Motorists in Cork received a welcome boost yesterday morning when the flyover section of the €50 million Kinsale Road interchange scheme opened to traffic some six months ahead of schedule.
According to resident project engineer Kieran Lehane, the opening of the 2.5km flyover section on the east-west axis will remove some 55,000 vehicles a day from using the Kinsale Road roundabout and will result in savings of up to 20 minutes at peak times for motorists.
"We estimate that some 100,000 vehicles a day use the Kinsale Road roundabout and some 55 per cent of these are vehicles travelling east-west or west-east so all of these will now be able to travel straight through via the flyover," said Mr Lehane.
The flyover, which has three lanes for eastbound traffic and two lanes and a hard shoulder for westbound traffic, is supported by 56 pillars and 20 concrete beams each weighing 100 tonnes.
The project is funded by the National Roads Authority (NRA)under the National Development Plan 2000-2006 and is co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund with Cork City Council acting as the lead agent in designing and supervising the project.
The flyover is part of the Southern Ring Road which straddles Cork City Council and Cork County Council areas and the council has worked on the project in a support capacity while carrying out further works to the west.
NRA senior project engineer Paschal Griffin paid tribute to contractors Ascon Ltd. Work began on the flyover in June 2005 and has opened six months ahead of schedule, with a likely completion date for the entire project in October 2006.
He said the contractors had committed 130 staff at peak times to the project and that a huge amount of effort had gone into preplanning discussions which had yielded substantial dividends in terms of reducing disruption.
"Ourselves in Cork City Council, the contractors and both our designers, Arup Consulting Engineers and Ascon's designers, Mott McDonald, put a lot of time and thought into preplanning in terms of reducing disruption, and it has paid dividends," he said.
"We looked a lot at night work and weekend work and that has helped speed up the project and get it to this stage some six months ahead of schedule."
He added that connecting the slip roads from the flyover to the roundabout still must be finalised.
The Kinsale Road roundabout was originally opened in 1990 and served as an interchange for traffic exiting the city along the South Link Road and traffic going to and from the Kinsale Road, and was subsequently linked up to the Southern Ring Road.
It now serves as a major interchange in the Cork road network for traffic coming east from the Jack Lynch Tunnel heading to west Cork and Kerry, and similarly for traffic coming from the west going east and north to Waterford and Dublin, as well as for city and airport traffic.
Cork City Council assistant city manager, Dan Buggy, said the open- ing of the flyover represents a significant improvement in the roads infrastructure in the Cork area. The city council was looking forward to completion of the scheme in October, he said. Cork county engineer Ned Flynn said the county council was working on a scheme to build interchanges at Bandon Road and Sarsfield Road roundabouts which would further enhance traffic flows along the Southern Ring Road.
