N17 - Knock to Collooney [design & planning underway]

Looks like the northern end is definitely going to be 3km online upgrade. The southern end looks like minimum c.3km online north of Knock before going offline if Light Green is chosen, more like 6km online if Dark Green is chosen. Options become more numerous from Kilkelly.

The northern end looks to me to only have one option, Grey, therefore it will be an upgrade of the existing road.

The southern end also only has one option, Orange, with the Light Green route then branching off and the Dark Green branching off further north. This looks to mean minimum 3km upgarde of existing road then going offline with Light Green route, or 6km upgarde of existing road then going offline with Dark Green route.

I'm open to correction on this if I am reading it wrong.

Here's a direct link to the revised route options. You can zoom pretty far in.

https://sligotransport.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=d7cc4e844330451bab50a19e8df2024a

Keep in mind that the corridors are not mutually exclusive. The final route doesn't have to be one corridorfrom end to end and will likely transition between sections of multiple corridors.

In any case, I think that there is zero chance going through a town would be quicker than a new build road bypassing the town.

I doubt Owenmore Geals will loose their pitch. Grey is the only option there and it looks to be on the existing road. That is a relatively modern stretch of road and I doubt DC will be justified here so landtake doesn't seem necessary. That section might get nothing more than resurfacing.

I was just about to post that link.

So they haven't got a Preferred Route yet but when they do, it has to be peer reviewed so no news until summer. Just great.

This was originally three projects: Knock-Charlestown, Tobercurry Bypass, Tobercurry-Collooney, so it’s not surprising that it would be split again. Although I’d prefer a different breakover point between the schemes now, something like: Knock-N5, Charlestown-Tobercurry Bypass, Tobercurry-Collooney, and do them from North to South: the two towns need bypasses, but Tobercurry-Collooney is a very dangerous road and safety should be first priority here.

In general, I think it makes a lot of sense to plan these upgrades as big projects, but when it comes to getting them built, sometimes it’s cheaper to do it in parts: there are few companies who would be willing to take on the whole 55 km, so splitting it into sections allows for more tenders to be received.

I suspect that combining the schemes into one was done to avoid the “rosary beads” effect of small bypasses, where completed the road ends up circling one town, then another, then another. The only economy of scale is that it’s all surveyed, designed and managed from one office, rather than three or four. With that master design to work from, the scheme can be put out to tender in smaller sections in the knowledge that the final thing will join up properly. It also helps to have the final alignment through planning, as it gives a lot more flexibility in scheduling the construction.

The fate of the Athenry Ring Road isn’t really relevant to this: for a start, it’s not a national route, it’s not funded from the Government capital budget, and it’s not being managed by TII. Galway County Council decided to build it, and it votes a new bit of that road to be built, by its own labour, whenever they have some spare cash - it’s not a construction project with a contract. That’s not exactly a great way of doing road construction, but there you go..

If you want a national route that’s been sliced into tiny sections, look at N56 Dungloe to Glenties in Donegal. But again it’s not necessarily for cost alone: this is nearly all online upgrades, and there’s no real alternative route for traffic to use, so the only way to do it without forcing people into taking 30 km detours was to work in 3~5 km sections. In effect, though, a lot of those works were done as a rolling project, with one section beginning before the previous has ended.

For this, three projects of 20 km each seems most likely, and it neatly divides the the sections into a priorty order: the northern 20km is lethal, but would be quick and cheap to do as an offline build, the middle one is congested (and would be the most expensive), and the southern one is okay but just needs minor improvements.

In fairness, I dont think it has been pushed out now. The update in March said;

Then the update in June said;

And now August says;

They are going through the various steps as outlined.