NI: £100m available to ease Belfast traffic bottleneck

[Nicholas]

From BBC News:

Up to £100m may be spent on getting rid of the traffic bottleneck at the junction of the Westlink and the M2 and M3 motorways in Belfast.

A consultation begins on Wednesday on plans to replace existing traffic lights at York Street with new flyovers or underpasses.

The proposed improvements will give motorists continuous links between three of the busiest roads in NI.

Good to see some big money being allocated!

[nirs]

I don't think the money has been allocated - this is a proposal to upgrade the M2/M3/Westlink junction at a total estimated cost of £100m. It will still have to join the queue for financial allocation along with the bulk of other schemes. As usual the media is giving the impression that this is something big and new. In fact, this proposal has been on the cards for five years as I've been recording on my site. Today and tomorrow there is a public consultation to discuss the current proposals.

Of more interest I think is the Minister's statement that "this scheme is a top priority". That was definitely not true under the previous minister and could see this scheme bumping up the queue in the next few years.

You can download the latest plans here.

Interesting that all four options are of broadly similar cost, no massively expensive options contrasting with cheap options. That means that really any of the four could be built.

[ravenbluemoon]

I quite like the look of Option C, as it provides freeflow for all major flows, and avoids the need for a great big flyover on top of the M3 and railway like in B and D. All of the options are better than what is there currently mind.

[bothar]

Belfast Telegraph article

Motorists travelling into Belfast could soon benefit from new flyover bridges and underpasses designed to bring about the end of tailbacks and bottlenecks.

A series of new proposals have been outlined to help alleviate traffic problems in the York Street interchange at a cost of between £72m and £100m.

The interchange — a key arterial route into the city centre and the main gateway for traffic from the north — links three of Northern Ireland's busiest roads.

The plans are intended to ease congestion and give motorists a more direct link between the Westlink and M2 and M3 motorways.

Four preliminary options drawn up by the Roads Service have been thrown out for discussion at a public consultation in Belfast city centre today following an initial report outlining the options which was completed in March 2009.

Currently, traffic between the Westlink and motorways passes through a series of traffic lights at junctions connecting with smaller roads, resulting in significant congestion at peak times, with 100,000 drivers using the route each day.

Included in each of the four proposals is the creation of a new bridge at York Street with the possibility of several underpasses connecting the Westlink to both the M2 and M3 motorways.

Two of the options also include building large flyovers above the existing Lagan Road and Dargan Rail bridges.

Transport minister Danny Kennedy said the new proposals were “an important milestone”.

“York Street interchange is one of the main gateways to Belfast, with over 100,000 vehicles passing through it on a daily basis.” he said. “It also provides access to the port of Belfast as well as serving strategic traffic movements around Belfast.

“This is another step in the process of developing a major road improvement scheme. The proposed improvements to this key junction will provide continuous links between three of the busiest roads in Northern Ireland. This is a high priority within the Roads Service programme”.

According to the Roads Service, a final selection of the preferrred option is unlikely to be completed until summer 2012. This will be followed by further development and reports on the environmental impact, safety, financial implications and public opinion.

The entire project is expected to take between six and eight years to complete.

Public consultation will continue tomorrow at the Ramada Encore hotel in Belfast city centre.

At a crossroads... the four options

Option A — A new bridge at York Street with underpasses connecting the Westlink to both motorways. The Westlink to M3 movement would be controlled by traffic lights Cost: £72m
Option B — A new 18-metre high flyover bridge running above existing Lagan Road and Dargan Rail bridges connecting the Westlink and M2. The Westlink is also connected to both motorways through an underpass at York Street which will provide an additional connection to the M3. Cost: £100m
Option C – The Westlink will be connected to both motorways by underpasses below ground level under a new bridge at York Street. Cost: £98m
Option D – The M2 will be connected to the Westlink by new 18-metre high bridges over existing Lagan Road and Dargan rail bridges. Traffic from the Westlink to M3 will use the junction at York Street and Nelson Street controlled by traffic lights. The M2- and M3-bound on-slip from Clifton Street will be closed. Cost: £95m

[jackal]

Those are a couple of nice articles. We don't usually get so much information in the mainstream press. The inclusion of graphical representations for all four designs in the BBC article is especially good.

