12.12.05
The New Road
Yes! The new road has opened. The KEK (Kilcock, Enfield, Kinnegad) motorway all 35 km of it – opened today. The mother with buggy, the street sweeper, the elderly bachelor with dog, the retired school teacher, and a few others of the disposessed who are available during the day when the rest of you are in offices, stood on the bridge and watched the cavalcade of important people do the first run. It was kind of exciting.
At €2.40 now and €2.50 after christmas, its the most expensive toll in the country. Our predictions?
Well, long distance traffic will of course use it. The heavy commuter traffic? Very hard to say. It would add €25 per week to your costs and in the morning, that would only earn you the right to get to the Lucan tailback quicker. Perhaps in the evening some will treat themselves. It will make the homeward journey easier even if you didn’t take the motorway because the traffic can escape quicker. In the morning, no point.
The HGV’s carrying sand and gravel definitely won’t take it. But the ferry trucks should.
ANYWAY, you can see my house from the motorway. When travelling west, you will pass Johnstown House on your left and drive under the main Enfield Interchange (i.e. the Enfield exit). Not far ahead you will see a smaller agricultural bridge (ie a little bridge just for use by local farmers to get to their land. My house is on the left seconds before that smaller bridge. It’s a two storey Fr. Ted style thing and you’ll be able to see the second storey. I plan to put a candle in the top window, a la Mary Robinson, during christmas week and over the New Year. So wave when you are heading to west for the holidays.
Branedy said,
December 12, 2005 at 9:32 pm
I can’t tell you how angry these new toll roads make me. We have mostly paid for these already, and then they are given to private companies that take money from us forever.
Sarah said,
December 12, 2005 at 9:56 pm
I know, its outrageous. But you know what? At the oral hearing into the tolls, I went along with my Dad and some other locals. The set up was that the NRA hired an ex-county manager to chair the hearing. So he wasn’t independent – he was their guy. But just in case he didn’t play ball, the NRA didn’t even have to take his recommendation. They could overturn any decision he made. It was sucha joke. However, we were the only protesters there (I made a great speech!!). At the time they were proposing a charge of €1.50, and I think everyone thought, oh well, that’s not much. I’d go on a new road for that. It didn’t seem to occur to them that the charge would increase.
ANYWAY, we can hear the traffic. It’s actually pretty audible outside and in the kitchen. I presume we’ll get used to it but hubby is NOT amused. We didn’t move to the country for this…..
P O'Neill said,
December 13, 2005 at 5:23 am
You risk being part of the media elite, with today’s Irish Times going all the way to Enfield to get a quote from media personality Sarah Carey.
gerry said,
December 13, 2005 at 10:27 am
I realise I am beginning to sound like a broken record but, seriously, what’s wrong with you people? an extra E25 a week to get to work each week and for this all I get is a E35 kilometre motorway? This is the cost of ONE leg of ONE journey on ONE day for me to go to work in a crowded train that may or may not be on time.
A scheme is in place that delivers a road 10 months early and allows private companies to realise a return in investment that allows more roads to be built? Where’s Kofi Anan standing on this? Is the world aware of the great injustce being visited on the Irish taxpayer?
not to mention the fact that it directly taxes the road user as opposed to our famous friend the squid gutter, more of whose taxes would be nused to pay for a road that he’ll never use.
Oh, and you can hear traffic? Seriously Sarah, don’t get me started.
Sarah said,
December 13, 2005 at 10:35 am
Oh Gerry, now first thing:
- it is an EXTRA €25, on top of your motoring expenses. Obviously if I am paying train or bus fare the transport company is paying all the fuel and overhead costs of the vehicle.
- the road doesn’t get you to work. It gets you the queue to get onto the M50 quicker.
- no one would mind paying a toll if it stopped when the road was paid for. The governments should hire SIAC/Ferrovial to build the road with bonuses for early finishing. Then it should be tolled. Once the cost is covered it should be opened.
-OR keep tolling after the costs have been paid but the money goes to build roads is less busy parts of the country. No one would mind paying the money if it went into roads. If its just making profits for someone else, the plebs start getting pissed off.
