Over €100 billion in road improvements needed. Can we do it by 2050?

marmurr1916 · 05-01-2010 05:39PM #1

Happy New Year to all - hope everyone had a good Xmas.

Now that we've come through the first decade of the 21st century (where are the damn hover cars...), maybe it's time to look back at road infrastructure achievements (and failures) in Ireland and set out some tentative plans for the future.

So far, Irish roads, especially national primary routes, have improved dramatically although a lot more work needs to be done to bring all these routes up to prevailing western European standards.

There have been less dramatic improvements in surface quality and signposting on many national secondary and regional roads, with the odd compeletely improved section (eg. Mullingar bypass, Waterford city 'ring road')on some of these roads.

Finally, the signposting of local roads (even if it's only with route numbers) is a welcome step forward and, if combined with satnav/postcodes, should make most rural addresses pretty easy to find in the near future.

However, there are far too many roads, of all types, which are still not up to scratch: poor surfaces, poor alignment, inadequate capacity, lack of safe overtaking opportunities, poor road-marking, poor signposting, lack of rest areas, with considerable variations between local authorities.

If all Irish roads were improved to the best standards prevailing in western Europe, it would cost a huge amount, over €100 billion by my rough calculations.

There are approximately 2,700 km of national primary routes, about 2,700 kms of national secondary roads, 11,900 kms of regional roads and almost 79,000 kms of local roads in Ireland. About 1,600 km of national primary routes will be of excellent standard by the end of this year, with about 300 km of national secondary routes up to this standard, leaving about 4,000 km of national routes needing upgrades.

The total cost of improving 4,000 km of national primary and national secondary roads would be €40,000,000,000 (€40 billion) assuming an average cost of €10 million per kilometre.

The total cost of improving 3,200 km of important regional roads (regional primary roads - see below) would be €16 billion assuming an average cost of €5 million per kilometre.

The total cost of imprioving the remaining 8,700 km of regional roads would be €21.75 billion assuming an average expenditure of €2.5 million per kilometre.

The total cost of improving 50,000 km of local roads (excluding existing improved local roads and local tertiary roads) would be about €25 billion assuming an average expenditure of €0.5 million per kilometre.

The total overall cost would be €102.75 billion!

That sounds like a lot but it averages out at just over €2.5 billion per year over the next 40 years at today's prices.

Given that just under €2 billion was spent on roads in 2009 (see http://debates.oireachtas.ie/DDebate.aspx?F=TRS20090616.xml&Ex=All&Page=2), then it should be possible to increase spending gradually to the required levels once the economy improves.

Here are a few improvements that need to be implemented before Ireland can claim to have a truly excellent road network.

1. Regional roads and local roads should come under the authority of the National Roads Authority which should become more like Northern Ireland's Roads Service. The NRA could then be divided into regions, with each region having responsibility for all national, regional and local roads in its area.

2. There should be clearly defined, legally enforceably minimum national standards for all features of roads: safety standards, crash-barriers, surfacing, alignment, linging, marking, junction layout, signposting, minimum lane widths etc. The NRA should set these standards in conjuction with the Road Safety Authority and other relevant agencies (Gardai etc) and benchmark them against standards set by other national roads authorities within the EU and globally with a legally-binding requirement to meet the best international standards.

The NRA should be required by law to to improve all roads under its control to the standards appropriate for each road type. Failure to do so would result in sanctions for the responsible personnel, including cuts in salary and possible dismissal. Achieving improvements in excess of the minimun standards would lead to performance-related bonuses.

3. The seven largest urban areas on the island of Ireland (Dublin, Belfast, Cork, Derry, Galway, Limerick, Waterford) should be linked to each other by roads of motorway/HQDC standard.

The Dublin-Belfast route is almost completed to this standard, with the Dublin-Galway route already completed. The remaining routes to/from Dublin will be completed this year, with the exception of Dublin-Derry. Hopefully construction on the A5 HQDC will begin this year/early next year and the N2/N33 from the border to the M1 will be upgraded to HQDC.

The Atlantic Corridor will be partially completed to this standard (from Limerick to north of Gort) this year and soon after to the north of Tuam.

It's important that the M20 be started and that the N17/N15 from Tuam to Lifford/Strabane be upgraded asap.

Finally, the N25 and N24 routes will eventually need to be upgraded to link Waterford to Cork and Limerick, as will the A6 from Derry towards Belfast.

If Ireland had a proper long-term development strategy, we'd be taking planning and taxation measures to encourage future development and population growth almost exclusively in those seven areas, hence the need by mid-century (2050) for HQDC/motorway standard roads between them.

All the routes connecting Dublin to these cities will be completed this year, with the exception of the Dublin-Derry route.

The relatively short upgrade to the N33/N2 required to link to the A5 HQDC should be given priority and planned for completion by 2015 at the latest.

The Atlantic Corridor from Derry to Cork should also be completed to HQDC/motorway standard by 2015.

The remaining routes (Cork-Waterford, Limerick-Waterford, Derry-Belfast) should by upgraded by 2025.

4. All motorways should have adequate motorway service areas, emergency phones, VMS and their junctions with other motorways and with national primary routes should be free-flow junctions where possible.