Clearly B and C are the best options from a traffic perspective, and as ravenbluemoon says option C is also less visually intrusive. It's slightly cheaper than B too, so overall the best option I would say.

Option D is ridiculous - virtually the same price as C, but with more visual intrusion and less freeflow. Can't see how it's even got this far.

The budget option is A, but it would be a real shame if they went for it as they'd have missed the one big opportunity to resolve problems at this site. If they wanted to cut corners it would be better to stick with the basic design of C but get rid of the hard shoulders on the slips, which must add quite quite a few million to the price of such complex structures for little benefit (the exception is the single lane slip to the westway from the M3, which obviously needs the hard shoulder).

[nirs]

I was just interviewed about this scheme on Radio Ulster. Just me against a whole barrage of people who either wanted to get everyone walking or cycling into the city, or who believed that cars were the spawn of Satan. Feel rather dragged through the mill as a lone voice advocating this junction!

As for those options I agree that B and C are the best. I can't bring myself to favour the flyover option. Much as it would look impressive, be easier to built and be unlikely to flood (!!), I keep stumbling over the proposed height of it. 18 metres is going to be pretty visible for a long way, especially as it's less than a mile from St Anne's Cathedral. I would be of the school of thought that things like major roads should be as inconspicuous as is reasonable within the limits of their purpose.

[ravenbluemoon]

I can't bring myself to favour the flyover option. Much as it would look impressive, be easier to built and be unlikely to flood (!!)

That was my only reservation about C!

[loch_cuan73]

I'd lump for option C also, although option B would give quite a good view of the city ( if you weren't driving of course)

Option C may however be more challenging engineering wise, as the pile cap foundations of the existing piers must make the geometry tight... And of course the potential flooding problems mentioned above.

[jackal]

Can everyone please stop going on about the flooding! The design standards are the same as elsewhere in the UK, where flooding is a small enough risk to be disregarded (provided standards are met, as I'm sure they are here). Just because one low-level road in Belfast flooded doesn't mean that every one will!

[nirs]

Well, I was joking about the flooding but in all seriousness if another event like that were to occur it would make Roads Service a laughing stock and be a major PR disaster. Even today on the radio people were going on about the flooding. I think it has, quite wrongly, given people an impression that road planners are incompetent and has eroded the public's confidence in major road building in Belfast. After all, people could have died - it was a close run thing.

It's not that likely at York Street. There are no major rivers in the vicinity, so the only possible source of flooding are (i) surface runoff, (ii) the sea and (iii) the main Belfast sewer trunk which runs beside the site. None is likely to happen.

[Truvelo]

I'll echo the comments made by others - options B and C are the best. Either build it totally freeflow or don't bother at all. Partial freeflow could be a false economy if queues start forming on the at-grade movements, especially if the design doesn't allow for easy upgrading at a later date.

[nirs]

I was at the public consultation this evening. They have some amazing 3D flythroughs which I really hope get put online at some point. (One of the consultants (from Scott Wilson) was from Glasgow and was talking about the work they did on the M80 Stepps to Haggs which was interesting). The Roads Service folks were being scrupulous in not stating a preference themselves, but most of the others there were saying what folks on SABRE were saying that options B and C are best. A Roads Service employee did note that while option C was less visually intrusive, the curves would require a 40mph speed limit, whereas the flyover option B would allow 50mph on the curves, which is an important consideration. He said that fluctuating speed limits leads to congestion and driver confusion.

[odlum]

It's so strategically important it is well worth up to £100m to sort it out IMO. Go for it!

[Truvelo]

A Roads Service employee did note that while option C was less visually intrusive, the curves would require a 40mph speed limit, whereas the flyover option B would allow 50mph on the curves, which is an important consideration. He said that fluctuating speed limits leads to congestion and driver confusion.

In that case if option C is chosen then the speed limit on the surrounding roads will be slashed to 40 to avoid congestion and confusion

[jackal]

In that case I think B is preferable, though I wasn't really expecting the turning movements to be as high 50mph if I'm honest. So C would still be an acceptable result.

[ravenbluemoon]

Given that whenever I've been through there on the mainline 50mph is usually near impossible, I doubt it would be anything other than an improvement....

