[Article] More pain but no gain: that's the future for commuters

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More pain but no gain: that's the future for commuters


A GRIM picture of planning failure and worsening traffic congestion was painted by experts yesterday.

They warned that commuters must face more years of pain as new roads are built and public transport developed. And at the end of it all the problems of congestion and snail-pace travel may well be as bad as ever.

Even with billions being spent on roads and public transport, the infrastructure in the country's most heavily populated region will not be able to cope with the relentless expansion in car, lorry and road usage, they said.

They called for a massive reappraisal of public transport policy.

An expanded M50 - with three lanes going each way - will provide a short term solution, National Toll Roads (NTR) executives said. But they forecast that it will be seriously congested almost as soon as work on increasing its carrying capacity by 50pc is completed in an estimated five to seven years.

In the meantime drivers will have to endure congestion caused by work to add another lane each way. "The well will fill up again," NTR chief executive Jim Barry said yesterday.

And that is not just because people will use it if they think they can travel faster. Other factors will swell usage.

These include 4pc to 5pc economic growth, an explosion in the population in Dublin and the surrounding counties and several other new traffic arteries such as the Port Tunnel feeding into it.

NTR argues that the only long term way to beat gridlock is a massive new orbital route way out beyond the arc of the current M50. But as that is still only a suggestion and unlikely to be considered while the current programmes of infrastructural upgrading are being pushed hard, the reality is that motorists face the prospect of congestion and tailbacks for many, many years.

Parallel with the NTR predictions came a serious questioning of our public transport strategy. Top economist Colm McCarthy of DKM Economic Consultants in Dublin said we must wait for a review of the Luas in the autumn to see if the €800m-plus costs it incurred were justified.

He said the question was not if the system benefited people but whether there were enough benefits and enough people using it to justify the massive costs. Our low-density housing has been cited as a major reason for public transport being stretched thinly across vast areas, leaving many commuters with no option but to use their car and compound the congestion crisis.

Mr McCarthy said we should wait until October or November to see just how successful the costly Luas project has been.

NTR executives, in a special briefing yesterday, revealed that since they added new lanes at the Westlink Bridge on Dublin's westside there has been a 10pc increase in traffic. They say that proves that motorists will use roads that offer a quicker, or in many cases the only, route.

That is one of the reasons they forecast the widened M50 will not be able to properly accommodate projected traffic volumes when it is completed in five to seven years. NTR's chief executive Jim Barry also emphasised how important it would be, in the long term, to integrate any plans for an orbital route with public transport. He said the Government faced a huge challenge in that area.

And the company's roads managing director Tony McClafferty said there would be major new influxes of traffic onto the M50. He gave the advent of Port Tunnel traffic as an example.

He also said Dublin airport's one million passengers a year, huge numbers visiting the major shopping centres along the M50, economic growth, our increasing level of car ownership and the population explosion in a major arc around Dublin ensured the explosion in traffic would continue to pose massive headaches for planners.

And motorists won't escape. Even while they are widening the new M50 - expected to begin next year - there will undoubtedly be traffic restrictions.

It was claimed at the briefing that expanding the M50 to three lanes in each direction from the M1 to Ballinteer would involve "quite a bit of pain for the motorist".

NTR runs the country's three toll plazas at the moment - the Westlink, Eastlink and the one on the M1 Drogheda bypass. Around 130,000 vehicles use these every day.

On a busy Friday just two weeks ago more than 100,000 vehicles passed through the Westlink alone. Mr McClafferty said the expanded Westlink, opened last September, has improved the service but "it hasn't solved the problems". He pointed to substantial tailbacks at the Red Cow and Galway Road junctions and, for the first time, northbound tailbacks at the Blanchardstown access roads. These are all due to the lack of sufficient lanes as huge volumes are shoehorned into narrow exits and slip roads.

Eddie Cunningham
and Kathy Donaghy

Victor

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