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Roads
early s, the Swedes dis-
covered that building more and more roads
doesn’t ease congestion; in fact, when the
knock-on impacts are considered, building
more and more roads makes matters worse.
Sweden decided to maximise the capacity
of its existing road network and build ded-
icated bypasses as required. But first and
foremost, it put the funding in place to make
walking, cycling, and public transport avail-
able as attractive, safe choices. Meanwhile
here in Ireland, the Fianna Fáil/Progressive
Democrats Government of the late s
went for motorway building. Public trans-
port, walking, and cycling were to come later.
The real cost of that sequence is now coming
home to roost. But before getting to that, it’s
worth unpicking the decision, and its
implications, a little more.
The National Development Plan published
in November mandated that existing
national routes be paralleled with motor-
ways. International literature, including
work carried out by widely-respected plan-
ner Colin Buchanan, for example, advises –
above all else – not to mimic the path of the
roads already in place. But, as requests under
the Freedom of Information Act later showed,
the Government didn’t heed the research and
today a motorway network is being put in
place that copies old national routes dating
back to medieval times.
Politicians wanted new
motorways to follow old roads,
wasting billions of Euro
j a m e s n i x
motorway on way
PHOTOS: PHOTOCALL IRELAND
village_oct_09.indd 57 27/10/2009 15:39:25
— village November - December 2009
Take the inter-connection of Dublin,
Limerick and Cork as one example. It’s basic
geometry that three points can be connected
much less circuitously using a tripod arrange-
ment than with a triangle. But right now the
taxpayer is forking out more than € billion
extra for a triangle of motorways linking Cork
to Portlaoise, Portlaoise to Limerick, and
Limerick to Cork (a section currently strug-
gling for funding). A tripod arrangement
where a motorway from Cork, Limerick and
Portlaoise meets just west of Thurles would
cost €. billion less and achieve a better
result. The authorities were well aware of
the multi-billion euro savings on offer. Joe
Rea, the Campaign for Sensible Transport,
and a group of litigants challenging the lack
of a strategic roads’ plan had drawn atten-
tion to the downsides, and to the alternative,
but as a National Roads Authority (NRA)
employee told Village, “it’s political; we have
to follow the old routes under the National
Development Plan”. With the Celtic Tiger in
full roar, it would have been easier to hold
back the ocean than to change the roads’ pro-
gramme of the National Development Plan.
Sadly, the boat has sailed on this, and for the
most part, we are now locked in to replicat-
ing our inherited medieval road network with
twenty first century motorways. The trou-
ble is that every inches of motorway costs
€, to build, so every one kilometre of
needless motorway is € million wasted,
and the number of kilometres wasted in the
Dublin-Limerick-Cork triangle model, runs
to more than .
Something the Swedes didn’t have to fac-
tor in was falling income, and its chief conse-
quence – fewer car journeys. The experience
of travelling on the Dromod – Roosky dual car-
riageway spanning the boundary of Leitrim
and Longford was recently described to me:
“you come on to this massive road all of sud-
den and there’s hardly anyone. Often it’s just
yourself. It’s madness”.
The figures bear out the
anecdotes. The NRA sur-
veys the number of vehi-
cles using each route and
hosts the information on
its website, www.nra.ie.
Traffic volumes are drop-
ping, down - % on
some main roads over the
past months.
If it was a good thing
for traffic volumes to rebound, then the drop
in traffic could be dismissed as no more than a
temporary setback. But the reality is that one
of the only ways to meet our climate change
commitments is cutting the use of energy in
transport, i.e. single occupant car journeys
will need to fall further. Whether that is
brought about by carbon tax or more radical
proposals, is beside the point. We can have
the Greenland ice sheets or gas-guzzling, but
not both. What about electric cars? Perhaps
these will be able to replace some part of
the current fleet. But, in a choice between
recharging electric public transport fleets
on the one hand, or fuelling legions of pri-
vately owned cars on the other, first call on
wind energy resources will surely have to go
to public transport. Yet if the NRA has its
way, we will spend more to build something
that is set to be used less. How much are we
paying to build new motorways and to serv-
ice the interest payments on existing ones?
