Public given once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to walk under River Shannon

By Jimmy Woulfe, Mid-West Correspondent

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

PEOPLE will have a first and last opportunity to walk under the River Shannon next Saturday when the €660 million tunnel road connecting Limerick and Clare will open for pedestrians.

Up to 20,000 people are expected to attend the open day from 10am to 5pm and walk along the 900m tunnel, of which 675m goes under the river.

When the motorway opens in coming months, pedestrians will not be allowed to access it.

Tom King, managing director of Direct Route, said: "We will be providing 10km of parking on the roadway and will have up to 30 buses to provide park and ride to avoid delays. The public will have an opportunity to go on foot and see the finished article."

Up to 150 emergency services personnel are due to carry out a major response operation in the tunnel prior to opening day.

Firefighters have been taking part in training drills in the tunnel over the past few months.

The tunnel will enable up to 16,000 cars a day to bypass Limerick city when travelling on the western corridor, linking Cork, Kerry, Limerick, Clare and the west.

The tunnel is a key element of Limerick’s new Southern Ring Road, a 9.7km four-lane highway.

It connects the southern side of the Shannon near the cement factory in Mungret to the northern riverside near the Radisson Hotel on the Ennis Road.

Then transport minister, Martin Cullen, turned the first sod on the tunnel site in October, 2006.

The construction of the tunnel is one of the biggest engineering projects of its kind ever undertaken in Ireland. The road network on either side of the tunnel will include 11 new access bridges, six underpasses and four interchanges.

The tunnel consists of five precast concrete tubes which were made by Austrian specialists, Strabag. They were floated out on to the river and lowered onto foundations which were set on the river bed.

To lay the foundations, 800,000 tonnes of silt had to be dredged from the river and six million tons of rock placed along the line of the tunnel to stabilise the soft river bed.

When open, the tunnel road will be tolled at rates equivalent to other toll routes, with a car rate of around €1.90 and lorries at approximately €4.50.

As well as cutting travel times between the south and south-west to the west and north-west, it is also expected to boost business in the mid-west and help attract more travel business to Shannon.

This appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Tuesday, June 15, 2010