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New River Suir Bridge, The Cat Flap : Tolls, Route and M9

New River Suir Bridge, The Cat Flap : Tolls, Route and M9

by | Oct 21, 2009 | In The News

Since I put up the posts about the Waterford bypass and the New River Suir Bridge there has been huge traffic on the website. On Monday, I had over 2,200 visitors on the site, the day the new bridge opened, all looking for information or pictures of the event.

In response to emails and blog comments I got, here is some extra information.

Naming of the bridge – Apparently the official unofficial name of the bridge is the River Suir Bridge. Some people are saying that the bridge will not have a name, others are saying we should call the bridge something more imaginative. Kilkenny residents are calling the bridge “The Cat Flap”

Tolls – Toll charges as of Monday 19th October 2009 are as follows;
Motor Cycles €1.00, Motor Cars €1.90, Buses or Coaches €3.40, Goods Vehicles with a design gross weight not exceeding 3,500 kilograms €3.40, Goods Vehicles with design gross weight exceeding 3,500 kgs & having 2 or 3 axles €4.80, Goods Vehicles with design gross weight exceeding 3,500 kgs & 4 or more axles €6.10.

Route – The N25 Waterford City Bypass is 24km in length. The New N25 route stretches from Kilmeaden in Co.Waterford to Slieverue in Co. Kilkenny (if one takes the new bridge). The route will also benefit people who want to go to places like Tramore, so that you can go from Co. Kilkenny, across the new suir bridge and take the first left exit to continue through the Cork Road and on to the Tramore road.

M9 to Dublin – The first phase of the M9 towards Kilkenny should be open before Christmas, this will be ideal for people traveling to places like Thomastown and Kilkenny and they are claiming that you will be able to get to Kilkenny in 30 mins on the new M9.

Bridge Lighting – The lights on the new bridge now switched on at night which makes for a very impressive sight, but the placement of the lights means that some parts of the bridge are lit up while others are not so lit up – might be nice to include the blue style lights which are on Rice Bridge.

Road Speeds in Ireland are stupid and unplanned

by | Jul 4, 2009 | In The News, Ireland

Road Speeds in Ireland are stupid and unplanned seem to be simply placed on the roads, independent of how straight of winding they are. In the South East of Ireland there are some glaring examples of this stupidity. The most obvious being the Waterford Outer Ring Road and Kilkenny Outer Ring Road Speeds : The Waterford Outer Ring Road is 80kph and the Kilkenny Ring Road is 100kph. Road Type : Both are Dual carriage way style, with 2 lanes of good quality. Speeding : No obvious speeding on Kilkenny Road, in Waterford it is happening all the time and there is a very limited Garda presence near the Six Cross Roads but really this limit needs to be upped to 100 kph !! I am sure that a percentage of people who get caught for speeding are confused … how can a big dual carriage-way road be 60 when a boreen or lane way with grass up the middle can be 80 kph? Also some roads go from 100 to 50 in one stage, it should be 100 – 80 – 60 – 50. There is one bend on the way into Ballyhale which is 100, as you approach a 50kph area. Recently there have been some accidents on this road, some fatal, some involving large vehicles and trucks, because it is marked as 100 and you can really only take this bend at 60 – 65. (If I have a chance I will update this post with some examples) The roads authority really have to take a good look at roads and plan the speeds based on the safest and most common sense speed. Lets see how long that will take to happen?? Road Speeds in Ireland are not standardised and without enforcement, what is the point is having speeds. Roadside speed cameras are present on some roads but the only solution to speeding in my view is average speed cameras, as there is no real way to bypass those.