Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The Clare Byrne Show on Newstalk. With Aviva Insurance.
The M50 has come in for some criticism this week because revenue from the tolls has nearly doubled since 2015. And this is while motorists are faced with mass delays and congestion during peak hours. So what exactly is the problem and what are the solutions to it? Well, I'm joined by Professor in Transportation at Trinity College Dublin, Brian Caulfield.
Brian, good morning to you and you're welcome to the programme. And when I say what is the problem to it, I suppose it's simple enough. There's too much traffic on it.
Chapter 2: What issues are currently affecting the M50?
That's exactly it. There's too much traffic on it. And in the past 20 years, the population of the GDA has increased by about 20%. And over the same time period, the population of cars on the island has increased by 40%. So too much traffic, not enough space. We need to do something about the demand.
And it's already been expanded, hasn't it? So what are the options when it comes to looking at making it bigger, essentially?
So there are a number of options and our centre in Trinity have launched a survey today to ask people what they think of these options. The first one would be to introduce high occupancy vehicle lanes. You see that in North America where two or more people would be able to use a particular lane. Obviously this would mean not constructing a new lane that would be taking one away.
The other one and the most obvious one and probably the most effective but not the quickest would be to invest more in public transport. Another one would be to put in bus-based park and ride across the M50. You could also look at ways to reduce the impacts that collisions have by having better response management.
You could increase the capacity on adjacent roads so people don't have to use the M50. And then the last two are one would be to have multiple tolling points on the M50. So far at the moment, we've only got one. And then the final one will be to give people more information on the congestion they're likely to expect on the motorway.
So to keep that would keep people away essentially at busy times if they knew exactly what was happening on it. So let's just go back over some of those options. You mentioned there the potential creation of another route. So that would be another M50 outside of the existing one.
That could be a potential. It's not one I think is a very good idea.
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Chapter 3: What are the main causes of congestion on the M50?
If history has taught us anything in this country, when we do this, basically build it and they will come and the roads will fill up with more traffic. So I think doing something like that, looking at international examples and looking at our own experience would result in more urban sprawl and getting back to the same point that we would be in in maybe 10, 20 years time.
What about a park and ride service, which I know you suggest as well? So this would be a bus, basically. So you'd park at one end of it and we'd take you to the other end or to stops along the way. Could that work?
I think that could work. And it may not be a bus that would traverse the whole M50. It might be more likely that, you know, each of the motorways that come into the city, that there will be both a base parking right there, similar to the Lewis at the Red Cow, that you would get off and then you would get on a bus and it would go through the bus corridors to get into the city.
Because that's where I suppose the majority of the trips are heading towards.
Would that be more of a short term solution?
It would be a short-term solution. The longer-term solution, I think, is investing more in the big rail projects, but it could be a very good short-term solution. And we've seen it used a number of times around the country for big congestion events. It was used in the Ryder Cup. It's been used in Waterford. It's used very effectively in Belfast every day of the week.
So I think we could learn an awful lot from that. And we've never been good at getting bus-based parking right off the ground. And it would be great to have some examples of that in and around the M50. And it could happen pretty quickly.
Yeah, and it would be more popular than one of the other solutions that you suggest, which is this additional tolling to various points on the motorway. And this has come up in the recent past and people get very annoyed, don't they, about how much they have to pay for the toll and how much money that toll bridge brings in.
You're saying it might be a way to reduce congestion and demand if you're told more often, more regularly along the route.
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Chapter 4: What solutions are proposed to alleviate traffic on the M50?
I suppose it's unpopular with the people that don't pay the toll, and I'm sure the people that do pay the toll, it would be popular that if the love was spread right across the M50. The way it works is basically it's tried to regulate the demand or flatten the curve of the demand on the M50.
And it would be multiple points and it would be different times of the day, kind of like the Dublin Port Tunnel, that at different points of the day, it has different prices. But I would imagine it would be very politically unpalatable. And the results so far that we're seeing in the survey, people don't like it.
