Decision to Build Motorways Flawed |
CaST continues the hunt for motorway deciders |
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Forfas is the advisory body for trade, science and industry in Ireland. In April 1999 it published a report called “Infrastructure Priorities for Enterprise Development in the Regions”. That report was delivered to its parent department, the Department of Trade, Enterprise and Employment, and from there was presented to the
Cabinet Committee on Infrastructural
Development and Public Private Partnership. The Committee then recommended to the government the inclusion of the current motorway construction programme in the National Development Plan. It received submissions from other bodies, including the National Roads Authority. Mr. Michael Tobin,
CEO of the NRA, has said publicly that the NRA did not recommend the current motorway construction programme. The Forfas report calls for the accelerated construction of motorways between all the major population centres in Ireland. This is necessary, it claims, because infrastructure has a positive effect on economic growth. Ireland has a poor transport network to the regions, thus regional economic growth would be increased by an improvement in this network. But there is no evidence presented in the report to show that the construction of motorways is the right way to fix Ireland’s transport problems. Forfas carried out no traffic surveys to see if motorways were needed from a traffic volume point of view; it relied on the figures produced in the NRA’s National Road Needs Study of 1998. That report estimates the traffic level on Irish roads up to 2019 and shows that in most cases a single lane carriageway would suffice. Forfas did not look at upgrading the rail network as a solution to Irelands transport infrastructure deficit. It did not look at the environmental impact of motorway construction on this scale. It ignored the efforts of the Dublin Transport Authority to put more emphasis public transport and less on the car. Four of the proposed motorways end in Dublin, a situation that will only add to the capitals congestion. It did not consider the impact on the social fabric of rural Ireland that its proposals would have. Most importantly, Forfas recommended in its report the spending of £4 billion on Irelands roads in order to increase economic activity in the regions. But it never looked at whether or not this was the best way to encourage regional development. Could that £4 billion be spent in other ways and deliver greater economic growth with a lower environmental and social cost? |