M11/N11 - M50 (J4) to Coyne's Cross (J14) [options published]

Reuben1210

donvito99 wrote: »

My point was that the protesters did less harm - to trees or anything else ecological - than the actual road.

They planted more trees than they removed there, so in the long run, it is arguably a positive

marno21

Any word locally on what's going on here?

Arup were planning on ABP in Q2 2021 but I would imagine that's out the window now.

prunudo

marno21 wrote: »

Any word locally on what's going on here?

Arup were planning on ABP in Q2 2021 but I would imagine that's out the window now.

Nothing official nor rumours, only what was posted here a few months back.

Chris_5339762

I thought this one was the one that Eamon Ryan said no to?

hometruths

Update 4 out at N11M11.ie - doesn't say a lot:

Planning and delivery on the project has continued with the collation of site information and progress through the option selection process.

Environmental constraints information received following Public Consultation No.2 on 11th November 2019 and information received at subsequent landowner meetings, has been reviewed by the project environmental specialists and the wider project team. Detailed botanical surveys at areas of
particular focus or interest have been completed for this current phase during summer 2020. All the information is being used to inform the ongoing assessments and the selection of the preferred option.

A range of initial transport solutions have been identified and have been taken through preliminary transport modelling and assessment exercises. Work is ongoing in this regard, including engagement with the relevant government agencies and project stakeholders.

A number of corridor options along and adjacent to the existing N11/M11 were presented during Public Consultation No.2. The corridor options have since been analysed and appraised against a broad range of assessment criteria. The main purpose of this analysis is to identify those corridors which should be retained and those which should be discounted and not taken forward for further consideration and assessment. We expect to provide an update on this analysis in Q4 2020.

prunudo

Hopefully we hear something more concrete before the end of the year. Reading that statement sounds like they're still unsure which route they'll go with, maybe knock 2 on the head and look at the other 2 in more detail.

prunudo

December update now out, it appears its between the cyan or red routes.

https://n11m11.ie/2020/12/16/bulletin-5-phase-2-option-selection-interim-update-december-2020/

Have to say I'm disappointed they're not exploring offline options on the northern end around jn5-7. Red, which is a full online upgrade has many restrictions to making it an easy project.

loyatemu

it'll be Red all the way I'd say as the "least bad option". Cyan option is still very tricky, they seem to say as much in the latest update.

prunudo

loyatemu wrote: »

it'll be Red all the way I'd say as the "least bad option". Cyan option is still very tricky, they seem to say as much in the latest update.

Yes, I agree. From reading the update wouldn't be surprised to see them progressing as two seperate projects, first one up to jn 8 and second in the future when figure out what to do.
Thats if the whole thing happens at all.

josip

prunudo wrote: »

December update now out, it appears its between the cyan or red routes.

https://n11m11.ie/2020...pdate-december-2020/

Have to say I'm disappointed they're not exploring offline options on the northern end around jn5-7. Red, which is a full online upgrade has many restrictions to making it an easy project.

I'm getting a page not found for that link. These work for me.

https://n11m11.ie/2020/12/16/bulletin-5-phase-2-option-selection-interim-update-december-2020/
https://n11m11.ie/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Public-Consultation-Interim-Update-DEC-2020-For-Publishing.pdf

hometruths

loyatemu wrote: »

it'll be Red all the way I'd say as the "least bad option". Cyan option is still very tricky, they seem to say as much in the latest update.

Interestingly they’ve added that they are investigating a tunnel option under the Glen - say they’re assessing the viability.

Also interesting is the talk of an interim bus lane solution. The cynic in me says this a widen the red road by the backdoor scam I.e widen it a little for a bus lane and then say ah sure we’re nearly there we only need to widen it a little bit more.

I think of these guys and the red route like captain of a boat looking at a forecast for potentially stormy seas.

The captain knows heading east is a shorter route, but high chance of hitting trouble. His only option to resist trouble is to head west, longer journey, more fuel, more manhours for the crew but less probability of getting sunk.

They weigh up all the options, but at the end of the day, when sitting at a desk looking at the charts/spreadsheets it is just too tempting to say feck it, we’ll head east!

The shortest route is not always the path of least resistance.

prunudo

josip wrote: »

I'm getting a page not found for that link. These work for me.

https://n11m11.ie/2020/12/16/bulletin-5-phase-2-option-selection-interim-update-december-2020/
https://n11m11.ie/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Public-Consultation-Interim-Update-DEC-2020-For-Publishing.pdf

For some reason it won't bring me to the page either just the menu page. Not sure what happened.

Pete_Cavan

Good to see that they are looking at providing bus lanes on the N11/M11 corridor as a separate project. Its what I said before should be done and there is lot of common sense in doing it that way.

I'd say the tunnel under the Glen thing is just to be able to say they looked at all possibilities when they finally declare that online upgrade has been selected.

