N8/N25/N40 - Dunkettle Interchange [open to traffic]

They used to have those, but they were demolished pretty quickly.

I'd be all for the short extra lane required from Bloomfield through to where Douglas West merges. That would give 3 lanes from Bloomfield to Sarsfield road. Great, but then the offramps at Kinsale Road, Sarsfield Road and Bandon Road would all back up every morning.

There is just too much traffic coming from the east and looking to access Cork via the South. There really is no solution to this - the south of Cork City will never be able to cope with the demand. The railway does help, but the onward links from Kent Station are atrocious. Its still bananas that the premier east-west bus line for Cork city, the 208, doesn't go via the train station but north of it up a set of very dodgy steps. Or the 214 which goes on an adventure around Togher. Busconnects will help but we need to stop with the public consolution. Plan it, one public consultation, any minor adjustments and then build it. Done.

And the solution to the Douglas flyovers pinch point is...?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121162710/#Comment_121162710

I'm afraid I completely disagree that such a scheme "shouldn't be overly expensive or disruptive". The works area would affect:

• a busy local road which is the only vehicular access point to the shopping centre car park and delivery yard
• a section of the N40 carrying ~70k vehicles per day
• the Tramore river

Some sort of cantilevered structure extending out from the existing line of the N40 would be more visually appealing and much less disruptive to local traffic and the river during construction, but it would probably be even more expensive (if it's even possible at all) and more disruptive to the N40 traffic.

How viable would it be to go double decking on the Douglas Flyover. Have eastbound lanes on level 1 and westbound lanes on level 2.

This would likely give 4 lanes in each direction without the need to widen the flyover. Be interesting to know if something like this has been built elsewhere. Assume it must have.

I don't see any extra capacity happening at the Douglas flyover in the medium term to be honest, however you try to add the lanes.

The most likely solution to the issue seems to be reducing demand.

The problem is how to reduce demand on what is effectively a distributor road, and many of these options will be very unpalatable to many people.

You could look at multi point tolling, if you joined at douglas west and got off again at kinsale road to head into town and it involved at 2 euro toll, could you imagine the outrage?

You could look at entry and exit point removal, no exits for non primary routes, so mahon, all douglas, togher, kinsale road and frankfield road removed from the kinsale roundabout, sarsfield and bishopstown roads access limited. There would be riots, I'd imagine.

The north ring and better public transport, as has been mentioned, yes would help. The north ring however is many years away and busconnects has been watered down to near uselessness so again, not much coming there.

In a way i'm just saying, there are solutions but I just don't see any real movement on any of these solutions.

I don't know is my only answer after rambling on for a while, the douglas flyover and the n40 is going to be an issue that I don't see being resolved any time soon.

I've said it a few times here. I am 99.9% certain that footings were put in when Tesco was done to facilitate a third Westbound lane. I remember reading it. Does anyone else recall that?

It looks like they completed the final concrete pour on the central part of the N25W to M8N bridge last night and this morning. I hope they’re going to remove the barrier wall between the N25/N40 to M8N movements to aid visibility when they’re done. It could be a bit hairy otherwise!

Resurfacing on link roads from N25W & Little Island tonight too.

Just five months to go to completion and there’s much to do on the southern side to bring the approaches to the “bridge to nowhere” up to the required levels once they’re done with using it for access to the middle of the site…

Almost certainly urban myth. New sheet piling was driven at the time and I expect somebody saw that, verbalised their fantasy on a bar stool somewhere, and then the Chinese whispers took over.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBGOryiqZZI

I would say most. I’d argue a lot of the South Ring traffic are people from Douglas wanting to access the City Centre, Mahon, Wilton and maybe Bishopstown and wanting to avoid the Douglas, South Douglas and Well Roads, i.e. local city commuting traffic. That’s why to me the Southern Distributor is needed. However, I don’t think it should be on Rochestown Road. I think it should be from Garryduff Road, over the N28 to Donnybrook, then west to the N27, and then to Sarsfield Road. This allows people to access the City Centre via the N27 and Wilton & Bishopstown via Sarsfield Road. That just leaves Mahon traffic, which isn’t an issue as there is already a lane from Maryborough Hill to Mahon without having to merge and it is usually quiet

This is exactly how it started in England decades ago now, as a previous poster said, it's the sheer volume of traffic. The roads are completely jammed over there now.

That's quite amazing for a commute via N40 if it's accurate (people do tend to underestimate driving times, though). But there will always be journeys that are quicker by car and no bus service would ever improve on that, and that's okay. The point of public transport investment is to tackle the "quicker by car" journeys that still take a stupidly long time..

and unless the bus frequency is significantly increased you could easily have a half hour wait in between 'connecting' busses.

Another crash at Bloomfield this morning bringing the whole road network around the interchange to a standstill.

Traffic backed up towards Carrigtwohill, Carrigaline and well up the M8.

Something needs to be done about that merge point.