I would take option B if there would either make the bridge stand out as a decent piece of architecture, or try to make it low key. I have horrible visions of a cross between Spaghetti Junction and the Glasgow M8...

[Trebeck]

I wouldn't mind a bridge. It would make Belfast look like a modern city, instead of the at-grade nightmare that it's traffic system has become. My initial thought about the 18 metre high bridge was initially a fear of instability due to water subsidence just below the ground.
But then, if high rise buildings nearby have overcome this, then it should not be beyond the ken of a seasoned engineer.

On the top of the BBC News page, there is a view of an option from the M3 perspective:



Are there anymore where this came from?

Regarding Clifton Street - yes it is handy for the Crumlin and Antrim roads, and for the Mater hospital, but when the M2/M3 bound onslip was closed traffic seemed to flow freer on that section with less weaving. The M1 bound onslip is a bit of a disaster, as it seems to be short and on a curve, with traffic either choosing to just miss the wall, or to come to a stop. Both onslips here could be closed at this oppurtunity.

The BBC article doesn't detail the fate of Nelson street. Option B looks like it is closed, with M3 traffic taking over the section of Great George's Street.
Citybound traffic would then, I assume, take Whitla St -> Corporation St?
If so, would 2 lanes be allocated to the J1A turnoff?
Or would be continue with the 1-2-2, with the outside 4 being fully freeflow, but all city centre traffic queuing up on a single lane?

[nirs]

That image is a still from 4 high-res movies that were on show at the public exhibition. As far as I know they're not online. Roads Service said they were too big for their web site, but Scott Wilson may put them online at some point. I urged them to.

And yes, I was thinking the same thing about local accesses. Access into the city centre from here seems to be rendered more difficult under some of these options.

The problem with the Westlink is that it tries to serve two purposes as (1) a bypass of the city centre and (2) a local distributor for the city centre. As a result it has too many junctions, so does neither particularly well. It exists as it does because it is the descendant of the Belfast Urban Motorway whose primary purpose was actually (2) and for which (1) was only a secondary goal.

We have already closed the north-facing accesses at Grosvenor Road during the 2006-2009 upgrade, due to the potential for weaving over an unacceptably short distance between there and Divis Street. This has helped the flow at the junction, but put more traffic onto local roads, especially Barrack Street and Divis Street as people have to come off early and go along city streets to reach places they could previously access directly.

It would start to cause real problems for access if we closed even more sliproads. Closing the north-facing slips at Clifton Street would mean that, except for its termini, Divis Street would become the only north-facing access point to/from the city centre on the entire Westlink. Closing sliproads would undoubtedly improve flow on the Westlink. And closing them all would help it even more! But at the end of the day the Westlink is functional - it is designed to get traffic to particular points on the edge of the city centre, and there comes a point were you are keeping traffic flowing by jeopardising the road's reason for existing in the first place.

[Trebeck]

Some very good points nirs.

Certainly I recall getting to the centre of Belfast from M2 direction used to be handy to turnoff at Grosvenor Road. Nowadays, the turnoff is Divis Street and then right onto College Avenue (which now seems to be very busy).

Only Option D would close northbound slips at Clifton Street.
My concern is that, currently, there is quite a lot of weaving Clifton Street -> M3, however the traffic light queues act as a bit of a buffer here, slowing traffic enough to allow traffic to weave, because no-one in Belfast knows how to merge

A freeflow 40/50mph Westlink Clifton St onslip on inside -> M2&M3 on outside lanes would just turn into an upscaled M3/onslip -> Middlepath Street/M3-A2-bound in the mornings, with people just *stopping*, looking round them, and then deciding to change lanes.

Wouldn't help traffic from Westlink direction whatsoever.

[Trebeck]

Comment article in this weeks 'Community Telegraph' (free newspaper) blasting the Westlink upgrade works.
In terms of:
- It costs money
- Traffic should not be directed to the city centre
he puts his case against it.

Mentions the Belfast Urban Motorway history (probably lifted from NIRS site), and then bizarrely puts forward their plan for a continuous motorway from Newtownabbey to Hillsborough (which the freeflow York St junction, and freeflow at the M1/A1 would allow....).