M40 motorway redesignation and demand management system [works ongoing]

Chris_5339762

There was also a tractor pootling eastbound at about 615pm causing a rolling roadblock and three lorries in a row tried to pass it at once which obviously worked really well and wasn't dangerous at all

Markcheese

Chris_5339762 wrote: »

There was also a tractor pootling eastbound at about 615pm causing a rolling roadblock and three lorries in a row tried to pass it at once which obviously worked really well and wasn't dangerous at all

And If it's designed as a 50kph tractor it'll be still using that road when it's a motorway... If its not... Then it'll go through town... Eeeekkk.

Passed a potato harvesting set up a couple of Saturdays ago,near bloom field interchange,. 2 tractors, I with a trailer leading the way, the other with an implement on front and an huge harvester on side and back,
And a big 25 kph sticker on the back of the harvester... No idea where this is gonna go when the m40 comes in,
They'll probably stick it on a low loader, and tow it with the same tractor at 50....

hans aus dtschl

Chris_5339762 wrote: »

There was also a tractor pootling eastbound at about 615pm causing a rolling roadblock and three lorries in a row tried to pass it at once which obviously worked really well and wasn't dangerous at all

Ideal time of day for a bit of N40 farming.

It will still be there after the new work is complete though....so....
I'm still sticking with my position that "the NTA need to do something a bit more intelligent than different colour signs".

L1011

Markcheese wrote: »

And If it's designed as a 50kph tractor it'll be still using that road when it's a motorway...

Designed and using road diesel

Green diesel cannot be used for 50kph vehicles.

kub

L1011 wrote: »

Designed and using road diesel

Green diesel cannot be used for 50kph vehicles.

Is that an actual law ?

Markcheese

kub wrote: »

Is that an actual law ?

Cant use green when driving "comercially"
But a farmer owned tractor pulling harvesting equipment for agricultural purposes, ain't comercial

L1011

kub wrote: »

Is that an actual law ?

Yes. It's only allowed for low speed vehicles. Nothing to do with commercial use in this case

hans aus dtschl

I know that this is getting a little bit boring, but to point out once again how ineffectual this scheme will be, this morning's rolling roadblocks were:
A backhoe digger westbound
A tractor westbound
With one approx 1km ahead of the other, they made a considerable blockage and traffic almost stopped completely between the Bloomfield Interchange and the Douglas flyover, from the accordion effect.
Both were at approx 50kmh though, so they'll still be there after the new M status.

marno21

hans aus dtschl wrote: »

I know that this is getting a little bit boring, but to point out once again how ineffectual this scheme will be, this morning's rolling roadblocks were:
A backhoe digger westbound
A tractor westbound
With one approx 1km ahead of the other, they made a considerable blockage and traffic almost stopped completely between the Bloomfield Interchange and the Douglas flyover, from the accordion effect.
Both were at approx 50kmh though, so they'll still be there after the new M status.

I missed all this but the merging at Bloomfield at 8:45 this morning was absolutely septic. N28 traffic trying to ram dangerously into stalled traffic

It’s little wonder there’s constant accidents there.

In other news, traffic management has been removed eastbound just after the Togher exit. Much better flow now

hans aus dtschl

marno21 wrote: »

N28 traffic trying to ram dangerously into stalled traffic

I saw this too, people were coming off the N28 at speed and traffic on the N40 was stopped. Bizarre inexplicable driving.

marno21

hans aus dtschl wrote: »

I saw this too, people were coming off the N28 at speed and traffic on the N40 was stopped. Bizarre inexplicable driving.

Indeed. If anything it was making the jams worse with mainline traffic and merging N28 traffic not at this behaviour having to slam on the brakes.

Traffic on the N40 was stopped dead but it started flowing smoothly again where the hard shoulder begins at the end of the N28 merge

The road outside Douglas Village can't open quick enough. It's a defacto third lane for the Douglas flyover as we've discovered.

hans aus dtschl

marno21 wrote: »

The road outside Douglas Village can't open quick enough. It's a defacto third lane for the Douglas flyover as we've discovered.

