Irish Rural Road Speed Changes

The speed limit for local roads in Ireland were changed from 80 km/h to 60 km/h in 2025. This impacted an estimated 73,000 km of roads. Gov.ie

For many of these roads 80 km/h was certainly a limit, rather than an actual expected driving speed. Especially those that were single lane with poor visibility.

Example 80km rural local road

These roads are now designated with a Rural Speed Limit sign.

Rural Speed Limit sign

Rural local roads were impacted, which is the largest class of roads in Ireland, with an estimated 60% of all roads in Ireland changing their speed limit.

Interactive map of Local Rural Roads in Ireland:

Cork, Mayo and Galway having the most kilometers of impacted local roads, with 0ver 9000 km of roads in Cork alone impacted.

But from a % of roads perspective Roscommon, Longford, Sligo, Mayo, Monaghan and Cavan all see around 70% of their roads impacted.

County Local Roads Non Urban, km Total Roads, km Estimated % Impacted
Carlow 972 1,622 60%
Cavan 2,401 3,392 71%
Clare 3,214 5,384 60%
Cork 9,902 15,257 65%
Donegal 5,043 8,506 59%
Dublin 550 4,990 11%
Galway 5,418 8,219 66%
Kerry 3,709 5,648 66%
Kildare 1,585 3,989 40%
Kilkenny 2,449 4,049 60%
Laois 1,697 3,045 56%
Leitrim 1,719 2,522 68%
Limerick 2,883 5,156 56%
Longford 1,311 1,739 75%
Louth 945 2,349 40%
Mayo 5,449 7,345 74%
Meath 2,453 4,692 52%
Monaghan 2,065 2,890 71%
Offaly 1,577 2,767 57%
Roscommon 3,303 4,305 77%
Sligo 2,297 3,079 75%
Tipperary 4,406 7,275 61%
Waterford 2,031 3,352 61%
Westmeath 1,738 2,975 58%
Wexford 2,747 4,780 57%
Wicklow 1,485 3,255 46%
Total7334912258160%

My Strava Activities from the Same Place at the Same Time Animated

All of my activities from Strava if they started from the same place at the same time.

Strava Activites Animated

Longest activity time wise is an 11 hour walk.

Distance wise is a 200km helicopter ride.

Includes a couple of 100km cycles. But mainly walks on the beach, 5 km runs, and 10km cycles.

You can see the patterns from a number of locations that I have lived in.

How to

  1. Download your activities from Strava.
  2. Parse them into a PostgreSQL/PostGIS database with Python: https://github.com/HeikkiVesanto/StravaGarminParser/blob/master/parser_points_to_db.py
  3. Process the points to time series in the database: https://gist.github.com/HeikkiVesanto/3fbd55cda45394d069773a34ea244e4b
  4. Create animation in QGIS using the atlas generator.