N2 - Slane Bypass [planning decision pending]

MYOB wrote: »

Being a transport economist does not make you a transport expert. Its a fallacy to even suggest that.

Please. I never said he was an engineer. There are numerous types of transport experts, and a transport economist is one of them. It defies logic to suggest otherwise. That is why the ESRI and the Irish Times engage him, to research transport proposals.

Obviously, you have some vested interest here, that you are not revealing, which is your right. However, we are under no obligation to accept your misstatements, just because you work for the Government.

MYOB wrote: »

That blog post is littered with errors and has been gone over on here before. Some of the errors are so basic as to make your calling him a "transport expert" laughable.

So, now you are an economist as well as an engineer. A transport expert and an economic expert, not to mention an archaeological expert as well? I;m impressed. But you know your real talent seems to be comedy.

Shouldn't you be working now? Or did you get laid off when a lot of roads projects got cut from the NDP. There must be a lot of engineers and archaeologists hoping for jobs on the Slane bypass, as it will be the only show in town.

MYOB wrote: »

Claiming that the NRA "agreed" with Morgenroth is a massive stretch of your imagination here! They pulled it due to funding, not due to Morgenroth. You're giving the man far too much credit, just like you give him too much status and belief in his "expert" status.

I said they agreed with him, in the sense that they reached the same conclusion. They did, which is why I reprinted both conclusions. Both the NRA and Morgenroth concluded that there were other more important roads projects that needed to go ahead, and that the funding for the Slane bypass should be pulled.

So, where did the funding magically reappear from, between May and July 2009?

MYOB wrote: »

I'm entirely serious. The buffer zone exists, that is all that is required to keep its world heritage status.

Seriously misinformed, by design I imagine.

According to UNESCO its World Heritage Status was already in question, even before this proposal, due to the impact of large and small 'inappropriate development". This include the M1 motorway, which UNESCO were shocked to find had been built along side the edge of the world heritage site, but wasn't even mentioned in the M1 EIS.

A joint UNESCO/ICOMOS reactive monitoring mission to Ireland in 2004, to examine the incinerator being built near Bru na Boinne, said in their report:

The mission received conflicting opinions on the effect of this development, ranging from the view that the inscribed area was rapidly being devalued to the point where continued inscription should be questioned, to the view that the local community, whose applications are ‘not discouraged by successive development plans, are faced with objection from the state, even for individual family homes’. In this latter view it was expressed to the mission that while strategically significant infrastructure projects were granted permission, smaller scale proposals of importance to local residents were being refused.

The M1 has had a major impact on the site, and this will be compounded by the N2. The UNESCO report condemns the Irish Government's treatment of the site:

M1 Motorway – At the time of the nomination it was clear that the Irish Government had aspirations for a Dublin-Belfast motorway. The eastern boundary of the buffer zone was drawn on a line west of a possible route. However, no mention was made of this motorway in the main text of the nomination dossier although, an attached study discussed the proposed motorway. The implications for the site of the motorway were not discussed in the original ICOMOS evaluation. In the mission’s opinion it would have been appropriate for the State Party to have drawn the attention
of the World Heritage Committee to this proposed major piece of infrastructure and to have confirmed whether or not it would have had an impact on the outstanding universal value of the World Heritage site.

Two years after the inscription, an Environmental Impact Statement of the Motorway was published and this makes no reference to the World Heritage inscription or its impact on it. The Environmental Impact Statement is concerned largely with the narrow line of the preferred route. Once again, the mission considers that not only was this a major omission but also that the State Party should have informed the World Heritage Centre of its intention to build the motorway.

The motorway (M1) has now been constructed and recently opened in 2003. The motorway crosses the River Boyne by means of a cable-stayed bridge with a main span of 170 m and a single pylon rising to an elevation of 85 m above sea-level and its top stands 60 m above the highest adjacent ground level. The bridge and the motorway are clearly visible from the eastern end of the inscribed site, not only during the day, but also at night when it is illuminated with blue light with a red aviation warning light. There is also considerable noise pollution. There can be no doubt that the motorway has a considerable impact on the World Heritage site and even more impact on the main site of the Battle of the Boyne within the buffer zone.

The report made a number of recommendations, including:

h) The Department of Environment, Heritage and Local Government considers reviewing the eastern line of the buffer zone in the light of the line of the M1 Motorway as built;

Has the buffer zone been reassessed?

MYOB wrote: »

A type 2 DC is NOT "built to motorway standard"! Its clear you don't even know what you're fighting against here.

To let you catch up a bit here, a Type 2 DC is a 4 lane road with a wire barrier down the centre. It has no hard shoulders. Junctions are generally roundabouts. Minor roads are on flyovers. Laybys are provided at intervals. The overall landtake is minorly higher than the old standard single carriageway - and identical to the wider standard of this built in some counties.

