M50 thread

Kermit.de.frog

marno21 wrote: »

Widening the M50 has been continiously ruled out by all parties involved.

It is not feasible for a multitude of reasons.

Why is it not feasible?

Of course it's feasible but the petals don't want to do it at the moment.

Two extra lanes each way and more flyovers at junctions would improve things enormously.

Much better chance of widening happening than tolling for political reasons.



Plenty of room. Let's get it done! :cool:

BonnieSituation

Kermit.de.frog wrote: »

Why is it not feasible?

Of course it's feasible but the petals don't want to do it at the moment.

Two extra lanes each way and more flyovers at junctions would improve things enormously.

Much better chance of widening happening than tolling for political reasons.



Plenty of room. Let's get it done! :cool:

And then when those lanes fill up?

Do you suggest to just keep adding lanes?

Getting needless private comnuter traffic off the roads is the only game in town.

Kermit.de.frog

Personally i'd set the limit at 10 lanes each way (if we needed it) including car pooling and HOV lanes.

Then i'd look at the outer ring motorway for Dublin...

marno21

Kermit.de.frog wrote: »

Why is it not feasible?

Of course it's feasible but the petals don't want to do it at the moment.

Two extra lanes each way and more flyovers at junctions would improve things enormously.

Much better chance of widening happening than tolling for political reasons.


Plenty of room. Let's get it done! :cool:

You picked one part of the M50 where there is space either side.

Not the parts where there are structures, developments beside the M50, or places like the Westlink.

The M50 has been upgraded. Spending several billion on further upgrades is a distraction from what's really needed.

smurph6

I'm flying out Saturday at 6.30pm from Dublin Airport. Was planning on taking the aircoach up from Cork. Will delays be bad on M50? I know on the aircoach site they said they'll be dropping passengers to Dublin airport first as opposed going through city. Just want to know what kinda time should I give myself

m5ex9oqjawdg2i

Widening the m50 to accommodate more traffic is very low on the list of stupid ideas to address the problem.

BonnieSituation

Kermit.de.frog wrote: »

Personally i'd set the limit at 10 lanes each way (if we needed it) including car pooling and HOV lanes.

Then i'd look at the outer ring motorway for Dublin...

And personally, why did you stop at 10 lanes?

marno21

Edward Tight Sailing wrote: »

Widening the m50 to accommodate more traffic is very low on the list of stupid ideas to address the problem.

Where is all the traffic going to go? The approach roads are also full

Aside from the multi billion cost of widening it. Addressing car dependence (especially needless car dependence) is the solution here

I would also build the eastern bypass before any M50 widening, and there are other solutions road based too such as measures around the Ballymount junction, perhaps a 2nd auxiliary lane between N4-N7 etc

Dravokivich

BonnieSituation wrote: »

And then when those lanes fill up?

Do you suggest to just keep adding lanes?

Getting needless private comnuter traffic off the roads is the only game in town.

The lanes don't create demand. They just release the choking elsewhere to get onto it.

But I don't think the m50 has much more opportunity for expansion. The way Dublin and surrounding counties have developed over the last 25 years means it's no longer suited to it's purpose. Just like the north/south circular roads.

Something needs to be done to enable people to make the journeys planners don't accept they need to. And that means reviewing what options there are with crossing liffey valley.

marno21

Dravokivich wrote: »

The lanes don't create demand. They just release the choking elsewhere to get onto it.

But I don't think the m50 has much more opportunity for expansion. The way Dublin and surrounding counties have developed over the last 25 years means it's no longer suited to it's purpose. Just like the north/south circular roads.

Something needs to be done to enable people to make the journeys planners don't accept they need to. And that means reviewing what options there are with crossing liffey valley.

They do create demand. The M50 maxed out at around 100k vehicles between N4-N7 back before it was upgraded, it's now carrying upto 170k vehicles per day and there has been no relief given to the surrounding roads.

I totally agree with your last point though. Extending the R136 Outer Ring Road across the Liffey to Blanchardstown really is a no brainer. The lack of Liffey crossing around the M50 are simply driving people onto the M50.

The toll is the obvious stumbling block here though.

Kermit.de.frog

For goodness sake. It's not rocket science. Expand the approach roads as well with extra lanes and flyovers.

Bigger, better roads is what we need.

marno21

Kermit.de.frog wrote: »

For goodness sake. It's not rocket science. Expand the approach roads as well with extra lanes and flyovers.

Bigger, better roads is what we need.

No, it's not rocket science. But even rocket science won't find you land to do this.

Bigger roads is the opposite of what we need, on the M50 corridor

Where will you find room to widen these?

Kermit.de.frog

There is room in all those locations for at least one extra lane. CPO for the rest.

Kermit.de.frog

Example

This could be the N4/M50 junction - full proper freeflow (though if the M50 mainline is under the flyovers i'd have an extra couple of lanes here)



And this should be the N4 itself....



When Dublin has roads like this there will be no problem! It will all work smoothly and never reach capacity in our lifetimes.

