M20 - Cork to Limerick [preferred route chosen; in design - phase 3]

Charleville will not need a ring road IMO. It will have the junction at O'Rourke's cross on the northern side. This will allow traffic from the north to access it.

The Buttervant junction will be the southern access, the road from Charleville to Buttervant is a good quality corridor at present it will be more than adequate for access to the motorway. The last bit into Buttervant may need realignment. ( I presuming that access to Buttervant is on the northern side as on the southern side it would be crazy.

Charleville is not that busy a town( compared to Ennis or Nenagh. Mallow will need a bypass as it has substantial traffic from east or west

Here's the eastern edge of the Mallow scheme, with the route corridor of the N20 marked in yellow. It's easy to see this scheme as forming part of a final N20 "Mallow" Junction. I think the N20 will have to be elevated here, so the relief road could be built ahead of the motorway.

Yes. Enfield bypass was opened in 2002, well before the M4 section opened in late 2005 (I think). But you have to ask is this the best way to approach these problems. If you look at the map below you now have a three roundabout section of road that is probably completely unnecessary.

I was going posting some and I had put you user name on it. However I deleted the post but could not delete you username. If you nark a post with a username @........ You cannot delete the name

Any idea when the Design phase is due to finish?

Fermoy has significant west - east transit issues. There is no direct N72 access to the M8 which is a huge oversight. It’s a much bigger issue than the toll.

No relief road in sight either.

In the case of Fermoy, I think it was driven by cost as the Blackwater would cause complications. That and the need for additional toll booths.

Would be very easy to have N72 access southbound on the east of the town. Northbound would require a more complicated set of slip roads.

Access from the West would require some sort of relief road.

Ideally, an N72 bypass is required around the north of the town requiring a third bridge and a junction with the m8.

An N72 bypass around the north of Fermoy would likely cut right through the land of a very wealthy family with significant political pull. Their business provides hundreds of millions of euro to the exchequer and it's employment both direct and indirect is significant. A major road through their land would be incredibly disruptive to the business.

In addition the first few kilometres outside the town to the west live multiple millionaires along the blackwater with very deep pockets.

Can't see it happening. Opposition would be phenomenal.

A southern bypass has geography against it (nagle mountains) but could possibly encounter less opposition.

Another issue is the R666 which carries significant traffic flows from east/west along the north bank of the river. It joins the N72 in Fermoy. A significant proportion of drivers who don't choose to stay on the N72 at Lismore choose the R666 before rejoining the N72 again in Fermoy. Sat navs direct drivers towards the R666 when coming from the Waterford direction when they get to Lismore as it's shorter. If a southern route was considered then potential linking of the R666 to the N72 east of Fermoy would be a significant challenge given the fact the N72 between Tallow and Fermoy runs along the peak of a hill dividing the blackwater valley from the bride valley. The R666 runs along the bottom of blackwater valley. There's a few hundred meters of elevation between the two.

It was at ABP in 2010. Until the Troika arrived as the countries finances were in meltdown. It had to be cancelled then as we simply didn’t have the funds to CPO the land etc

I'm open to correction but not sure "had to be cancelled" is fully accurate here? Obviously there was no funding for the full construction but some sums of money could have been allocated, as they were to other projects. A difficult decision was made to drop this project.

Yes, that makes perfect sense, but could they not have CPO'd the land and kept the process alive? Would the planning decision for a piece of national infrastructure like this just "lapse" if the project isn't completed by 10 years?

I think you've invented a straw man. The green party hasn't opposed the M20.

All parties are bound to emissions targets and the simple fact is building new motorways is counter productive to this. Exceptionalism is being applied to the M20 and a few other small exceptions which are being progressed for the sake of safety, port access and removing heavy freight from town centres.

As long as we acknowledge that building the M20, M11, M28 and Foynes motorway means that we'll have to seek efficiencies elsewhere like taxing work place parking and cars will likely be banned or heavily restricted from city centres in any case.

It really has nothing to do with the green party or any hypothetical future government. We have about 1,300 deaths a year in Ireland from air pollution and the human food chain is already impacted by climate change. That's the reality we're facing now.