Roads in Ireland: Encyclopedia II - Roads in Ireland - Roads in the Republic of Ireland

Roads in Ireland - Roads in the Republic of Ireland

The Republic's motorway network is focused on Dublin, and is being extended to other major cities as part of the National Development Plan. Dublin has also been the focus of other major projects, such as the East-Link and West-Link bridges, as well as the Dublin port tunnel. Other cities and towns have however had bypass projects, some of which are still underway or in planning as of 2004. The Jack Lynch Tunnel under the River Lee (Ireland) in Cork was another major project outside Dublin, and a fourth crossing at Limerick of the River Shannon is in planning.

Apart from roads constructed in the last decade, road surface quality on non primary Irish roads is poor by international standards. Many tourists come away with the impression that Ireland has Third World road infra-structure if they have to leave the Primary roads.

The road surface used by local councils typically consists of stone chips laid on a 6mm or less layer of bitumen. Cracks and potholes develop easily. While these roads have good skid resistance when recently laid, this advantage is nullified since tyres wear out 2 times more rapidly and turning movement by large vehicles easily tears up the surface. When freshly laid, loose chippings are a serious hazard to traffic, damaging paintwork and windows if one travels too fast or is unlucky. This type of surface has low quality course road noise characteristics and is prone to more rapid deterioration (the tar melts at the height of even the mild Irish summers).. This method is used as it has lower initial cost, however this method results in more overall cost due to increased maintenance. This type of surface is used mainly because of lower initial cost and is almost non existent outside of the British Isles and is far below the standards of, for example, American or continental European roads.

Roads in Ireland - Motorways

In the Republic of Ireland, the most important roads are motorways indicated by the prefix "M" followed by one or two digits. The motorway network is focused on Dublin. The first motorway in the state was the M7 Naas bypass, which opened in 1983. As of 2005, all motorways in Ireland are part of, or form, National Primary Routes. These routes are numbered in series, using numbers from 1 to 33 (and separately from the series - 50), which apart from on motorways, carry an "N" prefix. At the end of 2004 there were 191.7km of motorway Ireland and 285.5km of dual-carriage way. NRA source. This was extended in 2005 to 251km of motorway and 295km of dual-carriage way. [1]. As of Jan 2006 24km of new motorway is currently under construction along with 91.4km of new dual-carriageway. In addition, 17.4km of dual-carriageway is being reconstructed, specifically 15km between Naas and Dublin and 2.4km on the Cork Southern Ring road. [2]. Most of the new dual-carriageways being built in Ireland are built to motorways standards with full grade separation and controlled access, however to accommodate slow moving vehicles e.g. tractors, the motorway designation is not used.

In the Republic of Ireland, motorways use the route number of the national route they form part (or possibly in the future, all) of, albeit with the M prefix rather than N. In most cases, the motorway has been built as a bypass of a road previously forming the national route (e.g. M7 bypassing roads previously forming the N7) - the bypassed roads are reclassified as Regional Roads, although updated signposting may not be provided for some time, and adherence to signage colour conventions is lax. Regional roads have black-on-white directional signage, national routes use white-on-green (with the route numbers in amber). Motorways in the Republic of Ireland have white-on-blue signage. Destinations reached by other classes of routes should be listed on a correctly coloured "patch".

The M50, an entirely new national route, is an exception to the normal inheritance process - as it does not replace a road previously carrying an "N" number. The M50 was nevertheless legislated as the "N50" route (despite having no non-motorway sections) to record this National Route number in the statute books. It was thereafter designated M50 due to the route being entirely motorway standard. The route also breaks the sequential numbering scheme, but 50 was deemed an easily recognisable number. It is referred to by the NRA in its "National Route Lengths 31/12/2004" publication as the N50, as the publication does not distinguish motorways from National Primary Routes. Instead it classifies motorways where present as the National Primary Route under an N designation, for example its states there is 14.21km of the N1 in County Meath while also stating there is 14.21km of motorway in Meath. The NRA have designated the M1, which indeed is 14.21km in length in County Meath, as the N1 in the document (the road which was previously part of the N1 through Meath is only approximately 8.5km long). As of 2005 N34 is the next unused National Primary Route designation.

Motorways not yet open are in italics. Destinations which will not be directly served by the motorways are in brackets.

Roads in Ireland - National Primary Routes

This category of road has the prefix "N" followed by one or two digits. The most important routes are numbered N1-N11 ( radiate anti-clockwise from Dublin), with those in the range N12-N33 being cross-country roads. National Secondary Routes (see next section) are numbered under the same scheme with higher numbers. On road signage, destinations served but not on the route in question are listed in brackets, with the connecting route also listed.

Northern Ireland route sections (which are classified separately according to NI schemes) are in some cases included in a theoretical complete cross-border route – for example the N3 route, which re-enters the Republic. These are listed here in brackets for completeness (and are present on southern road signage).

This list ignores the sections of route reclassified as motorway (see previous section).

Roads in Ireland - Other roads

While funding for National Primary roads is administered centrally by the National Roads Authority (NRA), regional and local roads are less well funded (although funding has increased in the 2000s). Local councils are responsible for these roads, as opposed to the NRA.

National Secondary Routes are also indicated with a "N" prefix, though the number is higher (routes N51 and higher are secondary routes). Typically these roads are of a similar standard or better than regional roads, many having been properly resurfaced in recent years (so a smooth surface despite many narrow winding sections). Some are of worse quality than the better Regional roads, due to the localised funding for such routes.

Examples of National Secondary roads are:

Regional Roads are indicated with an "R" prefix and a three-digit number, ranging from R1xx in the north-east to R7xx in the south-east of the country. One of the more important regional roads is the R113 (Belgard) road, which forms a dual carrigeway between the N7 and N81 roads. Most regional roads are however regular highways, and most are rather narrow country roads.

Other roads are not generally referred to by number, but are registered with a four-digit "L" number, taking the form Lxxxx. It is extremly rare to see these numbers on signposts or Ordinance Survey maps.

Roads in Ireland - Old system

Some old road signs will still carry the previous classifications, "T" for trunk road, or "L" for link road. Trunk roads were broadly equivliant to the present national roads, and link roads to the present regional roads. However there were some notable differences. Most notably, the present N3 and N5 were not designated as one of the major arteries under the trunk/link system.

Former major trunk routes:

Unlike the present system, where each road (whether N- or R-) has a unique number, under the trunk/link system, the L-roads were numbered separately beginning with L1. These L classifications are not related to the current Lxxxx numbers for minor roads.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Roads in the Republic of Ireland", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki