The €752 million 4.5km (2.8 miles)Dublin Port Tunnel is to be officially opened by Taoiseach Bertie Ahern today, 12 years since the project was sanctioned by the government and more than five years after construction began.
The tunnel is designed to remove heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) from the city's streets and, the project engineers claim, will bring lorries, toll-free, from the port to the M1 in less than eight minutes.
The absence of a toll for HGVs is an incentive to use the tunnel before it becomes a de facto compulsory route when the Dublin City Council HGV management strategy comes into force in February.
From February 19th all lorries with five axles or more will be banned from the city area between the Royal and Grand canals and parts of surrounding suburbs.
So called over-height vehicles, also known as "super cube" HGVs, which cannot fit in the tunnel due to its 4.65 metre operational height, will be directed along a specific route, allowing them to exit the port on East Wall Road.
However, the Government is considering banning these lorries, which account for about 2 per cent of trucks entering the port daily, from the State.
Trucks delivering to city businesses will be given permits to exempt them from the ban.
Cars using the tunnel will be heavily tolled. Drivers heading to and from the port at peak times, in the morning for northbound cars and the evening on the southbound tunnel, will be charged €12. The remaining daytime rate for cars will be €6, with an overnight rate of €3. At weekends there will be just two charges: €6 by day and €3 by night.Cars will not be permitted to enter the tunnel until after the first three to four weeks of operations.
Initially the tunnel is expected to carry more than 6,300 HGVs and buses each day, with that number increasing after the February ban. This should remove a considerable amount of traffic from the city.
The ban is also intended to increase safety on the city streets following the deaths of several cyclists involved in collisions with lorries.
However, the ban is likely to have the opposite effect on M50 traffic. The Irish Road Haulage Association claims that congestion on the M50, which is already at a standstill for significant lengths of time each day, will increase following the opening of the tunnel as HGVs travelling from the south and southwest, which would have used city streets to reach the port, will now have to take the M50 around to the north of the city to get to the tunnel.
Mr Ahern and the National Roads Authority have also said that the tunnel by itself will not be a panacea for all of Dublin's traffic ills. An eastern bypass which would link the port with the southern end of the M50, most likely via another tunnel, has been mooted for many years, but is not included in the Government's Transport 21 plan, while proposals to make the M50 toll-free have, to date, fallen on deaf ears.
