South link Works

grogi

hans aus dtschl wrote: »

It's irrelevant.
The idea that re-categorising the N40 as a motorway will allow better traffic throughput is a fallacy.

What's the AADT at Douglas and the tunnel? It's overcapacity. Reclassifying it in the hope of removing less than a % of traffic is deckchairs on the titanic territory as far as I can see.

They need to build the M40 North. They need to designate a secondary Douglas-Ballincollig route for L plate drivers and slow moving vehicles. They can call the remaining N40 whatever they want, or just introduce local restrictions like at the tunnel.

To reduce some of the biggest tailbacks I've seen on the N40, you'd have to ban puddles and ban massive fires in Douglas.

Reclassification is currently not a useful exercise. Tailbacks will remain.

But the reclassification is not about capacity, but safety. While a ban like that would marginally improve capacity, the overall tailbacks would remain.

marno21

hans aus dtschl wrote: »

It's irrelevant.
The idea that re-categorising the N40 as a motorway will allow better traffic throughput is a fallacy.

What's the AADT at Douglas and the tunnel? It's overcapacity. Reclassifying it in the hope of removing less than a % of traffic is deckchairs on the titanic territory as far as I can see.

They need to build the M40 North. They need to designate a secondary Douglas-Ballincollig route for L plate drivers and slow moving vehicles. They can call the remaining N40 whatever they want, or just introduce local restrictions like at the tunnel.

To reduce some of the biggest tailbacks I've seen on the N40, you'd have to ban puddles and ban massive fires in Douglas.

Reclassification is currently not a useful exercise. Tailbacks will remain.

TII would love to build M40 North. But there are many reasons why they can’t:

1. The current Government’s approach to capital investment is pathetic
2. The current Minister for Transport is a sham
3. Most roads projects being advanced at the minute is because they have political “babysitters”. There are 2 major road schemes to start shortly, the N5 Westport-Turlough and the N22 Macroom-Ballyvourney. They are being heavily pushed by Michael Ring and Michael Creed respectively, hence the rush to get them started. There is no one pushing for a Cork North Ring Road.

Until there is a major change in attitudes towards transport capital investment, TII have to make do with what they have and sweat the existing assets. Hence they now implementing the N40 Demand Management Study in the short term (available on their website)

hans aus dtschl

grogi wrote: »

But the reclassification is not about capacity, but safety. While a ban like that would marginally improve capacity, the overall tailbacks would remain.

Whose safety?
Are you talking about banning people in the interest of their own safety? Or can you point to the some of the accidents that have been caused by slow moving vehicles? If it was even remotely about safety, we'd be ticketing 100's of cars an hour on the N40 for driving over the speed limit.
Not to mention that we're talking about rerouting tractors through the centre of the city.

So yeah, that's a ridiculous idea, that it would be "for safety".

marno21

From the N40 Demand Management Study:

Upgrade of N40 to Motorway Status will remove LDrivers, pedestrians, cyclists and slow vehicles and will have safety and capacity benefits:

Currently, the N40, while a national primary road with dual carriageway and grade separated junctions, is not a motorway. The consequence of this, from a traffic perspective, is that pedestrians, cyclists, learner drivers and slow moving vehicles are not currently excluded from the N40.

This has two significant effects:
Firstly, there is a safety issue with permitting pedestrians and cyclists access to a high speed and heavily
trafficked road. While it is acknowledged that pedestrian and cyclist numbers using the N40 are low, it is a
fact that, of the three fatal collisions on the N40 between 2005 and 2013, two of the fatalities were
pedestrians. Upgrading the N40 to motorway status would mean that pedestrians and cyclists are legally
prohibited from using the road, thus improving safety.

Secondly, the presence of slow moving vehicles during times of high traffic flows along the N40 can have a
disproportionally significant impact on traffic flows. The reason for this is that the presence of a slow moving
vehicle effectively removes most of the traffic from one lane of the road over a short distance as drivers
attempt to overtake. This causes a restriction on traffic flow and consequent congestion. Upgrading the N40
to motorway status would legally prohibit slow moving vehicles from using the road

Seems to me that it's a no brainer.

TheChizler

marno21 wrote: »

From the N40 Demand Management Study:



Seems to me that it's a no brainer.