Meath County Council/NRA were forced to admit that this dual carriageway can be upgraded to motorway, without additional land take.

This happened when they were forced by An Bord Pleanala to publish additional significant information, which they had excluded from the EIS and withheld from the public and the planning body.

This road is not being built in a vacum. It is part of the plan to connect the M2 motorway, now built to Ashbourne, with the A5 motorway in Northern Ireland. Ultimately, the aim is to link Dublin to Derry, on a single motorway. The Irish Government has even pledged half a billion euros to the Northern authorities, for works up there.

This is a motorway being built by stealth, and salami-sliced into small sections, but a motorway in the making, nonetheless.

MYOB wrote: »

Pedestrians are allowed on N road dual carriageways - of which a type 2 DC is.

If you imagine this is "gold plated" now, you clearly want Ireland to return to the middle ages.

Pedestrians, including tourists, will be endangered crossing from a sleepy historic village, over four lanes of speeding traffic, to a Unesco world heritage site.

I want Ireland to face reality, which is that we cannot afford this extravagant road, when we already spent 2 billion bypassing Slane with the M1 and M3.

Vested interests, like yours, are largely responsible for the mess we are in now. The 'transport experts' in the NRA managed to drive the cost of the roads programme from 6 billion in 2000, to over 30 billion - and take wwice as long to build them as was supposed to take.

MYOB wrote: »

Neither the R132 or R147 is acceptably close for a HGV ban. Look at the HGV ban routes around Maynooth to see how close they have to be. You can't redirect traffic solely on to tolled routes so don't continue pretending that the M1 and M3 can be the alternative. There cannot be a HGV ban in the village until there is a second river crossing and there can be no second river crossing without the bypass.

Every single county councillor in Meath voted for the HGV ban. The county manager has a legal duty to implement it, and both the NRA and the Minister promised to implement it. Why would it have been proposed and passed if it was unworkable? Clearly, it is being withheld, in order to artificially inflate traffic in Slane with 1,600 HGVs a day, so as to justify a bypass.

MYOB wrote: »

2+1s are known to be extremely dangerous and no more are being built. Once you bypassed the three towns (including Kells on both roads), provided the S2 bypass of Dunboyne and did patchwork upgrades in between you are, effectively, getting to the same scale as the M3 just without the speed advantages and with far more destruction of housing stock, business premises, etc.

If they are so dangerous, then why was the NRA promoting them so heavily?

MYOB wrote: »

The N2 will not be a motorway, stop pretending it will be.

The N2 already IS part motorway. The N2 from Dublin to Ashbourne was redesignated as M2 motorway in 2007. The rest is inevitable, if this bypass goes ahead.

MYOB wrote: »

New York is the far north east of its country, Dublin is in the centre, along one side. It is, of course, going to have more motorways radiating out northwards.

At least you are not a geographic expert too. New York has 8 times as many people as Dublin and is a central transport hub, just like Dublin. There are many states north of New York, and a country called Canada, not unlike the relationship between Dublin and N. Ireland. However, I can't see the Americans giving the Canadians half a billion to build their roads.

Three motorways going north out of Dublin, within 20km of each other, is "idiotic" to say the least.

MYOB wrote: »

Toll roads? Have you got some insane idea that this is going to be tolled? Or that it'll cost 100 million?

Every single road that can be tolled, will be tolled, in the upcoming budget. That is a certainty. There is not money to pay for building this road out of our own pocket. That is why the NRA cancelled it. They may have been forced to change their mind by some politicians, but they cannot print the money they don't have to build it.

The roads programme went from 6 billion to over 30 billion. And you expect us to believe this road won't go over budget?

MYOB wrote: »

Either you *are* Vincent Salafia or you're regurgitating his arguments without actually studying them. Every point you've made is in his extremely poorly researched letter to the Meath Chronicle.

You need to go away and actually learn what you're arguing against before you come back here and continue to argue. You also need to stop trusting Morgenroth as some form of deity.

None of your arguments stood up at all.

People are not as stupid as you seem to think they are, nor are you as smart as you pretend.

Its vested interests like you that are responsible for this country being the economic and environmental disaster zone it is now. And you still haven't learned anything.

THE CELTIC TIGER IS OVER - GET A LIFE

etchyed wrote: »

I trust virtually nothing this government tells me. But you can't assume somebody's a Fianna Fáil supporter/mouthpiece just because they support a road project you disagree with.

I can assume what I like when the person in question is spouting the same nonsense as Fianna Fail and the Government, as is the case here.

etchyed wrote: »

You've made some valid points, particularly in relation to this UNESCO report on the M1, which I doubt many posters here knew about. And I agree entirely that the M3 is a completely unneeded and costly piece of infrastructure that's a disaster in transport planning terms. Motorways are not supposed to be for commuters.

