N25 - Carrigtwohill to Midleton [route options published]

niloc1951

hans aus dtschl wrote: »

There's frequent crashes on the section immediately West of Carrigtohill. Even if they were looking at that stretch it would make more sense to me.

There are two primary reasons for that and neither have anything to do with the quality of the road.

The two reasons are:
a) Hooligan behaviour by some drivers.
b) The presence of slow-moving agricultural and construction machinery.

If it's to have a motorway 120km/h speed limit make it a Motorway and let cyclists, L drivers and slow-moving machinery use the parallel L3004 / L3680 (the old N25).
It's only asking for trouble to have such a traffic mix on a road with a 120km/h speed limit.

hans aus dtschl

niloc1951 wrote: »

If it's to have a motorway 120km/h speed limit make it a Motorway and let cyclists, L drivers and slow-moving machinery use the parallel L3004 / L3680 (the old N25).
It's only asking for trouble to have such a traffic mix on a road with a 120km/h speed limit.

Yes I believe that's exactly the motivation: they want an M-status road and a new junction. And hey presto, the land is ready for development.

The problem is that the LADP doesn't see an upgrade of the parallel routes.

For me (and maybe everyone here?) the obvious solution is upgrading the Ballyrichard road to work as a distributor. Tie existing houses into this and the new WaterRock interchange. Plan to continue a bypass (not distributor) around the North East of Midleton, since the current bypass is now a congested development corridor.

If TII are allowed to upgrade that local road then great. But if they don't, then it's a mostly pointless exercise compared with the other issues in the area. There isn't a hope in hell that the existing slow machinery will detour all around and through the centre of Carrigtohill and Midleton. There will be tractors with a sticker hauling grain all day on the M25.

Edit: my own personal hobby horse of sustainable transport goes out the window without a proper distributor road. It's a PFO route for cyclists and walkers in its current format unfortunately.
And the addition of a WaterRock junction without a WaterRock railway station means lots and lots more cars. Absolutely nobody is going to walk to the existing train stations from WaterRock.

hans aus dtschl

niloc1951 wrote: »

There are two primary reasons for that and neither have anything to do with the quality of the road.

The two reasons are:
a) Hooligan behaviour by some drivers.
a) Hooligan behaviour by some drivers.

Fixed your post, IMO.
The antics on the section between Carrigtohill and Little Island are exceptional.

spacetweek

Paddico wrote: »

Looks out of date

Sorry, link fixed: https://www.tii.ie/roads-tolling/projects-and-improvements/Major-Active-Projects.pdf

niloc1951

hans aus dtschl wrote: »

Fixed your post, IMO.
The antics on the section between Carrigtohill and Little Island are exceptional.

My post didn't need 'fixing'
My point b is quite valid. The presence of slow-moving machinery on a two-lane road with a 120km/h speed limit is madness. Such mixing of traffic regularly results in a moving road-block and all the fast moving traffic is forced into lane 2 with the result that lane 2 becomes a queue travelling at perhaps 90 km/h with 'new arrivals' arriving at a higher speed often braking aggressively resulting in the regularly reported crashes.
Allowing such machinery, which is not subject to roadworthiness testing and may be under the control of a person who has never undertaken a practical driving test, to mix with other traffic travelling at motorway speeds is the height of folly.
As a side issue, drivers who might remain in lane 1 are not allowed into lane 2 when they need to overtake the slow-moving road-block and through frustration may move into lane2 when it is unsafe to do so.

hans aus dtschl

niloc1951 wrote: »

My post didn't need 'fixing'
My point b is quite valid. The presence of slow-moving machinery on a two-lane road with a 120km/h speed limit is madness. Such mixing of traffic regularly results in a moving road-block and all the fast moving traffic is forced into lane 2 with the result that lane 2 becomes a queue travelling at perhaps 90 km/h with 'new arrivals' arriving at a higher speed often braking aggressively resulting in the regularly reported crashes.
Allowing such machinery, which is not subject to roadworthiness testing and may be under the control of a person who has never undertaken a practical driving test, to mix with other traffic travelling at motorway speeds is the height of folly.
As a side issue, drivers who might remain in lane 1 are not allowed into lane 2 when they need to overtake the slow-moving road-block and through frustration may move into lane2 when it is unsafe to do so.

