🚗 N4 into Carrick-on-Shannon, from the Roscommon side
Updated Friday 11 September, 16:30 IST. Refreshes every 15 minutes.
Heavy queue
Heavy queue at Cortober for the bridge, about 4 minutes extra
Tap the map for the wider view from the Usna counter.
- Google: averaging 8 km/h along the bridge approach (Sligo Road), 25 km/h when clear.
- HERE: 10 km/h on the bridge approach (Sligo Road), 38 km/h when clear (jam factor 5.1 of 10).
- TomTom: 22 km/h on the bridge approach (Sligo Road), 35 km/h when clear.
- Google: averaging 28 km/h along the N4 from Boyle (Dorrary to Drishoge roundabout), 52 km/h when clear.
- HERE: 31 km/h on the N4 from Boyle (Dorrary to Drishoge roundabout), 68 km/h when clear (jam factor 8.1 of 10).
- TomTom: 65 km/h on the N4 from Boyle (Dorrary to Drishoge roundabout), 80 km/h when clear.
- Google: the drive in from Usna (6 km out on the N4 towards Boyle) to the bridge takes 11 minutes now, 7 minutes when clear, 4 minutes extra.
- HERE: the same drive takes 9 minutes now, 5 minutes when clear, 5 minutes extra.
- TomTom: the same drive takes 9 minutes now, 5 minutes when clear, 4 minutes extra.
TomTom and HERE agree on the bridge approach.
The run in from Usna, as Google Maps colours it
Google: of the 6.1 km in from Usna, 0.5 km is jammed: 0.2 km ending 0.4 km before the bridge and the last 0.3 km onto the bridge. The rest is moving normally.
Left to right is the direction of travel, Usna to the bridge, 6.1 km. moving normally slow jammed
Reported on the roads nearby
| What | Where | Since | Delay |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jam: Queuing traffic | R368 Main Street (R280) / Leitrim Road (R280) to Bridge Street (N4) | 15:26 UTC | 3 minutes |
| Jam: Stationary traffic | N4 Dorrary (N4) to Old Dublin Road (R280) (N4) | 14:27 UTC | 4 minutes |
| Road works: Roadworks | R280 Drumlumman (R280) to Hartley (R280) | 21:36 UTC | |
| Road works: Roadworks | R280 Hartley (R280) to Drumlumman (R280) | 21:09 UTC | |
| Jam: Queuing traffic | N4 Attyruarie Road (N4) to Station Road (R368) (N4) | 15:13 UTC | 6 minutes |
From TOMTOM. Incidents are checked twice an hour.
How busy this road is: the TII counter at Usna
Usna is a townland on the N4 about 6 km north-west of the bridge, on the way to Boyle. Transport Infrastructure Ireland has a permanent traffic counter in the road there (its site 1046, "N4 between Boyle and Carrick-on-Shannon"), so everything arriving from the Boyle and Sligo direction is counted before it reaches Cortober. This page uses the counter as its fixed reference point: the drive from Usna to the bridge is the stretch it times, and the counter's records say how busy the road is in general.
Vehicles per day passing the counter, both directions, averaged over the year to 31 March 2026:
| Day | Vehicles per day | Against the weekly average |
|---|---|---|
| Monday | 8,619 | -3% |
| Tuesday | 8,784 | -1% |
| Wednesday | 8,897 | +0% |
| Thursday | 9,253 | +4% |
| Friday | 9,624 | +8% |
| Saturday | 8,637 | -3% |
| Sunday | 8,345 | -6% |
Daily totals only: the counter's hourly pattern is not published any more, which is why the outlook above is built from this page's own readings.
Annual average daily traffic at the same counter, by year: 2021: 7,112; 2022: 8,081; 2023: 8,443; 2024: 8,601; 2025: 8,864; 2026: 8,944.
How this works
Carrick-on-Shannon sits on both banks of the Shannon. The town centre is in Leitrim, Cortober is in Roscommon, and one bridge carries the N4 between them. Traffic from Boyle and Sligo on the N4, and from Roscommon town on the N61 and R368, all funnels through Cortober onto that bridge. So the queue builds on the Roscommon side, and this page watches that approach.
Every 15 minutes the page asks three traffic services what they see. All three build their picture from the phones and sat-navs of drivers on the road at the time.
Google gives drive times, not road speeds. The page asks for one drive from Usna to the bridge in three legs. Each leg's time over its length is the average speed on the Google lines above. Google also marks each part of the route as moving normally, slow or jammed, which is the colour bar above.
HERE reports the speed on each stretch of road, in each direction, with a jam factor from 0 (clear) to 10 (blocked). The page reads only the stretches heading towards the bridge, and adds their drive times up to get HERE's time for the run in from Usna. HERE's data is what a Garmin sat-nav shows.
TomTom reports the speed on the stretch of road nearest each point, in both directions together, and gives its own drive time from Usna to the bridge. The map above and its colours are TomTom's. TomTom also lists incidents: roadworks, collisions, closures and queues.
The state at the top is the worst of these signals. Free flowing means nothing to report. Slowing means traffic is moving, but a drive takes at least a quarter longer than on a clear road. Queuing means stop-start traffic, at least two and a half minutes extra on the run in from Usna. Heavy queue means near standstill at the bridge. The extra time in the headline is the average of the drive time delays the services report.
The "usual for this time" outlook, once there is enough history, is built from TomTom and HERE readings this page has recorded. Nothing from Google is stored: Google's terms do not allow keeping what its API returns. Google's map colours cannot be exported into an image either, which is why the map is TomTom's. Waze, which Google owns, shares its data with public authorities only.