Thank you.

etchyed wrote: »

But apart from that, MYOB has shown a lot of your posts to be nonsense. You've now resorted to "something fishy going on", "three motorways in Meath!", "Fianna Fáil are not to be trusted", "everything's been 10 times over budget" type arguments which won't really hold much sway here as everyone knows they're either incorrect or irrelevant.

Which posts, in particular, are nonsense? What references or quotes did he give to back up one word he says? All I have read is unqualified and unfounded opinion.

"something fishy going on"

I think there is something fishy going, for two reasons:

(a) The NRA cancelled the bypass, on economic grounds, in May 2009 and then changed their minds by July (after a visit from the Taoiseach where he met with the newly formed Bypass Slane Camaign.

(b) The NRA, Meath County Council and the Minister for Transport (whose constituency this is) all promised to implement the HGV ban that had been voted for unanimously by Meath County Councillors in April 2009. But they never implemented it, so that the EIS for the bypass was published in December, using the HGVs in Slane for the traffic count, when they should have been banned long before then.

"three motorways in Meath!"

The three motorways in Meath argument is actually semi-
borrowed from Frank McDonald (who does make the 4 motorway in Meath argument) in the Irish Times, who wrote an article called "There is a way around planned Slane bypass", which states:

The authority’s programme is so overblown that when the controversial M3 is finally completed this year, Meath alone (coincidentally, Dempsey’s own constituency) will end up being traversed by four motorways – the M1, the M2, the M3 and the M4. Three of these routes pass remarkably close to each other – only 20km apart in some places. Any Martian could see that we lost the run of ourselves in building all of these roads fanning out from Dublin.

Even as far back as 2008 he wrote:

Co Meath will soon be traversed by no less than four motorways - the M1, M2, M3 and M4. In a country as small as Ireland, with a relatively low population density, how can such profligacy be justified - especially when the coffers are no longer full?

This section will become the M2 motorway, just like the N2 from Dublin to Ashbourne did, as it is part of a single road linking Dublin to Derry, under Transport 21. Why else would they make it motorway standard?

"Fianna Fáil are not to be trusted"

I don't think this one takes much explaining, but I will try and expand on the obvious.

The Bypass Slane Campaign is being headquartered inFF Cllr Wayne Harding's Pub in Slane. The group was formed the day after the HGV ban was passed by Meath County Council.

The campaign has provided lots of free publicity for the likes of Thomas Byrne, TD, Cllr Nick Killian, and a tribe of other FFers, just like the Tara campaign did. Even the FF press office in the Dail is being employed to spin on their behalf.

This is Dempey's constituency, and economic development (FF style) is the main objective for Meath. If safety was a concern, they wouldn't let the HGVs continue to roll though Slane.

"everything's been 10 times over budget"

The roads programme in the NDP started out at 6 billion. By 2004 the Comptroller and Auditor General said it was up to 16 billion.

Then the new NDP in 2007 refinanced the same roads, for another 14 odd billion. So, from 6 to 30 billion is a bit of a jump, which I think is relevant here. Maybe you don't. But the idea that suddenly everything is OK, now that they are finally starting to use fixed price contacts, after wasting 24 billion is laughable.

They may use a fixed price contract, but I bet it will also provide for shadow tolling, and that in the end, just like with the M3, the road will end up costing way more than it was supposed to because the traffic numbers are fairy-tale.

etchyed wrote: »

I would respectfully suggest that your posting style might be better suited to Politics.ie, where nobody does much research before having an opinion.

As for my posting style, I don't see you giving any references or quoting any experts. And while you complain about me making personal attacks, you are quick enough to make them yourself.

I have just as much right to post here as you, and as an Irish taxpayer and citizen, I don't see why I should be forced to reveal my identity, or refrain from trying to stop this Government from destroying this country completely.

How many people, aside from Mr Salafia, actually tried to call a halt to the development frenzy, and voodoo economics? We now have have the 10 largest ecological footprint in the world and one of the worst economies, looking down the barrel of the IMF. Thanks to people like MYOB, and crew.

To be honest, I posted here to correct the nonsense I was reading, and it is scary to see that so many people actually believe it. I won't be spending a lot of time here, don't worry...

Jayuu wrote: »

I'm not arguing either for or against this bypass. However I do want to ask you where your extra €14 billion figure in 2007 is coming from?

As for the initial jump in cost the C&AG did criticise the NRA for not having proper estimation processes in the early stages of the road building programme but also states that 50% of the cost increases in the initial programme came from inflation and expanded scope. That's clearly not a waste of money so it already casts doubt on your supposed €24 billion wastage.

