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Wales not building any more roads in the name of the environment - Should we do that?

JimmyVik

I see in the journal today an article about Wales stopping any building on roads to save the environment.

Im sure this will be brought up by the Greens here.

Should we follow suit?

I suspect this is just a way for them to save money and pretend it is for the climate.

Are they going to give back all the money they have collected in taxes etc to the people who paid it.

Of course not. Its a con. Dont spend the money you collected the tax for, but keep the money all the same. Going forward do not adjust the money you are collecting but now not spending on what it was collected for.

So if we stop building roads over here I would like to see where the money that was ringfenced for them has gone. Maybe give a refund to the people of Ireland since its not needed for the roads anymore.

I think there needs to be some clarity first.

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McGrath5

Roads are expensive to build and maintain, bar the M20 IMO we are done here with large scale road construction projects. Instead I would like to see that money go towards public transit projects but we don't exactly have a stellar record in that area.

Parachutes

It’s all part of the climate agenda to in effect, ban the widespread convention of private car ownership by the year 2030.

SupplyandDemandZone

No. We need an increase in roads and above all better quality roads.

end of the road

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118149901#Comment_118149901

everywhere is served by road, and realistically bar as mentioned apart from the m20 all the motor way that is needed is done.

so what increase is needed and where is this increase going to serve?

certainly local and some n roads need serious improvement but that's not an increase.

SupplyandDemandZone

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118150965#Comment_118150965

Well Dublin needed an Eastern bypass for one and that's now been canned thanks to Ryan. M50 needs serious upgrades/widening and some of the roads down the country are more akin to stuff iv'e travelled on in Africa on my off road motorbike. I'd say Dublin badly needs an outer ring road also.

listermint

Wales don't have the money to do any of the above. All of their EU funding is gone in various regions there are replacement funding to the tune of 1 percent.

Anyone who thinks this is part of a climate strategy lol. Its brexit, the coffers are running dry and they pissed an inordinately large amount of money to Tory donors and Friends and family. There is no money tree. Projects across the country will be curtailed or gone.

Let's PR this with climate strategy....

landofthetree

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118150992#Comment_118150992

They are still building infrastructure in Wales.

The South Wales Metro

https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/work-progresses-on-south-wales-metro-scheme-25-10-2021/

I know a few engineers who left Ireland to almost double their take home pay to work on it.

end of the road

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118150991#Comment_118150991

the eastern bypass hadn't enough traffic to justify it and the traffic that would have used it can be accommodated on existing roads.

an outer road as well as upgrading the m50 realistically would be a waste of money since the congestion would never actually be relieved and we would just end up building an outer outer road and an outer outer outer road etc.

cheaper to relieve the congestion via public transport improvements and better value for money as well.

roads down the country are as i mentioned a mix of n roads and local roads which do need improvement but they aren't increases.

end of the road

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118150992#Comment_118150992

100% correct, and it's only going to get worse.

and get worse is actually an understatement.

end of the road

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118151064#Comment_118151064

yes but only the bare bones bit of that will likely end up being done, as in the bit that has been committed to, the conversion of the valley lines to tram train operation and relevant works.

the rest of it, the more expansive parts, will more then likely not see the light of day unfortunately.

listermint

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118151064#Comment_118151064

Probably funded that part already. Cost more to halt it in payouts to the contractors than get the MVP up and running.

[Deleted User]

Wales has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world at about 1.3 and their population will be declining very soon. They probably have no need for new roads at this stage.

Ronald Binge Redux

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118151064#Comment_118151064

They’d be stuck designing PDF documents for the NTA anyway. Much better use of their talents when chunks of Official Ireland looks for any excuse never to build PT projects.

medoc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118150992#Comment_118150992

I’m just back from two weeks in Scotland with the car and I’d agree. The state of the roads up there are shocking. The surfaces of major motorways and trunk A roads is very very poor. Dodging potholes at 70mph on the M73 M74 A9 and M9 is unacceptable and dangerous. Also a lot of their A roads have very poor patched and potholed surfaces. Definitely a big deterioration in the past 5 years.

SeanW

I don't agree with some of the Brexit stuff. I've been to the UK a number of times since they voted leave, sometimes travelling by public transport sometimes having taken my car, and though I can't speak for Wales as a whole I'm very much impressed with how easy it is to get around either by public transport or by car. It's not unheard of for even provincial cities in England to have well developed Metro systems and good road transport if you need to drive. At Holyhead vs. Dublin Port for example there are much better onward connections by both rail and road, and may English airports are connected by various types of heavy and light rail transport systems to the regions they serve.

It's possible that at least in some parts of the UK, they largely have what they need in terms of infrastructure. Wales is also quite mountainous which may make road upgrades more costly than they might be elsewhere.

cgcsb

It's a freeze on new road building projects not a commitment to cease road building entirely. Largely down to lack of demand, lack of economic growth or funding from a tory exchequer.

Relative to Wales, Ireland is an economic superpower with bullish economic and population growth. There has to be some new roads to service new developments, you can't very well build new residential areas like Poolbeg West, Cherrywood etc without any access roads for example.

But certainly building roads or widening roads simply to solve capacity issues is a dead policy, gets you nowhere.

Some of our national primary routes and the majority of our national secondary routes are below minimum standards from a safety point of view. There is also a case for some motorways like the M20, M28 etc where they operate as inter urban roads or as port access.

Widening motorways and building second bypasses is out as a policy at this stage. Hasn't worked anywhere else.

afatbollix

But we are decarbonizing the car. We're all going electric soon in fact in 9 years' time you won't be able to buy a petrol car. With more and more people buying electric you might even say congestion is only going to get worse.