No-one can say. Over a month ago, I sub-
mitted four questions to the Department of
Finance under the EU’s Access to Information
legislation. I asked how much was approved
by the Department of Finance for the con-
struction of new roads including motorways
for , and ? I also requested a break-
down of roads that are funded off balance
sheet, namely by private parties who put up
the capital and are repaid by government over
twenty to thirty years. This form of finance
is far more costly than direct State borrow-
ing because governments are charged lower
interest rates than private companies. I also
asked for the estimated repayment amounts
for each project over and . The
response from the Department of Finance?
Not even an acknowledgement. An internal
review of the non-response is now underway
by the Department of Finance, as provided
for under the legislation.
What we do know is that even though the
motorway programme is a big ship to turn, the
solutions are already there in many instances.
New Ross provides a classic example. Before
the Celtic Tiger roared itself into a frenzy, a
modest m bridge was proposed just south
of the town over the Barrow estuary. The nec-
essary corridor was reserved and recorded in
local planning documents. Then along came
the Celtic Tiger. And out went the sensible
plan. In its place came a scheme to build a
m long mega-bridge over the Barrow estu-
ary. It would be one of the longest bridges on
the island of Ireland, and perhaps the long-
est road bridge in the Republic. By bundling
it in with roughly . kilometres of road,
the estimated cost of the bridge itself isn’t
clear but it would probably account for €
million out of a scheme with a € million
price tag.
To put €m in some kind of perspective
is difficult but here are a few points of compar-
ison: €m would build eight dedicated med-
ical units for cystic fibrosis sufferers, it would
buy , double decker buses (the current
size of the Dublin Bus fleet), or it would fund
enough wind turbines to power all of Cork city
and county (around , homes). But the
story doesn’t end there. The €m New Ross
area scheme has swollen yet again, this time
being bolted on to another km of motor-
way in the Wexford area, with the total cost of
the project now running to over € million.
The NRA is now trying to get the Government
to borrow the money for it.
It’s not just the downturn that has sent the
NRA cap in hand to Government. Pretty much
all the schemes worth tolling have been done.
Motorway generally is designed for ,
vehicles a day. Indeed most sections of the M
see over , vehicles a day. But, with the
Wexford project, the NRA is now working up
a scheme which, based on current trends, will
see less than , vehicles a day. The fear of
falling traffic volumes led the NRA to change
horses in mid . Under the contract agreed
for the new M, between the NRA and the com-
pany chosen to operate the toll road, the NRA
pledged taxpayer funds to pay the toll opera-
tor if traffic volumes fall below a certain (undis-
closed) level. Basically, as media reports made
clear in early August, the taxpayer will be
accountable if there is a falloff in journeys, or
if commuters keep using the existing, un-tolled,
N rather than the new M. Taxpayers will
also foot the bill if the Navan railway, currently
being re-opened, proves popular.
Roads
“...it’s political; we have to
follow the old routes under the
National Development Plan”
village_oct_09.indd 58 27/10/2009 15:39:26
The M contract has exposed another deep
flaw in mega-project road building. If traffic
volumes decline the State pays out directly to
a toll road operator; if traffic volumes rise, the
State pays out indirectly to compensate for the
higher level of carbon emissions, or by funding
a host of other initiatives to try and get carbon
emissions back down. As Neasa Childers, MEP
for Labour in the Ireland East Constituency,
put it, “the M deal is all the more bizarre as
the State is rightly encouraging traffic off the
roads through the reopening of the Navan rail
line”. In trying to defend the NRA’s contract
for the M, Transport Minister Noel Dempsey
found himself on the back foot. As Dempsey
knows, the direction of transport policy is
changing, something he seems committed
to with the publication in February of
Smarter Travel, a new policy document that
envisages , drivers leaving their
cars at home in the coming years, among a
host of other measures to cut energy use in
transport. In April, Dempsey’s department
released a new blueprint for cycling, pledg-
ing to increase cycling to work from % to
% by . The level of control given to
the NRA, and the enthusiasm with which it
pursues outmoded objectives, looks ever more
like an Achilles heel and expensive political
lesson in the delegation of power. Dempsey
now has to alter the focus of a highly-charged
quango, perhaps infusing it with a public
transport remit, including the provision of
bus rapid transit and smooth-running inter-
urban coach services, and perhaps meeting
the targets laid down in the policy docu-
ments, but it remains to be seen if he is equal
to this challenge. To leave the NRA working
to a formula that is increasingly hollow, and
which will soon prove empty, is only storing
up trouble for himself.
