Why are Irish roads so potholed and bumpy?

Aidan1

Sorry to dig up an old thread - this subject came up recently, both in this thread and in another that was around here recently.

Other countries are having to examine the Finnish solution to rural roads also.

http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/02/new-roads-solid-as-crushed-rock/

As populations in rural Ireland continue to decline, particularly in thoses areas beyond the peri-urban, this type of solution will have to be examined in greater detail, together with the option of just abandoning some roads all together. We simply cannot afford to keep maintaining this vast network of rural roads, most of which are very rarely used.

KevR

from Aidan1's link wrote:

studies done after gravel conversions show that in low-traffic areas, crushed stone is is better than potholed pavement.

It could be argued that gravel roads would lead to people reducing their speed on the narrow/bending/dangerous roads in question so improved safety?

Might improve safety, but then again it might not. People would probably drive a bit slower but I'm guessing braking distances would be increased on a gravel road (in an emergency braking situation).

Another benefit would be that gravel roads wouldn't be as badly affected by ice/frost.

Aidan1

... and even if they were, they could be graded back into shape relatively cheaply. Actually, I'm guessing they'd be much more environmentally friendly than bitumen roads anyways, due to the fact that they'd have a lower fossil content, and would be introducing less hydrocarbon into the ecosystem.

busman

Aidan1 wrote: »

As populations in rural Ireland continue to decline, particularly in thoses areas beyond the peri-urban, this type of solution will have to be examined in greater detail, together with the option of just abandoning some roads all together. We simply cannot afford to keep maintaining this vast network of rural roads, most of which are very rarely used.

The problem with this idea is that most rural roads have a house at the end! Very few a rarely used. Land in Ireland is broken up into very small farms, average is <32 hectares. That is why we have a vast rural road network.

As for using graded roads, it would work if you removed the main cause of the poor surface of roads in Ireland - Water and poor drainage!

The reason most potholes start is that water pools in pockets that are present in bumpy roads.
Another reason is utter lack of maintenance of drainage ditches. Many roads now are more like rivers when there is heavy rain, the crushed rock would just be washed away into the remaining ditches.

Most of the fixing of roads that the councils are busy doing now is a total waste of time and money. They haven't fixed the cause, they are just treating the symptom!

In my own location, I live about a mile down a boreen where the public road ends. There are two houses and two farms after that. One is a dairy farm so has a milk lorry visiting regularly. The other is a out farm and the farmer uses a big front loader to visit every day to feed silage. The road surface has disappeared along most of its length, nothing left but gravel and craters!

Just like politicians, Ireland's roads has and always will be of low quality. I have learned to accept both, just drive slower and vote faster ;-)

Zoney

Yeah, I wonder have some commentators really been out in the wilds of the country, where once you go off the main roads, it is traditional style grass up the middle, little better than gravel surface (or indeed worse if it's almost degenerated into mud) and certainly the councils aren't really putting resources into them! I mean maybe you could fix them up to be proper gravel roads and they'd be better than what's there now, but I don't think people here are suggesting *more* investment than at present.

And as for the other main local roads, I doubt traffic is low enough to allow gravel roads. I also don't think our R roads are lacking in proper surface because the councils are spending a fortune on local roads.

I mean in Finland, and even to some extent the US, you are talking about far more scarcely populated land than ours, and not just because of one-off housing here, but just because it's a relatively small area on the island compared to the vast open spaces in those other countries.

The main reason for the roads here being as they are is due to a lack of funds due to our low general taxation (low personal and corporate, none for some, no domestic rates) and motor taxes are used to supplement general expenditure.

murphaph

I think folks who want to live in the middle of nowhere should club together and pay for their own boreens etc., just like they do with their community water schemes. Don't see why roads should be maintained that only serve a handful of people who have made the choice to live outside an urban area.

Here in Germany you could be driving along a Landstrasse (something between a Regional road and an Autobahn) which will be fine but once you enter a community (Gemeinde) the road turns to sh!t because the federal state won't fund these bits. If the community can't find the money from it's local tax take to fund the road, it just deteriorates. The state believes that the landstrasse is of statewide importance but because you can only drive at 50 through the village they don't consider it a part of the landstrasse, if you know what I mean. The side roads of the landstrasse will often be in bits unless the adjacent landowners maintain them themselves or pay for their maintenance. Germany in general does not try to make it appealing to live off the beaten track. It costs a fortune to get a new electricity supply, for example, if you don't live beside one.

