Plans lodged for €80m upgrade to interchange

The National Roads Authority and Cork County Council have jointly lodged an application with An Bord Pleanála for a €80m upgrade of the Jack Lynch Tunnel/Dunkettle interchange.

The plan involves building a number of new slip roads in the area and removing the signalised roundabout on the northern side of the tunnel to make traffic flow more easily at what is the busiest road junction, outside of Dublin city.

An average of 100,000 vehicles use the junction daily, considerably more than the capacity envisaged when the 335m-long Jack Lynch Tunnel opened in 1999.

It is expected An Bord Pleanála will order an oral hearing into the project which could take place within the next six months.

Both the council and the roads authority view the scheme as a priority, although when it gets the go-ahead will be entirely dependent on government funding.

Sources close to the project say the best case scenario is for construction to start in two years’ time.

The first thing the project managers would have to do is acquire some land in the area, possibly through Compulsory Purchase Orders.

The NRA has also set aside land which will be used to build a commuter railway station near the former Ibis Hotel at North Esk.

Final designs would also have to be drawn up and the construction would have to be put out for tendering before any work could be undertaken.

It is expected that the project could take a further two years to complete. It will be done in stages to minimise disruption to traffic.

Last February, the NRA organised a public display at the Radisson Blu Hotel in Little Island of some of its preferred options for the upgrade.

Since then the preferred option has been picked and this has been submitted to Bord Pleanála.

The NRA used computer traffic flows to identify where vehicles were coming from and going to.

These helped to identify traffic which was making local trips and traffic making regional journeys.

As part of the new upgrade, slip roads will be put in at a number of places which are designed to keep local and regional traffic apart as much as possible.

Some of the new roads will be elevated on concrete stilts and a new designated slip road will be created onto the M8 for traffic heading from Cork City to Dublin.

Plans for designated pedestrian walkways and cycle ways are also included in the proposals but will not include access into the Jack Lynch Tunnel.