What would our infrastructure look like if we had stayed in the UK?

Podge_irl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120524793#Comment_120524793

We could probably do with more high density housing mind you, but otherwise I'm not sure what your point is.

Sam Russell

Well, the Ballymun towers are no more, so that aspect has been tried and rejected.

Spaghetti junction would need the multiple motorways that we would not have so no junction like that.

London would still be the major economic driver for the UK whether we were still in it or not.

Charles Babbage

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120483665#Comment_120483665

Has Sligo grown less than Enniskillen?

Yes the social services end of things would have developed more quickly. But you would have ended up as NI is now, with big cuts coming up and limited private sector opportunities.

alentejo

Dublins orbital motorway would have been built in the late 60's or early 70's and would have been much closer to the city centre than the current M50.

It would most likely be absolutely jam packed with traffic and there would be calls for a new outer Dublin ring road.

gjim

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120520760#Comment_120520760

Meh - I don't find the Liverpool or Manchester "model" of redevelopment all that inspiring - dunno about Leeds. Yeah, the new tall buildings in both these cities look good from a distance but for me they fail in terms of basic unbanism - a lot of these new landmark buildings are adjacent to 4/6 lane traffic arteries and feel cut off from the city centre. The lack of height in the docklands in Dublin is a huge shame and missed opportunity, but I still think Dublin's docklands - especially the south docklands - the north docklands are still only 2/3rds done - are far more pleasant urban environments for actually living/working/walking around even if they don't look as impressive.

dublincc2

Would the motorway system in NI be developed as it was in our timeline? Would a British or Home Rule government really prioritise a motorway bypass of Ballymena? Would the Northern M1 be built at all?

I can see a proper Belfast-Dublin motorway being built though.

Capt'n Midnight

Compare Scotland's motorway map with ours.

We've got a motorway from Limerick to Tuam. Aberdeen and Dundee don't.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120525769#Comment_120525769

Brown envelopes may have contributed to land reserved for the motorway being rezoned for housing.

Maybe Dublin Corpo might have gotten away with motorways through the city centre ?

Sam Russell

This thread is discussing possible infrastructure in Ireland over the last century, which is as big a guessing game as one can imagine. A hundred years, and a world war affecting one part but less affect on the other makes it a bigger guess as to how things would have worked out.

Would rural railways been closed down less quickly in Ireland compared to GB (or England)? Would the UK exchequer fund the Irish loss making services?

Given NI was run by a local government based on gerrymandered elections that favoured the eastern side of NI and sectorial interests, would that have been allowed to influence infrastructure provision if Ireland had remained in the UK? Or would 'one man one vote' be forced on NI?

I think any guess is as good as any other.

dvdman1

Dublin's road and motherway system would be more developed, look at every comparable UK city in size. In the city centre you would see more under passes and separation of pedestrians and cars. Overall Dublin would be slightly more car friendly....As for the rest of the country I'd doubt as much motorways would exist as they do now.

Kaybaykwah

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120598738#Comment_120598738

The funny thing is many cities worldwide are trimming down their inner city motorways. The Bonaventure expressway into downtown Montreal was transformed into an urban boulevard. Our Ville-Marie expressway is mostly a series of tunnels under downtown, and may be covered where it is only in trench form. The trend is toward trimming infrastructure that had an overwhelmingly negative effect on urbanity, in terms of huge gashes on the city, and severe impediments on pedestrianisation.

L1011

Even Birmingham has started removing bits of Queensway, I stayed in the Clayton there last year which was built on the site of one of the big interchanges. Still had the EU funding logos up (for the removal project, not the hotel) which have been whipped away in more Tory/Leave voting areas.

spacetweek

Looking at NI's last century in the UK mightn't be instructive as it's not clear if the DUP and Protestantism would have been such a dominant force in NI with the whole island in the UK. Sinn Fein would have been a unified all-island party but the DUP would same as now only be a force in Belfast. Without a Protestant ascendancy asserting its will there it's not clear if the Troubles would have ever happened and if not then that would have had profound impacts on NI's economy as the Troubles tanked it for decades. Our own economy as pointed out upthread would be tiny compared to now as the US FDI gravy train we've been on for 30 years would never have been allowed by the British. Devolution in the 90s created Stormont but more likely the Irish devolved government would have been in Dublin, or maybe both would have happened with power sharing between the two cities.