If there was a reconstituted author-
ity responsible for investing in roads as
well as public transport, would it still put
money into new roads? Yes is the simple
answer. There was and remains a need
in many instances for local bypasses and
interventions so that road traffic, partic-
ularly coaches and freight, can move reli-
ably between destinations. In New Ross,
that programme is already being pursued
through Tim Ryan. In a twist of history, Mr
Ryan has secured significant support in New
Ross for a bridge at the point it was envis-
aged in the early s, before the Celtic
Tiger had its day, and before a great deal of
common sense went into hibernation.
has opened between two UCD economists with
very different styles, Colm McCarthy and Frank Convery, in the Irish Times.
Prof Convery is the charming and unflappable chairman of Comhar, the
Sustainable Development Council, which recently published a policy recom-
mendation: Towards a Green New Deal for Ireland. McCarthy, who can be
aggressive, wrote an opinion column robustly relying on the view of Yale
climate change boffin, Bill Nordhaus, that “raising the price of carbon is a
necessary and sufficient step for tackling global warming”.
Convery’s piece claims that McCarthy’s analysis would be true if, and only
if, the tax was high enough to achieve the necessary reductions, and the tax
was universally applied. Neither of these conditions can be met: a carbon
tax in Ireland can only be applied to about a third of our greenhouse gas
emissions, which is much too low on its own to meet our obligations. The
Commission on Taxation noted:
) the power sector and heavy industry, which account for about per
cent of Ireland’s emissions, are in the EU emissions trading scheme, and
already face a carbon price (€. per tonne of CO); it would be ineffi-
cient and pose competitive challenges if a carbon tax were to be added to
the existing price signal.
) the carbon tax to be applied to the non-trading sectors (agriculture,
residential and commerce, transport, light industry and waste) should, sub-
ject to a minimum level, mirror the price in the trading scheme, because to
do otherwise would be economically and environmentally inefficient.
) because of problems of measurement, reporting and verification, the
tax cannot be applied to methane and nitrous oxide emissions from agri-
culture, - much in the form of cow belches- which account for per cent of
greenhouse gas emissions from the non-traded sectors.
) the commission recognised that a tax at this level would not on its own be
sufficient to achieve the legally binding per cent reductions to be achieved
by .
It seems like QED by Convery.
cultural cowen
Fair play to Brian Cowen for assuring the good folk of Clonmacnois and
the Offaly Independent he’ll veto any application by the Department of the
Environment to get the monastery and surrounds there designated a UNESCO
world heritage site. Could sterilise adjoining lands, you see. More consulta-
tion clearly needed and it allows Cowen to keep his well-hidden cultural side
hidden, to fight another day.
carlisle pier train station
The row between the Heritage Council and the chair of its architectural com-
mittee, conservationist Gráinne Shaffrey, over the demolition of the railway
station at Dun Laoghaire’s Carlisle pier has gone nuclear – in conservation-
ists’ terms. A report by Ms Shaffrey to the County Council had identified the
granite pier as being of “regional” importance architecturally but assigned
no such standing to any of the structures on it – such as the station. The nor-
mally conservative Heritage Council has now written to the County Council
recommending that any development should be “conditional on reinstate-
ment of this historic structure”. There must be some doubt as to the tenabil-
ity of Ms Shaffrey’s position
Carbon taxes necessary but not sufficient
village_oct_09.indd 59 27/10/2009 15:39:26
