M50 Highway in Ireland

The M50 motorway is the busiest motorway in Ireland. The current route was built in various sections over the course of 27 years, from 1983 to 2010.

It begins at Dublin Port, running northward through the Dublin Port Tunnel and along a portion of the Airport Motorway. It then turns west at its junction with the M1, circling the northern, western and southern suburbs of Dublin, before merging with the M11 at Shankill in South East Dublin. The road forms part of European route E01.

An orbital motorway for Dublin was first proposed in the Dublin Transportation Study of 1971. Construction began on the first section, the Western Parkway in 1987, and opened to traffic in 1990. The M50 route was extended to Dublin Port in 2006, via a section of the 1985 Airport Motorway ( and the newly opened Dublin Port Tunnel.

A massive upgrade project commenced in early 2006 due to the motorway’s chronic capacity problems. Lanes were added, and many of the low-capacity roundabout interchanges were replaced with free-flowing interchanges in 2010, adding Survision technology to bill through License Plate Recognition.