A5 - Derry Dual Carraigeway

timmyntc

Too many holes in the scheme to be approved, better to try get it piecemeal through planning and make it work nicer with public transport with more park and rides etc.

They should look at m20 scheme here for something that (surely) will fly over all the climate hurdles.

Still it is paramount that DFI appeal the ruling, otherwise all infrastructure in NI is effectively dead. The ruling is excessive

KrisW1001

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123777910#Comment_123777910

Our record of not wasting money, you mean. Look at the map below. There are no motorways in the northwest because there aren’t enough people to generate the traffic levels that would require a motorway.

Outside of Letterkenny, the Northwest is very sparsely populated. Uniform quality single-carriageway roads with limited junctions would easily meet the traffic demand between towns in this part of the country - and that’s what you’d see in other European countries. As it happens, future upgrades in the Republic will be of a higher standard than this: 2+1 on quiet stretches and 2+2 around population centres (new guidelines say that any new road with a limit of 100 km/h requires lane separation for safety)

The reason we were prepared to pay for A5 is because it’s the only route between the Letterkenny region (the only part of the Northwest with high population density) and the Republic that had the traffic levels to justify building a dual carriageway of any kind for its total length.

L1011

While this clunks along, we do need to continue progressing the Donegal TEN-T schemes and also the N4 upgrades (and reinstate, as a separate project cause the bypass is urgent, the rest of the slashed Dromod-Carrick On Shannon scheme) as we cannot trust that the A5 will ever be upgraded; or that a future UK Government will actually respect the Belfast Agreement either.

Charles Babbage

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123778118#Comment_123778118

Traffic arises from regions, the populations of individual towns is not relevant. County Donegal has a bigger population that County Waterford, yet the latter has a motorway to Dublin. And notably you used a partitionist map, like the old East German maps of Berlin, as if nobody lived in Tyrone or Derry.

Cookiemunster

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123778194#Comment_123778194

A partitionist map? It's quite obviously a map from the CSO. You may have heard of them, they're the Irish States official statistical office.

Charles Babbage

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123778292#Comment_123778292

I didn't make a statement about who produced it, or claim that it was not accurate, I said that it was partitionist, which it obviously is.

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123778310#Comment_123778310

Why would the CSO calculate population density figures in a different country?

josip

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123778194#Comment_123778194

Politics Forum ————>

KrisW1001

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123778194#Comment_123778194

Traffic arises from people. You have to have people living in a place before you can have them going from place to place. People go from where they live or work to where other people live or work. Towns matter because they have higher concentrations of people, and only that produces the necessary number of point-to-point journeys needed to justify a high capacity road. At lower densities, people will use back-roads and take the shortest distance, because without other traffic, distance is the biggest factor in travel time. All high-capacity road types get that capacity by allowing faster vehicles to safely pass slower ones. What use is that on a route where you’d hardly ever meet another vehicle?

I’m not arguing against the A5. I already said that the only corridor with adequate population to support a higher capacity road is the one that goes through Northern Ireland. Letterkenny is only a large population centre because it’s part of a loose conurbation with Derry.

I was responding to the stupid suggestion that we should be somehow building motorways to the northwest that lie entirely within this state, like the Tuam to Letterkenny routing that keeps coming up like a bad meal. For this, the population of NI is irrelevant, as the catchment along the route that doesn’t involve NI. But “Partitionist”? Can we keep that kind of shite out of this discussion? It’s not the 1920s anymore. The map I used comes from the CSO - they have no jurisdiction to gather or report on the population of the six counties that, like it or not, are not in this country.

County Waterford is a really bad comparison. It has over twice the population density as Donegal, and that’s what matters. Letterkenny is 22,000, Buncrana is 6000, Ballybofey/Stranorlar is 5,000. Compare with Waterford’s largest centres: Waterford city 60,000, Tramore 11,000, Dungarvan 10,000. Even the bit of Clonmel that’s in Co. Waterford would be Donegal’s fourth-largest town (Clonmel is 18,000 people total). But even with that population density, there’s not enough demand for a motorway anywhere in the county: M9 terminates in Co. Kilkenny, and N25 is only single carriageway road through almost all of Waterford despite connecting the city to the second largest city in the state.

M9 (via N25) also connects the Port of Waterford to the motorway network. I actually think that that 2+2 would have been sufficient for N9 south of Kilkenny town, but 2+2 wasn’t a design option when it was built. (I’m from Waterford, so let’s skip the GAA-jersey outrage at this idea).

Charles Babbage

Population density is relevant to the traffic on the local road network. It does not have a material effect on the trunk road network as traffic funnels on to the main road from various places, the issue is the total population. This argument about the sizes of towns is neither here nor there. If Co Louth had one big town with 90,000 people instead of two towns with 45,000 people, the traffic on the MI towards Dublin would be much the same.

However, I overlooked that you were making a broader point about the North-West and not just the A5. I don't fully agree wit the idea that you only build roads where there is a lot of traffic, as that might well aggravate the concentration around Dublin. Reasonable travel times are important to maintaining the viability of western areas.

NIMAN

There will be a UI someday, so all the towns and cities in NI will some day be in the state, so I don't see any reason for the planners to not look at building better roads towards the NW region.

KrisW1001

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123778507#Comment_123778507

Trunk roads are not built just for their endpoints. This is the reason why we’re building M20 between Cork and Limerick, rather than telling people to just use M8/N24. The problem with building any high capacity road from Sligo to Letterkenny is that there’s not enough of a population near to the route to justify putting in so much capacity.

I’m not saying “only build roads where there’s traffic” at all. I’m saying that the type of road should be in line with the demand, and that depends on the catchment along the route. There’s about 15,000 people living anywhere close along the route, and 40,000 from the two end-points together. A 2+2 is generally considered only for traffic above 15,000 AADT. You simply can’t produce 15,000 daily average journeys out of a population of 55,000 people, even before you discount the children and those who cannot drive. Even doubling the population here won’t get you to this level.

Of course there should still be a good road from Sligo to Letterkenny (N15/N13), and there’s parts thad desperately need it, but the road shouldn’t be built at far higher capacity than will ever be needed. A 2+1 (capacity <15,000) for the majority of the route, with 2+2 (capacity <22,000) around Ballybofey/Stranorlar and on the last 5~10km approaching Sligo, Letterkenney and Derry is plenty for future demand.

The bulk of the traffic from Letterkenney wants to go East or Southeast, not South, so that’s where the big road should be.

Deedsie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123778714#Comment_123778714

I really hope you are correct and I will certainly vote in favour if given the option on this side of the border. However this project is one of the most irritating things I have ever followed. I am at the stage id prefer the Irish government withdraw support and I vest it elsewhere in thw North. Casement Park, rail investment, something that can begin straight away relatively speaking.

This appeal cant win. Casement Park has planning permission, a lot of rail investment can be done without the same level of planning required for a motorway. Relaying new track on lands owned by translink etc.

An education program for people in the North who think the NHS is a good health care system. To nip that in the bud. Seems to always be one of the first arguments used against unification. Dont really understand why.

NIMAN

How **** the NHS is is a completely different, and much needed, thread.

Deedsie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123780469#Comment_123780469

Agreed, just mentioning better ways money could be spent immediately. Rather than wait for another 15 years for nothing to happen. The NHS comment was a bit silly.

marno21

Lads stick to the A5 or related talk please. The NHS is not related to the A5