What was the point of the new Dunkettle layout?

It's not finished

For traffic coming from the East to the tunnel (the site of most of the unresolved problems) - yes it is and has been for some time now, other than adding *more* traffic via the Dublin loop in the coming days.

Traffic from the east is a disaster now and as bad or worse than the previous layout. This is mainly as it is trying to funnel all that the traffic into a single lane through the tunnel.

The problem coming from the East, is that the ~75% of tunnel traffic coming from this side is only allocated 50% of the road space (one of the two lanes) - simple maths. That cannot be fixed while maintaining free flow for traffic from the north. While some will maintain that there was bound to still be peak time queries, there was normally only queues at peak time anyway - so what was the bloody point in doing it?

It has definitely gotten a lot worse than the previous layout. People aren't using the zipper system, traffic from the left lane from little island try to push in too soon over a solid white line when you are trying to watch traffic merging from the right hand lane - need eyes on either side of your head! People are then crossing the solid line in the tunnel esp HGVs as they are moving slowly and want to get out the way for when they exit the tunnel. Accidents now at Bloomfield as the bottleneck has moved on to there. My boss went to LI the other morning and came back through, he said he found it extremely stressful and doesn't know how I do it every morning! The traffic lights before were 100 times better.

So official works are completed today. Interesting to

read:

"Concerns have been raised by local councillors that traffic queues approaching Dunkettle from its eastern side are getting worse.

They have also claimed that the traffic flow from East Cork into the tunnel and into Cork City has not improved since the Dunkettle works were undertaken. "

Which backs up what people are saying here. But if people crossing continuous white lines can't follow simple traffic rules then it will only make matters worse. What if cameras were mounted at such points to monitor behaviour and issue fines & points automatically for anyone breaking the rules? All it takes is one selfish muppet to cause a crash and grind the whole thing to a halt.

There was a crash at Bloomfield yesterday which was the primary cause of all of that.

Which begs the question, also asked by @dory above, what's causing all the accidents?

I bow to your superior driving skills, but consider this as a plausible hypothesis.

A lot of traffic coming up the back Douglas village ramp at that hour of the morning, attempting to merge with a lot of traffic coming from the east. At the top of the ramp looking in their mirrors for gaps to merge with the oncoming traffic, they do not see that traffic ahead has suddenly stopped or slowed because of the choke backing up from the Kinsale roundabout. And suddenly, they're into the back of the car in front.

Does that work as an alternative?