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

Pretty pleased with this. It fixes the pressing issue with N20, without encouraging ever more car commuting into Cork City. I'm happy that Blarney southward is out of scope, because it's there that the temptation to widen the existing road to "support new development" (i.e., more cars every morning and evening, worse traffic for everyone) was strongest. Northern tie-in is well done. At the other end, the three-roundabout-dumbbell solution to the mess of junctions around the Blarney business park looks odd, but should work in practice.

I really like the Travel Hubs; I'm glad they were added, and I would like to see these rolled out to the rest of the motorway network. There's already unofficial carpooling parking on the hard shoulders of the approaches to Dublin, so wouldn't it be better to do it right? (And as an EV driver, I can't overstate how great it is to have charging sites available every 10~12 km). My only concern is security, especially at night in the fairly remote stretches through South Co. Limerick .

The tolling is interesting, and I wonder if this will be the first implementation of Road User Charging in Ireland, but M50 is likely to happen first. Basically, you pay per kilometre as in France/Italy, but instead of payment gates on entry and exits, the operators use ANPR cameras and/or tolling tags and/or a mobile app to bill you as you travel.

Of the big pay-by-km networks, France charges €0.10 per km and Italy €0.07, so if you use that as a measure, travelling the full length of this road could mean €5 to €8 in tolls. But depending on how the tolling is implemented, there's also scope for giving discounts for off-peak or higher-occupancy vehicles, though.

What we've all been waiting for, for far, far, far too long. The travel hubs etc will be interesting, definitely having Park and Rides, etc should be promoted - that after all is one of the advantages of roads is that they do allow for fast and reliable bus services. The tolling will be interesting as well, there is a danger that they might make it too expensive, at the end of the day, no matter what car people are driving, most people have to drive anyway, so if it's too expensive people will either use the old road, or go for the via Mitchelstown approach.

I would rather they just got on with building the road (no doubt it would have been an awful lot less than €2 billion if that was the case) but in a country as wealthy as ours, it makes sense to do the active travel as well. I am also very glad it's a proper full blown motorway with the proper 120 km/h speed limits (of course, this is a very low limit by European standards for such roads, but far, far better than what we have right now).

Electioneering Waffle - the whole lot of it.

The largest 2 cities outside of the east coast are not connected by even a direct road.

More tolls and a big missed opportunity to provide a motorway once and for all between the 2 cities.

For myself I'm sick of driving between the 2 cities especially during Christmas with bumper to bumper traffic the whole way.

I'ts so bad that I now go via Mitchlestown and then over via Hospital in Co. Limerick.

are you on the gargle? this update is part of a planned communication strategy. its timing has nothing to do with the government.

the project will be going ahead with a planning submission expected next year. assuming we don't have another tiger meltdown spades will be going into the ground circa 2027.

Nothing special here. The tolling is a sop to the Greens and obviously won't happen when they are shown the door after the election and the local politicians get involved.

The junctions are cheap and small and infected with roundabouts (a disease we have inherited from Britain and parts of the continent) instead of properly designed cloverleafs and cross junctions which could easily have been accomodated within at least some of the junction footprints.

Ironically enough it's the cyclists who should also be questioning the preponderance of roundabouts which don't go well for cycling and add distance and time to pedestrians and cyclists to navigate. Normal crossroads are far superior from every viewpoint but they don't want to pay for traffic lights.

Overall a continuation of the cheap "minimum we can get away with" conservative approach to infrastructure in Ireland.

It will be some help obviously but not impressive. The M1 is a far more impressive piece of road than this will be, for example, and it's not perfect.

The only positive (aside from the fact it will save lives) I can see is that those unused cycle lanes running along side some of the route could come in handy when adding third lane in the future.

The update says the following about the Mallow Freight hub:

In addition to the six Transport Hubs, a Freight Hub is also proposed to be located adjacent to the M20 / N72 / N73 Mallow junction. This freight hub will provide facilities for parking, welfare and EV charging for heavy good vehicles, as well as fulfilling the requirements of the European Union’s Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) and the Department of Transport’s National Road Network En-Route EV Charging Plan 2024 – 2030 polices.  A small amount of vehicle parking will also be provided for active travel and park and share.