And Gerry darling, I am quite entitled to mildly grumble about the peace of my existence being disturbed by the unwanted arrival of a motorway. I am not overexercised about it but, it is disappointing. One puts up with these things in urban areas because that’s the cost when you want to be surrounded by great infrastructure. When you move out of the city and leave things like your friends and pubs and the cinema behind you, you expect a bit of quiet in return.
gerry said,
December 13, 2005 at 11:09 am
I did say extra – and it’s an extra however many lanes going an extra 35km. Seems a reasonable deal to me. and i don’t understand your point about not taking you to work – it takes you to dublin doesn’t it? Do you expect an off ramp directly to your office?
And how long precisely until these profits kick in? It seems to me building and maintaining roads is a pretty expensive business and would require many years to deliver a return. It’s not printing money.
And finally Sarah, you’re entitled to do what you like, but unless they’ve built a fly-over directly over the ranch I am not overly sympathetic to complaints about distant murmurings of traffic when the noise eminates from critical infrastrucure essential to the future prosperity of these children everyone is so exercised about these days.
Think about the babies.
Sarah said,
December 13, 2005 at 12:02 pm
Gerry I am not completely whinging.
The motorway is great if you are on a long distance journey. All I am saying is that it is little advantage to people driving into Dublin every morning. All it does is get the traffic onto the Lucan by-pass quicker. This means that it doesn’t bring you to Dublin. It brings you to the queue to get into Dublin which you will stay in longer, thus negating any time saved by your €2.50 20 minute trip on the motorway. If you pile cars at high speed towards a bottle neck, the result is longer traffic jams, not time saved. The commuters around here would kill for more trains, bus routes which went on the M50, anything which would spare them the nightmare of a nearly 2 hour drive in the morning.
They’d probably gladly pay twice the money if it actually did speed up the journey.
Now coming home it will be a help because it will help the traffic escape Dublin quicker.
Finally, actually Gerry, there is a bridge just across the road from me. AND I got planning permission for my house in 1998 when for 25 years it had been in Meath co. Council’s development plan that a motorway route corridor on the opposite side of town would be preserved. MCC built all houses and infrastrcuture on our side of town. So when the NRA madly decided to change the route and put it on our side they had to pay massive compensation to residents, instead of much cheaper compensation to farmers whose land had been sterilised for all that time. Go figure.
tom said,
December 13, 2005 at 12:56 pm
there’s some truth in that.
a couple of weeks ago I drove from Dublin to Omagh on Friday evening. I had been dreading this journey and particularly the prospect of an hour or so getting out of Dublin.
As it turned out I escaped Dublin very quickly, got onto the motorway, exited after Drogheda, round the bypasses at Ardee and Carrickmacross, going very nicely – could hardly believe it – and then spent 30 MINUTES in a tailback at castleblaney. Castleblaney! its about 70 miles from Dublin, all that traffic that had sped through the country on their way to donegal or wherever only to build up the moment they came to a town with a t-junction.
sarah your entire community now seems to exist on the basis of grants to make fields look pretty for passing motorists. more gratitude please.
Sarah said,
December 13, 2005 at 1:03 pm
it funny you should raise that point Tom. I was thinking of doing a column on exactly why farmers are perfectly entitled to those grants on environmental grounds alone…..
btw, to whom should I be grateful?…I think the German taxpayer is entitled to any gratitude.
gerry said,
December 13, 2005 at 2:24 pm
We should all be grateful to whoever was responsible for allowing us to skip going to Enfield. They’re a fierce ungfrateful lot down there. I used to have a mad unckle Frank in Enfield, he could have used a grant for making the fields pretty, make a change from giving loaded shotguns to 7 year olds to shoot a rabbit was frustrating his greyhound.
clonard.org » M4 v N4 said,
December 19, 2005 at 10:00 pm
[...] Sarah Carey in Enfield posts some observations on the M4 and the attached comments are worth a read. [...]
Sarah said,
December 20, 2005 at 10:18 am
OK so we are not amused. We’ve been trying to figure out the noise. Here is the story. We knew that our house would face the motorway. We presumed the worst noise would therefore be at the front of the house. It is a “field” away so we built the house with our principle living space and bedrooms at the back of the house. A big back garden etc. But there is more noise at the back than the front! The road continues past the front of our house and sweeps around to the left and thus the side and back of the house. Theoretically this shouldn’t matter because there is a hill between the house and the road and its further away. But whatever bizarre way the ecoustics work, more noise is coming from the back. When we are in the back garden, you’d think you were sitting right beside the bloody thing. I have no idea how sound travels. But this is not good. How can we use the garden for the whole summer? When the patio doors are open, its like being at Dublin Airport. I’ll write a letter to the motorway people. I am sure they’ll throw it in the bin.
