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Text of circular to be distributed in local towns
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A dual carriageway is being planned for the Clonmel to Cahir road. We are against this proposal as it represents poor value for money and may never come to fruition. We want a good road between Clonmel and Cahir, and a start made soon; not another pie-in-the-sky plan which provides a fine excuse to do nothing.
Why are we against a dual carriageway?
The traffic volumes do not justify a dual carriageway. Statistics for the NRA Woodruff traffic counter show the precise average daily traffic volumes between Rathkeevin and Cahir. In 2000, the average flow was 7623 vehicles per day. In 2001 the figure was 7808 vehicles per day.
According to the NRA National Roads Needs Study (published in 1998) a dual carriageway is suitable for use on a roadway here up to 45,000 vehicles pass daily.
The NRA traffic forecasts for the N24 between Rathkeevin and Cahir are given in the National Roads Needs Study. Given the figures recorded at the Woodruff counter in 2000 and 2001, an average daily flow of 12,000 vehicles per day can be expected in 2019 and the maximum 35 years from now will be 13,000 vehicles per day.
The National Roads Needs Study recommends a different type of road where traffic volumes of this order are expected. A “Wide 2 Lane” roadway can accommodate almost 14,000 vehicles per day.
For precise details on the NRA’s methods of forecasting traffic volumes and consequent selection of road types, the National Roads Needs Study (1998-2019) can be purchased from the government publication office for € 31.75.
Why are we against the proposed route?
The proposal is to build the dual carriageway parallel to the existing road. We believe that there is no point in having two roads between Rathkeevin and Cahir. They will both require maintenance (hedge-trimming, repairs and re-surfacing, line painting etc.). There will still be remedial work to be carried out on the existing roadway because many parts will still be dangerous.
We therefore submit that there should only be a single roadway between Rathkeevin and Cahir, and that this should be a re-alignment of the current roadway.
Interestingly, this is also the recommendation made in the National Roads Needs Study schedule of improvement needs (Annex 4) where a wide two-lane roadway is recommended for this route at an estimated cost of € 16.7 million
(1998 prices). Furthermore, the NRA proceeded with this option to the point where land surveys were undertaken and detailed plans were drawn up.
Will the proposed dual carriageway be safer and faster?
The National roads needs study says that impaired safety may result from the introduction of mixed road types over relatively short distances. This dual carriageway will be10 km at most, a relatively short distance. Given that two roundabouts are also planned within in this stretch, it seems likely that neither road safety nor journey times will be assisted.
Transport planning is on the road to nowhere Copyright © 2002 Irish Times
(April 18th edition)
By Frank McDonald Environment Editor
We've gone roads-mad, asserts Frank McDonald, but we've still very little idea where we're going. Now it is time to adopt a more measured approach.
There can be no doubt that we're roads-mad and seem prepared to spend hundreds of millions of euro indulging this communal insanity. To the motoring public, every bit of it is justified if the new or upgraded roads help to relieve maddening levels of congestion. But what if they become the arteries for unrestricted housing development in the countryside? Won't the
traffic simply expand over time to fill the road space available? That seems to be the motor that drives the National Roads Authority (NRA) too. In proposing new roads with a capacity far in excess even of its own projections, the NRA seems to have adopted the perverse old motto, "Live horse and you'll get grass", with Irish and European taxpayers footing the bill.
The evidence of over-spending is everywhere. Take Nenagh, for example. According to Father Séan McDonagh, a native of the North Tipperary town, all of the bridges over its first bypass - opened in 1999 by another native, Michael Smith TD - will have to be demolished and rebuilt when it is turned into a dual-carriageway.
In Co Cork, only a vigorous local campaign prevented the Lee Valley from being carved up for a completely new four-lane dual-carriageway between Ballincollig and Macroom. How could anyone have imagined that such a road, with a capacity to carry some 50,000 vehicles per day, was required in this neck of the woods?
