I hate the M50 [Warning post #222]

oppenheimer1

Grandeeod wrote: »

In a car dependent city like Dublin and with no viable PT alternative to the M50 and how it has shaped the city, this is what we should expect. It has happened before. But its never an election issue..ever. You reap what you sow.

Personally I'm very saddened by some of the contributions here today. It's currently an injured person but could be a dead person. All the emphasis is on getting the motorway opened asap with little regard to life. There is very little emphasis on why we are trapped in our car dependency. There was talk about other European countries and how they would deal with this, but no talk of how the public transport infrastructure is generally better in these countries and the adverse affect of a road closure is lessened.

Take London as an example. A vast area. Even when their M25 is messed up, other parts of the London area function as normal. I've witnessed it. Now that's one big place. But Dublin gets choked to hell if the M50 stops. Why? PT is crap and with the effective cancellation of MN and DU we are heading for decades of misery.

But its not an election issuse, just a moanfest from a people that seem to not give a damn about human life and expect the road to be always open in front of them.

I'm not sure what you expect, for people to say: oh there was someone hurt, we can't talk about it?? The main orbital road around Dublin was essentially closed in one direction for the entirety of rush hour up to lunch time. Serious accident or not, its unacceptable. If you were in any sort of motorised transport in the capital today you would have been affected. No one is saying that the incident shouldn't be investigated but for an incident on the most important road in the country that is heavily congested, there should have been an army of people set up to investigate and clean up and have the road opened within 2 hours of the casualties leaving the scene.

There is little point in talking about car dependency and public transport policy on a day like today, because we are where we are. Events such as today should shape policy with the aim of reducing the importance of the M50 and its potential to be a single point of failure for Dublins transport network. That is a medium to long term vision that will take years to implement. There is absolutely nothing stopping the same event happening tomorrow morning, with the same chaos, which is due to the resourcing of the clean up response and management of the road.

Finally the attitude in this country seems to be if there's an accident on the roads, the specifics of the accident are never discussed. The news report will generally read, a single vehicle crash: one killed. It will never tell you the driver was drunk, tired, on the phone, joyriding, in a vehicle that wasn't road worthy or wasn't paying care and attention. The end result of this is that people say - this was an accident, could happen to anyone, and move on. Most importantly, no lessons are learned.

RustyNut

JMSE wrote: »

So who to blame, who knows, but theres bad engineering at play.

In my opinion that junction must have been designed by some transition year student on work experience who got their hands on the cad machine, its dreadful.

P_Cash

Lol,

Asked to build up speed in order to merge, but what happens when at ur time to merge u can't,

Better not be above 80 if that happens

simdan

Superhorse wrote:

Love the M50. Irish drivers are some of the best in the world imo. If you want bad driving in abundance take a trip to Vietnam.

Eh no.. I don't know what else to say but no

BohsCeltic

RustyNut wrote: »

In my opinion that junction must have been designed by some transition year student on work experience who got their hands on the cad machine, its dreadful.

Blanch is similar. Inner lane is fine but the next one only gives people a very short distance to merge.

JMSE

Do they even need to have 2 merging lanes there? One would suffice as the volume coming off the N4 is coming off one lane anyway so whats the point of the 'walk the plank' outer one??

Superhorse

simdan wrote: »

Eh no.. I don't know what else to say but no

You really should it's beautiful besides the drivers.

Pinch Flat

JMSE wrote: »

Do they even need to have 2 merging lanes there? One would suffice as the volume coming off the N4 is coming off one lane anyway so whats the point of the 'walk the plank' outer one??

Isn't that the part of the issue though - originally built as a signal controlled roundabout then a clover leaf junction shoe horned in?

Seth Brundle

JMSE wrote: »

Do they even need to have 2 merging lanes there? One would suffice as the volume coming off the N4 is coming off one lane anyway so whats the point of the 'walk the plank' outer one??

It's a shorter journey from there to lane 2, the normal driving lane.

Irish Steve

RustyNut wrote: »

In my opinion that junction must have been designed by some transition year student on work experience who got their hands on the cad machine, its dreadful.

