Count On Us N81 Study

Count On Us has recently completed a large scale data collection and analysis project along the N81 National Secondary Route which runs South of Dublin.

The N81, the only major national road emanating from Dublin, connects the gates of Trinity College to the village of Closh in County Carlow, some 90km to the south. The recent study was looking at a 30km section of the route which runs between Tallaght and Holywood.

The need for an upgrade to the N81 has been identified in the National development plan 2007 – 2010, with the possible upgrade options now being investigated by the Kildare, South Dublin and Wicklow Councils. A significant part of the planning process is in investigating the numerous possible route corridor options, and a number of public consultations have already taken place to gather local opinion.

Key to the planning process is route appraisal which includes a traffic and economic assessment of the upgrade scheme, this required collation of information on traffic flows, volumes, patterns and distributions. In order to provide relevant information for this assessment Count On Us completed a traffic survey project during May and June 2010. This utilised a wide variety of traffic monitoring methods including 16 Roadside Interviews, 16 Automatic Traffic Counts, 16 Link Flow Counts and 24 Junction Turning Counts.

Surveys were undertaken on mid-week days over a 12 hour period. Previous experience and precise planning ensured that the optimum level of vehicles were stopped, interviewed and exited the interview bay within a reasonable time. Several sites on narrow rural feeder roads to the N81 required detailed risk assessments and customised layouts to ensure safety for drivers and interviewers. Count On us therefore worked in close partnership with the Garda and the design office team to ensure that careful planning allowed the surveying of these sites to go ahead.

Monica Reynolds, Project Manager COU Ireland commented “Effective liaison between Kildare National Road Design Office and our Project Team enabled rapid data collection that yielded rich and robust data for this project”.