It's 8am and the last of the lorries are leaving from the depot of the Gwynedd Shipping Group at Dublin Port following the earlier arrival of the Irish Ferries Ulysses from Holyhead.
A giant plasma screen reveals the location, speed and distance travelled of all the vehicles on the road. Some of the early ones are as far south as Waterford and as far west as Co Galway.
An ordinary day in so many ways, but the cluster of electronic blips on the M50 tells a different story. Not one of the trucks is in Dublin city centre.
A half-hour later, lorry driver Tom Connolly picks up a load of steel for Cork. He has already been delayed by 30 minutes from his home in Bagenalstown, Co Carlow, getting to work. The congestion on the M50 at 7.30am, he says, was "brutal".
Normally, when making a delivery south, he takes a route which is as time-honoured as it is familiar to lorry drivers.
It starts out at North Wall, proceeds along the quays past Heuston Station until the N4 meets the M50. It's a short journey on the M50 to the Red Cow roundabout and the junction with the N7 going south.
Even in the morning rush- hour, it takes about 55 minutes. Today, the 6km between Dublin Port and the end of the port tunnel is negotiated in no more than 15 minutes, but as he emerges from the tunnel, his truck is forced to slow to a crawl.
It takes half an hour to travel to the next slip road to the N2, a distance of less than a kilometre. "Normally, the traffic only starts building up past this junction," he says.
The traffic picks up, but only slightly, as he approaches the dreaded WestLink toll bridge. It has taken an hour to get this far, by which time Tom has usually reached Newlands Cross.
The problem is even worse on the other side of the M50, where there are long queues before and after the toll bridge.
Steel shutters, which have been erected where a third lane is being added to the motorway, obscure all but the highest vehicles, but there is hardly a break for a car as lorries line up.
Tom eventually makes it to the Red Cow roundabout at 9.45am.
"This is the worst I've ever seen on the M50 and there wasn't even an accident. I'd be gone past Naas and Newbridge and I'd be on the Kildare bypass by now if I went the way I normally go."
Back at base, operations director Austin Gilligan says the bottom line is cost. "It's making us more uncompetitive. It's going to pump up prices to Joe Public. I'm not opposed to [ having to use] the M50 per se, but not while it's under construction. It's madness to shut off the other existing routes."
