The Jack Lynch Tunnel (Irish: Tollán Sheáin Uí Loingsigh) is an immersed tube tunnel and an integral part of the N40 southern ring road of Cork in Ireland. It is named after former Taoiseach, Jack Lynch, a native of Cork.
It takes the road under the River Lee. North of the tunnel, the ring-road joins the M8 motorway to Dublin (north) and N8 road to the city centre (west), with the N25 commencing east to Waterford. The tunnel was completed in May 1999, and carries nearly 40,000 vehicles per day as of 2005. This figure may rise further as the N40 ring-road's upgrades progress, notably with the opening of the Kinsale road roundabout flyover and planned flyovers on the Sarsfield Road and Bandon Road Roundabouts.
The tunnel has two cells, each with two traffic lanes and two footpaths, and a central bore for use in an emergency only. Pedestrians and cyclists are expressly forbidden from using the tunnel. The exclusion of cyclists has been somewhat controversial as the feeder road is a dual-carriageway and so is open to cyclists, but the bye-law is applied because of space limitations and the obvious danger of cyclists in an enclosed tunnel.
Read more about Jack Lynch Tunnel: History, Financing and Contracting, Construction, Tunnel Operation
Famous quotes containing the words jack, lynch and/or tunnel:
“Little Jack Horner
Sat in the corner,
Eating a Christmas pie;
He put in his thumb,
And pulled out a plum,
And said, What a good boy am I!”
—Mother Goose (fl. 17th–18th century. Little Jack Horner (l. 1–6)
“A physician can sometimes parry the scythe of death, but has no power over the sand in the hourglass.”
—Hester Lynch Piozzi (1741–1821)
“It is the light
At the end of the tunnel as it might be seen
By him looking out somberly at the shower,
The picture of hope a dying man might turn away from,
Realizing that hope is something else, something concrete
You can’t have.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)