Irl: Road Widening schemes

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odlum
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Re: Irl: Road Widening schemes

Post by odlum »

Backstop Page 302, Paragraph 67, Section 4k states

"All motorways or dual carriageways in Northern Ireland shall henceforth, on the coming in to force of this agreement, have yellow hard shoulders"

:twisted:

*sure, we may as well sneak as much in as we can :laugh:
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Enceladus
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Re: Irl: Road Widening schemes

Post by Enceladus »

I kind of like our distinctive yellow hard shoulders - broken on National and regional routes, solid on the motorways. It makes our roads a little bit different and distinctive.

I had always assumed that these types of hard shoulder markings were introduced at some point in the early/mid 1970s when our road classification system changed over from the old Trunk and Link roads to the National Primary/Secondary and Regional, but that is not the case.

Apparently these types of hard shoulders were introduced at some point back in the late 1950s/early 1960s, around the same time we adopted the US style yellow diamond warning signs on the roads.

I’d love to dig out the actual reason for selecting such hard shoulders from official govt archives. I have a feeling it may have had something to do with adopting certain American style road protocols.
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bothar
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Re: Irl: Road Widening schemes

Post by bothar »

Enceladus wrote: Sat Sep 07, 2019 03:50 I kind of like our distinctive yellow hard shoulders - broken on National and regional routes, solid on the motorways. It makes our roads a little bit different and distinctive.

I had always assumed that these types of hard shoulder markings were introduced at some point in the early/mid 1970s when our road classification system changed over from the old Trunk and Link roads to the National Primary/Secondary and Regional, but that is not the case.

Apparently these types of hard shoulders were introduced at some point back in the late 1950s/early 1960s, around the same time we adopted the US style yellow diamond warning signs on the roads.

I’d love to dig out the actual reason for selecting such hard shoulders from official govt archives. I have a feeling it may have had something to do with adopting certain American style road protocols.
There is a report about 1955 or so which preceeded the 1956 act that icodified the road signs. I think this indicated that yellow lines were already used.
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Bryn666
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Re: Irl: Road Widening schemes

Post by Bryn666 »

If so the yellow edge line predates the UK parking control lines which wasn't formalised until 1964 (trials took place from about 1959).

Likewise the diamonds predated our changeover by several years.

People were saying about Ireland being backwards...?
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bothar
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Re: Irl: Road Widening schemes

Post by bothar »

Bryn666 wrote: Mon Sep 09, 2019 08:50 If so the yellow edge line predates the UK parking control lines which wasn't formalised until 1964 (trials took place from about 1959).

Likewise the diamonds predated our changeover by several years.

People were saying about Ireland being backwards...?
I've said this before here, but I think the 1956 Irish signage was a good job for its time, perhaps making up for previous deficiencies.
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Re: Irl: Road Widening schemes

Post by odlum »

Johnathan404 wrote: Sun Aug 11, 2019 21:05 A few from me. The speed limit is even more of a drag now it's all open. Still a lot of hard shoulder work to do, especially with the signage.

I got very confused coming off at J10. It's currently operating as a free-flow left turn, disguised as a roundabout.



Needs more lanes (evening outbound)
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bothar
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Re: Irl: Road Widening schemes

Post by bothar »

N11 options becoming available for Kilmacogue
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland ... -1.4080963

Some of these are offline and this would return Kilmacanogue to a village, but given the opposition to any new route the online upgrade has to favourite.

On an aside, the Dublin murders drama shown recently on BBC and RTÉ, had a story about a "Wicklow motorway". Most of this series was filmed in the North, and Sabristi will have noticed that the site of the proposed motorway in the series seemed to have UK style road markings.
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Re: Irl: Road Widening schemes

Post by odlum »

New vid of M7 widening. Nearly finished.

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Re: Irl: Road Widening schemes

Post by M50Jct15 »

When is the new junction with the Sallins Road due to open?
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bothar
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Re: Irl: Road Widening schemes

Post by bothar »

M50Jct15 wrote: Sun Sep 20, 2020 14:58 When is the new junction with the Sallins Road due to open?
Sallins road (and presumably junction) open today
https://www.rte.ie/news/2021/0409/12087 ... d-opening/

this drone view was December 2020


this should be more or less the end of the M7 project.

the next piece of motorway widening will possibly be the M1 J4 to J5.
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Enceladus
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Re: Irl: Road Widening schemes

Post by Enceladus »

Great to see the Sallins by-pass finally open, albeit a year or more overdue. It will provide huge relief for Sallins, a tiny rural village in the early 1990s and now effectively a burgeoning suburb of Naas.

I know the widening of the M7 from J7 to J9 was the priority, but the scheme seemed to be so poorly managed in general. Hopefully there will be lessons learned as the next motorway widening plans - for the M4 Leixlip to Maynooth and M1 - move forward.
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bothar
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Re: Irl: Road Widening schemes

Post by bothar »

Another video from boards.ie of the new R407 passing over the M7
https://vimeo.com/535611594
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Re: Irl: Road Widening schemes

Post by Cian »

bothar wrote: Fri Apr 09, 2021 16:55 the next piece of motorway widening will possibly be the M1 J4 to J5.
Three other major widening projects would be nominally ahead of that in TII phasing, only one is entirely motorway though:

M4 J5-J8 "Transport Corridor" (widening but the inbound third lane may be a bus lane, or be four lanes with a bus lane and no shoulder)

The N/M3 and N/M11 Transport Corridors are the others. The M1 widening isn't on the phasing doc at all; but as its a lot less difficult to plan out than the others (the bus lane/potential four lanes on the M4 could be very difficult with bridges etc) it could easily jump up.
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Re: Irl: Road Widening schemes

Post by Berk »

bothar wrote: Fri Nov 02, 2018 11:03
Euan wrote: Fri Nov 02, 2018 10:19Presumably the N6 Athlone bypass must have similar barriers towards motorway designation - it is now the only gap in the entire M6 between Galway and Kinnegad.
Engineering wise the Ahlone bypass is largely suitable. The concern was for non motorway agricultural traffic wishing to cross the Shannon, the town centre bridge isn't an ideal place for this either. Eventually, Athlone will get another bridge and then perhaps it can be upgraded.
Has there been any progress on this??
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Re: Irl: Road Widening schemes

Post by M50Jct15 »

The drop in designation doesn't seem to cause many problems, so I'd guess it is very low on the TII list of priorities. I've heard nothing of anything happening in relation to this.
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