Your point is valid, there should be no need for slow moving vehicles on the N25 West of Carrigtohill. And the mix is absolutely a hazard. I was just tongue-in-cheek emphasizing the volume of problems I've personally experienced on the N25 West of Carrigtohill from bad behaviour. People doing 140kmh+, people driving continuously in the right-hand-lane, people overtaking while intending to take an oncoming exit, etc.

And of course slow vehicles (40kmh) driving in the hard shoulder, half-in half-out of the hard shoulder or in the standard lane as a rolling roadblock.

hans aus dtschl

More information on this scheme: it's open for consultation.
https://www.corkrdo.ie/news/n25-carrigtohill-to-midleton-upgrade-scheme/

It does not include the Lakeview Roundabout.
(If anyone can now convince me that this isn't a land development facilitation exercise, I'll be impressed.)

Official scheme website here:
https://www.n25carrigtohillmidleton.ie/

hans aus dtschl

Red Route:
https://www.n25carrigtohillmidleton.ie/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Red-Route.pdf

Blue Route:
https://www.n25carrigtohillmidleton.ie/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Blue-Route.pdf

Brown Route:
https://www.n25carrigtohillmidleton.ie/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Brown-Route.pdf

Purple Route:
https://www.n25carrigtohillmidleton.ie/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Purple-Route.pdf

marno21

hans aus dtschl wrote: »

More information on this scheme: it's open for consultation.
https://www.corkrdo.ie/news/n25-carrigtohill-to-midleton-upgrade-scheme/

It does not include the Lakeview Roundabout.
(If anyone can now convince me that this isn't a land development facilitation exercise, I'll be impressed.)

Official scheme website here:
https://www.n25carrigtohillmidleton.ie/

I feel like we'll never agree on it but TII/NRA have a longstanding policy of modernising the stretches of 1980s dual carriageway outstanding around the country. In recent years, the N7 Naas Road, N4 Lucan BP, N4 The Downs, parts of the N11 around Bray, the N18 at Cratloe etc.

To my knowledge, this is the last stretch of national road DC at 100km/h with median gaps. The 4km stretch to be upgraded here is a glorified mess with the brick wall verges, housing fronting onto the road, median gaps, T junctions, variable with HS, the half arsed 2009 median closures etc.

It does need upgrading and this corrects some of the poor slip roads at J4 and J5 too.

Regarding development, the Amgen site would be a useful site to develop for industrial uses, there is a cluster of industry around there with Merck, the Tullagreen IDA site, Little Island etc. However development around there should exploit the rail line, and that's a LA issue rather than a TII issue.

hans aus dtschl

marno21 wrote: »

The 4km stretch to be upgraded here is a glorified mess with the brick wall verges, housing fronting onto the road, median gaps, T junctions, variable with HS, the half arsed 2009 median closures etc.

It does need upgrading and this corrects some of the poor slip roads at J4 and J5 too.

No question on all of the above

marno21 wrote: »

Regarding development, the Amgen site would be a useful site to develop for industrial uses, there is a cluster of industry around there with Merck, the Tullagreen IDA site, Little Island etc. However development around there should exploit the rail line, and that's a LA issue rather than a TII issue.

I suspect the primary objective here is actually housing NE of the proposed new junction Marno. Check out Midleton UEA. It's going to be a very large area.

The Amgen site gets touted for everything but we're not really that short of development land out East, and AFAIK the Amgen site doesn't have ideal ground conditions. When Little Island gets a new junction at the West, the Mitsui Denman site and Harbour Point site will be hot property.