It's worse than that, most of the M50 was initially designed in the 80's, and most of it was not even close to a standard motorway design, it was a high quality urban dual carriageway with no expectation of being used at motorway speeds or volumes.

When it was eventually built, the planners made it worse by then allowing all manner of development on top of the junctions, which made the later essential upgrade to freeflow impossible to adequately engineer, the space wasn't there any more, so we've ended up with junctions that are not safe at more than 30 to 40 Kph, and within 100 metres, you have to be doing 100 Kph in order to merge safely into high volume traffic

While there are more than a few idiots using the road on a regular basis, we can't blame those idiots for the even bigger idiots that designed the mess that we're stuck with.

Now, the M50 is the only route that crosses the Liffey between Lucan and Chapelizod, and neither of those crossings are suitable for anything other than very low volume local traffic, so right now, it's the M50 or nothing, there is no suitable alternative to get to the increasing number of industrial parks and estates that are scattered around the periphery of Dublin, and in most cases, they didn't exist when the M50 was designed, and many of them are not adequately served by a real and effective public transport network, so the car is the only way to get to these massive areas of work.

It can't be talked about, the elephants in the room are the absence of an eastern by pass, the manner in which many HGV's are forced to use the entire M50 to access the DPT to get to the port, and the absence of an outer ring road with proper high speed free flow access, which is what the M50 could and should have been, if the local planners hadn't been so criminally short sighted and greedy.

The other issues that are equally unspeakable is the total absence of a coherent public transport policy, we're still dancing around trying to get Dublin Bus and Bus Eireann to operate with any sort of sensible cooperation, and then there's the problems of Irish Rail, which are not going to go away any time soon.

I've tried interacting with the RSA over a number of issues over a number of years, and it's a waste of time, they are not prepared to be really involved, they are past masters at passing the buck, as are most semi state organisations, and the bottom line is that no one is accountable or responsible for most of the monumental mess that's been pushed on to the increasingly frustrated workers who have to try and get through this mess every working day.

The politicians don't csre, they get high speed Garda escorts to get them through it all, so it never causes them any problems.

So, how does it get fixed?

In the short term, I'm not sure it does, the will to do it and the plans to change it don't exist.

Longer term, a new outer ring road is going to be needed to take the pressure off the M50, the M50 needs to be fundamentally changed to make the bad habits of the idiots that jump multiple lanes impossible, variable speed limits with harsh enforcement, and better enforcement of the other issues that are a regular factor in the increasing number of accidents that are happening too often.

A fundamental rethink of the spoke public transport system has to happen to make it possible to use public transport to get to places other than the centre of Dublin in an acceptable time scale.

I'm not going to hold my breath, I will be very surprised to see any real change within the next 5 to 10 years, even if the will was there, which I don't see, there will then be very big problems getting approval for the funding that will be needed to make it happen

Then, between the country lobby, the NIMBY brigade, An Taisce and the like, any sensible plan to sort out Dublin will be mired in objections for probably another 2 decades, by which time, it will be too late, many of the multi nationals that our economy is dependent on will have moved to countries that are prepared to invest in a sensible level of infrastructure, which this country has shown a total lack of ability to do for generations,

If you don't believe me, why are we having all the hassles with things like Irish Water, the second runway for Dublin Airport, and Dublin Underground, among others?

AlekSmart

Irish Steve wrote: »

It's worse than that, most of the M50 was initially designed in the 80's, and most of it was not even close to a standard motorway design, it was a high quality urban dual carriageway with no expectation of being used at motorway speeds or volumes.

When it was eventually built, the planners made it worse by then allowing all manner of development on top of the junctions, which made the later essential upgrade to freeflow impossible to adequately engineer, the space wasn't there any more, so we've ended up with junctions that are not safe at more than 30 to 40 Kph, and within 100 metres, you have to be doing 100 Kph in order to merge safely into high volume traffic

While there are more than a few idiots using the road on a regular basis, we can't blame those idiots for the even bigger idiots that designed the mess that we're stuck with.