Zoney

murphaph:

Well, not *everything* Germany does is sensible, and that sounds like one of them. If the road is really between a regional road and autobahn, it sounds absurd to have the condition of the road through a settlement determined by the wealth/organisation/poverty of the settlement.

I suppose in a sense we have a worse example of that in practice with the local county councils doing road maintanance (and this affects even roads of national importance) and some councils are poorer than others and you can see the effects on the roads. Although probably a good idea, the roads would merely be more consistent if maintained centrally - without extra cash they wouldn't magically be better.

However, I'm not sure you grasp what I'm saying about boreens - I think in practice here in Ireland these *don't* get attention unless local landowners/homeowners pay for dumping a bit of gravel in the holes. Although maybe in the council areas with more cash or less area to cover this is not so true - my experiences are mainly based on visiting farms/homes in the midlands, Limerick and Cork.

ardmacha

I think folks who want to live in the middle of nowhere should club together and pay for their own boreens etc.

Ah right. So your policy is that where a community have an above average draw on resources that they should pay the extra themselves? This could have great potential, make the immigrants pay for the extra English tution themselves, levy people in rough areas for the additional cost of policing, areas with a lot of mortgages could be required to pay for NAMA. You could be on to something here, such measures would indeed release a lot of funds for roads.

L1011

The issue isn't boreens, its the regional/local roads which lead to two or three boreens and nowhere else but which the council is expected to pay for the mainto on that are the problem.

A proper redrawing of regional roads followed by a staunch refusal for the state to ever pay a cent for the remainder of the network wouldn't go amiss.

Zoney

ardmacha wrote: »

Ah right. So your policy is that where a community have an above average draw on resources that they should pay the extra themselves? This could have great potential, make the immigrants pay for the extra English tution themselves, levy people in rough areas for the additional cost of policing, areas with a lot of mortgages could be required to pay for NAMA. You could be on to something here, such measures would indeed release a lot of funds for roads.

To some extent that is already the way things work here in Ireland, although not to the same scale as parts of the US. For some middle-class commentators here it probably is barely noticed, but for those with tighter circumstances, or further down the ladder, all these administration fees, taxes etc. that you have in interacting with government services can be an almost unaffordable extra.

Income tax is much fairer, and it would be cheaper for the country as a whole to run some of the services that people currently have to finance out of their own pocket. The ultimate example of this is health care in the US - costs more even for the well-off compared to what it would with a public system.

Aidan1

The problem with this idea is that most rural roads have a house at the end!

That's exactly my point - they have 'a house' at the end. Why is the state paying for road access for individual houses? There is an assumption in much of rural Ireland that there is a 'right' to services at a universal cost, no matter where you live, regardless of the cost of provision. I'm not arguing that people shouldn't have the right to live in the countryside, just that they should pay the full economic cost of servicing their lifestyle, or at least pay on a trajectory that echoes the increase in cost incurred by all because of their decision.

Land in Ireland is broken up into very small farms, average is <32 hectares. That is why we have a vast rural road network.

Which brings me neatly to point #2. The demographics of much of rural Ireland are, frankly, horrible - at least outside of the peri urban areas. In some ways, this huge stored problem is reflected by two separate problems, each reflective of the political inability to tackle the power of the rural lobby. In the first instance, there has been a proliferation of one off rural houses since the 1970s (I say this as someone who grew up in rural Cork in one such bungalow), but most of these houses are linked to urban based employment. In the second, there has long been a huge structural problem in Irish agriculture, a problem that is slowly excising itself - albeit in a painful and economically costly way. Farm sizes are increasing, but just as importantly, a lot of land is no longer being farmed (thanks to the SFP), and more and more will go into forestry over the coming years. Just because we have a historical problem with small and unproductive farms doesn't mean that we should premise our policy decisions around that remaining unchanged forever.

In real terms, this means that the dependency ratio in much of rural Ireland is very worrying* - there is a huge structural aging problem that is going to work itself out over the next while, with real consequences for services and businesses in these areas. Seamus Cuddy once called this 'the circular cycle of culmulative causation' - hackneyed by now, but true - falling populations will lead to a contraction in services, leading to further population declines.

