N5 Ballaghaderreen Bypass

Geogregor

same ol sh1te wrote: »

Maybe you should drive the road before you comment on it

Maybe, but then internet forums would be mostly restricted to few locals. I think video gives reasonable good indication of the road design.

There very long steep hills that slow moving vehicles will have to reduce speed for. If an articulated lorry pulls out at Ballagh heading for Charlestown it will struggle to climb the long climb up the hill and unless the driver uses the hard shoulder they will cause a huge tailback behind if there is traffic coming the other way. This hill is 7-10km long (I'll measure next time)

Also, as I already said, the filter lanes are too short, much too short to slow in to enable you to turn left, therefore you are braking and slowing the traffic behind just so you can turn left.

All you write might be perfectly true but then:

markpb wrote: »

For this year:
N5 Between Tulsk and Frenchpark: 4708 AADT link
N5 Between Swinford and Charlestown: 4958 AADT link

With such low traffic counts few more conservative design features shouldn't be a problem.
There is two lane road near my hometown carrying 13670 AADT.
So, there are plenty of roads like that in Europe.

There is really no need for overengineered road in location with so low traffic.

veryangryman

Geogregor wrote: »

Maybe, but then internet forums would be mostly restricted to few locals. I think video gives reasonable good indication of the road design.



All you write might be perfectly true but then:


With such low traffic counts few more conservative design features shouldn't be a problem.
There is two lane road near my hometown carrying 13670 AADT.
So, there are plenty of roads like that in Europe.

There is really no need for overengineered road in location with so low traffic.

Its not so much the local traffic that would be using the road though. People doing a longer journey (Westport-Dublin etc) have enough woes doing that length of journey without tractors and the likes doing their nut in.

Your argument would make much of the M6, M8, M3, M9 obselete if followed. Look at the bigger picture.

markpb

veryangryman wrote: »

Its not so much the local traffic that would be using the road though. People doing a longer journey (Westport-Dublin etc) have enough woes doing that length of journey without tractors and the likes doing their nut in.

I drive Dublin to Belmullet fairly regularly and while tractors are certainly a pain, a high spec 13km stretch isn't going to make much difference on a 315km drive. If the entire route was DC, I'd be much happier but we have to be realistic about the volume of traffic on that road vs the amount of money that would need to be invested.

serfboard

veryangryman wrote: »

without tractors and the likes doing their nut in.

Surely tractors and their likes will be on the old (now local) road?

veryangryman

serfboard wrote: »

Surely tractors and their likes will be on the old (now local) road?

Didn't happen in athlone. I imagine they will use the bypass. Farmers are still farmers.

serfboard

serfboard wrote: »

Surely tractors and their likes will be on the old (now local) road?

Depends on where their fields are relative to the farm, they'll use the shortest route.

DJP

Does anyone now if the new road has the new road signage with Irish and English printed in the same size on it?

D Trent

Darren J. Prior wrote: »

Does anyone now if the new road has the new road signage with Irish and English printed in the same size on it?

That idea is for motorways only.
It's far too expensive to have it done on primary routes all over the country

DJP

D Trent wrote: »

That idea is for motorways only.

How do you know?

D Trent wrote: »

It's far too expensive to have it done on primary routes all over the country

There is little if indeed any cost at all because it only relates to new signs.

So can anyone who uses the road tell me are they on it??

L1011

There has been no change to the legislation for road signs as yet so no, it has the current ones.

DJP

MYOB wrote: »

There has been no change to the legislation for road signs as yet so no, it has the current ones.

Do you know for definite? Because Leo announced last year that the new ones would have the change. This issue is not covered by legislation. Maybe ideally it should be and that could happen with the review of the OLA being announced in the short months ahead of it but I would find it odd that they announced the change and then did not go ahead with it.

L1011

Darren J. Prior wrote: »

Do you know for definite? Because Leo announced last year that the new ones would have the change. This issue is not covered by legislation. Maybe ideally it should be and that could happen with the review of the OLA being announced in the short months ahead of it but I would find it odd that they announced the change and then did not go ahead with it.

Yes. Nothing has changed.

Road signs are covered by the Traffic Signs Manual which has not been changed.