Now, the M50 is the only route that crosses the Liffey between Lucan and Chapelizod, and neither of those crossings are suitable for anything other than very low volume local traffic, so right now, it's the M50 or nothing, there is no suitable alternative to get to the increasing number of industrial parks and estates that are scattered around the periphery of Dublin, and in most cases, they didn't exist when the M50 was designed, and many of them are not adequately served by a real and effective public transport network, so the car is the only way to get to these massive areas of work.

It can't be talked about, the elephants in the room are the absence of an eastern by pass, the manner in which many HGV's are forced to use the entire M50 to access the DPT to get to the port, and the absence of an outer ring road with proper high speed free flow access, which is what the M50 could and should have been, if the local planners hadn't been so criminally short sighted and greedy.

The other issues that are equally unspeakable is the total absence of a coherent public transport policy, we're still dancing around trying to get Dublin Bus and Bus Eireann to operate with any sort of sensible cooperation, and then there's the problems of Irish Rail, which are not going to go away any time soon.

I've tried interacting with the RSA over a number of issues over a number of years, and it's a waste of time, they are not prepared to be really involved, they are past masters at passing the buck, as are most semi state organisations, and the bottom line is that no one is accountable or responsible for most of the monumental mess that's been pushed on to the increasingly frustrated workers who have to try and get through this mess every working day.

The politicians don't csre, they get high speed Garda escorts to get them through it all, so it never causes them any problems.

So, how does it get fixed?

In the short term, I'm not sure it does, the will to do it and the plans to change it don't exist.

Longer term, a new outer ring road is going to be needed to take the pressure off the M50, the M50 needs to be fundamentally changed to make the bad habits of the idiots that jump multiple lanes impossible, variable speed limits with harsh enforcement, and better enforcement of the other issues that are a regular factor in the increasing number of accidents that are happening too often.

A fundamental rethink of the spoke public transport system has to happen to make it possible to use public transport to get to places other than the centre of Dublin in an acceptable time scale.

I'm not going to hold my breath, I will be very surprised to see any real change within the next 5 to 10 years, even if the will was there, which I don't see, there will then be very big problems getting approval for the funding that will be needed to make it happen

Then, between the country lobby, the NIMBY brigade, An Taisce and the like, any sensible plan to sort out Dublin will be mired in objections for probably another 2 decades, by which time, it will be too late, many of the multi nationals that our economy is dependent on will have moved to countries that are prepared to invest in a sensible level of infrastructure, which this country has shown a total lack of ability to do for generations,

If you don't believe me, why are we having all the hassles with things like Irish Water, the second runway for Dublin Airport, and Dublin Underground, among others?

The specific portion of the M50 where Wednesday's problems occurred is the former bailiwick of some hugely influential Irish Administrative and Political names.....Liam Lawlor & George Redmond to name but two.

Whether the "Forensic" Investigators will bother their arses to delve into the REAL reasons,why this particular junction is so dangerous is a moot point,but if they do,then be prepared for a VERY thick report !

Seth Brundle

AlekSmart wrote: »

The specific portion of the M50 where Wednesday's problems occurred is the former bailiwick of some hugely influential Irish Administrative and Political names.....Liam Lawlor & George Redmond to name but two.

With respect, neither of these two had any involvement or responsibility in the incident at the M50/N4 interchange.
Why bother mention them?

AlekSmart wrote: »

Whether the "Forensic" Investigators will bother their arses to delve into the REAL reasons,why this particular junction is so dangerous is a moot point,but if they do,then be prepared for a VERY thick report !

Why, what kind of thing are you talking about?
The junction was developed a few years ago, long, long after Lawlor, Redmond et al were operating around here.

Muahahaha

JMSE wrote: »

So who to blame, who knows, but theres bad engineering at play.

no doubt about that, the N4 junctions have terrible design. I've nearly come a cropper on that short ramp with a HGV too, the only thing that got me out of it was being on a motorbike which has much superior acceleration than most cars. The engineering on that junction is terrible and whats needed now in the short term is road markings and signage to make everyone fully aware of it.

