N4 - Mullingar to Rooskey [route options published]

So, what about that N4, eh? I hear they’re planning on doing some work to it, possibly between Mullingar and Rooskey.

Some obvious survey work going on along the route on Friday. Could have been for fibre rather than the road, but there was no branding on the vehicles like there usually is for NBI/Eir!

I think you are misrepresenting the current transport policy there. Safety is pretty much the only ground on which interurban upgrades are prioritised.

You mean apart from the M1, M2, M3 and M4, there isn't a single motorway in the Republic north of the M6!? That's a nonsense argument.

Eamon Ryan won't make a blind bit of different whether Mullingar - Longford is motorway or not. There are criteria which determine road type and approve the project to proceed to the next phase against certain benchmarks. There is very little chance of the cost of a motorway being approved in this case, regardless of who the minister is. Motorway would also create unnecessary planning difficulties and delays.

The M17 would disagree with you there - it is (just) north of the M4.

^^ I can easily imagine someone else making up exactly opposite argument. I mean: it is not "there's no motorway over there because there's low population density", but rather "there's low population density over there due to lack of motorways (and other transport infrastructure)".

I'm aware of some flaws in that logic, but still... ;-)

This project, and many others, crawling along was inevitable given the ridiculous policy now of designing many massive projects and spending next to nothing on actual construction. There are billions of Euro worth of projects which will all be looking for a share of the few hundred million budget each year for the second half of this decade. It is obvious that only some will go to construction while others are long-fingered until more funding is available.

This project is a dead cert for the long finger given traffic volumes, the cost of the project and the two main towns it bypasses are already bypassed. Smaller projects are the only way to advance things on a road like this. The existing road isn't terrible, 10km new road from east of Bunbrosna to west of Rathowen would solve most of the problems on the eastern side of Longford town. A bypass of Newtownforbes is needed on the western side but I think that should be looked at in combination with a N5 Termonbarry bypass.

It is ridiculous to be designing projects which you don't even have the money to design, which is exactly what is happening here. They absolutely don't do that anywhere else. The solution is properly profiled and realistic spending plans and only progressing that which can realistically be delivered in the foreseeable future.

To get around the problem of limited funding but lots of projects needing funding, we are drip feeding funding to to keep projects on lists to keep people satisfied. They will crawl along the planning process for the rest of the decade with nothing meaningful happening.

Next year, we will likely spend more on designing road projects than actual construction. That would absolutely be ridiculous. It just creates a bigger backlog of projects looking for increased but still limited funding later. It is likely that some of these designed projects will sit on the shelf waiting for hundreds of millions of funding to be made available for so long that they will become out of date, permissions expire and have to be designed again. It has happened before. The other risk is that the mega project doesn't pass PSC gateways and the really necessary part of the project gets dragged down by the nice to have parts.

The way to avoid that would be to phase the project, basically just build a part of it for which absolutely needs to be done and is small enough to fit within funding envelopes. If it ends up like that, it would have been better to have pursued that part of the project earlier as a standalone.

Your comparison to having to upgrade the junctions on the M50 is in no way relevant. There is no way that 40km of new N4 is going to be built in one go anyway. The design now will likely be split at points where it touches the existing N4, no reason those sections couldn't be looked at separately while still allowing for further construction later. The initial part of the M18 finished at a junction with an extra bit of motorway built so the future section was just a continuation of that. Budget has to be one of the main considerations, this project is already falling victim to budget limitations and it is only looking for relatively small amounts of funding now!

The Moone Bypass got 9 years (and 9 days - both openings are recent enough to have online articles about them) as being the N9 at least.

The N4 Enfield Relief Road had under 3 years! Kinnegad's N6-only relief road got 7.

Any movement on this project?

All I found was this article:

That €100 M underspend also includes a pile of public transport and active transport projects that aren’t moving. There seems to be a reluctance to spend money from the current Minister, regardless of purpose.

I thought the route was already selected.

https://www.westmeathexaminer.ie/2024/05/08/route-selection-for-n4-upgrade-can-go-ahead/

The selection of the route for the N4 Mullingar to
Longford upgrade can now go ahead, following an allocation of €1.4m. At a
meeting last week, members of Westmeath County Council welcomed the
allocation.

They were told that the draft documentation
on the route selection is being finalised to allow the consultation
process to commence. If more funds are available, the detailed design
process can begin.

The allocation is included in the €12.3m
allocated for national roads and greenways in the county. It includes
€4.7m for improvements, €5.5m for greenways, and €543,634 for
maintenance.

National Transport Authority grants of €4.5m
have also been announced for various projects in the county; the biggest
is Saunders Bridge in Mullingar, which is getting over €1.2m, and next
are Athlone footpath and cycleway improvements for six strategic routes
on €730,000.

The allocation for regional and local roads
is reduced, at €13.5m, but presenting the figures to the council, Jimmy
Dalton, head of finance, said that if non-recurring specific improvement
grants are taken out, they are generally in line.

Mr Dalton pointed out that the allocations
will be supplemented as the year progresses and further allocations will
be received under the TII national road pavement improvement and
maintenance programmes.