What is being done to address the M50 problem?

Ginger83

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121459926#Comment_121459926

Any links for it? What's the range and torque like?

Thelonious Monk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121459949#Comment_121459949

Riverside 500e you get about 45km out of it with decent help

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121459461#Comment_121459461

If you want to get people out of their cars, give them an option that they already know how to use, such as a bike.

WishUWereHere

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121456333#Comment_121456333

I’m from Newbridge so have an idea of what Your Partners friend goes through with that ‘hell that is the Red Cow’. Why don’t they park & ride at the RC?

Ginger83

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121459982#Comment_121459982

I watched a video, very nice bike.

Idbatterim

Peak hour bus lanes a good idea, very cheap buses, some might stop at a major junction along the way, some might stop at the n4, some at the n7, some at the n3? They stop at the airport and then onto swords etc area with a park and ride? Park and ride in sandyford / leopardstown, cherrywood etc too...

FazyLucker

M50 is always going to be so because it is a key artery for too many things. It is the key pinch point for almost all the traffic from every road in the country. It is a sign of economic prosperity - albeit a bad one - that its busy.

I would agree with those above on the topic of a public transport railway to be considered and built, but as long as we have Irish Rail subventions of €550 per passenger from Ballybrophy to Limerick to keep Alan Kelly happy, or the free travel brigade in Wexford wanting to re open a line used by a handful of people, these potentially really valuable and desperately needed pieces of infrastructure don't even get considered.

I would bet a well planned orbital rail route would really be utilised provided it hit all the right places along the route but failing that, why don't we have cycle lanes parallel to the M50 for example? If there was decent infrastructure I bet people would use it. I think they have them in France if I remember right? If its only 22km from Santry to Swords, many people could cycle to work much quicker than they can drive.

Alternatively, a (properly policed) 3rd lane for high occupancy, or the left hand lane turned in to a bus lane might help?

Nobody ever wants to sit in M50 traffic and if I get 100k of a pay rise but had to sit on it every day I would say no thanks.

saabsaab

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121459508#Comment_121459508

All I am saying is that the tolls were supposed to be limited in duration.

salmocab

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121467754#Comment_121467754

Oh yeah wasn’t really arguing with you, was just making the point that regardless of anything else it would be impractical to remove them now.

tibia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121456720#Comment_121456720

In a nutshell, yes. A slightly better way of saying it:

"hey guys, you know how the issue is the road is overcrowded and there is no alternative routes? Lets find a way to reduce the number of vehicles using the road at peak times

betistuc

Does anyone remember the offer that a Japanese company( Mitsui, I think) made to the Government at the time back in the Eighties. They offered to bring their drilling machines over to Dublin from a completed tunnelling contract somewhere in the UK, and build and operate a Metro system for free , in exchange for all the ticket sales for 20 years. Government told them to sling their hook. It would have been handed back to the state by 2010 at the latest. We'd be pretty glad of it now

Charles Babbage

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121504195#Comment_121504195

And that was 10 years after the Russians offered to build a metro in return for butter.

GreeBo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121504251#Comment_121504251

I think the issue was that they got to choose the route from Sandyford to the Airport, so they would have picked the cheapest to build that returned the best profit, which might not have lined up with what we actually need.

betistuc

Maybe , but it would still be preferable to what;s there at the moment and probably for the next 10 years. Nothing !!!

alinois

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121504849#Comment_121504849

Mark my words: when the MetroLink has finished it will already be outdated and won't make any difference. By that time Dart+, BusConnects and Luas extensions would've already proven inefficient to fix any problems and Dublin will be in the same situation or worse.

At the rate of population growth we're seeing today, despite money not being an issue, our delivery is just too slow and our projects take way too long to approve. The government is too narrow minded to be able to fix any of the surrounding issues preventing us from moving at the rate we need to make Dublin a city of the future.