John said,
December 20, 2005 at 1:35 pm
For what its worth in Clonard we now get to hear the motorway noise as a constant hum and we now have the low rumble of artics dropping down a gear and putting their foot down in order to maintain their 80+kph speed through the village as they crest the hill alongside St Finian’s National school.
I would suspect the reason you are getting weird acoustics is due to the low frequency noise which diffracts around buildings, hills etc. A bit like the reason you can place your home cinema Sub Woofer speaker anywhere in a room and it makes no appreciable difference to where the sound appears to come from.
Palm trees and similar dense foliage trees/shrubbery are very good at damping this type of noise.
In the summer the grass will be longer on the embankments and trees will have leaves, all of which will attenuate the noise. Maybe somebody else knows better but their are strict noise emission rules for motorways in Europe and a Google for decibel levels coupled with buying/borrowing/stealing a decibel meter might give you more ammunition for the motorway people. Or at least it might provide more paper and clog up their waste paper bin
John
Sarah said,
December 26, 2005 at 2:01 pm
A word of warning to travellers intending to stop in Enfield. When you pay at Kilcock make absolutely sure to ask for a receipt. Then you exit at Enfield and you can stay for 3 hours and not pay when going back on. You are not automatically given a receipt – so make sure to ask.
Finally, a lot of people are getting caught out leaving Dubin. As they approach Kilcock there is an exit signposted Kilcock and Clane. The person maybe going to Enfield so they continue straight on as per the signposting. Suddenly they arrive at the toll plaza and have to pay the €2.40. But they didn’t want to go on the motorway! They intended taking the old road to Enfield. So sneaky signposting is catching a lot of out.
don said,
December 26, 2005 at 6:39 pm
Sarah
How far is the road from your house front. Cork County council are proposing to run a dual carriage way 25 meters from my front door and are saying i wont be cpo’d because the road runs just outside the edgeof my garden. I know people will say that this road is in the national interest but why should i have to put up with a drop in valuation of my house and excessive noise in the national interest ,i dont think the cabinet ministers or the people in Cork county council designing the road would.
Sarah said,
December 26, 2005 at 9:18 pm
Hi Don, From our front gate, probably 200m. I suppose our biggest problem is that it then turns and we have it at the side and back as well. “People” always complain about people being pissed off with road building until “people” get half their garden CPO’d or worse still like you, don’t even get the bit of cash from the CPO but still have to put up with the inconvenience. Unfortunately there is practically nothing you can do. Our neighbours have had various experiences. Some are like you: beside it but no land taken. Some had a tiny bit of a land taken for what they call the “road bed” i.e. the area adjacent to the road but not road. You’ll get a couple of grand for that. Others had a good bit of land taken and here’s how the compo works. They calculate it on a number of different criteria. How much land is taken, what proportion that land is of your total holdings, and the use of the land. So some did get a lot of money, but they are all hoping they can sell up and move on. I guess we won’t know the impact on land valuations until they do.
However, what you should do is get extremely friendly with the relevant engineers and make sure they put in as much sound proofing and landscaping as possible. We didn’t do this and I swear to God, they planted all along the motorway and stopped at the bit in front of our house. Now to be honest, I am not panicking too much as I am assuming that the noise at the moment is the worst it will be. It’s winter, there’s no growth and none of the landscaping has come up yet. Perhaps in the summers it will be fine. Only time will tell. Anyway, if you can identify the project engineers and get them to draw in some trees at the bit beside your house, you’ll have achieved something. Also, go to the Oral Hearings and see can you persuade the inspector to specify the various “accommodation works” and a TIME period within which they should be completed. Our accommodation works aren’t finished and probably won’t be for months even tho the road is open and they are taking in the money.
They won’t CPO you if they think they can get away with it. Try not to stress yourself out. I send snotty letters every now and then, but it only makes them hate me and less likely to do anything. But f*ck them. I’ll get a column out of their bloody road yet.
don said,
December 26, 2005 at 10:23 pm
Did any of your neighbours try to force a cpo by getting a professional noise report done when the road was at design stage or what about the road designers enviromental impact study