N22 - Macroom to Ballyvourney (Macroom Bypass) [open to traffic]

First off, Micheal Creed's extended family have no more rights than any other citizen of this country. This isn't the eighties anymore, and Creed knows well that any whiff of pulling strokes for family will cost him dearly at election time.. it's not like anyone in that constituency strolled into office last time.

Second, this is not Macroom town. It might be inside the boundary, but it's a really still an approach road to the town. There's plenty of space here for a junction improvement, and it doesn't have to be a roundabout either.

You're on a hiding to nothing with this junction request. If I were you I'd focus my energy on ideas that would have a wider benefit. That way, you bring more people in with you, because right now, this whole thing comes across as a hundred people in a village demanding direct access to the bypass just because they're too sh_t at driving to use either of the two existing ones.

Carrigaphooka roundabout

This is the roundabout now. Yellow road is the bypass. The yellow roundabout is the temporary one and will be removed next week. The white roundabout is permanent and for going to Macroom. Blue line is the old N22 road

This is what it will look like once the temporary roundabout is gone. The green will be joined onto the yellow and it's the bypass. Red line is for Macroom. Blue line is the old N22 road. It would have made sense to put the junctions where the purple marking are or near it and It wouldn't have cost that much. Not as much as the temporary roundabout which cost 1.2 million and will cost more to remove it.

Maybe in a few years time after planning etc, it might be done

I do know the area, actually, and what you drew is not what I drew - I was a lot more careful. But it was less than 10 minutes thought... someone actually doing this stuff for a living would come up with a better option. The point still stands.. It's easy to fix the turn for HGVs... it just needs to be done.

I never once said the current setup is good for HGVs...I've been saying the opposite for a long time. But the fix is simple, and the fix is not a new junction where almost nobody will use it.

Where did I get the hundred? At most a thousand people live in the area where that new junction would be any use (go argue with the Census if you disagree). but that thousand is everyone: adults and children. Say 750 adults of driving age (that's high, but I'm trying to be fair), now of those, how many have no regular business in Cork or points east of Macroom.?Most of them. So "a hundred" is a good estimate of the number of people who would actually use this junction regularly.

When this road was planned, they did traffic counts on all the possible approaches, to decide where juctions would make sense. I'm sure you could get that information (most of it is public), but it's pretty obvious that very few vehicles join or leave N22 near here, and the traffic counts will back that up.

KrisW1001

It doesn't matter what we drew. I'm basically saying its not going to work as the road will be going through a garden with shed/garage, which will have to be knock down. Owner won't allow it

Go on the satellite on Google maps, you'll have a better picture

As for the 1000, I'm sure if you did the census and check out all the wider areas I've mentioned, you will find it's alot more than 1000.

Even it was just a hundred driving, most of them especially lorries will go through the town to go to Cork rather than turn left at Millstreet Cross

So if you know all the areas, you would know what businesses are in the area I've mentioned that are affected by it

And there's no traffic count for the areas I've mentioned

Go check it out yourself

So there was no access proposed in 2009, 14 years later it dawned on people that this was the case. Sorry now but it’s a bit late to be protesting.

Two slip roads at Carrigaphooca is all that is required. No new roads or link roads

Access to a bypass which includes junctions either side of an urban centre/town is commonplace throughout the country. Some towns have an access junction at a midpoint in to the town also, in this case that’s Millstreet junction

Look at Midleton, Youghal, Ballincollig, Tralee, Castleisland, Cashel, Ennis, Nenagh etc etc.

 “design, planning approval, land purchase, funding approval, tendering, etc”

l think everyone appreciates that all of the items listed above are necessary. But each and everyone of them is not insurmountable. The regret is that the access at Carrigaphooca was not in place in the design of the project, some will know why that is case but many of us will never find out.

”all that is required” for now is that there is access provided at Carrigaphooca so that Macroom town is properly bypassed and motorists whoever they may be can benefit from it.

This project presents more questions than answers.

1. Why the limited access west of Ballyvourney at Slievereagh? Especially as there are slips but only one way single lanes. How much would it have taken to build slip roads allowing access/exit from any direction.
2. Why no access at Carrigaphooca? Just a partial junction…..etc etc.
3. Why did the project stop at Coolcower? Leaving us with bad stretch of road between Coolcower and the 4 mile bridge. Now the worst section of road between Cork & Killarney. Unlikely to be upgraded any time soon, say 10 years.

Mallow - Ovens was held up because of the Save The Lee Valley campaigners. Taking the Macroom - Ballyvourney scheme terminus further to the east, removing the crap section of roads would have irked them and set them going again.

So we’re getting slip roads at Slievereagh because there’s a few local roads but no slip roads at Carrigaphooca where there are local roads including the N22 old route. So did the slip roads for Carrigaphooca get moved to Slievereagh? Or we just got them for free as you say. Decent of the contractors & council Any chance they’d do them for free at Carrigaphooca

It would save us all a few million

Fair enough about Coolcower junction but Ovens-Coolcower won’t be built in my lifetime, an I’ve a bit to hopefully. The road from Coolcower to 4 Mile bridge is still poor by comparison to the remainder of the N22.

I do! Mallow to Ovens would be an interesting proposal alright...

Depends what you think a TD's job is. For most TDs in Ireland it's getting planning permissions and medical cards and so on.

TDs don't have time to do what most of us think they should be doing because they spend all their time doing petty clientelist bullshít. He would only have become aware if one of his constituents made him aware and obviously they didn't because they never checked. Now they're annoyed that no-one told them they never checked and, as you say, are directing that anger elsewhere.

Some more history:

This scheme was sent to ABP in 2009, and planning was granted (with conditions) in 2011. If you want to read the details, ABP’s archive is the place to go: An Bord Pleanála (pleanala.ie).

During the oral hearings (see the Inspector’s Report), three submissions requested that a junction be added at Carrigaphuca (the junction was not part of the design). The final report did not recommend such a junction.

So, people who asked for their own junction 13 years ago and were told they couldn’t have one are now pretending to be surprised that this junction wasn’t built for them.

Interestingly, the Planning Inspector’s Report for this scheme recommended that planning should not be granted, as he did not find a strong justification to build at 2+2 road type on the western half of the scheme, but the Board of ABP overruled this and granted permission for a 2+2 type all along. I can actually see the Inspector’s point here: I’ve never seen much traffic on the wide single-carriageway road just west of here, but I also understand why ABP overruled that opinion: the cost difference would not have been much, and the horrible terrain would have made any future upgrade prohibitively expensive.

How long is the new section opening?

Anyone chance a visit to Macroom these days to see how traffic is doing?