On the second point you're only solving the problem of vehicles with a max speed of 50(?) km/h, how many of those do you ever see?

marno21

TheChizler wrote: »

On the second point you're only solving the problem of vehicles with a max speed of 50(?) km/h, how many of those do you ever see?

I have seen two tractors on the N40, both westbound between 5pm and 6pm in the last few weeks. One was on the Douglas flyover which would cause gridlock were there to be an accident.

hans aus dtschl

marno21 wrote: »

TII would love to build M40 North. But there are many reasons why they can’t:

1. The current Government’s approach to capital investment is pathetic
2. The current Minister for Transport is a sham
3. Most roads projects being advanced at the minute is because they have political “babysitters”. There are 2 major road schemes to start shortly, the N5 Westport-Turlough and the N22 Macroom-Ballyvourney. They are being heavily pushed by Michael Ring and Michael Creed respectively, hence the rush to get them started. There is no one pushing for a Cork North Ring Road.

Until there is a major change in attitudes towards transport capital investment, TII have to make do with what they have and sweat the existing assets. Hence they now implementing the N40 Demand Management Study in the short term (available on their website)

I don't disagree with any of that.
Demand management makes perfect sense: I've seen it work in Germany.

I'm just saying that recategorising it as an M status without addressing where the resulting L-plate drivers and heavy machinery will go instead is counter-productive. The TII document just glosses over this detail, as it doesn't really concern them. They put three paragraphs into it, in total. It's not fair to insinuate that they've addressed the issue: their scope was to find a short term solution that would increase throughput by a small amount.

marno21

hans aus dtschl wrote: »

I don't disagree with any of that.
Demand management makes perfect sense: I've seen it work in Germany.

I'm just saying that recategorising it as an M status without addressing where the resulting L-plate drivers and heavy machinery will go instead is counter-productive. The TII document just glosses over this detail, as it doesn't really concern them. They put three paragraphs into it, in total. It's not fair to insinuate that they've addressed the issue: their scope was to find a short term solution that would increase throughput by a small amount.

It's not TII's responsibility as to where the L plates and heavy machinery goes. It's TII's responsibility to provide the best level of services possible on the N40 as it's classed as a strategic element of the national road network. Even more so between Bloomfield and Dunkettle as that's part of the TEN-T Core network and will have to be reclassified motorway for that reason anyway. If J9-J11 is being redesignated, they also have to redesignate to J6 due to the lack of places for non motorway traffic to leave.

In a similar fashion, TII don't care about how heavy machinery and learner drivers get around Dublin, or Limerick, especially between the N4 and N3 exits where there is no clear defined alternative route.

hans aus dtschl

marno21 wrote: »

From the N40 Demand Management Study:



Seems to me that it's a no brainer.

Sorry I've replied to you above: I've no problem with saying the N40 should be a motorway. And you can do the same with Carrigtwohill to Midleton, ban the locals from getting in and out of their houses on the N25: job almost done overnight. But it doesn't address the reason it's not currently motorway standard at all.
So yes, my issue isn't with the technical concept of it being Motorway standard (the safest road type in the state) rather that simply calling it motorway isn't sufficient as there's currently no alternative route for some few users.

And you can't say "the primary motivation is safety" while rerouting slower HGV's through the city centre. Of course you'll improve the safety of that stretch of N/M40 but at what cost to safety elsewhere? So if it was about safety, you could drop and enforce the speed limit on the whole N40 overnight. That's not the purpose. The purpose is to achieve more throughput.

hans aus dtschl

marno21 wrote: »

It's not TII's responsibility as to where the L plates and heavy machinery goes. It's TII's responsibility to provide the best level of services possible on the N40 as it's classed as a strategic element of the national road network. Even more so between Bloomfield and Dunkettle as that's part of the TEN-T Core network and will have to be reclassified motorway for that reason anyway. If J9-J11 is being redesignated, they also have to redesignate to J6 due to the lack of places for non motorway traffic to leave.

In a similar fashion, TII don't care about how heavy machinery and learner drivers get around Dublin, or Limerick, especially between the N4 and N3 exits where there is no clear defined alternative route.

Yes I believe we're on the same page entirely here.

