How much did Motorways improve the driving times

Waterford to Red Cow is about 90 minutes. Telling Google to avoid the motorway and adjust to go through the centre of Naas adds an hour. But I feel like it used to be maybe a bit more than that, maybe 3 hours, but I can't remember for sure.

Driving to Derry from Cork used take me 9 hours minium

12 in bad weather

Used be hell , every village n town caught in,

Fermoy nightmare,Slane also.

Going through limerick and Ennis an experience 🫣

I remember driving Dublin to West cork on a bank holiday Friday back in about 1998 and it was tortuous - probably about 7.5 hours all in.. 5 lads in a Nissan Micra.

I remember spending six hours on a Bus Éireann coach, travelling from Dublin to Galway in 2004. An hour and a half of that was spent getting from one end of Moate to the other. Nobody should ever have to spend an hour and a half in Moate.

Immense difference. With the motorway I can be at the airport in under 45 minutes. In the past I could be 25 minutes alone going through one of the towns en route.

Motorways are one aspect but cars are certainly another, growing up in the 80's anything that had over 100bhp was a supercar, and going over 40mph was going fast! We had a Mini and at a certain uphill T-Junction we had to get out so my dad could make it through.

Well re-adding Enniscorthy, Ferns, Camolin & Gorey to the Wexford - Dublin trip adds 25 minutes according to Google maps.

And that's today, when everyone isn't going through Enniscorthy, Ferns, Camolin & Gorey and creating massive tailbacks. Especially in Gorey which was a bloody nightmare.

I only vaguely remember the trip before parts of the current N11/M11 were built in Wicklow (although I do remember the old road through the Glenn of the Downs), but even with a couple of those in place it was still the thick end of 3 hours.

Things took a whole lot longer - every village was a chicane - the towns were road blocks. In 1975 I lived on the east coast & decided to head for Connemara for the Easter weekend. Got to Athlone & a big big tailback - was on a motorcycle so filtered through stationery traffic. Only one road bridge over the Shannon then - narrow streets leading to it from the east side. Got to the head of the queue to discover that the locals were re-enacting the crucifixion on the narrow street. A lot of cross drivers.

Other memorable road blocks - Dundalk, Portlaoise, Fermoy, Newbridge - things have improved. Easy to forget that while you dare drive through Adare.

There were partial improvements e.g. Dundalk had the inner relief road, Drogheda the Peace Bridge. These improved things for while, but in the 1990s as the economy took off there was much more traffic and places that were not a huge problem became much worse and it became very difficult to overtake. So the opening of the motorways made a big improvement from that point.

On those old roads it was harder to overtake, and more dangerous. No central barrier.

These days it's much better. When it's quiet. When it's busy it can a lot worse. I've been 1.5 hours one day and 2.5 hours the next day. The dread as the red line appears in Google Maps.

This !!

The above timings are quite accurate.

Travelling from Dublin to Cork around 1990 the dual carriageway ended at the Nass bypass and didn't start again until Tivoli. Traffic lights and pedestrian crossings were encountered in Newbridge, Kildare, Monasterevin, Portlaoise, Abbeyleix, Durrow, Urlingford, Cashel, Cahir, Mitchelstown, Fermoy, Rathcormac, Watergrasshill and Glanmire (and probably a couple of other long forgotten holes). There was a stretch of passing/climbing lane between Mitchelstown and Kilworth that you often looked forward to with greater anticipation than your summer holidays. I vividly remember leaving Newbridge one wet November Friday night behind three articulated car transporters which were in turn following a jolly little camper van bobbing along without a care in the world at 50mph. I never hit the accelerator as hard as I did on the Kilworth Mountain passing lane.

Lot of places that we used to stop for food are mostly gone now.

Thought it was mostly paid for by EU money. Use it or lose it kinda of a deal.

EU contribution to that NDP was tiny. Not the 80% that the 90s roads got

Dublin to Galway you used to have to turn left at a chipper in I think it was kinnegad, so on the reverse journey you hit a T junction so had to wait on a break in traffic to turn right.

the upside was great places to get a breakfast instead of soulless motorway stations.

I remember that lol..

Good summary of it here...

Motorways really opened up the entire country making trips between places much more straight forward even if the place you were going to wasn't specifilly on a motorway.

We used to travel West Mayo to Dublin - was a 6 hour drive passing through every single town and village en-route, tailbacks of traffics at various locations. Getting out of Dublin on a Friday evening, tailbacks in Maynooth etc While the last portion of the journey hasn't gotten any more convenient the rest of it has and its dooable in less than 4 hours.

I know a lot of people in parts of Mayo now go south via Tuam and motorway network from there as the journey time is more predicable despite massive improvements being made on the "traditional" route East.

Laterally would have done Galway-Dublin on a semi regular basis and going through Loughrean, Craughwell, Ballinasloe was tough going.

Can do Lucan to Galway city now in 1hr 50 odd - would have taken 3+ depending on traffic and longer again when there was no motor way to Athlone.

As others have said, its the predictibility that has really helped. You know how long it will take you from A to B ans there are far less variables in play from A to B.

Still a few bits to be done - Limerick Cork, General improvements from Charlestown to Sligo and you open up many more parts of the country.

It's grand if you get a clear run.

Noticeably worse getting out and around Dublin these days. M50 seems to have constant traffic jams.

I find driving on motoways utterly boring to the point of putting me to sleep. But really fantastic to get places.

I remember Cork-Dublin being 4.5-5 hours alright. In the late 2000's I remember doing 3 round trips between Cork and the Northside of Dublin in two days, and each trip was around 6 or 7 hours and I thought that was just unbelievably good at the time!

I do Cork to Ballina, Sligo, Westport etc a bit and it's still harrowing on the N20 section, but it's come down from a 9 hour round trip to just over a 7 hour round trip at good times.

I want to re-state that the N20 particularly still needs to be done. Cork-Limerick is totally unpredictable, and can vary quite a lot from around 80 minutes to 150 minutes. Cork-Waterford isn't all dual and it's not perfect but it's a damn sight better than it was. What was 4 hours to Rosslare is now around 2.5!

Some individual stretches were more impactful than others: The Jack Lynch Tunnel, Ballincollig bypass and Shannon tunnel for instance. But I can barely remember how we coped before the M50.

Used to get the bus from Ennis to Dublin quite a bit. Took forever and the driver had to stop for a rest break in Borris-In-feckin-Ossery every single time. A hellhole with nothing but a petrol station and a wierd hotel thingy with a tuck shop that everyone got stranded in for 30 minutes each way on every trip

I rememeber someone on here a few years ago saying that they rocked up to possibly Larne with a large crane that had to be delivered to Killarney somewhere. Back in the 80s possibly. Based on the equivalent distance in the UK, they estimated it would take at least 5 hours to deliver.

It took 14.

There were 2 people killed by trucks in Charleville in the last 2 weeks. Motorways have a human element as well as a driving time one