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Date: 2026-03-03 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00029241

IRELAND CHRONIC ROAD CONGESTION Prime Time: 'We've done all we can do to fix M50,' warns Transport Infrastructure Ireland PLAY YOUTUBE VIDEO Original article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cny0-OHLNrA
'We've done all we can do to fix M50,' warns Transport Infrastructure Ireland \| Prime Time RTÉ News ... RTE is an Irish public broadcast service. Dec 2, 2025 202K subscribers ... 21,432 views ... 187 likes Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII) says there is almost nothing it can do to address traffic gridlock on the M50, while accepting that the road has reached capacity. Commuters using the M50 say travel times have become increasingly unpredictable, with journeys that once took under an hour now stretching well beyond that. For more on this story and all the latest Irish and international news - http://www.rte.ie/news Thanks for watching and don't forget to subscribe. RTÉ News Peter Burgess COMMENTARY The problem of urban and peri-urban road congestion has become a very serious problem with little movement from the 'top' in most countries to make the investments need to solve the problem. This particular video concerns the excessive congestion on the M50, aa major ring road round Dublin, in Ireland. Peter Burgess Transcript 0:01 Well, now to the M50 motorway, which many accept has reached capacity. More than 150,000 vehicles are traveling on it per day, and it's seeing about 700 collisions a year, and congestion there ripples out through the wider road network. Well, critics say it's simply no longer fit for purpose. So, what's the solution? Here's Prime Time's Connor McMaro with the story for us. The Westling tollbridge was officially opened last Sunday by the T-shuk, Mr. Hi, I'm taking about half an hour off the journey. It's probably about 12 hours a week I'm spending just sitting in the car on the motorway. The M50 was originally envisaged as a ring road around Dublin to bypass to the east and the west. The M50 at the present time is just not fit for purpose. The Westlink tollbridge on the M50 motorway. There's no rhyme or reason to it. There's no two days the same and it's as simple as that and any anything can 1:00 happen. [Applause] [Music] It is progressively getting worse and worse all the time and it's just it's really draining. It's a lot to do before you go in and actually do a day's work. [Music] It's 26 minutes past 7 and this is my daily commute to St. Lawrence's College in Lachland Town um around the M50 motorway. I usually leave around this time um to be in for a quarter to 9. Sean O'Neal has been making this journey across the Westlink tollbridge from Thingless on the north side for over 20 years. It's costing me about a f a day um to come back and forward over the the M50 and I I'm not really sure what exactly I'm paying for. It's the busiest time of year for the M50 and many of those using it like 2:00 drivers at this DPD Ireland parcel delivery depot. The Barbrian depot um we do about 25,000 parcels a week. That will increase to about 35,000 during peak. We're operating about 25 vans. We generally start our sort around 5:00 a.m. and then we we spend the next maybe 3 hours before we're on the road. Yeah, we probably have, I don't know, 200 plus vehicles across seven depots. Um, and they all have to interact in some way with with with with the M50, but it is it is Russian roulette. It's the roll of a dice when you come on to this. Tara Mcmanis commutes to work in Fibsbor in Dublin from her home in Mulla inside Caven. Most mornings I will drop my four kids to the bus stop at about a4 to 8 and then I head on the road. Um I go through to two toll bridges on the way to work and two toll bridges on the way 3:00 home. I mean it's 70 km. It technically should take about an hour door to door but I've never done it in that time. And I've never made it for 9 unless I leave at like 6:00 or 5 in the morning. We've seen a 17% increase in population since completion of the M50 in 2010. We're seeing pressure in terms of increased volumes of traffic fueled by population increase and a a a very buoyant economy. The main reason why people undertake trips is to travel to work. The largest employment center in Ireland is within the M50. Because of our housing shortage and inability to build houses within the M50, people are being forced to live further out in the commuting counties. Seems that people are back in the office again. So, um the traffic levels have got an awful lot worse. I think the volume is just is just too 4:01 much. Um the motorway itself is just it's just not able to take it. It really is now the only alternative for going north south or south to north and everybody's practically using it. Ireland's road and motorway network is directly connected to the M50. A critical