Motorways in the Republic of Ireland
The motorway network consists entirely of motorway-grade dual carriageways and is largely focused upon Dublin.
There are also several three-lane motorways, while Ireland's busiest road, the M50,[1] incorporates four-lane, five-lane,[2] and six-lane[3] stretches.
Planned new road construction will possibly lead to there being almost 1100 km of motorway by 2035, subject to the availability of funding.
Motorways in Ireland are generally constructed to high-quality dual carriageway standard – with sightlines, curves and elevation designed for 120 km/h speeds.
Until recently, all motorways were built with wide medians in the centre, which typically have a wire or steel barrier with a continuous hedge growing and covering it over time.
The more recent schemes have narrow medians, only 3 metres in width, with a concrete barrier in the middle.
These narrow-median schemes also have reduced carriageway width – a typical narrow-median motorway cross section has two 3.5-metre running lanes, a 2.5-metre hard shoulder and a 1.5-metre central reserve in each direction whereas a typical wide median motorway has 3.75-metre running lanes and a 3-metre hard shoulder.
The most notable include the presence of a continuous hard-shoulder, use of crash barriers, superior lighting and provision of emergency phones at regular intervals.
1998 featured the opening of another short piece of M1, this time to the south of Balbriggan, modern day junctions 5 and 7.
The first decade of the twenty-first century saw a major expansion in the construction of new motorways in Ireland, after an initially slow start.
Finally the various sections of M1 were joined, creating continuous motorway from Dublin to just south of Dundalk.
By 2005, projects were beginning to be completed faster and in this year the M4 was extended from Kilcock to Kinnegad,[6] this section of motorway having a toll applied to it, one of the first PPP schemes to be tried out in Ireland.
The M1 Dundalk bypass was also finished, meaning that there was now a full motorway link on the Dublin to Belfast route virtually as far as the border.
In 2007 the same road was extended by some 10 km (6 miles) to join with the N52 north of Tullamore, still opened as N6 as the first tranche of motorway redesignations had only just been submitted.
Finally, the M6 was extended to the Athlone bypass and Ireland's motorway network was greatly expanded.
2009 was another major milestone in the development of the Irish motorway network, with many projects under construction finished by the end of the year.
Redesignation of High-Quality Dual-Carriageway sections of National Primary routes to motorway took effect on 28 August 2009, further expanding the network.
[11] M7: Limerick – Shannon motorway tunnel, 10 km (6 miles) long, opened ahead of schedule on 27 July 2010.
This Act makes provision for the redesignation of suitable dual carriageways to motorway status.
The closing date for submissions was 14 November 2008 and the Statutory Instrument reclassifying the roads as motorways was made on 2 July 2009, taking effect from 28 August 2009.
Under the government's Transport 21 initiative, Letterkenny will be linked to Waterford and Cork with new high quality roads – collectively known as the "Atlantic Corridor".
[22] A motorway project, the Dublin Outer Orbital Route, may be progressed in the future.
