N17 - Knock to Collooney [design & planning underway]

Im puzzled by all this. Does anyone know exactly what has happened here? How was the existing bridge over the N5 deemed suitable for a future N17 when it opened in 2007 but now it seems its in the wrong place?

Assuming that the LDA state ownership maps is accurate, and what yer man Murray said is true, then the additional land bought is not at the existing junction. The article says "Lavey would be the connection point for the N5 onto a new N17" not that the existing junction would be upgraded.

There would be no need for longer merges from N17 onto the N5 unless the N5 itself was being reengineered. Traffic joining from even an upgraded N17 would still have to stop and wait for an appropriate opportunity to join the N5. This is the case with DC too, as highlighted several times recently in the N22 thread. Even with a new junction at a different location, this would almost certainly still be the case.

You'd have to wonder if Mulvey from Sligo has any idea of the process of designing and building such a road (as Cathaoirleach of Sligo County Council you'd hope he would know the basics). He said “The concerns of the farmers and small businesses along the planned route should be taken on board before the final contracts are signed,” and “I suggest that we examine the concerns of communities along the N5 project in Mayo and see what can be learned from them. If this means a delay of 2 or 3 months in starting the project , so be it". We are several years away from final contracts are signed! There is a public consultation happening right now to hear the concerns of the farmers and small businesses along the planned route. What does he think would happen in a 2 or 3 month delay that isn't already happening? It won't affect the actual start date anyway as it is as yet unknown.

My reply wasn't directly to you and hence why I brought up what Mulvey said, not that I thought that you were talking about what he said.

I was just making the point that the information we have suggests the plan was always for a new junction, not to upgrade the existing one. Obviously the project being designed now can determine whether or not to use the existing junction, regardless of the thinking in the past.

If the plan was always for a new junction and bridge then that's fair enough I suppose. The existing bridge wouldn't have involved much land aquisation so they just built it to get the existing N17 across the new N5 road.

Ugh killjoy. Dont let the planners hear ya. Everything is bloody watered down these days. Demand a Motorway to get 2+2.

Thats fair enough but its been the scene of many accidents from minor closures or delays upto and including one fatality

While it is very disappointing, the mock-outrage of the Shinners to any of these announcements is nauseating. I heard Mayo Sinn Fein TD Rose Conway-Walsh roaring on the radio recently at a Green party politician about the Western Rail Corridor something like: When are you going to build it? When? When?

Yeah, like the Shinners are going to build the Western Rail Corridor, the Atlantic Road Corridor, a hundred thousand houses, new elective public hospitals etc. etc. and all within the first week 🙄

This thread is just going about three or four directions at once. Can someone just start a "the Greens are the cause of everything bad" thread? It'll be a lot easier.

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Is this road project being shelved not indicative of the preferences of the current Minister for Transport, also the green party leader?

Hey, I agree it looks wrong here Marno. 100%. If it's true that the minister is waving his hand to stall a project like this it's bad on many levels.

But you know we've been here so many times on different threads now that I'm after getting sceptical.

Have many road projects listed in the NDP been shelved? Seems a strange decision with all the talk the last few weeks of huge exchequer returns. As someone has mentioned the road from Cooloney to Charlestown badly needs upgrading so its difficult to understand the decision.

Like Pascal O'Donoghue, Minister for Finance Michael McGrath is quite conservative and seems to favour putting the bulk of the large corporate returns away rather than spending it but that hardly extends to shelving already planned NDP projects?

That's pretty much my synopsis too. I've no idea whether Ryan or the Greens put the kybosh on this one. They might have, but it's not yet clear to me.

Meanwhile we have good visibility of parties point-scoring by saying "the greens are out to get you". Absolutely not blaming people in this thread by the way, I just think the reporting is very poor in this area, repeating whatever politicians say.

I'm reading so much about how the greens are ruining roads projects, farms, electricity prices etc. It'll be very interesting, like Brexit, to see who gets the blame if/when they're out of power. The whole politicial media schtick is really annoying, how they try and rile people up for a few votes.

If funding was given to MCC and SCC to progress certain sections of the N17, this could actually be a good thing. It would allow the possibility of some work actually getting done in the short to medium term, which was impossible with a 50km, €X00m project. A Charlestown bypass should be progressed on its own along with targeted online improvements which can be done under Part 8.

Both the N52 in Westmeath and the N55 in Cavan have seen huge improvements over the last 10 years, we need more of this ongoing improvement approach which can actually result in getting something done. These huge projects are too unwieldy and require massive funding and take 10+ years with no physical works to show for it.

The section from Ballinacarrow to Curry is irredeemably terrible. It’s 30 years since the sections from Collooney to Ballinacarrow and Curry to Charlestown were completed. Nothing has been done since. It’s 25km of narrow single lane road with no hard shoulder and littered with dangerous junctions. The possibility of maybe doing bits and pieces at some point in the medium term is a pathetic place to be after so many years.

If Eamon Ryan hasn’t put the kybosh on it, he should probably clarify his position. While the usual suspects will attack him, the source of people’s ire is a letter from the Chief Executive of Sligo Count Council to his counterpart in Mayo in which he said that Minister Ryan had said that ‘there would be no funding available for the scheme for many years’. So either he is being misrepresented or he did say that. Either way, people deserve a straight answer because passing off the criticism as politicking by SF and parish pump local councillors isn’t fair if he has, in fact, stymied the project for the foreseeable.

If he has legitimate cause to halt the project, let them be known. And if it is purely his own personal preference and he can’t back that up with facts and figures, let that be known too. Something that people being led to believe was in the process of being fixed being suddenly knocked on the head deserves an answer.

Thats the thing - this section of road is bad not because of the towns and villages it runs through, but because the parts between towns are so godawful.

Bypasses wouldnt fix a thing, would they even shave 2/3 minutes off journey times?

Consensus is one thing Marno, but do we have any clarity? It seems to be a complete vacuum of information still?

If the minister isn't doing a solo run, then he certainly isn't doing anything to quell the impression that he's doing a solo run. I wouldn't be happy with schemes going ahead based on a ministerial whim, let alone schemes getting canned on a ministerial whim.