Yes very accurate.
Could there be scope now while it's closed, to use the time and space to examine the possibility of in infrastructure project to add a new "lane" (or space for same) to the N40, reopening the existing Douglas Village road underneath?

I'm not talking about starting the building now, rather doing the feasibility survey. I appreciate that it would be very expensive difficult and potentially disruptive, but the opportunity will be rare.

Chris_5339762

My idea is to leave the viaduct as it currently is for the mainline, take the left hand lane of the M28, and bring it across a separate viaduct next to the current one, adding it to the Douglas East merge and reline things so that a third lane goes across the Kinsale Road flyover, which is wide enough.

No N40 disruption to build it.

Also there was a five car rolling crash tonight eastbound on the flyover. Five cars had all gone into the back of each other. How thats even possible I don't know, but it held the traffic back from Dunkettle and ironically made the whole thing flow better.

neiljung

Is there a planning application or even a map anywhere of all the new gantry signs on the N40?

blindsider

Is it me or are they taking forever to install these? I do understand that there are traffic restrictions etc etc, but how long can it take to erect these?

Chris_5339762

They are going up at the start of December according to the newsletter, final system to be commissioned and working by next summer.

Hibernicis

Chris_5339762 wrote: »

“the newsletter”

Any chance you could share this ?

marno21

Hibernicis wrote: »

Any chance you could share this ?

Pop an email off to roadconstruction@ccc-site.com and you'll start getting them weekly.

neiljung

neiljung wrote: »

Is there a planning application or even a map anywhere of all the new gantry signs on the N40?

Bump

Markcheese

How much of the N40 has a footpath running alongside,
I know theres was a path running along from bandon Rd roundabout towards sarsfield Road roundabout,
There's some sort of path alongside by poulavane...
There's another path of sorts by bessborough heading to mahon point,
And there the tramore valley park from kinsale Road to Douglas... And the walkway along the estuary from mahon to the tunnel, that links to Blackrock and mahon...

Just wondering could they be all be linked up for a pedestrian /cycleway running from blackrock to bandon Road...

AugustusMinimus

Reported on 96FM that a person stopped his car and got out to take a selfie of himself with the shopping centre the other day.

The guy should be give a driving ban. What an idiot.

hans aus dtschl

Markcheese wrote: »

How much of the N40 has a footpath running alongside,
I know theres was a path running along from bandon Rd roundabout towards sarsfield Road roundabout,
There's some sort of path alongside by poulavane...
There's another path of sorts by bessborough heading to mahon point,
And there the tramore valley park from kinsale Road to Douglas... And the walkway along the estuary from mahon to the tunnel, that links to Blackrock and mahon...

Just wondering could they be all be linked up for a pedestrian /cycleway running from blackrock to bandon Road...

They could yep and your idea makes perfect sense as a low-hanging-fruit project, but you may have to wait for the CEO of Cork City Council to resign first. Ann apparently doesn't believe in putting in protected cycleways because some people cycle on footpaths. This is the level of thinking you have to deal with when campaigning for this type of infrastructure.

On the N40, gridlock after another rush hour crash southbound yesterday morning. The biggest issue still seems to be people weaving and merging at high speed. Speed averaging cameras in conjunction with the demand management system might be a solution?

AugustusMinimus

hans aus dtschl wrote: »

They could yep and your idea makes perfect sense as a low-hanging-fruit project, but you may have to wait for the CEO of Cork City Council to resign first. Ann apparently doesn't believe in putting in protected cycleways because some people cycle on footpaths. This is the level of thinking you have to deal with when campaigning for this type of infrastructure.

On the N40, gridlock after another rush hour crash southbound yesterday morning. The biggest issue still seems to be people weaving and merging at high speed. Speed averaging cameras in conjunction with the demand management system might be a solution?

The weaving is caused by incredibly poor lane usage. I’ve seen people just powder along in the overtaking lane at 80kph. Causes chaos.

hans aus dtschl

AugustusMinimus wrote: »

The weaving is caused by incredibly poor lane usage. I’ve seen people just powder along in the overtaking lane at 80kph. Causes chaos.

