Traffic chaos at opening morning of Dublin Port tunnel
There was traffic chaos in Dublin Port during rush-hour today, less than 24-hours after the long-awaited Port Tunnel was finally opened to trucks.
The Dublin Port Company said trucks in the busy hub were at a standstill during the morning due to the overnight closure of the tunnel and difficulties with traffic signals in the area.
Enda Connellan, chief executive of the group, said: "It is frustrating for my customers, the traffic within the port was an absolute mess this morning, right back up to the ships."
The tunnel, built to remove Heavy Goods Vehicles from Dublin's Streets, was only opened yesterday, millions of euro over budget and far behind schedule.
The infrastructure, which was touted as easing traffic in the city centre, is initially expected to carry over 6,300 HGVs and buses, free of charge, each day.
Mr Connellan said: "With such a large piece of infrastructure we would expect some teething problems but I suppose the frustrating part of it is the amount of time it takes for people to actually react when things go slightly wrong.
"Last night at about half past 11 the tunnel was closed and wasn't opened again until 5am this morning."
He said neither the port company or the harbour police were informed in advance of the overnight closure.
However, Hugh Cregan of the National Roads Authority (NRA), denied the traffic situation was a mess.
"We just opened an enormous piece of infrastructure 24 hours ago and it was always our intention for the first few days after opening we will use a few hours in the dead of night to double check that all the myriad of systems we put into the tunnel are all performing correctly," he said.
Mr Cregan said a co-ordination group, which involved members of the Dublin Port company, were aware it would be closed for a limited time during the first few nights.
He also said there were message boards throughout Dublin Port to inform drivers on the status of the Port Tunnel.
The Dublin Port Company attributed the congestion to a combination of the tunnel closure and the phasing of the lights exiting the port which they claimed were 84% against traffic exiting the port.
"That essentially means for every 100 seconds for phasing of lights, 84 seconds would have been red for exiting the port," Mr Connellan said.
"Then when you go down to the traffic office you get denial this is happening which is frustrating. However, I would expect there will be vast improvement on this tomorrow."
Mr Cregan said if any adjustments were required for the traffic signals they would be quickly altered.
Jimmy Quinn of the Irish Road Haulage Association said it was critical the traffic signals were working correctly to remove the heavy early morning traffic from the port.
"Between 5am and 7am there are around 1,000 trucks from the ferries and haulage companies starting work who are exiting the port, this is 10 miles' worth of trucks," he said.
"The phasing system needs to be strict to get them out of town quickly."
He said it was going to take a number of days for the effect of the tunnel to be felt.
Over 98% of trucks leaving the docks will be able to use the €751m tunnel with journey times of between six and eight minutes.
However, fears have already been raised over the road layout near the M50/M1 interchange with traffic exiting the tunnel forced to cross busy lanes in order to access the capital's ring road.
