"Wasting Money on Roads" - Edgar Morgenroth

KevR wrote: »

And what do people against these roads have to say about our greatly improved road safety network? How much is a life worth to them?

The title of the thread is loaded. Money spent on proper roads is not wasted. Neither Edgar Morgenroth nor An Taisce make any reference to the impact of modern motorways on road safety. There is a vast difference in terms of road safety between a motorway/dual carriageway and a wide single carriageway. I’d give the precise figures, except I’m on holidays in southern USA and can’t access them readily. But, I’m sure ESRI’s research department could find them. In 1997, just prior to the commencement of the building of a national motorway network, there were 472 road deaths in Ireland. Allowing for the 30pc increase in population since then, that would correspond to around 620 road deaths today. Based on the figures for the first 8 months of 2010, it looks as though the figure for 2010 will actually be about 200. So, over 400 fewer deaths on the roads each and every year adds up to a pretty large total of lives saved, not that an organisation like An Taisce would care much about that. In 1997, Ireland had one of the highest road death rates in the EU15. In 2010, it is one of the lowest. I do believe Ireland’s road deaths rate may now for the first time ever be a lot lower than even in Edgar’s native Germany, which has historically had a good road safety record. It is certainly now well below the EU15 average and even more so below the EU27 average. Of course, not all the improvement is due to better roads, but most of it is. A statute should be erected in honour of Bertie Ahern who defied the anti-motorway nutters (An Taisce chief among them) and has in the process saved thousands of Irish lives.

Regarding the two roads that Edgar Morgenroth mentions (Emyvale and Slane), these are both on the route from Derry to Dublin. Once the motorways to Cork, Limerick, Galway, Waterford are completed (which is imminent), Derry will be the only major city in Ireland not connected to Dublin by a full-blown motorway. It is very badly needed for the development of the whole North-West economy on both sides of the artificial border, not that an organisation like An Taisce would care much about that. On the northern side, a motorway from Derry to Aughnacloy is now being built and should be complete towards the end of this decade. The whole raison d’etre for it is that there should then be a road of similar motorway standard from Aughnacloy to Dublin. Unlike south of the border, there is very little opposition to its construction. Even Sinn Fein are enthusiastically in favour. Once that is complete, is it seriously suggested that the north Monaghan and Slane stretches should be left as they are? The current road from Aughnacloy to Monagaghan is totally inadequate for the route linking Ireland’s largest and fourth largest cities. As for Slane, I suggest that Edgar make the journey from Omagh to Dublin on some recent All-Ireland Final days and he’ll see what a bottleneck it is.

Regarding long-term population (both people and traffic) projections, I’m afraid that Ireland has a very sorry record in this department. As I’ve mentioned a few times here, a major report published by Davy Kelleher McCarthy in 1990 predicted that the population would fall from its then 3.5million to 3.3million in 2011. Its actually 4.5 million today. As a result of the gross under-estimation of future population (both people and traffic) growth by the economists then, Ireland had a hopelessly inadequate infrastructure in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Do we really want to repeat the same mistake at the behest of an organisation of upper-class toffs and remnants of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy like An Taisce?

I am posting this from South Carolina, where there are motorways and dual carriageways everywhere. Here, no one would pay the slightest attention to an absurd organisation like An Taisce. As far as I’m concerned, the only good thing that An Taisce has ever done was to threaten to have Fintan O’Toole put away for a long stretch for building an extension to his house in Clare. An Taisce’s delaying of the building of the motorway network in the early 2000s has undoubtedly cost hundreds of lives. They should be ignored entirely.

The title is not loaded at all. I am referring to instances where the planned specification vastly exceeds the specification that will ensure that the required level of service is met in the long-run. In such instances tax payers money is being wasted.

There is lots of international evidence that investment in roads can have a high return. That evidence has led me to recommend increased spending on roads in the past. However, there is also lots of evidence that if you build to many motorways (e.g. Belgium) the overall impact is to reduce growth, because it diverts funds from good projects to unneeded roads projects.

I have responded to you on road safety before, but I will do so one last time. CBA exlicitly takes this into account. You seem to claim that the improvements in road fatalities are entirely due to road improvements. This is not correct - there are many factors including road improvements, the points system, road safety campaings, safer cars etc.

The remaining bottleneck on the N2 is Emyvale - I have no problem with a by-pass with a wide 2 lane road, a standard of road that is is perectly adequate for Carrickmacross, where the traffic level is higher. That is the standard of road that should be built between the Monaghan by-pass and Aughnacloy and not a dual-carriageway that will be empty and cost the Irish tax payer 82% more.

The Slane stretch of the N2 is totally irrelevant for access from Donegal to Dublin as you only have to use the excellent and uncongested N33 to get onto the excellent and uncongested M1 to get to Dublin (that is what the N33 was built for). Facilitating toll dodgers by building a prallel dual carriageway to the M1 is about the most stupid thing that the government could do - worse still if those toll dodgers are free riding on the improved roads in the first place.

Au contraire. This is what I actually wrote: “Of course, not all the improvement is due to better roads, but most of it is.” Nothing could be clearer than that.

With your undoubted expertise, perhaps you could post here the exact contribution each of the factors you mention (road improvements, the points system, road safety campaigns, safer cars) has made to the massive reduction in road deaths in Ireland since 1997. From that, we could then calculate pretty accurately how many lives the An Taisce campaigns against each and every motorway project in that period has cost. The line is being spun that it is only now, when Ireland has a decent number of motorways, that An Taisce is opposing the building of more, claiming we are over-motorwayed. In fact, An Taisce has opposed each and every motorway project in the history of the State, indeed almost every road project in the history of the State. They opposed motorways being built in Ireland equally vehemently even when Ireland had no motorways at all and the roads from Dublin to the provincial cities were little more than a series of death-traps. Had it not been for An Taisce and similar organisations, the motorway network we have today would have been in existence a decade ago, and hundreds, even thousands, of lives would have been saved on the roads.

That most of the improvement in road deaths in Ireland is due to better roads is clearly evident from Ireland’s improvement relative to other countries. All countries have benefitted from various points systems, road safety campaigns and safer cars. But, the improvement in road deaths in Ireland since 1997 has been far greater than in other countries and it is reasonable to assume that this is largely due to Ireland having come from a situation of having virtually no motorways at all to a situation of having a relatvely decent national motorway network. For example, it seems to irk some of the posters that Ireland now has a better motorway network than Scotland. But, in 1997, when the opposite was the case, the road deaths rate in Ireland was over 3 times that in Scotland. In 2010, it looks as though it may go below Scotland’s rate for the first time. If Ireland had followed Kevin O’Brien’s absurd advice and, instead of building a modern motorway network, had simply widened the roads existing in 1997, with maybe a few bypasses thrown in, there would still be 500 to 600 road deaths a year, instead of 200.

Regarding the route from Dublin to the North-West, there is clearly a massive imbalance between the number of miles of motorway in the northern half of the country (by which I mean the 32-county country) and the southern half. There are hundreds of miles of motorway south of a line from Dublin to Galway, but, apart from the route to Belfast, hardly any north of a line from Dublin to Galway. Yet, there are far more people living north of the line from Dublin to Galway than south of it, something which may surprise Dublin 4 economists. The lack of modern motorways/dual carriageways in the northern half of the country is also reflected in the much higher road deaths rate in the border counties than in the rest of the country.