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Displaying items by tag: Port Tunnel

Early next month reports The Irish Times, a major traffic plan is to be launched to prevent Brexit-related traffic congestion at Dublin Port spilling out into the city, the port tunnel and the motorway network.

The contingency plan – known as Operation Purge – will be designed to ensure that the tunnel remains open and that key thoroughfares around it, including the M1 and M50, do not become congested should new border checks introduced at the port after the UK leaves the EU on October 31st lead to delays.

The operation, which will come into effect if lorry traffic in the port backs up, will mean port-bound trucks travelling in through the port tunnel are redirected at Dublin Port and sent back out the north bore of the tunnel.

The lorries will be directed to park up at service stations and other areas off the motorway network that they normally use until congestion at the port eases.

Dublin Port Company and Transport Infrastructure Ireland, the State agency responsible for managing the tunnel and national road network, are leading the management of the plan and will work closely with the Garda and Dublin City Council to avoid traffic jams in the city centre.

Further reading on this story can be read here. 

Published in Dublin Port

The Irish Cruiser Racing Association (ICRA) Information

The creation of the Irish Cruiser Racing Association (ICRA) began in a very low key way in the autumn of 2002 with an exploratory meeting between Denis Kiely, Jim Donegan and Fintan Cairns in the Granville Hotel in Waterford, and the first conference was held in February 2003 in Kilkenny.

While numbers of cruiser-racers were large, their specific locations were widespread, but there was simply no denying the numerical strength and majority power of the Cork-Dublin axis. To get what was then a very novel concept up and running, this strength of numbers had to be acknowledged, and the first National Championship in 2003 reflected this, as it was staged in Howth.

ICRA was run by a dedicated group of volunteers each of whom brought their special talents to the organisation. Jim Donegan, the elder statesman, was so much more interested in the wellbeing of the new organisation than in personal advancement that he insisted on Fintan Cairns being the first Commodore, while the distinguished Cork sailor was more than content to be Vice Commodore.

ICRA National Championships

Initially, the highlight of the ICRA season was the National Championship, which is essentially self-limiting, as it is restricted to boats which have or would be eligible for an IRC Rating. Boats not actually rated but eligible were catered for by ICRA’s ace number-cruncher Denis Kiely, who took Ireland’s long-established native rating system ECHO to new heights, thereby providing for extra entries which brought fleet numbers at most annual national championships to comfortably above the hundred mark, particularly at the height of the boom years. 

ICRA Boat of the Year (Winners 2004-2019)