Chris_5339762

marno21 wrote: »

To my knowledge, this is the last stretch of national road DC at 100km/h with median gaps. The 4km stretch to be upgraded here is a glorified mess with the brick wall verges, housing fronting onto the road, median gaps, T junctions, variable with HS, the half arsed 2009 median closures etc.

Same with the A1 from Newry to Sprucefield. Its littered with median crossings (and is far, far, far worse than this section of N25).


These plans are largely similar to the 2006/2007 plans - opening development land and somewhat fixing up the Midleton West junction which has the shortest merge in Western Europe.

marno21

hans aus dtschl wrote: »

No question on all of the above



I suspect the primary objective here is actually housing NE of the proposed new junction Marno. Check out Midleton UEA. It's going to be a very large area.

The Amgen site gets touted for everything but we're not really that short of development land out East, and AFAIK the Amgen site doesn't have ideal ground conditions. When Little Island gets a new junction at the West, the Mitsui Denman site and Harbour Point site will be hot property.

I do bow to your superior local knowledge regarding the Amgen site. I am aware of the Water Rock plan too - however TII have a different view here and will be providing input should the development there continue. They shouldn't leave the N25 between Carrigtwohill and Midleton in the mess its in because of the potential for the council to ruin it. Maybe a better option might be upgrading J4 and J5 and using the existing N25 as a two way single carriageway between Barryscourt and the junction near Abernethys.

If there was one thing I would prefer here, it would be that the N25 had a masterplan for east of Barryscourt. This scheme is an ad hoc road development given that there's issues further east that need rectifying in the short/medium term. The lack of any plan as to what is actually to be done east of J5 is disappointing, even if the actual construction got long fingered.

Pete_Cavan

hans aus dtschl wrote: »

Red Route:
https://www.n25carrigtohillmidleton.ie/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Red-Route.pdf

Is the proposal here to use the existing westbound lanes as a local road, the existing eastbound lanes become the new westbound lanes of M25 and then add another two lanes to the south which become the eastbound lanes? Difficult to tell whats new there.

hans aus dtschl

marno21 wrote: »

I do bow to your superior local knowledge regarding the Amgen site. I am aware of the Water Rock plan too - however TII have a different view here and will be providing input should the development there continue. They shouldn't leave the N25 between Carrigtwohill and Midleton in the mess its in because of the potential for the council to ruin it. Maybe a better option might be upgrading J4 and J5 and using the existing N25 as a two way single carriageway between Barryscourt and the junction near Abernethys.

If there was one thing I would prefer here, it would be that the N25 had a masterplan for east of Barryscourt. This scheme is an ad hoc road development given that there's issues further east that need rectifying in the short/medium term. The lack of any plan as to what is actually to be done east of J5 is disappointing, even if the actual construction got long fingered.

I don't know very much about it but older lads in the area say it's porous limestone rock, big cavities underneath.

I fully agree with fixing up the N25, and I would like to see the J5 Midleton West junction upgraded. There's queuing on it now which is the biggest issue: they can't put in more houses accessed from J5 because of the queuing. The NTA and TII have put a halt on anything later than phase one of the UEA going ahead.

There should of course be a masterplan for East of Barryscourt. There's huge issues East of J5 getting ignored, because it's not really important to the cause of opening up the Waterrock land parcel that Cork Co Co themselves put together. Since February, the Golf Course is closed. They're sitting on a large land bank and not progressing its development.

But what happens East of J5 after this scheme? There will be tractors and cyclists and a lot of East Cork and Refinery traffic on it. That's not dealt with, but a new junction to access Waterrock is included in 3 of the 4 proposals.
And East of Lakeview has enough safety issues to keep you going for weeks, if you wanted to look at it. But that's not being looked at.

hans aus dtschl

Pete_Cavan wrote: »

Is the proposal here to use the existing westbound lanes as a local road, the existing eastbound lanes become the new westbound lanes of M25 and then add another two lanes to the south which become the eastbound lanes? Difficult to tell whats new there.