In and of itself, that'd suck, but the effect of the last few years has been to imprint long term structural unemployment in much of those areas outside of the economic reach of the cities. In much of the BMW region, for example, there is a huge oversupply of housing, and so the building trade is effectively dead for the next 10 years. Those regions were also characterised by a stabilisation in population due to the slow down in emigration for the first time in a century in the last decade. That stabilisation is over, and people are leaving again - and the ecomonic recovery, when it happens, will be largely an urban based phenomenon, just like the first phase of the Celtic Tiger.

I haven't run the figures yet (because I don't have access to a proper GIS anymore), but you can take it as a given that there will be a very significant return to the longer term trajectories of rural decline at the next census. Why should the tax payer be subsidising services in these areas when there are going to be a whole range of other much more worthy uses for revenue over the coming years? Actually, looking solely at the energy balance of rural Ireland, the long term sustainability of much of the housing stock is also very questionable**. People commuting very long distances is fine with oil at 75 dollars a barrel, but wait until it has sat at 150 or 200 dollars a barrel for an extended period. The whining and pleading for Govt support for rural 'communities' (read people living in McMansions, miles from the nearest village) will become unbearable.

Essentially, this is part of a larger question of how we mean to manage our society, and it's spatial arrangement. We have stored up a huge problem for ourselves because of our inability or unwillingness to confront the consequences of our actions. We are slowly coming to terms with the implications, and I think that LAs and Central Govt are freshly empowered to try and deal with some of these issues, and are less likely to be hidebound by the lobby of the past. There remain serious problems though - the debate over the Mayo County Development Plan last year being a case in point, and Laois and Cavan before that being likewise. Wait until NAMA is recommending the widespread de-zoning of land. That'll be a real test.

And if the question of knowledge of rural Ireland was directed at me -don't bother, I have a lot of experience of the subject, academic and practical - but lets play the ball, and not the man. I don't want to have to whip out my qualifications in public, it's not polite.

*There's a great book of GIS maps of the 2002 census put together by NIRSA which illustrates this, and a range of other issues very clearly - http://www.nuim.ie/nirsa/research/publications/AtlasDL_000.pdf.pdf

Edgar Morgenroth also has a great Article in the most recent proceedings of the SSISI called "Exploring the Economic Geography of Ireland".

** There's a good article by Richard Tol and a whole load of others in the SSISI Journal called "Towards Regional Environmental Accounts for Ireland", which neatly complements some work done by the WDC (though perhaps not in the way they would like) on the environmental costs of certain policy decisions.

ardmacha

As I said if your principle is that people should pay for themselves that is one principle. But this has to be applied in every case. The money spent on the Ballymun regeneration would maintain every minor road in the country for the next 50 years.

Aidan1

The principle at hand is around a political decision regarding the extent to which the State has an obligation to individuals to provide services, not the more fundamental argument about whether that 'obligation' exists. I'm categorically not suggesting that people should be expected to pay for everything themselves, but rather that in cases where the social benefit of expenditure is limited to a very small number of people, that it would be more appropriate for those people to pay for these services themselves, rather than relying on everybody else to subsidise their choices. It's a similar principle to the 'polluter pays' one, after all.

There are plenty of more rational uses for taxpayer's money than perenially patching up boreens that are used by very few people - not least in the provision of services that are of genuine universal benefit, like primary and secondary education, healthcare, and, at a remove, national infrastructure.

Btw - you are monumentally underestimating the cost of the upkeep of the rural road network!

ardmacha

but rather that in cases where the social benefit of expenditure is limited to a very small number of people, that it would be more appropriate for those people to pay for these services themselves, rather than relying on everybody else to subsidise their choices.

I suggest that we apply this principle to drug clinics and the like in the first instance.

Btw - you are monumentally underestimating the cost of the upkeep of the rural road network!

The roads in question are invariably narrow, lightly trafficked, and not very well maintained, so only attract a fraction of spending per Km. Say you prune 10% of the road network, which would be a huge cut unless you want to depopulate the country entirely, then you'd save perhaps 2% of expenditure. Now local authorities may be adding to this, but I don't think I am "monumentally" underestimating.

Aidan1

If you're talking about rehabilitation facilities (and prisons btw), I think you'll find that the social benefit is more broadly enjoyed than just the addicts themselves.

Again - large areas of the the countryside are depopulating anyways (not to zero, but to a new, lower equilibrium). Taking a policy stance that certain roads not be maintained, or be actively turned to gravel, would free up LA expenditure for much needed investment in more heavily traffic R and N roads. However, if we continue to assert that all roads must be maintained because they always have been, then we risk (or rather ensure) that a proportion of spend goes forever on a rapidly shrinking % of the population.

