all those new roads

[Guest127]

in the past month I have had to travel on the Kells to Mullingar road many times. if bertie and his boys stopped promising us utopian standards of transport/roads and just delivered on a few basics theres no doubt we would be better off. If theres a worse stretch of (national) road anywhere else in the country then I feel sorry for the poor buggers who have to use it. the speed limit on this road is 100kph yet it twists and turns like government promises. Outside Dundalk theres a dual carriageway, straight, divided by a crash barrier, excellently lit at night, and its designated a 60 zone. Which of the two is the more dangerous?

 

[daltonr]

Carlow to Waterford (at least the portion of it in Kilkenny) could be worse, I'm not sure.

I started travelling to dublin when I was 1 that's 30 years ago.
Over all the journey time has gone from a little over 3 hours to about 2 and a half hours. Thanks mainly to the motorway as you approach Dublin, and better roads generally from Carlow to Dublin.

The new plan is supposed to shave another 56 minutes off the journey which would be great, but it will be 30 or 40 years since they started talking about it before we see it.

My generation are screwed, we're the ones who will put up with the city centers being dug up for two and 3 years at a time, and doing most of our driving on narrow twisty roads. A year on from Dublin getting back to normal after LUAS we're now facing into 3 or 4 years of the Stephen's green area being dug up again, to do what many claimed should have been done INSTEAD of LUAS in the first place.

Hopefully 20 years from now all this will be done and dusted and Ireland will have excellent infrastructure. I worry though, we have a habbit of cutting corners in some false sense of economy. Then we have to go back to redo the job at even higher cost.

Examples:
Not enough Lanes on the M50 even though we've only this year finished stretches of it.

Port Tunnel not big enough for the kind of truck now in use, even thought we knew about these trucks in advance.

Luas not connected to each other, and sharing street space with Cars and buses, when it could have gone underground as many proposed back then. Now we're planning an underground anyway.

It's not like by all this corner cutting we get particularly good deals on the cost of infrastructure. I worry that 20 years from now we'll have an infrastructure suitable for Ireland of 2005 not Ireland of 2105, and worse still it might not even be suitable for Ireland of 2025.

-Rd

 

[redstar]

I always shudder when Govts are involved in ANY type of project - always a mess, overbudget and late.

 

[Henny Penny]

I think this government doesn't think big enough ... why do they insist on rebuilding existing roads? Surely if they were doing their jobs properly and took a long term view of what the country needs (instead of the 4 year term of office view) they would realise this. Stop linking the roads to the people and start linking the people to the roads. Build the roads first and then the cities/towns can evolve.

 

[CGorman]

in the past month I have had to travel on the Kells to Mullingar road many times.

You are right. That is by far the worst road in the country... I live in Mullingar and have family in Kells, Navan and Trim... and always feel dreadful after visiting them!

 

[Joe1234]

Don't remember ever travelling between Kells & Mullingar, but my experience of the worst primary road in the country has to be from Dundalk to the border on the Castleblayney road.

 

[jasconius]

I am sometimes inclined to agree with you cuchulainn but I am surprised that you didn't nominate somewhere nearer to home.The Newry Road from Ballymac roundabout to the Carrickdale Hotel on the Newry road is not far behind.
At night it is like Brands Hatch with the speed of NI drivers on it - also there are two discos running all night at the weekend just on the border where several young people have been mown down as they charged out of the clubs fully tanked up.

 

[Guest127]

Hi Jas. That stretch of road is bad and its overstretched with traffic. when its empty you can at least push the speed up a little bit, joe 1234 I find the road from Dundalk to Castleblayney not too bad but probably poor for a N designated road. Started widening it about 20 years ago but gave up after two miles. Dundalk to Carrickmacross much worse but it is an R road. still think the Kells to Mullingar road wins the prize. While still on this subject and the ( good) proposal for a Letterkenny to Waterford road how come there was no upgrading for cross country roads ie Sligo to Dundalk/Drogheda or Limerick to Cork. If you want to travel from Sligo to Dundalk you either have to go 'up' or 'down' ie up to Monaghan/Enniskillen etc or down to Mullingar/Longford. cross country is out of the question.

 

[CCOVICH]

I think that the road from the Ardee interchange to the border will be substantially imrpoved in the next few years (there have been improvements in recent times, despite the fact that I think that a much better job could have been made of the Carrickmacross bypass). On the N.I. side, I figure there will be less improvement, given the comparitive lack of money available to N.I./GB from public finances. There are some upgrades taking place, adding overtaking lanes here and there, but Omagh to Strabane is still pretty poor (the Newtownstewart bypass is also a fairly poor design IMHO). Lifford to Letterkenny is due for an upgrade under "Transport 21", and this is long overdue, as it is a dangerous stretch of road as far as the Derry Road roundabout (admittedly a lot of this is due to reckles driving, but a straightening/widening programme would undoubtedly help things).

I'm not familiar with Kells/Mullingar (but Kells/Slane is a hairy ride), and have only used Dundalk/Castleblayney once, but if memory serves it wasn't great.