Minister Noel Dempsey reversed his decision to open the M9 Motorway on 8th Jan 2010 and the motorway will now be opened on Monday 21st December between 12 midday and 2pm with varying setups for north and south traffic. The website boards.ie was inundated with posts about the M9 situation with calls made to the media and radio stations such as WLR FM, Kildare FM, Joe Duffy and Today FM. At lunchtime the decision was made to go ahead and open the new stretch of Motorway on the date set out in Tuesdays Irish Times. At one point there was a “People Power” movement which was going to go to the motorway at 2pm and manually move the bollards – i.e. the people would open the Motorway if the NRA did not. Thankfully sense was seen through and all is well again in the world! This should really cut down driving times to Waterford and Kilkenny from Dublin as well as getting rid of the usual delays at Castledermot (or Hassledermot) as it was called this week. At Last ; Goodbye N9 at Castledermot – Hello M9.
M9 Kilcullen/Carlow section of Motorway to open Monday 21st December
by Shane McDonald | Dec 17, 2009 | In The News | 1 comment
I drove from Dublin to Waterford on Monday 14th December. It took forever to get through Castledermot due to roadworks. They should’ve waited until the traffic was on the motorway before carrying out these roadworks. The opening of this latest section of the M9 means we now have motorways and dual carriageways between the south end of the Carlow bypass and Red Cow (M50 junction 9).
When the rest of the M9 is completed I’ll never use the trains again. If you park your car at Waterford Plunkett Station it takes about 20 minutes to get back out due to the very busy roundabout at the station. Iarnrod Eireann lets you reserve seats on the trains but they don’t activate the electronic labeling system for the pre-booked seats so people with a reservation find their seats occupied when they board the train, and people without a reservation don’t know which seats are or are not reserved. There’s announcements on the trains telling us to “book seats online” and “do not occupy pre-booked seats” but they don’t bother do label the reserved seats. That’s Iarnrod Eireann for you… so typically Irish. I only use the trains because I can’t stand the N9 (or R448 as it’ll be known), especially the part between Waterford to Paulstown, so when the M9 is completed I’ll never have to put up with the stupidity and idiocy Iarnrod Eireann ever again. It’s always been quicker to drive between Waterford and Dublin than taking the train… and driving will be even quicker with the motorway.