Like many have written elsewhere, we're a rich country that thinks like a poor country.

betistuc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121509033#Comment_121509033

I read an article recently about the Madrid metro The expansion of the existing metro began around 1995 until 2011 . In that time they tunneled 172km of new line and added 132 new stations all built in 4 phases. They were able to achieve this in that time frame thanks to some crafty legislation brought in by the Spanish government earlier in the century. The law required no planning permission, environmental impact study and public consultation for tunneling that is more than 10 meters below the surface. This reduced costly and lengthy compensation negotiations. The law also meant that if and when any problems were encountered during tunneling, they could change direction of the tunnel without planning.

Minister for Transport here at the time was Seamus Brennan. He was made aware of the Madrid experience but I imagine he found it all a little too progressive and consigned it to the rear of a filing cabinet.

If this law was applied here, who knows it could shave 2-3 years off any future tunneling projects. I'm only saying ...........

P.S Tunneling work in Madrid was carried out 24/7. That meant no expensive machinery lying idle for long periods, which often happens here .

Also, the Madrid metro was built for a fraction of the estimated cost of E 4.8 billion for the proposed Dublin metro in 2003 .

BlueSkyDreams

We wont see satisfactory PT for Dublin for decades, since ML will take at least 10 yrs to build and the other projects like BusConnects & a 3km LUAS extension to Finglas are just peripheral.

Its cars for the forseeable in Dublin.

MayoSalmon

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121514592#Comment_121514592

We are an embarrassment of a country run by absolute luddites

Seth Brundle

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121514533#Comment_121514533

If this law was applied here, who knows it could shave 2-3 years off any future tunneling projects. I'm only saying ...........

What other stuff would have been done without the public having the opportunity to say "wait"?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121514986#Comment_121514986

We are run by the people we choose and those people will almost always pander to our anti-change whines.

betistuc

Probably the Port tunnel, Jack Lynch tunnel and Limerick tunnel. This legislation only applied to 10 meters below surface projects.

KrisW1001

... and of those, only the Port Tunnel actually involved tunnelling under private property.

kirk.

Cars = Gridlock .

Everything in the city should be geared towards public transport

idi na khuy hai

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121521842#Comment_121521842

Good luck delivering a truck load of goods with a bus pass....

victor8600

Just to echo what other have said. More public transport is needed. From my point of view, I would like to see more Luas (radial) and new orbital metro lines, either Luas like or the undergrounds rail. If there are easy ways to get from Swords to Blanch to Tallaght to Sandyford by public transport, that could relieve the pressure from M50.

circadian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121522002#Comment_121522002

Deliveries aren't the same as private cars.

circadian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121522066#Comment_121522066

Need to increase the core density too but it's too easy for people to oppose this. Decentralising the country and building fast and efficient rail connections to regional towns and hubs might make more sense.

CrabRevolution

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121504195#Comment_121504195

This would be more believable if we hadn't heard the same story about the Chinese, Russians, Germans, French, Spanish etc.

Thelonious Monk

I live well within the M50. Having a coffee now in Killester and the whole area is just rammed with traffic in every direction. It has been like this for a while now every day. There are just too many cars and people are addicted to the convenience of them.

Jayuu

There's an argument to be made that while we should be delivering better infrastructure in Dublin and more public transport options we shoud also be actively trying to limit the growth of the city. Dublin (and the Greater Dublin area) is outsized for the size of country we are. Radical regional development is required to bring up population in Cork, Limerick, Galway, Waterford and Sligo. Of course that would require money too to bring the infrastructure in those cities up to par as well but we need to start thinking outside the box here.

kirk.

Is there anything being done to stagger the traffic ?

Any incentives or schemes

Seth Brundle

Staggering traffic will require companies to change their working hours and that's just not going to happen as it has been mentioned many times in the past and yet here we are.

Anyhow, the problem isn't company opening hours, it's too many people making the decision to drive around Dublin. The only solution will be to encourage people to choose sustainable forms of transport, where possible - there is absolutely no other solution to traffic congestion other than to reduce the number of people driving.

kirk.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121527651#Comment_121527651

Why is it not going to happen?

