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Irish Independent
Saturday November 17th 2001
by Eugene Hogan
YESTERDAY'S announcement of the routes for two legs of the N7 is the final piece of the route selection jigsaw for the biggest roads programme ever undertaken here.
After 14 months of planning, the Castletown to Nenagh and Nenagh to Limerick legs of the N7 dual-carriageway/motorway were the last routes to be decided on for the five new corridors linking Dublin to the North, Galway, Limerick, Cork and Waterford.
Nonetheless, the National Roads Authority yesterday conceded that nothing is certain with regard to the development of the routes due to the current uncertain economic climate.
Speaking last night, however, an NRA spokesperson said that it is still "all systems go" with regard to the plan.
"We are not on notice about any cuts and are still on target to complete this programme in accordance with the 2000 to 2006 National Development plan" said the spokesperson.
"But at the end of the day we live in a situation where the strength of the national economy will reflect the level of activity of this plan," he said.
"At this stage we are still on target but the one aspect that is holding us up is the negotiations over compensation and unless the farmers agree to a deal soon it could delay the plan beyond its targeted completion date of 2006."
To finalise the route selection process within the desired time-scale, the Authority, in conjunction with local authorities, strengthened road project management and planning capacity and boosted expenditure on planning.
Expenditure in this area this year will exceed £50m compared to £9m in 1998.
The completion of the five routes will involve the construction of 700km of motorway/dual carriageway, dramatically reducing travel times.
Once the routes are built, time savings are expected to be 24 minutes between Dublin and Belfast; 58 minutes between Dublin and Cork; 36 minutes between Dublin and Galway and 31 minutes for Dublin to Limerick.
These estimated time savings are based on typical travel times in 1999 and journey times that will apply on the planned completion of these routes by the end of 2006 (mid-2007 for Dublin/Waterford).
Liam Connellan, chairman of the National Roads Authority, said: "The completion of the route selection process for the major inter-urban routes is a key development in the Authority's strategy to improve the reliability and safety of national roads.
"We have taken an important step towards realising the NDP objectives to remove traffic bottlenecks and remedy capacity deficiencies, thereby improving access to the regions and contributing to competitiveness within the economy generally."
Michael Tobin, the NRA's chief executive, said: "The progress to date is the outcome of extensive planning studies designed to identify optimum route choices taking account of environmental impacts, effects on land and property owners, traffic movement, engineering and cost considerations."
Copyright © Irish Independent 2001
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