N72 - Mallow Northern Relief Road [refined route options published]

Was in one of yesterday’s papers that there is no funds available for the minor upgrades promised between Mallow and Mitchelstown and also between Mallow and Fermoy.

So business as usual for the hauliers wrecking their trucks with a combination of branches and potholes.

Seems a bit odd to have the new road connect to the N20 north of the hospital. It could be 500m further south which would shorten journeys from N72 west of Mallow to N72/73 east of it.

If the plan was to eventually continue the new Northern Relief Road south west to connect to the N72 to thesouth west, that would be easier if the NRR was further south.

The plan should be (and most likely is) to convert the existing N20 between the new NRR and where the current N72 crosses the N20 to N72 when Mallow gets a new north/south bypass as part of the M/N20 project.

Road surface in Fermoy is crap, but it has no bearing on the plans for N72 - National roads are funded by central government; county councils are responsible for streets.

What's going on here? Why would this be shelved?

There is no shortage of money for roads, it is just being spent in the wrong places. For example, N25 Midleton-Youghal is getting €800,000 this year, that could be deferred by a year or two with no impact on the eventual delivery. Same goes for N24 Cahir-Limerick Junction which is getting €1,000,000 and N2 Rath Roundabout-Kilmoon Cross getting €750,000. Then there's the €3,000,000 for the Galway Bypass which is ridiculous while it is all up in the air.

I've made this point before, it makes no sense bringing more projects to this stage of design if the projects which are there already aren't progressing as well. The more advanced projects need to be moved on too, otherwise we'll have lots of projects hitting ABP at the same time and they won't be able to deal with them all. Then after taking unnecessarily long to get through ABP, we'll have lots of "shovel ready" projects which will create another bottleneck and further delays.

Plenty of money there, it just needs to be focused on 4 or 5 projects and get them to construction. The money is being spread too thin. The likes of the Mallow Northern Relief Road and N52 north of Tullamore are ideal projects to push ahead with now, (relatively small, straightforward, not controversial, etc.) but they are essentially stalled while projects which might not happen this decade, if at all, get lots of money.

The problem is that projects aren't getting to the "shovel ready" stage. Lots of projects are being funded through the early stages of design but then funding is significantly reduced as they approach being ready for ABP. The same has happened recently with N2 Ardee-Castleblayney and N/M11 to J14.

Instead, more projects are being funded to start at the beginning (e.g. N25 Midleton-Youghal) despite those further ahead not progressing. It remains to be seen if these new projects will be funded right through to ABP in a timely fashion or if they too will have funding reduced as they are approaching an ABP-ready state.

It seems likely that some projects will have to wait their turn to go to ABP as even with restructuring, they wont be able to handle several years worth of projects being dumped on them in a short period of time. Projects will have to be submitted over a longer period of time, it makes sense to start that now rather than funding more projects to a pre-ABP state and leave them sitting for a few years, as would appear to be the plan for the Mallow Northern Relief Road.

Saw it after posting and was typing a post there while you posted here!

Yep. He doesn’t have the power to veto schemes, so anything requiring his signature sits on his desk as long as he wants instead. As good as a veto for the lifespan of this government.

Is it just dead again?

Very strange. I don't understand why things aren't being kept at least moving forward. The spending ratios are explicitly designed to deal with the roads/not roads situation, so why interfere?

Interesting reading. As per your prediction in August, Ryan’s block on this project has done a unique job in unifying local politicians against him. No more defence by silence, the knives are out. And it looks like the commercial interests are also aligning:

It’s high time the local politicians stood up for their constituents. Instead of towing the party line and not criticising an incompetent transport minister.

If you had a person who was against blood transfusions due to religious beliefs - you wouldn’t expect to see them to be appointed as CEO of IBTS.