What is being done to address the M50 problem?

Sam Russell · 27-12-2023 7:15pm

The M50 was upgraded to reduce congestion. Result: congestion was reduced for a while but it is back worse than before. That is always the way.

If tolling the M50 gives rise to congestion on alternative routes, them a Congestion Charge becomes the next step.

However, without the PT projects implemented, then we are doomed to have massive congestion in the Greater Dublin Area.

salmocab · 27-12-2023 10:40pm

It needs carrot and stick, without the carrot there will be no stick. If a metro is built then is the time to try force people from cars, right now it would be fanciful as the PT just couldn’t cope with much increase in numbers. With a metro in place it takes cars off the road and that in turn makes other PT run better and more reliably. Other ticketing initiatives etc will help but the carrot has to come first.

Seth Brundle · 28-12-2023 1:54am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121542001#Comment_121542001

Grand, so if you're depending on the Metro, your carrot won't be here for 20 or probably 30 years so enjoy the daily traffic congestion until then!

veryangryman · 28-12-2023 5:56am

This induced demand is complete horsedoo. Increasing capacity gets more through and thus aids the economy.

As has been said we likely won't see a decent metro in out lifetimes. Lane widening would help. Not fully but the alternative is no help at all. Fk the greens and anyone who backs up them stopping us progressing as a country.

markpb · 28-12-2023 6:55am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121542698#Comment_121542698

I’m sure you can point to examples of urban motorways where road widening successfully reduced congestion after the initial bump then?

salmocab · 28-12-2023 7:51am

Is there room for another lane under all the bridges? I suspect not which would make adding an extra lane a mammoth task.

markpb · 28-12-2023 9:38am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121542716#Comment_121542716

Whatever about the bridges, the junctions were difficult to widen last time and would be next to impossible to do again. The N3 junction in particular would need the removal of multiple houses and businesses and a tennis club. Or you could shift the entire thing north slightly and only have to CPO a golf club.

Stark · 28-12-2023 9:43am

Yeah it's maxed out without redoing all the junctions. And they already had to make some of the existing free flows a lot tighter than they'd like due to space constraints.

Seth Brundle · 28-12-2023 11:09am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121542698#Comment_121542698

So despite all the evidence showing that induced demand is in fact a thing, you know better. A wider road will not make traffic better and would represent very poor value for taxpayers money.

It has nothing to do with the greens either. It is demonstratable fact. Lastly, if you follow the news, you'd know that traffic congestion is actually holding us up as a country. It has led to a massive amount of urban sprawl where people have no option but to commute stupid distances by car. And you think encouraging more of that would show that the country is progressing?

Beta Ray Bill · 28-12-2023 11:20am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121528798#Comment_121528798

Except the data is NOT there, not the the official TII website anyway: https://trafficdata.tii.ie/publicmultinodemap.asp

Data only goes back as far 2019 which is useless as we had a pandemic from 2020 onward

Also there is only 89% data coverage for 2019 on motorways indicating +10% of the traffic data is missing, or wasn't collected. I do agree with you though that there is a straw that breaks the camels back. Total increase in traffic since highest values recorded in 2019 is around 6 or 7%. (this excludes missing traffic data so we probably have not yet hit 2019 traffic levels)

Tabular data function on TII website doesn't work either, so cannot do a detailed analysis.

There are also no nodes for the main roads into Dublin. IE At the canals on the likes of the Finglas Road, Longmile Road, Stillorgan road, Malahide road etc. The data is just not there.

In fact, in 2017 according to this article:

https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-30875223.html#:~:text=According%20to%20the%202017%20annual,exceed%20155%2C000%20vehicles%20per%20day.

The traffic Numbers between J7 and J9 exceeded 155,000 vehicles per day, currently it's at 156,000 vehicles per day. So there has only been a 0.6% increase in traffic there. (Busiest section of road in the country btw)

kirk. · 28-12-2023 11:24am

Whatever happened with all that talk about relocating business away from the capital

It seems like madness everyone driving to the same place at the same time

Beta Ray Bill · 28-12-2023 11:33am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121543003#Comment_121543003

No proper plans, and no infra, so that was never going to happen.

Seth Brundle · 28-12-2023 11:53am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121543003#Comment_121543003

You mean the ill-concieved "plan" whose only intention was to distract from a crap budget?

Stark · 28-12-2023 11:59am

They had civil service decentralisation which probably made things worse imo. Most of the civil servants who were moved already had bought homes in Dublin, had families in school etc. so it's just added pointless commutes to the countryside for them.

