the N4 on occasion but avoid it like the plague at rush hour because of the slowness of the traffic. As said earlier the lights at Newcastle Rd should have eliminated the jams but it seems not to have had any effect.
People are not planning their exits on time and crap signage could have something to do with this.
Also the traffic exiting for Celbridge and Leixlip is sometimes backed down onto the left lane of the N4 making all the westbound traffic having to squeeze by into one lane.
They probably need 4 lanes there to do a right job like they did on the Red Cow section of the M50, a former traffic nightmare which is now a pleasure to drive once completed.
You need an extra lane for accidents, breakdowns and other mistakes and you need a constant cop and recovery truck presence on these roads (The Navan and Naas rds come to mind) even if the public had to form a club to pay for it.
The waste of time and petrol when some .........person...... has an accident is infuriating. One ....person... can hold 50-60 thousand people up for hours by their stupidity and carelessness the way our roads are run at their maximum capacity these days.
A similar hold up was on the Maynooth interchange at rush hour and they had to extend the Westbound exit lane extensively to cater for the pile-up of cars exiting to Maynooth and blocking the N4 as they did so.
Now the N4 from the Intel interchange onwards is a joy to drive as there are no blockages until you get to west of Athlone.
What is needed though is a constant Garda presence to stop the bad drivers having an accident and slowing things down.