Tech3

A website has been setup lately to highlight the amount of potholes that are appearing on routes around the country. It's a good inititiave but the county councils have to look at this website. There is no point whatsoever settting it up without a guarantee from the council to keep tabs on their area daily. Over 100 have been reported already on the website and when I log on there will certainly be some more to report.

http://www.potholes.ie/

Media report

LOCAL authorities that fail to repair dangerous potholes on roads throughout the country will be named and shamed as part of a new online campaign.



In response to the damage caused by the January freeze, www.ripoffireland.org founder David Wall has set up a website to address the need for vital maintenance.

As part of the independent www.potholes.ie campaign, anyone affected by pothole damage has been urged to log on to the website and report details of their complaint.

This information will be sent immediately to participating city and county councils who will be asked to repair the damage caused – a step which has allegedly failed to take place inrecent weeks.

While commuters are continuing to highlight potholes across the country that were first reported last month, a Department of Transport spokeswoman said the office was addressing the matter.

She said the "important thing to note" was that €411 million was set aside for regional and rural road development on Monday, with a further €180m road repairs fund also available.

Mr Wall said he hopedlocal authorities would react quickly to the issues raised, despite the fact that councils have previously insisted they are not legally responsible for road maintenance claims.

However, if local authorities fail to react swiftly to the information, the online campaign’s founder said they will be named and shamed on the website. "People are delighted to have somewhere where they can actually report their potholes and have their say," Mr Wall told RTÉ’s Gerry Ryan Show.

"We also have a reporting system, so it will automatically send the details to the councils. If they still don’t fix them [the potholes] the website will show that," he added.

Meath has topped the list as the county with the most complaints on the website so far.

http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/kfkfmhcwidcw/rss2/

anneboleyn

Pretty certain we could better that if we rally the troops in Tipp and Limerick and Kerry

KevR

New craze in Galway of digging foot wide holes the whole way across the road. I think it could be something to do with telecomms but I'm not sure. Anyway they rarely fill the holes properly afterwards - the tar they dump into it sinks down a couple of inches and you get a teeth rattling bang everytime you have to drive over one of these. Not possible to avoid it as it goes the whole way across the road.

:mad:

popebenny16

anneboleyn wrote: »

Pretty certain we could better that if we rally the troops in Tipp and Limerick and Kerry

the situation in north tipp is nothing short of a scandal. once you cross over the laois or kilkenny or offaly border you will hit a large pothole within a few hundred meters. it is a disgrace, in some places NTCC should be putting in temporary lights as one side of the road is totally destroyed as the holes have joined up, but the other side is not that bad (only having a few holes), and these are on R roads, not L's.

what they do, as been outlined above, is chuck tarmack in with a shovel and pat it down (although they have invested in a whacker plate recently :eek:) but the tarmack is out within a day.

the other thing (the only word i have for it) is this yoke that blasts a mixture of tar and chippings into a hole -looks like a road sweeper truck -but also blasts them everywhere else, and which lasts a few days.

Of course, the standard of chucking loose chippings on tar that is the choice os resurfacing is the main problem, as it just wears off so fast.

charlemont

SURE IT,LL DO......................




thats what a cute hoor politician would secretly think,,, ha ha yeah they are a disgrace

fitman

I agree with alot that is said here,espicially about old bohereens being resurfaced at the tax payers expense,def think they should be covered with gravel or something thats less expensive to repair. Im a cyclist at a very high level so I've cycled on every type of raod you can imagine,my point on all this is the actual road surface itself,now Ive seen roads covered in tar and just sprayed with stone chips which are the biggest load of ****,and a complete waste of money,they throw up lose stone chips which contribute to the wear of the surface and they degrade as soon as there is bad weather or frost. These will last about two years max before they are back to square one. The council will usually be the one to put this ****e down. Then you have private contractors who will put down tarmacadam,Ive seen these roads last more than ten years without any holes or repairs needed on them,they are beautiful to cycle on and to drive on. Why cant the local councils put down roads like this all the time,would save on the repairs,would save on claims for car damage,would save on the roads having to be laid again in two or three years. And the best excuse is the "WE(IRELAND) HAVE A VERY VARIED WEATHER WHICH MAKES IT DIFFICULT TO MAINTAIN ROADS".....because in countries like,France,Italy,Poland and Germany it never snows with temperature dropping to -10 and in their summers it doesnt get hot with teperatures up to and over 30 degrees.