The drawings are poor unfortunately.
I think the Eastbound (towards Midleton) being used as a local road.
Westbound (towards Cork) being used as two lanes, and two additional lanes to the south of that. But the space is barely available at Milebush, and it's a serious squeeze at Castlerock avenue.

I don't hate this red design, but don't like the weird T junction at Hedgy Boreen. And I don't know what the plan for J5 is. If it's closed, then the new junction will see heavy use. If it's staying, then there will be queuing on a motorway.
I also dislike that they're building a link road on the link road. Just in principle, I hate that we've sunk to that level of crappiness. The whole reason J5 is in this mess is because of the development that was allowed there. That link road is only a few years old, it's a disgrace. And here we are with another massive capital project to facilitate development West of Midleton, just because we're doing things by halves.

As I've said earlier in the thread, I partly wish they'd just upgrade the Ballyrichard and/or Ballintubbrid roads as local distributors.

Edit:
But hey, at least we're no longer talking about traffic lights at the Amgen site!!!

niloc1951

Not wishing to hijack the thread but a few km's east of Lakeview acurate signage is required, despite what they indicate the road is not curving to the left it's curving to the right click here for the 100m sign and here for the 250m sign
It's unbelievable that those signs haven't been corrected since they were installed over 10 years ago .

marno21

hans aus dtschl wrote: »

The drawings are poor unfortunately.
I think the Eastbound (towards Midleton) being used as a local road.
Westbound (towards Cork) being used as two lanes, and two additional lanes to the south of that. But the space is barely available at Milebush, and it's a serious squeeze at Castlerock avenue.

I don't hate this red design, but don't like the weird T junction at Hedgy Boreen. And I don't know what the plan for J5 is. If it's closed, then the new junction will see heavy use. If it's staying, then there will be queuing on a motorway.
I also dislike that they're building a link road on the link road. Just in principle, I hate that we've sunk to that level of crappiness. The whole reason J5 is in this mess is because of the development that was allowed there. That link road is only a few years old, it's a disgrace. And here we are with another massive capital project to facilitate development West of Midleton, just because we're doing things by halves.

As I've said earlier in the thread, I partly wish they'd just upgrade the Ballyrichard and/or Ballintubbrid roads as local distributors.

Edit:
But hey, at least we're no longer talking about traffic lights at the Amgen site!!!

The red option would appear to "optimise" the west facing slips at J5. The east facing slips stay as they are though.

I favour the red option personally. It's the least beneficial for NW of Midleton sprawl, sorts the mess directly east of Carrigtwohill and seems to have the best all round qualities. Open to criticism of that position.

hans aus dtschl

I'm still getting my head around the variations, but there seems to be minimal difference between Blue and Purple.
I like that these two continue straight at Hedgy Boreen. The local distributor road is more valuable to me in that configuration.

All designs appear to deal with medians and houses and all create a link-road-link-road, so probably worth calling out what I see as the "differences":
Carrigtohill Eastbound slip
Hedgy Boreen upggrade design
New "Amgen/Waterrock" junction placement
J5 queuing/merging

None of these designs appear to deal with the tractor/cyclist question. Really not sure what they're thinking about these: through Midleton Main Street, or use the N25 East of J5?

hans aus dtschl

More detail from the brochure:

Red Option
New central interchange at Ballyadam (with the closure of Barryscourt Interchange east facing slip roads);
Blue Option
New central interchange at Milebush (with the closure of Oatencake Interchange west facing slip roads);
Purple Option
New central interchange at Milebush (with the closure of Oatencake Interchange west facing slip roads) and an alternative route for Middleton [SP] traffic accessing the new interchange
Brown Option
A Traffic Management Option which focuses on closure of the gaps in the central median and rerouting of residential accesses to Local Roads but does not have a central interchange

marno21

Celtic Interconnector converter station is to be at the Amgen site at Ballyadam, Carrigtwohill

Interesting quote:

Echo wrote:

