M20 - Cork to Limerick [preferred route chosen; in design - phase 3]

It’s anyone’s guess. Would undoubtedly be cheaper to bundle it in with the M20 however there’s no guarantee that the M20 won’t be held up by dodgy objections.

Aarhus gives you the right to a legal review of decisions taken, but that does not have to specifically be a Judicial Review, which is usually concerned with errors in legal process.

If you brought such legal reviews into a normal planning process, and made them automatic for projects above a certain size, it would not only make it easier to predict how long the legal permissions process would take, but it also would reduce the possibilities of submitting spurious requests just to delay a project.

The root of the problem is an understaffing in ABP. Fix that, and large projects attracting lots of submissions (and 99% of these are genuine concerns from people who will be directly affected by the scheme in some way) can be processed quickly.

I don't think understaffing at ABP is the root of the problem. It's one of the roots, definitely, but not the only one. The M28 was approved in just over a year (far too slow, obviously), but the real hold-up was in the judicial review process, which held up permission from July 2018 to March 2021. ABP could have delivered its decision in a day and the statutory process would still have dragged on for nearly three years.

The real root of the problem is that there are too many ways to slow down planning in this country. It has become a vetocracy, where anyone can stick their oar in and bring the process to a halt. We need a simple, streamlined decision process that delivers rapid, final decisions. Speed up ABP with more resources, definitely, but the legal avenues to overturn planning permission must be drastically narrowed and compressed into a shorter timeframe.

@Cookiemunster By "dancing to the Greens' tune" I mean that the other coalition parties have agreed to lock the M20 and other road projects behind a further set of arbitrary justification criteria, this time on climate, which seem intended to stall road projects to such an extent that they are never delivered, but are also never cancelled. Maybe it will not work out like that in practice.

I think @Cookiemunster and your interpretations are reasonable, but I really don't think the new "climate-positive projects only!" restriction is just going to fade away as quietly as you seem to think when the time comes to give the M20 the final go-ahead. It's a barrier which is clearly aimed at preventing road projects from proceeding, because even if the numbers add up from a safety and business point of view for the M20 (which they absolutely do), it is intended to arbitrarily tip the scales in the other direction. With carbon budgets soon being placed on departments, how hard do you think it will be for the Greens to say "oops, we'd love to build the M20, but there just isn't enough carbon in the budget for it?"

The problem with the "anti-roads/cars" people and the NIMBYs is that they both have the exact same power to delay and overturn planning permission, and both abuse that power heavily. There is no meaningful difference between them at the end of the day.

Yep you could be right but I sure hope you're wrong!

Maybe a way back around that "tactic" could be to heavily invest in the sustainable transport on the corridor, also.

Extending Shannon Airport’s catchment down to Cork City is one of the goals for the Limerick City rail plan. That benefit also applies to the M20 to the same extent (i.e. not a lot, but it would help both airports to counterbalance the draw of Dublin if they were only an hour and a half apart from each other).

What’s holding Ringaskiddy back is N28. M28, when completed, will funnel traffic onto M8, so to make N20 an advantage, the N20/N8 link of the Cork Northern Ring needs to be done too. (M28 and M20 will probably complete around the same time)

M20 being there or not doesn’t affect Rosslare at all: if you’re going Rosslare-Cork or Rosslare-Limerick, there are more direct routes (N24 and N25, respectively). N24 will be fully upgraded in the same timeframe as M20.

I thought you all might appreciate knowing that I had a dream about the M20 last night. Not that it was built in my dream, oh no.

The route recommendation turned out to be the Mitchelstown - Limerick routing, or the navy routing in the dream. Not only was it a terrible option, but they swung west to avoid some of the hills near Mitchelstown, but ended up going over a mountain that was over 700m in height that happened to be the westernmost.

That was about it, but it was an interesting dream nonetheless.

Article about the N20 in today’s IT

Any indication of when the preferred route will be announced?

I read an article earlier saying only 5000 cars were expected to travel between cork and limerick on the new m20.. is that true?!

https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/ireland-s-deadliest-road-it-s-like-she-s-frozen-now-forever-at-29-1.4739121

If the 3 billion price tag is accurate, it seems a staggering amount for the relatively minuscule numbers that will use it...

A relief-map will show you why. N20 goes through a narrow plain between the Ballyhoura (to the east) and Mullaghareirk (to the west) mountains: anyone living north or south of this natural pass will use N20, because as bad as it is, it’s still the best road in the area.

Forget the €3 billion estimate, its a complete fabrication.

Eamonn Ryan pulled that figure out of his arse to try and turn public opinion against the scheme.

TII appointed a new chairman, a Welsh man. Best of luck to him, at least he comes from a country with proper road infrastructure.

From the Indo

“Limerick TD Kieran O’Donnell who chaired the meeting sought a commitment that Mr Llewellyn would drive from Limerick to Cork to see for himself why representatives from the region were admant a motorway must be built between the cities.”