N5 - Ballaghaderreen to Scramoge [construction to commence shortly]

Engineering jobs being advertised with a start date in April, presumably that's when the works will get into full swing as the ground will have dried out.

Great stuff. Looks like its kicked off already

Do we know when its going to be finished...or planned to be?

Just moving in area....and wondering if that will drive the prices down or up (property)

I live 5 min away...but renting now and going to buy... hopefully

Think it was 4 years from the signing of contracts last year, but I wouldn't be shocked if it was open around this time three years.

A few updates on this scheme. For starters, the first newsletter is out. It even mentions a Bugatti Veyron!

The contractor has also provided a defibrillator for public use:

And predictably, a local election candidate is making up safety problems in an effort to appear relevant:

A town that dies after a bypass is a town that was dying anyway.

Strokestown should have enough going for it if the local politicians and committees there are any ways competent. But Frenchpark, Tulsk and Bellanagare don't look like they could get much worse anyway.

In my experience, people just want to get through places like these, and only stop if it's absolutely necessary (toilet, fuel, etc). Meanwhile, locals are put off from going anywhere near the town because of the heavy through traffic.

Really what the councillor should be asking for is funding to turn these towns' main streets back into a local streets, and undo decades of works that changed them into HGV routes.

Quoting myself from last year, with details of active travel schemes planned for the bypassed towns. Presumably these will include some public realm improvements etc that will make the towns more attractive places to visit.

Potentially a separate thread topic but a great opportunity for Strokestown to reimagine itself after the bypass.

Wow, that’s pretty depressing stuff! On the second widest street in Ireland (their claim), pedestrians gain 60cm (only on one side) but now have to share the footpath with cyclists. Clearly there’s not enough space to split them and produce a safer and more pleasant route for both.

Why is that? Because the road will still be 6.5m wide. In their own words, “operation of the road will remain as per the current usage”. DMURS says that local streets (which this should be when the bypass opens) should be 5 to 5.5m wide. 6.5m wide roads are for heavily trafficked routes.

The trees will be retained unless they get in the way of parking - they’ll be nuked for that crime.

The roundabout will be improved but not removed. Can’t get in the way of keeping traffic flowing.

Theres no mention of continuous footpaths at side road crossings, just “ramped uncontrolled crossing” although I may be mistaken on that one.

The only positive improvement I can see is the addition of some zebra crossings but on road that is 6.5m wide, I suspect they won’t be used by the very young, very old or vulnerable pedestrians.

The design brief for this was clearly along the lines of: tidy the town up, don’t make it any harder for people to drive or park and do the bare minimum to tick the ‘active travel’ box so we might get some NTA funding.

The locals were up for the redevelopment initially, but ended up mostly against the finished design for a couple of main reasons.

The parking spaces that would be lost were right around the centre of the town, where they are most useful for the shops. More spots lost up where parents drop off/ collect kids from the schools as well. Ros CoCo indicated off street parking could be developed in the future, but there is not really anywhere suitable in the centre of the town. Also, why not make it part of the development now, would go a long way to allaying fears over it never getting done even if a magical space appeared for it.

Some small grass areas and planters are to be installed on some of those parking spots, and the local tidy town committee weren't too happy to find out they would be responsible for maintaining them without any prior consultation.

Parking was to be removed off one side of Elphin St /R368 altogether, with a cycle path going in instead to connect the town out to the new main roundabout to the N4. This would have been the biggest disaster of all, restricting parking near the local church and funeral home. Plenty of people living on that street too, and no plans provided as to where they could park. This part of the scheme I believe has now been dropped or scaled back and the parking remains.

About the only proposal that everyone does agree on is the relocation of the bus stops from where they are on Bridge St, as you come off the roundabout heading to Dublin, up onto Church St where the width of that street is far more suitable and safe. The town has looked for the stops to be moved for years. I'd wager anyone on the May to Dublin weekly commute has been held up by a bus here a few time a year.

The other end of the wide streets to the gates of Strokestown Park House is also to have the parking broken up, making what is a defacto plaza for events in the town, e.g Xmas market, Easter parade review stand, difficult to host in the future.

The development proposal just comes across as a box ticking exercise to say money was spent on the town after bypassing, rather than making any meaningful impact to attracting new businesses to the town.

Ros Co.co haven't a great track record in this area lately, looking at the mess they made of the Square in Roscommon Town, the second attempt in five years at maximising that space, just finished, hasn't won many hearts over either from what I gather.

Any plans for the major redevelopment of the public spaces of any town is always going to have pro's and cons, but there were far too many issues with it for the majority of the town locals to get behind it, especially when the CoCo wouldn't engage in a meaningful way with them to find some compromises.

You could park at least 3 cars deep between the road and the footpath down Church St and Bawn St