N5 - Ballaghaderreen to Scramoge [underway]

Reopening delayed until Friday the 13th.

What could go wrong?

That's a pathetic excuse for a public realm improvement. Results from a car dominated mindset and a fear of change amongst the locals. The majority of funding should withdrawn and diverted into towns that are serious about the whole towns first ethos.

It's probably a Dublin based firm designing this

"Exposed Aggregate concrete"

I recently saw this finish in the Ballaghadreen town realm 'upgrade' works.
It looks awful and feels gritty and totally unfinished surface to walk on. Dull, dirty, porous, cheap and unattractive like old 1950s concrete. How any architect thought this would enhance the urban environment is beyond me, can only assume it's a cost saving material?

While the scheme isn't finished and will include planting, new alignments, kerbing and many other welcome traffic management changes, I felt sad for the towns people hoping this multi-million facelift will fix some of the dereliction, they will be very disappointed aesthetically if this is outside their door.

Most these face lifts like the one in Ballaghaderreen too are just lipstick on a pig. These towns are dying or almost dead. They need to be made more attractive to businesses which will increase the footfall

I have heard of similar issues in another town which has had a plan approved to improve the reasonably wide Main Street for pedestrians and where now some local gombeen has started to whip up opposition because the plan involves removing car spaces directly from the Main Street whilst providing the same amount of car spaces in a car park almost adjacent to it.

Some new drone footage of the project.

I hear from one of machine operators that progress is running 8 months ahead of schedule.

Hopefully that level of progress will continue. Things must really be going to plan. Credit to contractors.

I'd say the contractor is progressing largely as they expected but the employer had set an unnecessarily long timeframe for the works.

Here are images from a few days ago off the Copernicus browser website.

This is at the Scramogue tie in off the N5.

The shaded green area hasn't been touched much yet, probably will be late into the project.

The two areas marked in blue are where the bridges are needed, don't look like they have started them yet, I must drive by as best I can at the weekend and have a look.

The red Circle is where the roundabout for the main link into Strokestown will be, though any traffic from Dublin to there will likely still head in the old road.

This is the 10/11km stretch from that roundabout for Strokestown (bottom right) to the roundabout on the N61 Roscommon -Boyle road (top left in red). I can't for the life of me figure out why they haven't put a flyover with slips here, especially when they put one on the R368 Strokestown -Elphin road (in yellow). The N61 is down for upgrading along the full length of the county by Roscommon Co Co as a development artery for the county, and the topography of where the roundabout is would have helped such a junction.

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this is from The N61 rounabout (in red) to Bellanagare.

The yellow circle is an offline roundabout at Shankhill cross into Elphin, they are working on this at the moment as well, anyone who uses that road off the N61 into Elphin, should be aware it will be closed for a few months shortly.

A lot of Bog ground here, but this is the section they hit first.

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Lastly, this is from Bellanagre to the Ballaghaderreen bypass/ N5.

Very sad. Hopefully the new road will put an end to trucks going through Frenchpark and the other towns on the route.

No need in this case thankfully. Trucks / Buses etc would have to go out of their way to pass through Frenchpark, Ballinagare or Tulsk once the new road is open and unless they were doing a delivery in those areas they will have no need to. Would just add massive time and inconvenience to their journeys.

The locals will not know themselves when that day comes. Those villages will become ghost towns overnight.

TII confirming that project completion is on track for 2027 Q3.

https://www.con-telegraph.ie/2025/05/06/n5-project-on-track-for-2027-opening-bringing-big-benefits-to-mayo/?fbclid=IwQ0xDSwKGz2djbGNrAobPKGV4dG4DYWVtAjExAAEeu0FHgIBo5Ah6IHvBr4ScPIfCCTkK0TD_Z0CV7Ezv2P4LKbf3Lo59doZpyTA_aem_E_jevV2shr16j7_EVakSrg