All this would have big impacts on what infrastructure was or was not built in the South.

• Looking at the extent of railway closures in NI, it would have been the same here anyway. The exception is cross-border railways which had to close as they were impractical to operate across an international border, especially with the Troubles. Possibly some of those wouldn't have closed, especially Derry-Letterkenny and Enniskillen-Sligo.
• No reason to believe Dublin would have an underground as the UK is surprisingly lukewarm about those, with even huge cities like Birmingham/Wolverhampton or Manchester not having one.
• The reason NI never electrified any railways was probably because of small network size, but with the whole island in the UK there's a chance Belfast-Dublin could have been electric at an early stage, like in the 80s. DART+ would have been done at this stage, maybe in the 90s.
• For motorways, we would have started getting them earlier, in the 1960s same as NI, but they probably would have petered out soon enough with probably 20 years of building them with nothing after that. The resurgence of motorway building under Thatcher in the 80s wouldn't have happened in Ireland. The dense network of motorways we built out in the 2000s would never have happened. The British would have built some DC bypasses but no long sections away from Dublin. Dublin's radial motorways out into Leinster would still have happened, and Cork City might have a big local motorway network, bigger than now.
• Regarding numbering, they would have applied UK numbering with A/B roads and the motorways being a separate set. The road between Belfast and Dublin would have been M1. They might have zoned the country same as Britain with Belfast in the 1 zone, Derry 2, Dublin 3, Galway 4, Waterford 5, Limerick 6, Cork 7. At a guess, multiple Dublin radials would start with 3 (3,30,31) with Cork having M7, M70, M71 and Limerick's bypass the M60. The M50 would have been reborn as the Waterford Bypass. It's worth noting that NI's road numbering would also be different as it was conceived after partition.
• The proposals for a city-centre motorway network in Dublin in the 1970s could have taken the form of even larger-scale motorways a la Glasgow and we could have ended up with huge elevated highways very close to the historic core which probably would have had high rise council housing towers nearby as the UK loved doing that back in the day. We'd hate those roads nowadays and there'd be endless talk of removing them but like Glasgow we wouldn't.
• Everything would be in miles and miles per hour!
• There probably would be better water infrastructure. The type of dicking about where some towns are still pumping raw sewage into the sea in the 2020s would not be allowed in the UK and that would all have been sorted decades ago. There'd be water charges.
• It's possible we could have 1 nuclear power plant. There wasn't much impetus behind the proposal 50 years ago so it was quickly shot down. Inside the UK, there would have been much more political pressure.
• Renewable energy installation would probably have taken a similar trajectory as at present.

L1011

UK is not somewhere to be looking to when it comes to dumping sewage in to the sea tbh

dublincc2

In what way would the motorway routes be different? As mentioned above the interurbans wouldn’t have been built as they are with more likely a direct route and a single spur. How would the M7/8/9 in particular look? Would it even exist?

end of the road

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121023242#Comment_121023242

100% correct.

CrabRevolution

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121023032#Comment_121023032

The UK's sewerage systems are so poor that they regularly make national news headlines, nevermind local or infrastructural ones. They had an average of 825 discharges of raw sewerage per day in 2022.

Charles Babbage

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121023353#Comment_121023353

The M9 would mostly not exist. The other route might have resembled the 1990 proposals for Ireland, i.e. a M7 to Portlaoise and online dualling otherwise, except close to Cork.

dublincc2

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121027687#Comment_121027687

So the M8 wouldn’t exist either?

Sam Russell

Well, the current UK are finding it hard to support Wales, Scotland and NI.

Our infrastructure would probably be based on a population of about 3 million, with little to no industry, just agriculture. So we would just have enough industrial support for an agriculture based economy.

end of the road

it would now be decrepid and on it's last legs along with everything else had we stayed within the UK.

for all of our faults, i am very, very, glad we didn't remain part of the UK.

Charles Babbage

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121083404#Comment_121083404

It might exist very close to Cork, but would not be justified elsewhere. South of Portlaoise the traffic volume is around 12500. Compare the single carriageway A1 London-Edinburgh road in northern England or even in Ireland the N2 or N3 which have 90% of that traffic volume in Cavan or Monaghan. Nobody plans to make any of these motorways, although the Irish ones will be dualled in the 2+2 style.