Some one with better knowledge can say when the NRA started using fixed-price contracts but to my knowledge its been the standard for a number of years now and there's no reason to assume that it won't be the standard for the Slane bypass if it goes ahead.

The €14 billion figure in 2007 is actually €16.5bn, which is the roads portion of the NDP 2008-2013, as quoted in the Sunday Tribune.

However, also in the same article is the claim that the NRA only gets to spend half of that. So, let's be conservative on this, and say the figure is only 8 billion. So, we have an 8 billion overspend on the NDP 2000-2006 and then another 8 billion spent on roads that were supposed to have been finished by 2006, but were refinanced in 2007. That's 16 billion.

I don't have an exact figure, because Minister Dempsey refused to give an exact figure in his answer to the following Parliamentary Question on the issue:

258. Deputy Maureen O’Sullivan asked the Minister for Transport the amount by which the national roads programme has gone over budget since it was launched in the National Development Plan 2000-2006, wherein it was supposed to cost approximately €6 billion.

For an example of real gibberish, read Dempsey's response. But you won't find an answer to the question.

As for fixed price contracts, the NRA may have been required to start using them in 2007 (3 years after the C&AG recommended it), which you would have thought protected the taxpayer and transferred the risk to the construction company, as Fred Barry claimed above. Wrong.

In the same year that fixed price contracts came in, the Public Private Partnership (PPP) of the NRA came up with a way of transferring the risk back to the taxpayer, with 'shadow tolling' clauses. For proposed new roads, which the NRA wants to build, but which won't have enough traffic to be economically viable, they went to the European Commission and got special permission to insert 'minimum traffic guarantee' clauses.

Dermot Ahern requested and received an Opinion from the Commission. He got a favourable one, saying that the traffic guarantees in the M3 motorway and the Limerick Tunnel were 'permissible state aid', on the basis that there was 'no alternative' to meet the traffic needs.

This was not mentioned at the Tolling Hearing for the M3 in 2007, even through they already had permission.

Traffic levels on the M3 have fallen way below the targets, and the M3 will cost another 100 million.

I had said before, that the public were not told ahead of time about the tolling aspects of the M3, and was contradicted by MYOB. What actually happened was that the EIS for the M3, back in 2003, had a tolled and an untolled scenario. They didn't actually decide to do it until they got permission from the Commission to do the shadow tolling. This is because they knew damn well that the M3 was a loser, and as the EC Opinion even states, they wouldn't have been able to get any tolling company to agree to invest in the road.

Anyhoo...this is somewhat of a digression from the Slane bypass issue, which I will get back to shortly. But it should serve as a warning to anyone who thinks that there isn't more to the story with just about anything the NRA tell you.

Irish and Proud wrote: »

You could explore the concept of a consensus between the Truckers, the M1 Toll operaters, the Slane Residents and the NRA, which in turn would become a signed 10 year deal if sucessful. This could include a deferral of the Slane Bypass until 2020 - the year construction would commence as part of that deal. Also, trucks could immediately be banned from Slane, while the reduction of M1 Tolls would be a done deal for at least 10 years. Alternative routes via Navan could be signposted - the N51 would still need an upgrade, but that shouldn't break the exchequer.

I don't know if the above would work, but it's worth a try... :pac:

Regards!

Interesting idea, but you will need to give them another 10 years to complete all the archaeological excavations in and around Newgrange.

The truckers would play ball, if they were offered a fair deal.
IRHA president Vincent Caulfield attacks M3 tolls:

IRHA president Vincent Caulfield told Anglo-Celt newspaper last week that road hauliers are avoiding the toll charges on the M1 and M4 by continuing to use the old roads, because they cannot afford them. He said he feels that the same will apply in respect of the new M3 thus defeating the purpose for which such new roads were built. "We are more than compensating for the wear and tear we are causing to the roads - tolls are a double taxation as far as we are concerned," Mr Caulfield is quoted as saying.

MYOB wrote: »

Even if the fantastical figures are correct, how much of the road do you think you'd have got built for 100M - and 100M over 40 years at that?

I suspect you'd have run out of steam short of Navan, particularly with the delays and extra costs caused by your equivalents at Tara.

Also, on your constant insistance that the roads scheme went up so much in price - you're managing to ignore the vast amounts of schemes that were completed or progressed which were outside the original NDP1 scope. This is where most of the extra went. But of course, that doesn't help your argument.

Planning permission was granted for the M3 that was supposed to cost 600m. By completion, it had cost 900m.

Please explain how any of this additional cost was caused by delays to the M3, when there were none.

Then there is the 100m extra in shadow tolling...so a billion...for a road that wasn't needed, which we will all be paying for, for the next 40 years.

Were the public ever given a say in this? No, they were lied to and misled.

The M3 contract is in violation of the fixed price requirement, and should be terminated.