Irish Steve wrote: »

Then, between the country lobby, the NIMBY brigade, An Taisce and the like, any sensible plan to sort out Dublin will be mired in objections for probably another 2 decades, by which time, it will be too late, many of the multi nationals that our economy is dependent on will have moved to countries that are prepared to invest in a sensible level of infrastructure, which this country has shown a total lack of ability to do for generations,

If you don't believe me, why are we having all the hassles with things like Irish Water, the second runway for Dublin Airport, and Dublin Underground, among others?

excellent post Steve. Though in some ways I feel we have to be nearly at the point we had back in about 2004 when a report said that not upgrading the m50 would cost the economy over a billion a year. Not providing the funding for DU and MN will seem a worse and worse decision with every delay on the m50. Its only going to get more choked as more people get back to work so hopefully the powers that be will be having their Eureka moment sooner rather than later

simdan

Superhorse wrote:

You really should it's beautiful besides the drivers.

I hope you're talking about Ireland. Irish drivers are the worst.

Nichard Dixon

JMSE wrote: »

Worse again for Lane 1 drivers who are doing 100 coming up to this merge is this scenario.... A driver comes off the N4 to go southbound and he/she is in the inner merge lane, but are getting held up by whatever in front of them. They realise theres nobody in the outer merge lane so they drive over the chevron and hey presto, they've about 50 metres to go until they hit Lane 1 and they are not up to speed. Also adding to the impending danger is the fact that the HGVs and others already using Lane 1 werent expecting this sudden introduction into their immediate future and wont have time to adjust their speed so what happens?? Luck takes over thats what happens, but today might have been a day when luck ran out, somebody jammed on, and a car got sandwiched.

Some of these lanes are too short and the changes discussed earlier will help. A camera fining anyone cross chevrons would also help.

delahuntv

RustyNut wrote: »

In my opinion that junction must have been designed by some transition year student on work experience who got their hands on the cad machine, its dreadful.

and your qualifications are????


Cause of crash looks to be the driver of car crossing over the ghost island and simply not adhering to basic road signage and also not paying attention.

At the end of the day there are over 300,000 journeys every day on the M50 (abut 130,000 go through the tollign area), yet there are very few crashes for the number of journeys / miles travelled. But when there is one, it causes huge issues.

Maybe it needs a "Motorway Traffic Corp" as an offshoot of main traffic corp and dedicated to the motorways in the greater Dublin area (Kildare town / Maynooth / Drogheda / Clonee / greystones & inwards of that)

Combine this with SPECS average speed camera systems and you will find that many of the smaller crashes will stop.

kidneyfan

delahuntv wrote: »

Combine this with SPECS average speed camera systems and you will find that many of the smaller crashes will stop.

SPECS has been debunked earlier. The simple fact is that the design standard of the M50 is abysmal as is unsurprising given how corrupt the whole process of its design was.

jd

Originally the M50 was designed with free flow junctions. Pee Flynn essentially said "Sure those yokes are too expensive, just put in roundabouts". Zoning is a reserved function of politicians, land close to the M50 junctions was rezoned for development, leaving the engineers with very constrained areas to work with when the junctions were redesigned.

Alkers

How was it corrupt?

Superhorse

simdan wrote: »

I hope you're talking about Ireland. Irish drivers are the worst.

I'm not I'm talking about Vietnam. Irish drivers are not the worst. They are no better or worse than any other European's. Is the standard great here, no but it's not great anywhere. I'd hazard a guess you have very limited driving experience if you think Irish driver are the worst. Rent a car in Naples for a day or two and see if that statement is accurate.

jd

Simona1986 wrote: »

How was it corrupt?

I kind of summarised it there above you - in that area cf Quarryvale etc etc

Alun

Nichard Dixon wrote: »

Some of these lanes are too short and the changes discussed earlier will help. A camera fining anyone cross chevrons would also help.

I drove down the N3-> M50(S) one yesterday. Looks like an improvement apart from the fact that they still have the old signage up, although there is a "road layout changed" illuminated sign up. It wasn't that busy at the time, but most of the cars in front of me in the right hand lane, i.e. the one that became the auxiliary lane, merged much earlier than they had to, and of course still hopped straight in to lane 2 as soon as they could :rolleyes:

kunst nugget

delahuntv wrote: »

and your qualifications are????

Cause of crash looks to be the driver of car crossing over the ghost island and simply not adhering to basic road signage and also not paying attention.