Beta Ray Bill

I have to use the M50 twice every week over and back

I drive from Coolock area to Rathfarnham to Collect my kid from School and then drive back

I've to collect him at 2:30pm so I always leave at 1:30pm to be safe, they drive over at that time is not to bad. but the drive back is an absolute killer, It's often been 4pm when I've gotten home. I've tried various routes via m50 or through town, I've tried using public transport multiple times but it's insanely slow (the roads on the south side of the city are just to narrow), and it's also expensive (guts of €10), as you go past the 90 min fair. I'll come back to the town piece in a minute.

In my mind the issue is not the volume of traffic it's the flow, The problem areas for my journey are Junction 7 and Junction 9. The issue is the flyovers and on ramps are very poorly designed. The traffic at Junction 7 is trying to go from 7 lanes into 4 and Junction 7 is 6 lanes into 4.

Two of the the lanes have major design flaw in that they do not have a long enough area to speed up to motorway speed. It's the loop on ramps coming from the city centre on to the Motorway heading north bound. There's heaps of HGV's using them and they slow everything down, cause they just cannot get up to speed and in that distance.

Once you pass the toll bridge the traffic clears a bit and at least you're moving.

My solution for the M50 would be to remove those figure 8 on ramps, they are are core contributing factor.

These ^^^^^^

If they wanna keep them then eliminate the other on ramp IE in the below pic, remove the Red and expand the Blue:

That would increase the flow. (Would need to be modelled)

Beta Ray Bill

Sorry for the 2nd post

But the other thing that is hugely contributing to traffic around the city is councils decision to allow developers to take a lane of the road for deliveries on large sites.

This is causing mayhem on Tara Street at the minute. it has a knock affect all the way up to Fitzwilliam Square. I don't know why DCC allowed this. It's baffling actually. It's 4 lanes of traffic on Pearse Street merging into 2... Like who signed off on that!!!!????

Green dots are buses only but only a few buses go through that, the bulk are trying to get over the quays

If I drive through town after collecting my kid, this is where I get stuck for at least 30 mins. Again once you pass that bottle neck it's mostly ok around that time.

vegandinner

Double the price of petrol and half the price of public transport, the problems will resolve themselves.

Seth Brundle

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121527701#Comment_121527701

Is your company going to change its opening hours then and if not, why?

kirk.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121527817#Comment_121527817

Why won't it work ?

If the incentives are there it can happen

Seth Brundle

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121527868#Comment_121527868

What incentive? This has been put forwards loads of times and always comes to nothing.

So, is your company going to change their opening hours or not? Or do you want other companies to change theirs first?

kirk.

Can't be that big of a deal to get business and schools to change time

What else is there on the M50 at peak time

Pale Red

Could try variable toll like in Port Tunnel. Reduced rate between, say, 19.00 and 07.00 to encourage those who have discretion to use lower volume times. Same could apply for other lower volume times (if they exist)

kirk.

There has to be something

No reason everyone has to want to use road the same time

salmocab

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121528012#Comment_121528012

A company changing its opening hours has knock on effects on child care for staff. Lots of other things would likely be affected with unintended consequences. Building sites tend to start and finish earlier but lots of businesses trade with other businesses in one way or another and it might cause issues.

Beta Ray Bill

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121527920#Comment_121527920

So this has already been done in many ways.

People used to leave the house early (say 6:45am) to beat the traffic and were able to go home early. Those days are gone now, even at 6:30am the traffic is very heavy on the M50.

I don't think there are more cars in the city nor are there people making different types of journeys. I think the issue we have is one of bad planning, bad policy (fixing things that aren't broken) and people's incompetence in driving.

chicorytip

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121447073#Comment_121447073

More lanes = More accidents = More Delays.

Irish motorists can hardly cope with two lanes, let alone five.

veryangryman

Normally I regard kermit as fanciful and a man who forgets were on a small island with a small pop density.

But... wrt M50 yes we should be having shedloads more lanes regardless the cost as it will more than pay for itself in efficiency.