D Trent

Darren J. Prior wrote: »

How do you know?



There is little if indeed any cost at all because it only relates to new signs.

So can anyone who uses the road tell me are they on it??

No they are not on the bypass

DJP

Thank you both for your responses. I have emailed the NRA to see what the story is with them.

markpb

Darren J. Prior wrote: »

I would find it odd that they announced the change and then did not go ahead with it.

Politicians announce things all the thing, it doesn't mean that it will happen soon or even happen at all. Every hair-brained political idea needs to be written into an SI or act which takes time to do (properly). Something which affects road signs, road safety and an expenditure of tens of millions over several years won't happen overnight.

spacetweek

Even if Varadkar did say that, it was an idea only and may never happen.
And it should not as Irish should not be given prominence in an English-speaking country.

RED L4 0TH

Now on Google Maps. Old route is still labelled the N5 though.

almccabe

its updated on HERE.com now also, old N5 re-named as L1244

YouTookMyName

This really helps on the road to dublin, good god.

The only problem is the stretch when it finishes until you leave tarmonbarry.

joujoujou

And funny thing - once old N5 (L1244 now) was N5 yet, it was perfectly safe to do 100km/h on it, but now it's not safe to do so anymore, so speed limit's been dropped to 80km/h now.

Carawaystick

L and R roads by default get an 80 limit.
The county council can increase the limit, if they wish, like Galway did with the old n6, or Louth did with the r132 and the road to Carlingford from Ballymascanlon.

But if they don't, then the limit is the default.

yop

V surprised they didn't put a passing out lane on that road. Was stuck behind 2 40ft lorries on Friday coming down from Dublin, weather was poor and visibility v hard to see, was stuck behind them from Tulsk, then I went to pass them on the new road on a broken line and there was a dip in the road and car heading for me!! Scared the life out of me and the person coming towards me had every right to be really peed off with me.
Why they have passing out lanes on the Knock/Claremorris road and not this one I can't figure.
Still takes time off though.

L1011

I'm not 100% sure if you can put 100km/h on an L road. There's a fair few R roads around with it, many of which were never N roads - all over North Cork for instance.

MayoSalmon

YouTookMyName wrote: »

This really helps on the road to dublin, good god.

The only problem is the stretch when it finishes until you leave tarmonbarry.

You basically mean the county of Roscommon:D

hardCopy

MayoSalmon wrote: »

You basically mean the county of Roscommon:D

A bypass of Tulsk, Bellanagare and Frenchpark would have had more of an impact, I never found Ballaghadereen itself to cause any real delays. You can easily be stuck doing 70kph for ages through these towns.

I know there are archaeological reasons why this hasn't been done which have been discussed on this forum before.

dubhthach

Lotusm has a good post with what Roscommon County council preferred route corridor, as can been seen it appears to give Cruachan Aí a wide berth.

lotusm wrote: »

Got a brochure from the National roads design office in Roscommon outlining the route from Ballaghaderreen to strokestown . Now this is a few years old and appears to be at stage 3 at the time "Route Corridor Selection"... Not sure how relevant it is but see attached details..

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=81560600&postcount=90

paulbok

Haven't seen any updated corridor map since this one, but the scheme has been extended from Scramogue to join up with the new Longford bypass. It'll be interesting to see this route considering the problem they had in sections of the bogs between Scramogue and Tarmon, and also where (if there is) a new bridge across the Shannon will be.

L1011

Surprised they aren't doing everything they can to try "preserve" the investment in the new bit between Longford and Strokestown - which would probably have been needed anyway even if all that was was a more direct L road between the towns...

It may explain why they haven't done the obvious, tiny, bypass of Stokestown too.

paulbok

L1011 wrote: »

Surprised they aren't doing everything they can to try "preserve" the investment in the new bit between Longford and Strokestown - which would probably have been needed anyway even if all that was was a more direct L road between the towns...

It may explain why they haven't done the obvious, tiny, bypass of Stokestown too.

The obvious bypass, going straight on at the bad bend at the old football field as you come into the town (Dublin side) would have to navigate around several small lakes to get back out onto the Tulsk road, map, then there is the issue of the Rathcroghan complex. This is why the preferred route completely bypasses both towns to the north.