Steve012

Pete_Cavan wrote: »

Good to see that they are looking at providing bus lanes on the N11/M11 corridor as a separate project. Its what I said before should be done and there is lot of common sense in doing it that way.

I'd say the tunnel under the Glen thing is just to be able to say they looked at all possibilities when they finally declare that online upgrade has been selected.

It could be that way Pete, how much would that cost a tunnel? really? the ground underneath the road is pure big tree roots I guess about nearly 30ft plus (tree roots)

So the tunnel sounds like BS cost proper stupid money, have they chosen a route folks?

Anyone got a gist and could give a summary, would be great

josip

Steve012 wrote: »

It could be that way Pete, how much would that cost a tunnel? really? the ground underneath the road is pure big tree roots I guess about nearly 30ft plus (tree roots)

So the tunnel sounds like BS cost proper stupid money, have they chosen a route folks?

Anyone got a gist and could give a summary, would be great

Most tree roots don't go down deeper than 2 feet, they extend laterally rather than horizontally.

KrisW1001

A tunnel would most likely go west of the Glen, not follow the line of the road. That's almost certainly solid rock, and might be easier and less intrusive to bore through it rather than blow up the same rock to form cuttings as the cyan route would require. It would also be offline, so reduce traffic blockage on N11 (which from next year will be carrying a lot more goods traffic from the continent than it does now).

The tunnel they marked would be approximately 3 km long, a little over half the length of the M50 Dublin Tunnel, but this would be a far less challenging dig than that project - it's pretty much guaranteed to be rock, not clay, and there aren't tens of thousands of people living on top of the route, so boring could be done 24 hours a day. In Italy, these kind of tunnels are a matter of routine.

Cost is definitely going to be higher, but online upgrade of N11 wasn't ever going to be cheap either (and the online update is guaranteed to be hard to get through planning, further increasing its cost). Cost of a tunnel could be offset against the economic cost of cutting capacity on N11 for the duration of the online red upgrade, and that by at the end of a tunneling scheme there's more capacity than the red solution, so a bus-lane can be added to the existing, now bypassed, N11 using paint without reducing overall capacity on the corridor or needing more land in a very expensive part of the country.

loyatemu

KrisW1001 wrote: »

A tunnel would most likely go west of the Glen, not follow the line of the road. That's almost certainly solid rock, and might be easier and less intrusive to bore through it rather than blow up the same rock to form cuttings as the cyan route would require. It would also be offline, so reduce traffic blockage on N11 (which from next year will be carrying a lot more goods traffic from the continent than it does now).

The tunnel they marked would be approximately 3 km long, a little over half the length of the M50 Dublin Tunnel, but this would be a far less challenging dig than that project - it's pretty much guaranteed to be rock, not clay, and there aren't tens of thousands of people living on top of the route, so boring could be done 24 hours a day. In Italy, these kind of tunnels are a matter of routine.

Cost is definitely going to be higher, but online upgrade of N11 wasn't ever going to be cheap either (and the online update is guaranteed to be hard to get through planning, further increasing its cost). Cost of a tunnel could be offset against the economic cost of cutting capacity on N11 for the duration of the online red upgrade, and that by at the end of a tunneling scheme there's more capacity than the red solution, so a bus-lane can be added to the existing, now bypassed, N11 using paint without reducing overall capacity on the corridor or needing more land in a very expensive part of the country.

if they're going to spend silly money on a tunnel I'd rather see them properly fix the issues on the railway line by boring through Bray Head and doubling as far as Wicklow Town (not that I expect them to do either).

prunudo

The tunnel idea is definitely worth exploring and as you say bar the cost it would solve a lot of the current issues and ultimately remove large volumes of traffic from The Glen and allow it be a proper nature reserve again.
But we're not known for ambitious projects here so I can't see it happening. Anything costly or ambitious is always pushed out, redesigned and sanitised often resulting in capacity issues within a short period of time.

riddlinrussell

loyatemu wrote: »

if they're going to spend silly money on a tunnel I'd rather see them properly fix the issues on the railway line by boring through Bray Head and doubling as far as Wicklow Town (not that I expect them to do either).

Reckon there would be any scope for a 'twofer'? Do a rail and road tunnel at the same time? I imagine there's no possible way to route it.

loyatemu

riddlinrussell wrote: »

Reckon there would be any scope for a 'twofer'? Do a rail and road tunnel at the same time? I imagine there's no possible way to route it.

no - would require a complete reroute of the railway, which would have all sorts of complications. New tunnel under Bray Head would be relatively expensive, but it requires no land take, minimal environmental issues etc.

prunudo

loyatemu wrote: »

no - would require a complete reroute of the railway, which would have all sorts of complications. New tunnel under Bray Head would be relatively expensive, but it requires no land take, minimal environmental issues etc.

