Up to 100,000 vehicles per day are now using the West Link bridge, according to the National Toll Roads, operators of the East Link and West Link toll bridges in Dublin and the North Link toll on the M1 to Belfast. Combined daily traffic through all three toll plazas is now estimated at up to 130,000 vehicles.
Figures for West Link traffic show that between April and June 2004 traffic across the bridge increased by 10 per cent, with an average daily throughput of 87,000 during the three-month period. Morning peak hour traffic has increased by 15 per cent since the introduction of the extra toll lane in each direction, and up to 7,600 vehicles per hour use the facility during the busy morning peak hours. NTR predicts average usage will rise by 16 per cent to 105,000 by 2008.
Despite the opening of the second bridge last September, Tony McClafferty, managing director of NTR's road division said that while it was easing localised traffic, with several projects to upgrade the M50 motorway planned and traffic from the Port Tunnel due to start filtering onto it in late 2005, motorists on the route are facing congestion for the foreseeable future.
NTR also announced yesterday that its electronic toll collection system, Eazy Pass, is to operate on the North Link toll plaza on the M1 at Drogheda from next month. "Within a matter of weeks we hope to have the system up and running, allowing motorists to use the same system at all NTR toll plazas," according to Dermot MacEvilly, development manager for Eazy Pass.
He said the hope was that eventually all toll road operators - whether they be NTR or not - could be persuaded to operate the Eazy Pass system.