archery for the economy, the M50 is essential for accessing all their cities and towns from Dublin by road, but traffic volumes are higher than ever. Yeah, we're actually beyond the Celtic Tiger numbers, but we're at capacity again. We can't make it any wider, and you can't make it a double-decker. All the Dublin DBD network has to deal on a daily basis with with with the M50. All drivers, you know, to try and predict them deliveries and if if there is an incident on the M50 and that cascade uh you know onto the ancillary routes coming in and off the M50 um just affects every every part of the business, you know, and uh you're just not able to keep on time. A decade ago, the busiest day in 2015 5:01 was a Friday, August 28th, which saw almost 159,000 vehicles on the N4 N7 section. The section of the M50 between junction 6 Blanchardstown and junction 5 Fingless is now the busiest with just over 187,000 vehicles. June 26th this year was the busiest day ever. RT radio 1 traffic and traffic Dublin heavy on the M50 southbound to a collision on and there's a breakdown on the M50 northbound between junction 6 Blanchardstown and in Dublin the M50 southbound is busiest again between junction 9 the Red Cow and junction 12 fur house the N4 this is now as bad as I've seen it in quite some time it's after 9:00 so you would imagine most of the school traffic should be gone or going at this stage um and we haven't even hit the the slip road for Blanch yet. It's very, very slow going and very frustrating. Ireland's 1300 km motorway network is monitored and managed from Transport 6:00 Infrastructure Ireland's motorway operations control center. Realtime feeds from 100 cameras along the M50 are displayed here. This is M50 junction 9 known as the red co interchange. So, as you can see in the left of the image, the southbound carriage is free flowing at the moment. It's half 12 today and a Friday afternoon. And this is one of our kind of seed points on the network where congestion starts even earlier now to Friday. Increased traffic volumes on the country's busiest road have meant there are now more collisions on the M50. We've had the same number of collisions uh approximately for the first 10 months compared to 12 months in 2024. A lot of it is to do with driver behavior and they've been distracted on their mobile phones. Um there's rubbernecking of incidents where drivers are seeing something in the opposite carriageway and not paying attention. The biggest dread is is when you put on the the radio in the morning and you hear that there was a collision. Um, and if you if it's anywhere on the M50, it has repercussions. It it's hitting all the the other roads that kind of join up with the M50. So, you know, it's taken 7:01 us 40 minutes to do probably 3 km here this morning. You're always worried about whether or not your clutch will hold up. That's basically probably the most worrying thing. Um, but it's it is frustrating. If you're looking at the clock and you're wondering whether or not you're going to be in on time, that is always very frustrating. The M50 really is the Achilles heel of the country's motorway network and road network. It allows goods and services coming into and out of the island of Ireland to get throughout the entire island of Ireland. And the M50 is that link. We're just approaching the the entrance onto the M50 now from the M7. It's 10 minutes to two. It's the quietest time of the day for for traffic. Give it another hour. The traffic going down the N road will be will be chock a block. Leash man Jer Highland is the president of the Irish Road Hollage Association. He says M50 congestion comes at a huge cost. We estimate for every hour that we're standing up on the M50, it's costing us 8:02 €100. Our drivers are limited to the amount of hours they can work every day. It's now taking an extra hour to do a load from Nace into Dublin. That extra cost is going to be found in the shopping basket at the weekends. Somewhere between 15 and 20 incidents a day on the M50. Incidents varying from breakdowns to fatalities are dealt with by the M50 incident support unit which has vehicles strategically placed along the motorway to respond quickly. Yes. So this is a breakdown in the hard shoulder on the M50 northbound just before Blanchtown. We have the van position behind it giving the edge of protection just so all the other road users know that there's a vehicle blocking the lane. Ryan Malroy has been working on the M50 for 13 years with the incident response unit. We could have anything from 10 to 20 callouts per day. We usually take between 13 to 18 minutes to get to any incident on the road. We have four trucks and four vans on the road at any given time. So, we'd be able to get out 9:02 to the instance fairly quickly. I I commute 450 km a week along the M50 and you and you see everything. You see all every kind of bad behavior on the M50. Everything from mobile