Rate of increase in M50 traffic falls behind Dublin population growth – report

Traffic on Ireland’s national roads network was back to pre-pandemic levels in 2023, according to Transport Infrastructure Ireland’s report for the year which points to the M50 as again being comfortably the country’s busiest motorway.

The rate of increase in vehicle numbers on it has, however, fallen somewhat behind the rate of population growth for the Dublin region, something that “indicates a level of behavioural change”, said TII director of communication Seán O’Neill, who points to Covid as having had an impact.

“If you look at the old reports, there used to be a very strong correlation between the increase in population in the region and the amount of traffic on that road,” he says. “But that’s not the case so much now and you would infer that it points to higher levels of remote working since the pandemic and public transport use.”

Overall, the report, which covers the country’s roughly 5,300km of motorway, national primary and national secondary roads, finds usage of the network was up 4 per cent last year with a 1 per cent drop in the number of kilometres covered by heavy goods vehicles (HGV).

That represents a return to pre-pandemic growth rates after a turbulent few years. In 2019, passenger vehicle usage grew by 3 per cent before a 28 per cent drop in 2020 which was followed in turn by increases of 15 per cent and 17 per cent as Covid-related restrictions were eased and the economy got back to normal in 2021 and 2022 respectively.

HGV traffic only fell by 4 per cent in 2020 and so post-pandemic growth had been much more modest before last year’s decline.

Total emission levels from all vehicles, meanwhile, are down 2 per cent on the 2018 figure.

The M50 remains the busiest road in the network.

A total of 1.6 billion kilometres (up 3 per cent) are said to have been travelled along it over the course of the year with average vehicle numbers of more than 150,000 per day. June 29th is recorded as its busiest day in 2023 with 184,978 vehicles passing between the N2 and N3 exits.

The stretch of the M1 leading to the airport exit was the next most used stretch of road with 158,664 vehicles on May 19th followed by the N7 to Newlands, N4 to Liffey Valley and N40 in Cork, all of which had one-day highs of more than 100,000. The Cork road had a daily average of more than 80,000.

There were 320 collisions that resulted in fatalities or serious injury on the national roads last year, up 3 per cent on the year before and 9 per cent on the average for the years immediately before the pandemic.

Just more than a fifth of the total, 21 per cent in each instance, involved a single vehicle or “non-motorised road user”.

A total of 58 collisions resulted in 60 fatalities, a little less than a third of the total for all road fatalities in Ireland last year, with 14 of the victims cyclists or pedestrians.