Incidentally i'm a big fan of the rumble strips in the line paintings! That should be implemented here too!!

marno21

LOL I give up

Dravokivich

marno21 wrote: »

They do create demand. The M50 maxed out at around 100k vehicles between N4-N7 back before it was upgraded, it's now carrying upto 170k vehicles per day and there has been no relief given to the surrounding roads.

I totally agree with your last point though. Extending the R136 Outer Ring Road across the Liffey to Blanchardstown really is a no brainer. The lack of Liffey crossing around the M50 are simply driving people onto the M50.

The toll is the obvious stumbling block here though.

The extra vehicles is because there's more people driving from outside Dublin. The m50 is the first major roadway available to disperse around Dublin for high volume traffic. Which'll continue to increase with time.

marno21

marno21 wrote: »

LOL I give up

Yeah, It's like an obese patient going to the doctor anf been told to get the next size up in clothing rather than to lose weight!
What is needed it to look at why there is so much traffic and either disperse the places of work, more accommodation in the city or better public transport, or a combination of all of these and other measures.

Kamili

I'm actually shocked that some posters on here think Ireland has the money to doll out building US style motorways, let alone the land or space, then theres the resources. Where do they think this money is going to come from?

Simply building more and more lanes doesn't solve the issue. Poor planning, and our unreliable/sub standard and expensive public transport needs to be looked at before considering ah sure whack a US style 10 lane motorway in. and ah sure if that doesn't work feck in more lanes.

The issues of bad routes on Public transport is forcing people into their cars. Taking 2-3 hours to get across a small city on a bus, is crazy. Lack of public or too expensive public transport options from commuter towns is also pushing more and more into their cars and clogging up roads.

There is some epic trolling going on on this thread.

BonnieSituation

I was willing to take KDF's ignorance on the matter at face value til I saw the posts/images above.

So, I guess we can move swiftly on.

marno21

The M50 must be quite improved this morning, M1 closed SB J5-J4, and the R132 is barely coping with the traffic so there's a lot less traffic feeding into the M50 from the M1 corridor

rameire

unfortunately not.
N3 inbound was very heavy.
and M50 was very heavy from Lucan junction all the way to Jn12.

Kamili

Northbound was slightly slower than previous weeks too, and the brake light checkers and late lane changers/swervers are back. Along with the dawdling middle and right lane hoggers.

Sigh.. I miss summer

Kermit.de.frog

Jesus!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QikEacxthSY

US rumble strips instead of line painting could help with the drunks.

prunudo

Hope they got sorted. The beauty of a traffic cam, makes life a lot easier when having to explain something to an insurance company.

Kamili

piece in the Journal about the number of incidents on the M50 since 2017

http://www.thejournal.ie/m50-crashes-foi-4278822-Oct2018/

THE COUNTRY’S BIGGEST motorway has witnessed more than 5,100 accidents and incidents since the beginning of 2017.

Dublin’s M50 ring road has recorded “incidents” at the rate of over 243 per month, according to a detailed list provided by Transport Infrastructure Ireland.

And one just for Kermit:

A spokesman for Transport Infrastructure Ireland said that with 50 million journeys a year, the motorway was no longer a ring road but rather within the city suburbs.

Sean O’Neill said: “Options for increasing capacity are not endless and eventually there comes a point when adding lanes and upgrading junctions is no longer feasible.”

L1011

And Sean O'Neill is American!

Cantona's Collars

Proposals to bring in lower speed limits at times on the M50 to try to reduce congestion. That would simply be unworkable. At many times the speed on the road is reduced to a crawl for mile after mile.
Recently I travelled southbound on a Sunday afternoon and the traffic came to a halt past Carrickmines,the cause-eejits jumping across from the overtaking lane to try and exit at Bray causing everyone behind them to brake and then we saw the concertina effect as traffic for miles behind simply stopped.

Bray Head

It's counter-intuitive but the lower the speed limit, the more capacity a road can carry.


I drove around Antwerp a few years back and saw very aggressive traffic management using variable speed restrictions on its ring-motorway.


Every few hundred metres was a speed limit sign which varied between 50 and 110 I think.


The traffic was very heavy and, although it came close to snarling, it never actually came to a crawl even with extremely heavy traffic.

Alun

Cantona's Collars wrote: »

Recently I travelled southbound on a Sunday afternoon and the traffic came to a halt past Carrickmines,the cause-eejits jumping across from the overtaking lane to try and exit at Bray causing everyone behind them to brake and then we saw the concertina effect as traffic for miles behind simply stopped.

Yes, it's crazy ... there's a whole 1.5km of sliproad between where the M11 joins to the Bray North exit for traffic to sort itself out into the right lane, more than enough if everyone planned ahead a little bit.

Bray Head

Kamili wrote: »

piece in the Journal about the number of incidents on the M50 since 2017

A spokesman for Transport Infrastructure Ireland said that with 50 million journeys a year, the motorway was no longer a ring road but rather within the city suburbs.

That is a bit silly. The M50 has been a conduit for traffic in and around Dublin since it was built.