I've seen the opposite too: people driving at over 100 Southbound in the standard driving lane, trying and skip past and exit via the hatched markings at the Bloomfield interchange (35 metres or so, and a 50kmh zone). This causes people to jam on the brakes, and the obvious resulting accordion effect.

It's just general bad driving in general really, isn't it. Maybe if there was a way for the public to send dashcam footage to the Gardai, and if the Gardai themselves were better resourced then some of this dangerous behaviour could be clamped down on.

Markcheese

It's would have be a camera based system, lots of cameras on gantries, detecting people driving like dicks... Wether it's speeding, weaving, aggressive lane changing or using phones, and yes it'd cost...

marno21

Most of the gantries on the N40 for the VMS signs were installed before Christmas. No shortage of coverage of them anyway, there are at least 5 on the N40 eastbound anyway, along with one on the Ballincollig bypass, ones on the N27 either side of the Kinsale Road Roundabout, one on the N28 and N71 approaching the N40.

Chris_5339762

Yup, all are up. I do think they missed a trick though... there is one east of Carrigtwohill I think, but there is absolutely no VMS between Cobh on the N25 on the approach to Dunkettle. The first you meet is near the N28 junction on the South Ring.

Should have been one just west of the Cobh junction.

cantalach

What exactly will this new signage achieve? I’m really not understanding the cost-benefit analysis here. I’m talking here about the initial usage of the gantries, i.e. not possible future uses (traffic enforcement, etc.) that might never happen.

The system will tell people there’s a slow-down or accident ahead. Can they do anything about it? Not usually. A diversion of eastbound traffic along Well Road and Skehard Road would be useless because the latter is a car park every morning anyway. And if the accident is east of the Mahon exit then tunnel-bound traffic has no option but to grin and bear it anyway. For westbound traffic, the alternate routes are even worse.

An electronic information system serves a purpose in sprawling suburbanised areas in the US where there are a myriad of alternate freeways onto which one can divert. But when it comes to movement across the south side of Cork, the N40 is the only show in town.

hans aus dtschl

cantalach wrote: »

What exactly will this new signage achieve? I’m really not understanding the cost-benefit analysis here. I’m talking here about the initial usage of the gantries, i.e. not possible future uses (traffic enforcement, etc.) that might never happen.

The system will tell people there’s a slow-down or accident ahead. Can they do anything about it? Not usually. A diversion of eastbound traffic along Well Road and Skehard Road would be useless because the latter is a car park every morning anyway. And if the accident is east of the Mahon exit then tunnel-bound traffic has no option but to grin and bear it anyway. For westbound traffic, the alternate routes are even worse.

An electronic information system serves a purpose in sprawling suburbanised areas in the US where there are a myriad of alternate freeways onto which one can divert. But when it comes to movement across the south side of Cork, the N40 is the only show in town.

The idea - which works in some countries - is that the gantry's posted speed is the legal speed at the time. You can prevent people rushing headlong into a jam by slowing them down further out, thus giving the jam time to clear.

Here, the project is a "titanic deckchair" of epic proportions. They won't solve any problems for the foreseeable future. I can think of a hundred local capital projects that would improve traffic but the NTA and TII won't advance them, yet this one got the go-ahead.

cantalach

hans aus dtschl wrote: »

The idea - which works in some countries - is that the gantry's posted speed is the legal speed at the time. You can prevent people rushing headlong into a jam by slowing them down further out, thus giving the jam time to clear.

Ah, so adaptive speed limits like London's M25. I thought there was a legal impediment to their introduction in Ireland which would require amendment of the RTA. Maybe that's not difficult to fix. Though I'm not convinced people will take much notice of the adaptive limits without enforcement.

I can think of a hundred local capital projects that would improve traffic but the NTA and TII won't advance them, yet this one got the go-ahead.

Yeah, I guess that's the real point I'm making.