All the PR is for the environment but it's really about budgets.

veryangryman

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118183201#Comment_118183201

Oh god where to start...

Swords needed 2 bypasses. Good luck convincing anyone otherwise. Enfield, Kinnegad, Loughrea. I could go on.

Building/widening roads would solve capacity issues if good bus services and lanes were invested in same. Take the 25a from Lucan. Wider road with a bus lane allows the bus to fly into the city. The alternative of waiting a lifetime for a Luas line to be built there doesn't bear thinking of. Buses use the roads too. I want you and your similar thinking people to read that sentence again. It seems to go over your collective heads a lot.

end of the road

simple solution is to price cars off the roads that don't really need to use them, that way the buses can fly into the city without building more road space.

widening the roads and continuing to allow the ridiculous amount of car traffic into the cities is no longer financially viable, the traffic that can use alternatives has got to go.

D.L.R.

ROI built its motorways with zero intelligence, and beyond the motorways its developing world standard.

Wales motorway network is better designed. But it could use more rail (as could ROI which is far more car oriented).

Deregos.

Yeah, we should stop building roads, infact we should just stop building everything and none of us should ever do anything ever again . . . that'll sort out the environment.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118177797#Comment_118177797

Might have something to do with having 68.5 million people, and not 5.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118405380#Comment_118405380

Perhaps we should just let covid rip and reduce the population. That would be even better and avoid the pitfall of deciding who really needs a car and who's faking. How about euthanasia clinics - remove any boomers still around and save on future care and pointless consumption.

Don't you just love social engineering - the variety of problems you can solve is near limitless.

What a load of crazy nonsense!

It has been proven time and time again that building more roads doesn't reduce traffic congestion, it just induces more congestion. I never forget going to the US and counting 20 lanes on a road and the traffic was still bumper to bumper. Hell they have a 26 lane interstate and people on that road still complain of the congestion!!

We really don't want to be repeating the idiotic, car driven mistakes of the US.

I can't believe anyone here would look at a city like LA and say we want to live in a city like that, rather then somewhere like Amsterdam or Copenhagen!

We have built lots of motorways and have a very decent motorway network now. It needs a few extra bits like the M20. But overall the focus now has to be on building public transport infrastructure into and around our cities like Dart+, Metrolink, BusConnects, etc.

Capt'n Midnight

The latest section of widening the A465 is two years late and £100m overbudget.

Which is peanuts compared to the loss of funding because HS2 is budgeted as benefiting England and Wales.

A report by the Commons' Welsh affairs select committee said the Welsh government received "approximately £755m in Barnett consequentials" between 2015 and 2019 as result of DfT spending money on HS2.

HS2 will cost over £100Bn, so Wales will lose billions more in funding re-directed to it. Money that could be spent on improving the lines to Crewe otherwise Wales will be bypassed and be longer in travel time then the midlands.

Strumms

our population is increasing by tens of thousands a year and hundreds of thousands per decade…

when public transport is at a standard where it is an efficient, far reaching, punctual and a comfortable fit for purpose alternative to the private car great, then people will embrace leaving cars at home…

In cities such as Paris ( where I’ve lived ), Rome, Madrid… People do, I wouldn’t dream about owning a car… public transport both serving the city and suburbs is world class, punctual, comfortable, fast, regular, affordable and frequent.

we are being told to get out of cars or it’s being suggested without any sort of reliable and comprehensive public transport network to serve the demand of the additional transport needs of the population….

want people out of cars, have some way for them to get around… want people out of cars, spend the millions/billions of taxpayers money enabling it…

here, checking google maps, from where I live to a major public hospital on the south side….

29 minutes by car

1 hour 17 minutes by public transport.

By public transport I’d almost be in Kilkenny as fast as I’d get to Tallaght hospital. It would take me just 10 minutes extra I’m seeing to travel to Kilkenny…1 hour 27..

Over 165% more time required by public transport…. Right.

end of the road

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118409524#Comment_118409524

this is just ranting nonsense.

there is no social engineering going on here, simply improving efficiency and value for money.

it is just not good value for money to keep creating more and more road space because it simply keeps filling up while not solving any issues and increasing the costs to maintain it all.

as pointed ut, we already have the necessary trunk roads in the form of the motor ways and there are probably a couple of bits missing but once they get built then that's the lot.

it will then be time to do up the secondary roads but that will just be a proper resurfacing and removing dangerous bends where possible rather then any major building projects.

bb1234567

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118150991#Comment_118150991

No it doesn't need any of that because of the well established phenomenan of induced demand meaning you may as well burn the money on a pile. It's a waste with grave conseuqneces for the environment.

https://www.smartertransport.uk/does-building-more-roads-reduce-congestion/#:~:text=Typically%2C%20within%20five%20years%20after,similar%20to%20before%20the%20upgrade.&text=This%20is%20why%20widening%20roads,today%20in%20congestion%20actually%20want.

Widening roads has not once, never, reduced traffc congestion. You know what does reduce traffic congestion?Encouraging a more balanced modal split and provision of altnerative means of transport.

bb1234567

Austin will soon widen it's urban freeways to a whopping 20 (!!!) lanes! It's unreal that the existing twelve lanes still experience massive congestion that meant this expansion was needed , isn't it? When Dublin's M50 reaches 20 lanes then we know we will have made it, and none of us will ever experience traffic again in our lives.

https://usa.streetsblog.org/2020/03/02/op-ed-a-7-5b-boondoggle-advances-in-austin/

veryangryman

I for one can't wait until Dublin has a 20 lane M50

I used to be environmentally conscious. Ever since the lack of common sense of the past 10 years where non stop a45erape for using a car or heating a home I've just said fukcit. My most recent purchase of 1000 plastic straws while petty is satisfying to whip out when having a drink