and check this link to different surface types,Tar and chip photo is for a laneway.
http://www.stoneroadtarmac.com/surfacetypes.html

wellboss

fitman wrote: »

I agree with alot that is said here,espicially about old bohereens being resurfaced at the tax payers expense,def think they should be covered with gravel or something thats less expensive to repair. Im a cyclist at a very high level so I've cycled on every type of raod you can imagine,my point on all this is the actual road surface itself,now Ive seen roads covered in tar and just sprayed with stone chips which are the biggest load of ****,and a complete waste of money,they throw up lose stone chips which contribute to the wear of the surface and they degrade as soon as there is bad weather or frost. These will last about two years max before they are back to square one. The council will usually be the one to put this ****e down. Then you have private contractors who will put down tarmacadam,Ive seen these roads last more than ten years without any holes or repairs needed on them,they are beautiful to cycle on and to drive on. Why cant the local councils put down roads like this all the time,would save on the repairs,would save on claims for car damage,would save on the roads having to be laid again in two or three years. And the best excuse is the "WE(IRELAND) HAVE A VERY VARIED WEATHER WHICH MAKES IT DIFFICULT TO MAINTAIN ROADS".....because in countries like,France,Italy,Poland and Germany it never snows with temperature dropping to -10 and in their summers it doesnt get hot with teperatures up to and over 30 degrees.

and check this link to different surface types,Tar and chip photo is for a laneway.
http://www.stoneroadtarmac.com/surfacetypes.html

I completey agree with you, i'm also a cyclist and cannot believe the state of some of the road surfaces. Everytime I come home from a cycle I go on a rant to my father , The surfaces are terrible and the Co Co and town councils keep doing the same thing over and over again, I understand that funds are low but where is the long term thinking?, do it right now and it wont have to be done again for a long time.

Can anybody explain the thinking behind the "lose chippings" road surface, as the last poster mentioned they throw down some tar then dump big chippings on top which is a rough as hell, even if this is the best they can do, why not put down small chippings so that when(and they will) big trucks and vans come along and pull up the top surface it wont be as rough as it is when big chippings are used

Roughly a year ago I arrived home from abroad to find the road from my house to the the town limits had been completely resurfaced with an immaculate tarmac surface, a good quality road, roughly 1.5km in length. After years of loose chipping roads and more potholes than i'd be able to count, I thought to myself they finally got it right, however 3 months later I was down home again and I couldnt believe my eyes, the muppetts in the council had come alog and put loose chippings down on this perfect surface, mostly big chippings and then a little patch of smaller ones, to say i was pissed off was an understatement. In the time been just like every other road like this some spots have been pulled up as alot of large vehicles use this road daily, the smaller chippings have just gathered in a heap on the side of the road after coming loose in the cold weather. I sent the council a mail about this but never got a reply, typical:rolleyes:

CAN SOMEBODY PLEASE PLEASE EXPLAIN TO ME THE LOGIC USED WHEN PUTTING DOWN THE SECOND SURFACE!!!

It wasnt even needed and was just a waste of funds:rolleyes:, no wonder they have no money when they are at this craic, the worst thing is iv seen this in lots of places while out on my cycles and the end result is always the same, a s***e rough surface that would nearly shake the wheels of the bike:mad::mad:

After watching the Tour De France and seeing good quality surfaces wind up the sides of 2000m high mountains with nothing but goats in the fields around them I don't think it's unfair of us to ask for a little bit of quality:cool::cool:

Can anything be done about this???????? Because if it keeps going on we will have S***e roads for years to come

Rant Over

Brian CivilEng

wellboss wrote: »

CAN SOMEBODY PLEASE PLEASE EXPLAIN TO ME THE LOGIC USED WHEN PUTTING DOWN THE SECOND SURFACE!!!