Detailed design is a matter for the NRA and its army of consultant engineers. But it was the Government's National Development Plan 2000-2006 that telescoped implementation of the NRA's 1999 Road Needs Study from 20 years to just six. And that, in turn, was driven by the perceived availability of unlimited funds. Even if we could afford it all, this frenetic road-building programme is far too scatter-gun in its approach. Few could argue with the need to improve road links between the main cities, with bypasses bringing relief to long-suffering towns along the way. But to run roads in every direction is not in line with sustainable development.
Road transport is the fastest-growing contributor to the greenhouse gas emissions blamed for causing potentially catastrophic climate change. And on a per-capita basis, Ireland's emissions are outstripped only by those of the US, Canada and Australia, yet we are doing very little to implement our commitment under the Kyoto protocol.
That new roads will promote yet more car use is inevitable, especially when the railways outside Dublin are getting barely more than what's needed to make them safe. And all of this investment in road infrastructure is taking place in the absence of a National Spatial Strategy to promote more balanced regional growth. Looked at soberly, it is clear that we have no idea where
we are going. Without firm decisions on where growth is to be directed, how can anyone say whether a motorway or dual-carriageway is really required between one place and another? Ireland is not the Netherlands. We do not have large, dense urban centers dotted around a compact area. All we have is Dublin and everywhere else.
Moreover, cost over-runs have become commonplace in major transport infrastructure projects. We now need to cut our cloth more to our measure, bearing in mind the scale of this State and its distribution of population, both existing and projected. Grandiose infrastructure projects of whatever stripe must be subjected to rigorous cost-benefit analysis instead of being
shepherded through the system with the right questions neither asked nor answered.
Only when projects can be thoroughly justified on that basis will we have some idea whether we are getting value for money.
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Questions to ask your politician on the doorstep:
1. Do they think that an € 80 million dual carriageway between Clonmel and Cahir is needed?
2. Do they believe that the NRA can now deliver such a project for €40 million (which they recently claimed), when that was what it would have cost in 1998?
3. Can they justify spending this money when the NRA’s traffic data indicate that the road will never be used at anything close to capacity?
4. Do they realize that the traffic data (and the NRA’s 1998 study) actually supports the building of a wide 2-lane roadway with hard-shoulders between Clonmel and Cahir?
5. Are they happy that the new consultants who are recommending the dual carriageway are being paid on commission, and that thus the larger and more expensive the road they recommend, the more money they make?
6. Do they think that it makes sense to run this new road through virgin countryside, severing communities and farms, blighting peoples homes, and duplicating on the maintenance costs which will arise because there will be two roads between Cahir and Clonmel instead of one?
7. Have they any concern that due to the worsening state of public finances, this new road may not go ahead?
8. Are they happy with the current level of roads spending in South Tipperary, which this year is only
€ 8 million, (excluding € 6million for the Cashel bypass)
9. Are they happy that the current Cahir/Clonmel road, which is one of the most neglected in the country, will not have any major work done to it, even though the proposed dual carriageway (if it does go ahead) is unlikely to open for ten years?
10. Are they aware of the 1999 plan for the Cahir/Clonmel road that was for a roadway like that between Cahir and Mitchelstown?
11. Are they aware that this plan was shelved at the last moment just as work was about to begin?
12. Are they happy to see an alternative plan being drawn up for a dual carriageway, even though this will further delay the day when we have a decent road between Cahir and Clonmel?
13. Is there any risk that we’ll be given plan after plan, but no new roadway?
14. If it were their own money, and not ours, would they be so quick to spend it on grandiose projects that do not stand up to financial scrutiny?
15. Would they agree with John Dardis (the PD candidate for Kildare South) who now says that bypasses should be a priority, and that a motorway like that proposed between Dublin and Waterford is a waste of money and can no longer be afforded?
16. Would they agree that a similar situation pertains to the Cahir/Clonmel road in Tipperary?
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