Rail line definitely needs to be double tracked from Wicklow at a minimum but I believe there are capacity issues north of Bray so IE are probably reluctant to spend large amounts on new tunnels and infrastructure, certainly in the short term.

BigMoose

While I would love to see the line double tracked to at least Wicklow and regular (so usable) trains, I just don't see it happening, as prunudo says, the line north of Bray is already at capacity with DARTs. You only have to sit on a "fast" train from Bray and it often potters along behind the DART in front. And expanding that part of the line is just not going to happen. I dont see them giving over some of the capacity from DARTs either. Now if they were to expand the DART to Wicklow and run 1 an hour that far, how long would it take to actually get into central Dublin...?

punisher5112

How come raised options were looked at?
Or were they.

Pete_Cavan

The road also has the same issue, no capacity further north. A tunnel or any sort of offline road is not going to solve anything, it'll just encourage more cars to join the queues at Bray. It will also cost a couple of hundred million euro so no chance it would get funded. AADT north of Bray was touching 80,000 with little possibility to provide for that level of traffic, nevermind more than that.

What will most likely happen is that initially, bus lanes will be provided north of the Bray South junction under the separate bus project. The main project will evolve into extending the bus lanes further south to J9 but nothing done with the Glen.

KrisW1001

The tunnel adds capacity through Glen of the Downs, and allows much better public transport provision for the bypassed route.

The queues at Bray are caused by car commuters (usually 1 person per vehicle) originating in Bray itself. This problem should be dealt with by greater public transport provision to and from Bray, not an endless buildout to accommodate peak-time volumes that will eventually just dump traffic congestion into Dublin city itself. There are (very) long term plans for the Luas/Dublin Metro to serve Bray: a good interim would be to build a Bus Rapid Transport system quickly on that reserved corridor (the Metro will run on the surface here, I believe).

I favour the parallel route, but it would be very, very costly to construct the Cyan option on surface: this is a wealthy part of the country, and you can expect multiple legal actions against anything that would spoil their expensive views. However, more capacity is needed, if only to provide a higher quality public transport corridor.

hometruths

KrisW1001 wrote: »

I favour the parallel route, but it would be very, very costly to construct the Cyan option on surface: this is a wealthy part of the country, and you can expect multiple legal actions against anything that would spoil their expensive views. However, more capacity is needed, if only to provide a higher quality public transport corridor.

I also favour the cyan route. Your point about legal actions is valid, but they will face these no matter what route they choose.

Of course cost is a factor but so is the legality. No point picking the cheaper route if they end up losing in the courts. And if they go through the glen you can guarantee that it won’t just be wealthy locals fighting them, all the environmental crowd will have a go too.

From a legal point of view the glen is very tricky because the council are starting off on the back foot given the nature reserve is protected by law.

Macy0161

BigMoose wrote: »

While I would love to see the line double tracked to at least Wicklow and regular (so usable) trains, I just don't see it happening, as prunudo says, the line north of Bray is already at capacity with DARTs. You only have to sit on a "fast" train from Bray and it often potters along behind the DART in front. And expanding that part of the line is just not going to happen. I dont see them giving over some of the capacity from DARTs either. Now if they were to expand the DART to Wicklow and run 1 an hour that far, how long would it take to actually get into central Dublin...?

Capacity on the DART line is a consequence of not going ahead with Dart Underground though, isn't it?

loyatemu

Pete_Cavan wrote: »

The road also has the same issue, no capacity further north. A tunnel or any sort of offline road is not going to solve anything, it'll just encourage more cars to join the queues at Bray. It will also cost a couple of hundred million euro so no chance it would get funded. AADT north of Bray was touching 80,000 with little possibility to provide for that level of traffic, nevermind more than that.

What will most likely happen is that initially, bus lanes will be provided north of the Bray South junction under the separate bus project. The main project will evolve into extending the bus lanes further south to J9 but nothing done with the Glen.

this was essentially my submission to the consultation. Extra general traffic lanes will just push the problem up the road, and they'll be full again in a few years. Convert the shoulders into bus lanes; close minor accesses & build some auxiliary roads to remove the local traffic and put any money saved into the railway. (FWIW I think they could fit an inbound bus lane through the glen without much extra land take).

prunudo

I'd love to see a tunnel built and then designate the existing road to a regional road. I know it would cost a future but even adding a bus lane to the existing Glen would further destroy the natural beauty of it. It would be great to remove tens of thousands of vehicles and turn it back into an enjoyable place to stroll without the drone of vehicles passing by. As they say, may as well dream here as in bed.

donvito99

Macy0161 wrote: »

Capacity on the DART line is a consequence of not going ahead with Dart Underground though, isn't it?

The level crossings between Lansdowne Rd and Merrion Gates are more of a factor on frequency I'd say.