I mean, if you look at the Port Tunnel, the price of going through the tunnel at peak times, it is so high that it makes you stop and think, well, I'll just... find another way to go or another route to go. That's what you're talking about. It would make travelling the entire M50 unattractive financially.
At particular points of the day, I don't think it would ever be the price that the Dublin Port Tunnel would be. But at different times of the day, it would make it so unattractive that people would not take those trips. But we don't really know why people are taking trips on the M50 right throughout the day. Are there trips that could move to other modes?
Are there trips that could move off the M50? We don't know. And we need much more research to find that out.
Yeah, the tolling system at the moment is arbitrary, isn't it? I mean, really, it just catches the people who are going over that particular bit.
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Chapter 5: How can public transport improvements impact M50 traffic?
And so you could be a victim of it twice a day or never.
Exactly. It's a legacy. It was there to pay for a piece of infrastructure that's been paid over multiple times by the people of this country. And right now, basically, it's been used to supplement repair and upkeep of the motorway network. And that's exactly why it's there.
A listener suggests a SkyTrain, two lanes both ways, only stopping at the exit. Imagine the driver sitting in a jam seeing a train glide by overhead. It could be used for cargo, therefore you'd have no white vans on the M50 and this can all be built in multiple sections in parallel. What do you think? Is that feasible?
It's not something I've seen. It's something I like the idea of. I think, you know, any of these types of rail solutions I think are good. Back in the heyday of the Celtic Tiger, we did have a solution called Metro West, which was to be a west line that was kind of to traverse the M50. It's kind of, I suppose, that one kind of died in the water and it never got off the ground.
But those types of rail solutions I think are very viable. And that's one thing we don't have is a kind of orbital rail solution in the city.
But as you have alluded to earlier, we don't know why we're all on the M50 and whether we all need to be. So you'd need to establish that before you started looking at building any kind of a rail service that sort of mirrored the M50 from start to finish.
Exactly. Well, I think you'd have a good guess why people are on the M50.
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Chapter 6: What role does tolling play in managing M50 congestion?
It's because they don't have any alternative. There are no viable public transport alternatives. And again, it's something that we're looking at in the survey. And then it's, I suppose, understanding why people are using it and what alternatives could be provided. Because we need it. We need that motorway. We need that motorway to work. The city needs that motorway to work.
The country needs that motorway to work for moving people, goods, getting to the airport, getting to the port. And right now it is not working as I'm sure many of your listeners that are on the M50 know.
I have an interesting text here from a listener who says, no one seems to mention that a lot of vehicles on the M50 don't need to be on it, Brian. Vehicles from the southeast heading for the northeast and the Midlands are basically forced to go on the M50. We need another motorway to bypass the M50 for people not going to Dublin. There might be something in that.
There could be something in that. Again, in the traffic models, they will know the volume of people that are doing that. But again, I suppose my fear about doing something like that will become this outer orbital bypass. And then the sprawl that we've seen happen with the M50 could happen again. But there's definitely something in it and it's something that should be explored.
I mean, it does make sense to suggest that, you know, there are vehicles on the M50 very close to Dublin and the occupants don't need to go to Dublin, but they're forced to go there in order to connect with the other motorways and other routes.
Yeah, exactly. I'm sure there's a statistic there, similar to the one we have in Dublin City, that 40% of all cars in Dublin City aren't stopping in the city. So there is data there, I'm sure, to say how many people that could be taken off the M50 by such a route.
But listen, we'll go back to where we started. It's not working. I mean, certainly in the last, say, 18 months to two years, it is a nightmare at certain times of the day, isn't it?
Yeah, it's definitely not working. And the volume of congestion that's there. And like, you know, from a traffic and transport planning perspective, we can work out the cost of the economic cost of this delay. I think what's more important is, you know, the unknown costs.
It's the cost of, you know, the families that are split up for a large part of the week because people have to leave early to get onto the M50. The stress levels it's causing. There's obviously the climate and the noise impacts that it's having as well. So all of these things basically make for, you know, the corridor above.
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