I used to think the solution to Dublin's problems was to invest more in Cork, Limerick, Waterford, Galway but those cities seem to be under similar strain. Ultimately it makes sense for people to live in high density cities (and Dublin is still relatively low density by international standards), Ireland just needs to get its **** together when it comes to building infrastructure for growth.

KrisW1001 · 28-12-2023 1:25pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121542987#Comment_121542987

Historic traffic data is available on the TII website. Irishmotorwayinfo.com, maintained by @spacetweek of this parish, also has graphs. Search "M50 Traffic Counts" and follow the results...

Dublin City Council also counts traffic in and out of the core inner city (between the canals). Search "Dublin City Traffic Counts"

There's piles of data there if you look.

The motorway traffic figures are rising, but the city core figures are falling, so where are the "missing" cars going? Still within Dublin city, but outside the canals.

The key point of my post was this: When a system is close to its limit, even a tiny increase can cause catastrophic breakdown in throughput. That's what we're seeing in Dublin. But the good news is that this means even a modest reduction in car numbers would really improve service levels.

Clo-Clo · 28-12-2023 1:33pm

I used to drive the M50, it was already at capacity before they had finished the roadworks. At this stage more lanes won't help. They would be better putting on orbital buses and pull one lane from cars and use for buses only.

They have a new bus lane enforcement system coming into play so can use that as well.

Beta Ray Bill · 28-12-2023 3:27pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121543400#Comment_121543400

You could have just linked me:

http://irishmotorwayinfo.com/inex/roads/m50/m50counts.html

In any case the traffic figures have not changed on those counts by any meaningful amount since 2017. Some are very slightly up some are very slightly down.

And its not Dublin City Traffic, its the canal cordon count and the 2023 report (on 2022) is here:

https://www.nationaltransport.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/NTA-Canal-Cordon-Report-2022-Final.pdf

And it too shows the number of cars entering the city between 7am and 10am continues to fall and has done since 2006.

It will be interesting to see the 2024 report on 2023 (we'll need to wait until may though)

KrisW1001 · 28-12-2023 10:45pm

Yes, I could have given you the direct links, but you know the saying: "give a man a fish..."

I don't know where you're getting "no meaningful change" from with the M50 counts. There's a clear, steady increase year on year.

Charles Babbage · 28-12-2023 10:50pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121543418#Comment_121543418

The junctions should have been designed with bus interchanges from day 1, to allow quick transfer from city bound buses to orbital buses.

Any discussion of reducing traffic is pie in the sky when public transport largely ignores orbital trips. They need to offer travel times on orbital journeys that are not 3 or 4 times the time taken to drive.

Clo-Clo · 28-12-2023 11:45pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121545310#Comment_121545310

Buses are stuck in the same traffic as everyone else, if they close down a lane to buses only this would speed up the travel time for the bus is my point. Otherwise why would anyone take a bus to sit in the same grid lock

SeanW · 29-12-2023 1:12pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121542941#Comment_121542941

I'm all for improving public transport in Dublin, starting with a full Metro network, Dart Underground, more Luas etc. But the simple fact is that these alone will not work for everyone, as public transport tends to work best if masses of people are doing roughly similar journeys. Great if you happen to live AND work within a very short distance of a station along the same line, but if your home or work is far from public transport or if a journey involves multiple mode changes it gets dicey really fast. Or if you are travelling for any reason other than commuting, PT might not necessarily be the solution.

Roads will thus continue to be the solution for many, those who live far from work and those who are travelling for reasons other than commuting, not to mention road hauled freight.

For that reason, I too would like to see improvements made to the M50 and/or an outer orbital motorway further away from Dublin - but only after a lot of investment has been made into public transport in Dublin. The full Metrolink from Swords to Bray and Dart Underground being the absolute bare minimum in this regard.

KaneToad · 29-12-2023 1:19pm

Remote working is the quickest & cheapest solution to our infrastructure needs. Hoards of people travelling into Dublin on a daily basis could be removed in an instant.

Dublin Chamber of Commerce won't be happy but Navan, Tullamore, Bray, Gorey, Enniscorthy, Naas, Portlaoise, New bridge, Drogheda, Dundalk etc would be delighted.

Stark · 29-12-2023 4:27pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121546824#Comment_121546824

Dumb comment. Plenty of people would be delighted with the offer of more remote work options. It's not like asking people to make sacrifices like giving up holidays