[Article] Waterford - Kildare dual carriageway

Victor

Overkill comes to mind.

http://home.eircom.net/content/unison/national/1941857?view=Eircomnet

The high road: price of land pushes route total to €1.08bn
From:The Irish Independent
Wednesday, 12th November, 2003
Treacy Hogan Environment Correspondent

TAXPAYERS face a land compensation bill of up to €130m for thousands of acres being compulsorily acquired by the State for a new €1bn highway.

The new €1.08bn dual-carriageway is being built to replace the existing Dublin to Waterford N9 which has been branded one of the most dangerous roads in the country.

A total of 1,184 acres in two counties, Kildare and Carlow, are being compulsorily acquired from landowners along the route in the first 46km phase of the new dual-carriageway, details of which are being revealed today.

The entire new 105km is expected to cost in the region of €1.08bn, with 12pc of this estimated to account for land compensation payments.

This breaks down as follows:

* Of the €488m price tag for the first phase from Kilcullen, in Co Carlow to Powerstown, Co Carlow the land compensation bill could be as high as €58m.

* The land compensation for the second phase stretching from Carlow to Waterford city for 59km at a cost of almost €600m could amount to almost €72m, giving a possible overall land compensation total of €130m.

But motorists and truckers on the safer new N9 high grade dual carriageway will cut more than half-an-hour off their journeys to just over 90 minutes.

Kildare Co Council will today brand large stretches of the existing N9 Dublin-Waterford route as a high accident location and insist the new highway is vital for safer travel by both local and long-distance vehicles.

However construction work on the new inter-urban route, one of the big five highways between Dublin and Cork, Galway, the Border, Limerick and Waterford provided for in the National Development Plan, is not expected to get underway until at least 2006 because of a plethora of planning, compensation, legal wrangles and a full Bord Pleanala inquiry.

All five intercity highways were due to be completed by 2006 but will now be years late.

And the N9 dual-carriageway to Waterford will have to take second place for funding with Transport Minister Seamus Brennan indicating that new motorways/dual carriageways to Cork and Galway are to take priority in any new roads funding.

The first phase disclosed today involves the compulsory purchase of 479 hectares, 1184 acres, between Kilcullen, Co Kildare and Powerstown, Co Carlow and this will lead to a flood of compensation claims.

Landowners can accept compensation for the loss of their land or go to an arbitration hearing where the outcome is binding.

The new road will carry much of the long distance traffic and trucks currently using the existing Dublin-Waterford route.

There will be bypasses of Carlow town and Castledermot as well as 43 new bridges and underpasses.

The northern section of the road will join up with the Kilcullen bypass and will also include a specially-built link to Athy.

Kildare Co Council says it has serious safety concerns over the existing N9, a single carriageway road with significant variation in width (some sections are as little as six metres wide with no hard shoulders).

The council has published an environmental impact statement (EIS) for the project, and has identified a number of measures to minimise disruption during the construction stage and to mitigate any adverse effects of the scheme on the environment.

Documentation for the southern section, from Powerstown to Waterford, is expected to be published shortly.

Victor

http://home.eircom.net/content/irelandcom/topstories/1941612?view=Eircomnet

€488m highway announcement today
From:ireland.com
Wednesday, 12th November, 2003

Compulsory Purchase Orders for the first stage of the proposed new Dublin to Waterford highway are to be announced by Kildare County Council this morning. The 46-km dual carriageway is to be built at a cost of about €488 million - or €10.6 million a kilometre.

The road will not be classed a motorway however, but a high-grade dual carriageway. It will link the existing M9 at Kilcullen with Powerstown in Co Carlow. The route will bypass Carlow town and Castledermot to the east and include a new link to Athy.

Its 43 new bridges and culverts will encompass four new road junctions, as well as flyovers over local roads and rivers. The route passes east and then south of Carlow and stops at Powerstown, just north-east of the Barrow.

The road was identified in the National Development Plan as a key inter-urban route linking Dublin with the south-east.

Documentation on the southern section of the route from Powerstown to Waterford is expected to be published shortly. This will bring the new road from Powerstown east of Kilkenny city and south to Waterford City.

The National Development Plan envisaged this route being completed by the end of 2007, one year later than the other inter-urban routes.

However, the Department of Transport and the National Roads Authority (NRA) accept that "some slippage with these dates has occurred".

At almost half a billion euro for this section, the costs of the new stretches of the Dublin to Waterford road are likely to exceed €1 billion.

The projected toll road is expected to go to tender early next year and the construction contract is to be one of the NRA's new-style "design and build" contracts.

Some 479 hectares, almost 1,200 acres, are to be acquired by Kildare County Council for the northern section, the council will announce this morning. Land costs, which are included in the €488 million estimate, are subject to the State's agreement with the IFA and will include money for severance, "new for old" farm buildings and goodwill payments.

Critics including the Campaign for Sensible Transport have claimed the road capacity is "over designed" but Kildare council maintains the N9, a single carriageway with significant variation in widths, is inadequate to cater for growth.

mike65

Sounds reasonable enough to me Victor!

Mike.

Capt'n Midnight

and then there is the problem with the ploughing championships....

mike65

....and they said infrastuctural humour was dead!

Mike.

Victor

All this was just to try to get an extra seat in Carlow / Kilkenny last election. Expect it to sit around until the next one.

D'Peoples Voice

Victor wrote:

All this was just to try to get an extra seat in Carlow / Kilkenny last election. Expect it to sit around until the next one.

All right Victor,
you may take a bow now,
the contracts for all 4 phases of the M9 have still not being signed!

Zoney

The entire Northern section is appropriate to have as dual carriageway based merely on traffic volumes. The volume north of the N10 junction (near Leighlinbridge) is approaching 2+1 capacity; so it would not make sense to build anything but dual carriageway. Rather than upgrade the existing alignment, quite sensibly the Kilkenny and Waterford traffic will continue together further south with the N10 diverging from the N9 further south than at present. So all of this is quite sensible dual carriageway project, about two third of the total N9 project.

As for south of there? Well, even as someone in favour of public transport I would say the traffic volumes are not at all what they should be (for healthy commerce between Waterford and Kilkenny/Carlow/Dublin) and probably greatly dampened by the current rubbish road. Dual carriageway is certainly more than the traffic volumes demand, but will be important strategically.

Zoney

Traffic volumes (AADT - Annual average daily traffic) north of Leighlinbridge (N09-12) here on NRA site:

2006: 15373 (7% growth on 2005)
2007 estimate: 16463 (7.1% growth on 2006)

2+1 recommended capacity: 17,250

So you can see why they are building dual carriageway rather than 2+1. Bear in mind too that these are the traffic volumes on appalling standard two lane country road. Traffic volumes will jump once a decent road is in place.

Victor

Remember there is also the N/M11 which will pick up Waterford traffic.

Dac51

Victor wrote:

Remember there is also the N/M11 which will pick up Waterford traffic.

Correct. A lot of Waterford people driving to Dublin (me included) use the N11 coast road at the moment as the N9 is to poor and dangerous to be driving on.