See Section 1.5 here https://corklimerick.ie/june-2024-update/

The towns along the route will likely have sever restrictions on through traffic before then.

What are you unhappy with? It will be a full motorway.

Well done to the project team. Some of us keep bleating "wHaT aBoUt SuStAiNaBiLiTy" at project after project….well….this is how it's done. We're finally getting roads upgrades where people won't necessarily be locked into car dependency (if they choose). It looks like it ticks the boxes of "not adding more cars".

I'm most excited about the Transport Hubs, personally. And the distance tolling makes sense. They'll hopefully cost it well and back it up with calming measures on the secondary route so that people aren't rat-running.

The cycle/pedestrian designs aren't perfect but they aren't terrible, and most snags will come out in detailed design (at no extra cost).

A minor detail people might not have spotted here is that the Blarney Business Park will be connected to the station and town by footpath/cycleway. A simple cheap win.

But one thing I'm confused about (I think others have pointed it out) is the lack of a Blarney P&R tie-in. Not sure what they're thinking here. Maybe they simply don't have the scope to deal with IÉ issues like that.

What's "lol" about it.

Loads of people read the headline but don't understand any of the content I think.

I really hope the mallow to dungarvan greenway is delivered as it would connect into the M20 cycle lanes providing an incredible resource for people to travel by bike from cork / limerick to Waterford without having too many interactions with traffic.

In days gone by you always knew when the ferry arrived into rosslare as there would be dozens of tourists seen cycling on the N72 heading west.

There is no access at Attyflynn to the M20 North for the Old N20 Traffic. I know it would be very near the M20 merge. No exit to use the old N20 also. If you were travelling south you would have to exit at Patrickswell to use old N20.

Which junctions do you believe should have full cloverleaf junctions?

All of them?

Tonns of new lanes? there's no usable cycling infrastructure in Limerick City Centre and what little of it exists in Cork is substandard, disappears at junctions and has to contend with Cork people in cars who simply cannot drive.

Right. I'll be as patient as I can.

Imagine all those drivers commuting between Limerick and Cork were used as justification for the M20. Then there's no M20 project at all. Because we don't justify schemes based on specific end user journeys, we base them on requirements on a corridor. It's the same for walking, cycling, driving etc: there's a reasonable radius for every mode. We've surely done this to absolute death at this stage.

Secondly, if you don't balance sustainable infrastructure against your car infrastructure then you can wave goodbye to the whole project.

Blarney to Cork is a very easy cycle commute but has no infrastructure. Rathduff to Blarney business park is straightforward but has no cycle infrastructure. Rathduff to Mallow is about the limits in terms of distance. But again no cycle infrastructure. This continues up and down the corridor.

In terms of the "shur nobody uses it" dog whistle, leave it for another thread. The new-build sustainable infrastructure in Cork is getting very heavy use. We had to read all the same rubbish in the Midleton Youghal greenway thread: "shur nobody will use it", and it's been an unequivocal success.

Quick shout-out though to the new-build bits in the Cork area which are seeing very heavy use. And it's really only just beginning, in terms of the roll-outs of approved schemes.

Maybe labouring the point, but the walking/cycling part of the project is also really really low cost. Likely lower cost than a couple of the "hubs". Tiny compared to the wider project. Roads are really expensive.

I understand the idea that adding the walking/cycling modes into the corridor demands looks like some kind of "qu'ils mangent de la brioche" sop, but it's so easy, there's no reason NOT do it! Rail is obviously a whole different story, but it's the "cycling on the motorway" clickbait headlines that seem to have caught people's attention and rubbed people up badly.

Just saying cycling sets a certain group off.

They will always say "I have nothing against cycle lanes but" and then when one is being built with no impact on car users they still cry.

Libel laws? ROFL.

How can someone libel an anonymous account on the internet..