The consultation process resulted in a preference for Ballyadam as the most appropriate location for the new station given the existing and anticipated industrial and commercial activity in the area

https://www.echolive.ie/corknews/Cork-site-chosen-for-converter-station-for-1-billion-electricity-project-799228c2-7107-4116-bb21-bbff6b45b1b6-ds

hans aus dtschl

marno21 wrote: »

Celtic Interconnector converter station is to be at the Amgen site at Ballyadam, Carrigtwohill

Interesting quote:



https://www.echolive.ie/corknews/Cork-site-chosen-for-converter-station-for-1-billion-electricity-project-799228c2-7107-4116-bb21-bbff6b45b1b6-ds

Yeah, the Amgen side is all planned/hoped to be the next CoCo industrial sprawl-park after Little Island, the WaterRock side will be a sprawly housing estate.

And a shiny new road will mean everyone can drive there.

marno21

https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/munster/arid-40248605.html

Preferred route due in May

marno21

Tender out for ground investigation works

https://irl.eu-supply.com/ctm/Supplier/PublicPurchase/187478/0/0?returnUrl=ctm/Supplier/publictenders&b=ETENDERS_SIMPLE

marno21

https://www.n25carrigtohillmidleton.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/N25-Brochure-final-english.pdf

Preferred route published.

Chris_5339762

Interesting. Cheapest option. Hopefully they'll be able to improve the Midleton West sliproads somewhat. Surprised they were lazy and didn't do an all-out new Midleton West junction. Silly decision.

hans aus dtschl

This was the option I expected from discussions with the team. But I don't really see how this option deals with some of the biggest issues: slow moving agri machinery, cyclists, etc.

And I'm still baffled a year later, by the motivation to upgrade this section but not the Lakeview Roundabout, Midleton-Castlemartyr, Castlemartyr, or Killeagh sections of the N25.

Chris_5339762

The lack of investment in the Cork section of the N25 has always baffled me. Its not that they haven't had funding, its that they haven't even considered it. They linked the 1980s Midleton bypass to Dunkettle and then stopped.

Cork to Youghal should have been DC years and years ago.

Edit: AND IT IS STILL NOT EVEN BEING CONSIDERED. The best we will get is a half assed Castlemartyr relief road... nothing for Killeagh.

hans aus dtschl

Yep it's a very strange one for me too.

Anyone who knows me on here will know I'm hardly a staunch advocate of "more roads projects" but the N25 is a fairly low standard interurban corridor. Obviously not as important as the N20 or N22 in terms of strategic infrastructure, but there is no alternative transport method on the corridor. Maybe upgrading the N24 is the "preferred option" for Cork-Waterford, but the N25 isn't just going to go away!

Pete_Cavan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117885603#Comment_117885603

Local traffic and machinery will be accommodated on a new road provided on the northern side of the existing road pavement. An active travel route will also be provided alongside.

As for the N25 further east, I think Lakeview is a much bigger project than most expect. I dont think it will be possible to have a junction there if the roundabout is removed. The N25 could fly over the existing road and a new junction and link roads provided further east. Obviously building this would be a nightmare as the road will have to remain live and there is very little space.

I think Midleton to east of Killeagh, all the eggs seem to be in a one large project basket. The problem with that is they can't do anything else in the meantime and that large project will be very expensive and is well down the list. It would be better to shift policy build SC bypasses of Castlemartye and Killeagh in a sooner timeframe and have that done. Waiting for a full DC which may never come is not a great option.

KrisW1001

East of Midleton, there’s very little justification for a dual carriageway. The reason it backs up is because of the bottleneck movements in Castlemartyr, not because there’s a lack of capacity: the section between Killeagh and Castlemartyr is able to accommodate the volumes of traffic using it, but that traffic gets caught in Castlemartyr itself. A relief road in Castlemartyr would make a huge difference to this section, without the cost and disruption of a dual carriageway.

Lakeview is a major problem because there’s so little space around. I agree with Pete_Cavan, and I suspect that any upgrade would result in Lakeview becoming a limited-access junction with N25 (join for Cork, leave for Midleton only): that would fit my own experience of traffic at the roundabout.