phone, eating, putting on makeup, tailgating, speed. There are ways to relieve traffic congestion such as variable speed limits and redesigning junction layouts. But the problem is that these have already been done. The TI says it can do no more. The Red Cow literally had traffic lights and you could be the most powerful person in Ireland and hit that button and stop traffic for the entire country. But that's no longer there. So all of that sort of investment and redesign has been maxed out. We've added lanes. We've elongated merging corridors, which means it gives you, you know, safer time and more distance to get into an interchange and get out of an interchange. The um the upgrade overall has been a success, but we've done everything we can do and anything additional would have to be, you know, a significant uh policy decision by government or, you know, but 10:00 that wouldn't be for us to decide. It's just before 9:00 a.m. and thousands of drivers are starting their day. Many of them already frustrated by the traffic on the M50. But could anything be done to ease congestion on this road? So the M50 was originally envisaged as a ring road around Dublin to be able to bypass to the east and the west. And what we've built is a C- ring. The only way that we can expand capacity in the short to medium term in my view is by reconsidering the eastern bypass. If we were to complete the ring, it would give an alternate east or west bypass of the city. The idea of an eastern bypass isn't new. It was first proposed back in the 1970s and reconsidered regularly ever since. The most recent proposal for the route takes it from the Dublin Port Tunnel through Sandy and Busterstein up Fosters Avenue and through Goatstown to Sandifford. There it'll connect with the 11:02 M50 motorway. However, building this bypass is not in keeping with the current government policy. In a statement, the NTA said that in 2022, the project was deemed not to be aligned with the objectives of transport planning in relation to environmental protection. It added, 'There is no evidence that the eastern bypass will be the panacea to congestion on the M50 and a new motorway linking directly into the M50 would potentially attract new car users to the strategic road network. So if further redesign isn't an option and an eastern bypass is also off the table, what's left? Some regular users say the only option is an outer orbital route. The M50 at the present time is just not fit for purpose. There has to be a call for an outer ring road from Nace the whole way up as far as Drawadlock. It it it won't alleviate it completely, but it will be a huge help. There's a lot of traffic going from here up and on to the M50 and heading on up the M1. 12:01 So that uh ring outer ring road would take all that traffic out of Dublin completely and away from Dublin. But plans for an outer orbital route linking Drada, Navan, Trim and Nace were sheld a few years ago. Opinions on whether the plant should be revisited now differ. It's certainly worth looking at again. I think the problem however will still remain for the greater Dublin area where the M50 at capacity is still going to be a major constraint uh for a large share of the population. The NTA says it has not sheld plans for the development of improved orbital road movement in Linster. The benefit of links between the N3 and N4 national routes will be assessed in plans to deliver improved roads. Dublin is not Los Angeles and the government is trying to avoid that level of car dependence with various public transport measures. But these take time 13:00 and environmental concerns may be at odds with lived experience. Our environmental concerns around emissions and decarbonization as a priority are also somewhat in conflict with our transport policy and de facto what people are living with in terms of how they undertake journeys in this country. We're arriving at school and it's um 20 to 9 which means 5 minutes to get into class and get ready. It's been quite over an hour to get into school. About an hour and 20 minutes. In the meantime, for people running a business, there is a real financial cost to a road that is severely congested. The the M50 as a as a motorway is is an additional cost. It is an overhead for the business. Ironically, increased congestion means delivery companies have had to add more vehicles to the roads, making them more congested. Traffic is adding more vehicles. It's confounding the problem because the 14:00 traffic is creating a situation where you're having to add more vehicles, more drivers. So, I'm finally um pulling into the car park. It's 10:01 and I left Mullet and County Caven at a/4 to 8. So, there's a record 2 hours and 15 minutes to get to work today. Really, really frustrating. Yeah. Um you know, it just kind of puts in bad form now for the whole day. [Music] [Applause] [Music] All

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