How much did Motorways improve the driving times

My homeplace is at one of those passing points outside Mitchelstown. I grew up with the sounds of sirens and literal bangs and smashes from car crashes. It used to be absolutely lethal there where people would do exactly what you mention, mash the loud pedal at first sight of a potential gap. Not to mention the Friday evening traffic which would stretch maybe 2km outside the town in all directions.

I worked on the Motorway construction at the time, the difference in the days after it opened was staggering. Motorway infra is a game changer for this country.

Dundalk to Dublin with my dad in the late 70`s was at least 2 hours.

Castlebellingham, Dunleer , Drogheda - over west st and down shop st , no bridge of peace (Drogheda still the worst town in ireland for traffic today ) through Balbriggan and through the north Dublin suburbs but at least you could park outside the ice cream shop in o connell st !

This is very true. It's no coincidence that road deaths and injuries have been significantly reduced over the past couple of decades per capita. A combination of better roads and one could argue better/safer cars.

Dublin city to Cork on the bus was 5 hours, with a pee break in the middle. Now it's 3 hours or so, and the last 30 minutes is from Heuston to O'Connell St.

The Bridge in Drogheda was built around 1976. Before that, a passenger could probably get out and buy an ice cream and walk up the street and catch up on their car. Two HGVs meeting while turning from West Street into Shop Street could jam things up.

People in those days often chose not to face Drogheda but took the R169 from Dunleer to Collon and proceeded on the N2. Slane was a delay, but no queue. Ashbourne was a village then, and while there were lights at Finglas there was a relatively quiet dual carriageway to Glasnevin.

100% agree. Was thinking about this earlier while reading some of the posts on driving Cork-Dublin and the other long drives. People thought nothing of stopping off in Morrissey's of Abbeyleix or The Silken Thomas in Kildare or similar for a few scoops to break the journey, driver included.

And it wasn't just the drivers on the long runs that contributed. One of the big cases of accidents was drunks emerging from a pub after midnight and hopping into the old banger to head two miles over the road and driving, often on sidelights or one headlight, onto or across a main road. Had some close shaves of this nature on the N8 in places like Horse & Jockey, Kilbeheny, Rathcormack and the like.

I think there are five factors which have contributed to lowering the death toll:

• NCT improving the roadworthiness of cars, especially tyres (No more remoulds, regrooves, rethreads, or just plain bald tyres)
• Better (more skilled) driving
• Better roads
• Better/safer cars
• Complete change in attitude towards drink driving

It's difficult to guess at which of these has had the biggest impact. There are of course new factors which have the opposite effect: Using hand held mobiles while driving, faster cars, a lot more cars on the roads etc. But I definitely feel safer on the M7/M8 today than I did on the N7/N8 thirty years ago.

I agree 100% that HGV’s should be strongly discouraged from passing through populated/residential areas unnecessarily.

I didn’t suggest removing anything and I didn’t and don’t dispute that roads which pass through villages may be national (or regional or local) roads.

I cannot agree with your approach of rewarding HGV operators or anybody else for their current ignorant behaviour. The motorway bypasses were built at great expense, not just for the convenience of the few who are willing to pay the tolls, but equally if not more so for the benefit of those whose lives were made miserable and unsafe by large volumes of through traffic. The current toll regime is arbitrary and downright illogical however this is neither here nor there as it is what it is and should either apply to all road users equally or be scrapped and replaced with something more logical.

It would be fairer and better all round to apply a toll, being at least the same amount as the Motorway toll, preferably higher, to vehicles leaving the motorway at a junction immediately before the toll gates and re-joining within a short period at the next junction after the toll gates. This could apply to all vehicles and not just HGVs.

Not wishing to derail an otherwise interesting thread, I’m more then happy to disagree on this, but I can’t see any reasonable grounds for your approach.

They are one of the biggest reasons irelands poor road safety record went from bottom to top of the class in a short time in the late 2000s. We need to complete the puzzle now though. The N20, parts of the N4, N17, N14 etc are still not acceptable

Carlow and castledermot were pretty bad. I drove the old N9/10 from Kilkenny to Waterford recently just for nostalgia and Christ what an awful road that was for a national road. Only thing is now there’s no traffic on it and it was actually a kind of a pleasure to do.

North of Thomastown and Carlow it was an ok road in parts and had been improved through the 80s and 90s but certainly wouldn’t handle the traffic on the M9 now.

Used to drive Cork Dublin.. Six hours was not unusual.

Bought my first car a week after spending close to an hour on a bus getting from the Coonagh Roundabout to Colbert Station on a Galway to Cork trip on a Friday. Figured out a route that peeled off the old N18 south of Gort through Tulla, Bradford and O'Briens Bridge onto the N7, then back roads from Annacotty around to Kilmallock road, onto Kilmallock and Charleville.

On a good day on the N18/N20 it might not have made much difference but it gave me certainly, on a bad day on the N18/N20 it saved hours.

There are Dubs fans still out there, driving after all thrse years, trying to get to Thurles, still hopeful of making throw in for that game.

More traffic calming in the town/village and on the intermediate stretches might be an answer maybe? I'm quite fed up of the rat-runners to be honest. 100kmh on the old now-downgraded N road, and unwilling to wait for an opportunity to overtake safely. But it's for a different thread to be fair.

"re-enacting the crucifixion on the narrow street. A lot of cross drivers." - I see what you did there :)