N17 - Knock to Collooney [design & planning underway]

Are you suggesting that the new road will be SC?

Type 1 Single with a limited number of (maybe compact-GSJ) junctions will do just fine here - as @DumbBrunette says the traffic levels are very low, and safety, not capacity is the driving force behind the upgrade. If traffic does increase in future, it’s not very expensive to widen to 2+2 so long as any structures over are made wide enough (which I believe now have to be on all new primary Single Carriageway builds).

The junction with N5 seems a little wasteful when there’s already a new overbridge just a couple of hundred metres to the west.

The Tobercurry and Charlestown bypasses are the most justifiable sections of this project and align with government policies regarding making town centres more attractive, focusing development around existing settlements, etc.

Looking at the route, I think it would be better to reduce the scope of the project to south of Charlestown to north Tobercurry (basically the green and red sections). I think the Business Case for this would be much stronger and would be more likely to actually happen. The rest could be done as smaller online upgrades with short offline sections where necessary. I'd still be looking at 4 or 5km offline new build around Ballynacarrow though.

This is one of the issues with these massive planning undertakings, everything is wrapped up together but nothing can happen until the entire thing has run its course. That's 30km between Charlestown and Coolaney on ice for several years.

He highlighted that the dangerous junctions on the section between the airport and Knock also need to be addressed, and that could be done now.

I thought that part of the above linked article was interesting. There must be an intention to do works around the airport separately, which pressumably is why it is not really part of the scope. I think this approach should be taken on other sections too.

Yeah, it’s odd that on one hand he’s complaining that local residents are having to face the prospect of compulsory purchases again despite being assurance last time; but then on the other hand he wants this road to be a motorway - an option that would have huge impact on local farmers, and would require far more CPOs.

Populists like this guy rely on getting listeners angry, so they don’t have time to actually think things through.

However, he’s still right about the first point: on the last construction here, the State bought extra land at the current N17/n5 junction to allow for a future junction expansion, and the current junction already contains a bridge over N5. I cannot see the reason for rebuilding a new bridge structure barely one kilometre east of where one sits now. (There is another patch of state land just East of the corridor, but I think that this has nothing to do with the road)

(You can find publicly-owned land on the Land Development Agency’s Map, here: Map - LDA )

I assume that the additional lands bought which he refers to are those to the east. The state ownership at the existing junction is only really enough for the junction as is, not for a future junction expansion.

The picture on that article is a weird mistake... looks like the whole thing has been drawn 20km north of where it really is.

n17knockcollooney.ie has the correct map, and you can see there that the new road will run from the N4 at Collooney, south of Sligo, to the existing N17 at Knock.. it doesn't bypass Sligo at all.