TII's scope was to find a short-term (ideally cost-effective) measure to increase throughput on the N40. That was their brief.

marno21

hans aus dtschl wrote: »

Sorry I've replied to you above: I've no problem with saying the N40 should be a motorway. And you can do the same with Carrigtwohill to Midleton, ban the locals from getting in and out of their houses on the N25: job almost done overnight. But it doesn't address the reason it's not currently motorway standard at all.
So yes, my issue isn't with the technical concept of it being Motorway standard (the safest road type in the state) rather that simply calling it motorway isn't sufficient as there's currently no alternative route for some few users.

And you can't say "the primary motivation is safety" while rerouting slower HGV's through the city centre. Of course you'll improve the safety of that stretch of N/M40 but at what cost to safety elsewhere? So if it was about safety, you could drop and enforce the speed limit on the whole N40 overnight. That's not the purpose. The purpose is to achieve more throughput.

Oh I don't disagree with needing to provide routes for local traffic, but that comes under the remit of the Council, not TII.

Carrigtwohill-Midleton is to be upgraded to motorway standard over the next few years via the provision of distributor roads for local traffic. But that's a much easier job given the rural nature of the scheme. It's more difficult with the N40 given it's constrained by development.

The reality here is this, and we can both agree on it. The main reason the N40 Demand Management Study is being emphasised is the lack of will to properly invest in infrastructure. This whole thing could be solved via the Southern Distributor Road, greenways, improved roadside ped/cycle facilities, North Ring Road etc. But instead, the Government don't want to invest in actual infrastructure so are directing TII to sweat assets everywhere, which only has a moderate improvement.

This could come to a head if there's ever an issue with the JLT that requires a lengthy closure. Absolutely ridiculous that the JLT carries such volumes with absolutely no redundancy at all.

hans aus dtschl

marno21 wrote: »

The reality here is this, and we can both agree on it. The main reason the N40 Demand Management Study is being emphasised is the lack of will to properly invest in infrastructure. This whole thing could be solved via the Southern Distributor Road, greenways, improved roadside ped/cycle facilities, North Ring Road etc. But instead, the Government don't want to invest in actual infrastructure so are directing TII to sweat assets everywhere, which only has a moderate improvement.

This could come to a head if there's ever an issue with the JLT that requires a lengthy closure. Absolutely ridiculous that the JLT carries such volumes with absolutely no redundancy at all.

I'll 100% agree on all of that yep.
No funding other than for minimal "sweat the asset" efforts.

There's currently no plan for agri vehicles, L-plates and HGV's. The Southern Distributor road would be a solution but there's no funding for this.

I think pedestrians and cyclists could be facilitated extraordinarily cheaply as there's space parallel to most of the E-W alignment and a disused railway line at Togher. But again no funding for this.

TheChizler

marno21 wrote: »

I have seen two tractors on the N40, both westbound between 5pm and 6pm in the last few weeks. One was on the Douglas flyover which would cause gridlock were there to be an accident.

Did they have their top speed of less than 50 km/h printed on them?

Padraig Mor

hans aus dtschl wrote: »

So yeah, that's a ridiculous idea, that it would be "for safety".

Large speed differentials are inherently unsafe - whether that be a slow moving vehicle on a road where other traffic is travelling considerably faster, or the reverse (as reference for the latter, the motorcyclist killed a couple of years ago while racing a car on the road during the day). Unfortunately the only proposals from the anti car brigade on this thread have amounted to 'ban cars from the road', 'fine speeding cars' and 'build another road for slower traffic [i.e. cyclists]' ignoring the fact that the road was constructed to move large volumes of traffic at high speed. It's funny - I distinctly remember a thread some years ago in Motors regarding a cyclist on the middle lane of the section between Kinsale Rd and Wilton on a dark rainy night at rush hour - incredibly dangerous behaviour - and the gang who arrived from the Cycling forum screaming and shouting that it was safe and he was legally entitled to be there and anyone who had a problem with it was some kind of speeding lunatic.

marno21 wrote: »

I have seen two tractors on the N40, both westbound between 5pm and 6pm in the last few weeks. One was on the Douglas flyover which would cause gridlock were there to be an accident.

Unfortunately, M designation will not preclude tractors (although it should). Personally, I don't see naming it as a motorway making much difference at all until the Dunkettle interchange is complete, and even then any benefits are aspirational at best.

hans aus dtschl

Did you read the thread at all yourself Padraig?