Or it could have been caused by brake failure, oil spill, a blow out or numerous other factors we don't know about. When even the Guards don't know the cause of the accident and are looking for witnesses to the accident, you can't state that the accident looks like it was doing to the driver not paying attention.

Gone Drinking

JMSE wrote: »

I'm surprised this happened as early as 5.30am but things are getting busier and people are getting on the road earlier.

The merge area where this happened should be flagged as a 'black spot' although they dont do this anymore and never on motorways. I can't say what happened either, just what has happened to me right there on countless occasions.

2 lanes merge onto the M50 here, the inside one is a 'pressure free' merge as it is about 5km long (accession lane they call it I think). However the outer one is about 75 mtrs long and merges with Lane 1 of the M50 in an extremely short distance.

So you have 'slower' moving traffic in the outer merge who are most likely accelerating and trying to get up to the speed of the traffic in Lane 1 before they slip in between vehicles in Lane 1. All it takes is for one car to not be up to an ideal speed and suddenly you have people pausing and braking and combine that with an extremely short merge zone as marked on the road, and you are in trouble.

Most of the HGVs going southbound here will be in Lane 1 and they will ALL be trying to hold their speed as this is an uphill stretch for them too. Personally speaking, I try not to be in Lane 1 here, too dangerous. The rules of the road would have everybody adjust their speed to allow others to merge, and that may have happened here, but the merge is too short. Its almost like a T junction onto the M50 for anyone not up to speed.

Worse again for Lane 1 drivers who are doing 100 coming up to this merge is this scenario.... A driver comes off the N4 to go southbound and he/she is in the inner merge lane, but are getting held up by whatever in front of them. They realise theres nobody in the outer merge lane so they drive over the chevron and hey presto, they've about 50 metres to go until they hit Lane 1 and they are not up to speed. Also adding to the impending danger is the fact that the HGVs and others already using Lane 1 werent expecting this sudden introduction into their immediate future and wont have time to adjust their speed so what happens?? Luck takes over thats what happens, but today might have been a day when luck ran out, somebody jammed on, and a car got sandwiched.

So who to blame, who knows, but theres bad engineering at play.

Couldn't agree more. I actually started a thread three years ago on this merging area of the M50 and some problems that stemmed from it.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=81877852

A lot of people told me I wasn't going fast enough to merge, or couldn't merge correctly.

I think that shorter lane should just be removed

Nemeses2050

Alun wrote: »

I drove down the N3-> M50(S) one yesterday. Looks like an improvement apart from the fact that they still have the old signage up, although there is a "road layout changed" illuminated sign up. It wasn't that busy at the time, but most of the cars in front of me in the right hand lane, i.e. the one that became the auxiliary lane, merged much earlier than they had to, and of course still hopped straight in to lane 2 as soon as they could :rolleyes:

They do this all the time, I too get in on the M50 (N) at N3 and see it everyday people cutting each other to either merge or get in the Finglas exit Lane - I think this is one of the longest streches of Road before the next exit, so people have ample time to get on the main M50 Lanes/exit Lane but no people want to cut each other as soon they see it....

this along with short merging lanes (I agree even with long merging Lanes people act like dickheads as per above but still think they would help reduce accidents and delays) are the biggest reasons for delays on M50 and for shunts as most of them happen in slow moving traffic or when merging.

OldMrBrennan83

This post has been deleted.

duffman3833

Patww79 wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

Exactly, They will be saying, if we increase tolls, less people will want to use it. That means people will try other routes to bypass it and cause more traffic jams etc ....

kidneyfan

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/private-firm-to-reap-115bn-bonanza-from-m50-toll-deal-26628381.html

Heroditas

BohsCeltic wrote: »

Blanch is similar. Inner lane is fine but the next one only gives people a very short distance to merge.

Similar insofar as the merge is quite short but there is absolutely no justification as to why a car can't be at an appropriate motorway speed by the time it merges. They are going downhill to merge and they haven't had to handle a sharp corkscrew turn before it.

RainyDay

Patww79 wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

You're nearly right. They want public transport solutions for other people, so that they can still remain in their cars;

http://www.theonion.com/article/report-98-percent-of-us-commuters-favor-public-tra-1434