There are two road treatments which look similar but are actually quite different, surface dressing and road strengthening. Surface dressing is, to put it in the only way i can, just surface dressing, they put a load of asphalt and chippings on the surface of the road. This improves the grip and makes the road look better, but is only temporary. If a road is desperately in need of remedial works but the money is not there surface dressing will extend it's life for another year or two and full works can be programmed for when there is room in the budget. that way it is common to see a road that has been neglected in years get some works then what seems like a few months later get ripped up and done again. It is not a mistake or a waste of money, there just isn't enough money to pay for everything that urgently needs to be done.
Road strengthening involves ripping the top layer of the road off and putting down a new layer of asphalt then resurfacing. This gives the road another 10 years of life or so. If a road is breaking up due to traffic levels or the winter weather surface dressing might make it look perfect but in a few months it will be back to where it was before the works.

dynamick

To the OP who asks why Belgium has better surfaced roads than Ireland the answer is simple: twice the population but the same length of road network means twice as much tax money to maintain roads . Also Ireland is a low tax economy with very little local taxation. Belgium has property tax for example.

Aidan1 wrote: »

Again - large areas of the the countryside are depopulating anyways (not to zero, but to a new, lower equilibrium).

Is this true? Here are the population change stats for the country from 2002-2006



The average for the state is 8% but you can see that most of the city populations and south dublin/dun laoghaire are down at the bottom while connacht & plenty of rural counties are far above average growth. My sense is that the country has been ruralising over the past 13 years or so. What the stats don't show is whether people are leaving towns and villages for open countryside. My sense is that around 30% of dwellings in Ireland are one-offs but the one-off rate for new housing is more like 40%.

Brian CivilEng

As a matter of interest is that graph based on the last census? There was a Munster game in Dublin that day which had a not insignificant effect on the populations of Limerick and Cork, it's interesting that in your graph every region increased to some extent except Limerick and Cork.

It's important to remember when considering Ireland's road density that in the early 1850's the island of Ireland had a population of 8 million, compared with the approx 5.5 million on the island now. However the cities were much smaller, Dublin only had 250,000 inhabitants for example. The population was much more spread out and most of our boreens date from this era. The do not reflect the current population so it is not in the best financial interest to maintain them. The matter of which roads get priority is down to daily traffic, areas served and local influence.

wellboss

abitofacomedian wrote: »

Road strengthening involves ripping the top layer of the road off and putting down a new layer of asphalt then resurfacing. This gives the road another 10 years of life or so.

Yeah I think this is what they did on the road im refering to, the road definitely needed strengthening as sewerage works from the previous year had the road in tatters, However i dont understand the need for the surface dressing?, the original asphalt/tarmacadam surface was PERFECT, they have it in other areas of the town and the surface is as smooth as it was 10 years ago.

Why put surface dressing on it when its not needed? It gets ripped off in places and leaves a very uneven bumpy surface. This is what i find hard to understand and it is seen all over the country

quattro5

Just back from driving around France, Belgium, Holland, UK and the Mosel region of Germany. First off, our motorways are something we can be very proud of (alignment, curvature and surface), taking VMS and the disgraceful lack of service stations out of the picture of course. Yes they're new and yes there are one or two roundabout endings but these are common in Holland as well.

After driving to hilltops in Germany, I could've cried with joy (and frustration thinking of Ireland) at how even German bad roads are amazingly smooth and well-lined.

The Belgian corpo seem to have attended the same tarmac laying school as ours, every road from boreen to motorway is bumpy as hell with widespread surface disintegration.

One obvious thing about signage in all these countries is that when roadworks are warned about, they're happening. There's no signs and cones for a job that finished years ago like we have here. No permanent "icy patch ahead" signs!

We're getting there but there's so much we can improve, a lot of it is commonsense and is not being done due to laziness as opposed to lack of money.

Brian CivilEng

Usually it's to increase the grip, road surfaces can get worn down so much they are effectively polished. I don't know the specific case, could be any number of reasons not immediately apparent.

dubhthach

abitofacomedian wrote: »

As a matter of interest is that graph based on the last census? There was a Munster game in Dublin that day which had a not insignificant effect on the populations of Limerick and Cork, it's interesting that in your graph every region increased to some extent except Limerick and Cork.

The major problem in both Limerick and Cork is boundaries. Limerick has reduced the population within the city boundary every census since 1991. The sooner the boundary is extended the better. Likewise with Cork, there was a proposal couple years ago from Cork City to expand boundary. I think the end result would have been a city population of over 200k.

Stonewolf

The "Tar & Chips" approach infuriates me. I ride a motorcycle and for a significant period after this kind of surface has been layed down it's very dangerous for me to travel on so I have to go very, very slowly.