I say that as both an Ev driver and a fan of the bicycle salesman

markpb

It’s nearly 2024 and we still have people claiming that more lanes on the M50 will help reduce congestion 😔

It’s just over a decade since we spent a billion euro widening the M50 and removing the barriers from the toll. How long did that help for? You could generously say it gave us five years, most of which coincided with a recession.

A billion euro back then could comfortably have paid for a large part of a metro or new Luas lines or an upgrade to the suburban rail system. That would have been money well spent.

When we were throwing money into our M50 blackhole, LA did the same by widening the 405 and adding HOV lanes. And they’re in the same boat as us now but at least they are actively building several rail lines and have already finished the equivalent of our DU tunnel project.

KrisW1001

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121528417#Comment_121528417

The traffic count figures are there online for you to look at. There are more cars in Dublin. Not an enormous increase, but it's an increase that has brought traffic closer to the hard limit that the street network can accommodate.

When you get toward the absolute capacity limit of a system, service levels collapse dramatically, because even small delays or short blockages can ripple out into major jams.

There are only two ways to fix this: widen the streets in the city (which will require demolition of a lot of properties, and you have to be prepared to do it all again in ten years), or reduce the number of cars using the streets. The second option is massively cheaper, leaves you with an actual city that's worth going to, and has the advantage of fixing the problem permanently.

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121528012#Comment_121528012

It's really the reluctance of people to change. We just had two years of lockdown, remote working, which had the effect of removing a lot of traffic. A year or two past the lock down we've just gone back to old habits. Let's drag everyone back to the office 9-5 because it works so well. Even though all the stats say otherwise.

I think at this point you just have to let gridlock build to the point where it's impossible to move.

Meanwhile all rail projects are just stalled here. Resistance to any change to roads to facilitate faster trains. So much resistance to cycle lanes and cycling.

You've people on this forum who literally spam any thread where anything other than cars is suggested.

jams100

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121528816#Comment_121528816

I dont know anyone against the metro or indeed the dart underground, we've been going on about these projects for over 20 years, we still haven't got a shovel in the ground. It's a complete lack of imagination and shocking oversight generally speaking when these projects do begin. (E.g. Children's hospital).

The main short term solution for M50 and general congestion would be to try encourage/force tech and office jobs to do more remote working.

The fact is, most people who use the M50 and commuting to / from jobs and have no public transport options (within any reasonable time vs car) for their journeys. Many examples...Palmerstown to CityWest or Swords to Tallaght etc.

Where public transport does exist its at capacity a fair amount of the time, I'm thinking both Luas lines, the C spine of bus connects etc.

Even the planned metro terminating at Charlstown shows the lack of long term vision it should be rolled all the way out to sandyford and we should already be in the planning stages for the second line, but we will probably end up with a delayed, overbudget small metro

Jayuu

I'm normally in favour of improved road infrastructure where possible but the idea of adding more and more lanes to the M50 as a solution to the problems is just ludicrous. It would be incredibly expensive to implement because it would require the redesign of almost all of the existing junctions, some of which simply don't have the space to accomodate a redesign. It would also require the provision on a new M50 bridge crossing as otherwise all these new lanes would have to merge again on the existing bridge thus creating logjams similar to those that used to exist when the barriers were there. We almost doubled the space availailable on the road in the last upgrade and yet as traffic volumes increased all of the benefits from that upgrade have dwindled away.

Solutions which try to get people out of cars and use of the road have to be the way to go here. Trying to smooth out the peak times is probably a more sustainable approach but a lot harder to achieve as many people are constrained by the need to bring children to and from school and so are locked into a time schedule for use of the road for their work.

Finally on a more left-field approach I did often wonder would it be anyway possible to have some of sort of M50 orbital public transport solution? Not directly on the motorway obviously but something that would mimic the route and then link in with existing public transport options so as to offer an alternative to car use. Maybe that's just as fanciful as a solution but I wonder has it ever been investigated.