N71 - Cork to Bandon

KrisW1001

Yes, it's that road, and yes, it's long overdue.

Chris_5339762

.. but a 2+2 bypass of Bandon would have been much better. At least its a little something though.

marno21

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119335925#Comment_119335925

Yes, a new northern bypass completely separate to the existing “bypass” would have merit here.

The N71 east of Bandon has an AADT of 14k, not counting a large volume of traffic that avoids this road via the R589, R585 etc. It’s busier than many of the inter urban primary routes. Just because it’s a national secondary doesn’t mean it’s a low volume country road. East of Inishannon it’s one of the business national routes in the country outside of the greater Dublin area

Chris_5339762

AADTs as far as I know support at least 2+2, if not motorway in parts, to the west of Bandon. I'd advocate Type 1 to Innishannon, or at the very least the Halfway roundabout, and 2+2 to the west of Clonakilty TBH.

marno21

The slow news days of Christmas saw the Irish Examiner with a feature on the N71

https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/munster/arid-41039123.html

Of course, nothing meaningful will happen with this route in the near future. Sad for a country like ours that we should be having ambition and doing something about this embarrassment of a road, but instead it'll be "we have no money", "it'll destroy the planet" etc while the region suffers gazing at the walls of Inishannon and Clonakilty every day.

marno21

https://www.southernstar.ie/news/shelved-innishannon-bypass-now-needs-to-be-a-priority-4260381

Off the table for now.

marno21

I had a look at traffic figures, particularly to see if the pandemic had any impact on traffic numbers.

Summer peak isn't here yet and traffic is already running at motorway levels (21k AADT) from Inishannon to the N40 (either side of the R613 grade separated junction).

Traffic west of Inishannon then drops to a cool 14k so a Type 2 dual would do from there to Bandon. This is on a glorified cattle track.

West of Bandon thankfully it drops to Type 1 single 9k heading into Clon. This stretch of road is an embarrassment, narrow, undulating, twisty, lethal junctions.

It's hard to see what they'll ever do with this road. The interventions that you could envision will not solve much. If we were a rich country running massive surpluses perhaps you could suggest a dual carriageway from Cork to west of Bandon.

hans aus dtschl

Yep I think to the West of Bandon as you say. And loads of associated works at the interface to the city then. Possibly the tram as a centrepiece of that connectivity.

ForiegnNational

Having a road that meets any standard between Bandon and Ballinascarthy would be wonderful. They shouldn't have stopped at down grading the N71 to a Secondary National road, the surface quality is below Regional and makes many Local roads in many counties look good.

Unsurprising really, given it is the third lowest County for government funding: https://www.independent.ie/regionals/cork/news/cork-roads-get-1k-per-km-less-than-roads-in-other-counties/42362050.html

KrisW1001

A road being Secondary or Primary has no bearing on the type of maintenance done on it. The problem is that N71 has a lot of "never engineered" stretches, and these can't be resurfaced away - they need to be removed and replaced with new road, but West Cork is a difficult place to get planning for major construction. In terms of capacity, I'd suggest a 2+2 to Bandon, then a Type 1 single carriageway with grade separated Junctions to Clonakilty (a small section of this is in place), and a Type 2 single from there on. Once N22 opens, the section from Ballydehob north to the R594 will now be Cork's worst National Road, and should be replaced with a new alignment as soon as possible, but as I said: "West Cork" and "Road planning" are almost opposites. Given the number of rich people's holiday homes around here, planning would make N28 look like a picnic.

But, that news article is taking the piss a little. Yes, Cork's funding per km is lower than other counties this year. But, Cork also has three of the biggest road projects in the state running right now (N22, Dunkettle, plus N28 pre-work) with N20 coming down the tracks as well. Now, I've lived here for a long time, I like Cork, but they do have a problem of perspective, and of forgetting eaten bread: Every cent of the transport budget can't be given to Cork every year.

marno21

https://www.kildarestreet.com/debates/?id=2023-06-13a.421

A half baked second phase of the Bandon relief road and c. 3km of realigned carriageway outside Rosscarbery is the height of current ambitions, and both of those projects will take years to come to fruition