5. All national primary routes should be divided (i.e. either motorway, HQDC or 2+2) with Grade Separated Junctions for all junctions with other national primary routes, national secondary routes and regional roads.

6. All national secondary routes should be built to at least WS2 standard (with climbing lanes where necessary) with adequate land-take to allow for future upgrades to 2+2. Overbridges/underpasses should be built to a sufficient width to allow for future upgrades to 2+2.

7. All regional roads should be classified as either regional primary, regional secondary or regional tertiary routes (as local roads are at present), depending on AADT counts, strategic importance etc. This classification would not be reflected in route numbers/signposting, but would be used for administrative purposes by the NRA.

8. All regional primary roads should be upgraded to WS2 standard, with bypasses of villages/towns along their routes and some DC sections where necessary on busy urban routes.

9. All regional secondary roads should be upgraded to S2 standard with a minimum carriageway width of 7.5 metres, with hard shoulders and climbing lanes where necessary.

10. All other roads (regional tertiary roads and all local roads) should meet minimum national standards (see 2.) for surfacing, alignment, lining, marking, junction layout, signposting. widths etc.

Given the current economic climate it's unlikely that most of these improvements will happen for the foreseeable future.

However, it makes immediate sense to give the NRA control over all public roads and turn it into a body with a similar remit to NI's Roads Service.

This would save money because it would reduce administration, personnel and material costs and allow the NRA to set consistent national standards for all road types.

The savings made could be put towards improving non-national roads which in most cases require resurfacing, (re)lining, (re)marking and improved signposting to bring them up to an excellent standard.

Assuming an average cost of €0.5million per 1 km, it should be possible to improve 643 km of mainly local roads per year, based on the €321.5 million in capital funding for non-national roads in 2009.

In fact, with the savings generated by transferring control to the NRA, it might be possible to improve well over 643 km of local roads for this amount of money - possibly up to 20% more?

Combined with the ongoing improvements to national primary routes (which will all hopefully be of excellent standard by 2025 at the latest), this would mean that most of Ireland's roads could be of the highest standards by mid-century.

Lot's to think about - the €100 billion+ price tag seems like a lot, but it's only (!) €2.5 billion per year over 40 years.

Given that we spent almost €2 billion on roads in 2009, we should be able to afford an annual average of €2.5 billion on roads up to 2050, assuming the economy improves over the next few years.

fricatus · 06-01-2010 01:21AM

Absolutely top drawer post. It should be the mission statement of the DoT and maybe also the Department of Environment, Heritage and Local Government.

marmurr1916 wrote: »

If Ireland had a proper long-term development strategy, we'd be taking planning and taxation measures to encourage future development and population growth almost exclusively in those seven areas, hence the need by mid-century (2050) for HQDC/motorway standard roads between them.

There's so much to talk about from your post, but it is this bit that interests me. Two points:

1. Our multi-seat constituency system mitigates against this sort of approach and ultimately will need to be changed if this vision is to be realised.

Just an example: the IDA in the South East came in for huge criticism early in the '90s, with accusations of "everything going to Waterford". I seem to remember the Wexford TDs Brendan Howlin and Ivan Yates being in the vanguard of this. What they failed to see was that commercial development in Waterford would provide direct benefit (i.e. jobs) to Wexford, especially people living in and around New Ross, and indirect benefit in terms of commercial opportunities more widely within the constituency. The pattern is repeated all over the country. As long as our political constituencies are aligned with the GAA teams we support, we will continue to be blinkered.

2. We regularly read predictions like "housing for 300,000 needed in Dublin over the next 10 years" (or at least we used to before the credit crunch :rolleyes:), but whereas an extra 300,000 people in Dublin would have comparatively little impact on the city's commercial, social and cultural offerings, the same number of people, if attracted to the other cities would have a huge effect on their ability to attract mobile foreign investment - think how much more attractive to employers Galway and Waterford would be with 120k and 100k populations respectively.

Unfortunately, this country is basically run for the benefit of powerful interests in Dublin. I mean that as distinct from being run for the benefit of Dubliners. Most of the rezoning and over-development of the Celtic Tiger years involved a small cabal of Dublin landowners with connections, and all the decisions supporting development of their land (e.g. the location of jobs, shopping centres, etc.) were taken with a view to maximising the return on these land holdings. Contrast that with the shoddy treatment of your average Dubliner who has to endure traffic chaos, overpriced housing, poor public transport, etc.

The country needs a proper strategic planning regime, and it needs to be separated from politics. Politics, in turn, needs to be separated from powerful interests. (Yeah, I know... dream on!)

NFD100 · 06-01-2010 09:46AM

Excellent top post, couldn't agree more!

murphaph · 06-01-2010 11:01AM

fricatus wrote: »

<snip>

I agree that our political system leads to paralysis but it's not because of a load of wealthy lads in Dublin pulling the strings. These wealthy landowners exist all over Ireland. The system as it currently stands does nothing to encourage urbanisation and a move away from the rural way of life which simply cannot deliver jobs in quantity.

We need to actually implement the NSP and develop the towns and cities therein and basically ignore the rest, save for routine maintenance. This won't happen so long as Irish people believe it's their birthright to a job within 100 yards of where they were born. We went from mass emmigration for decades to this silly situation and mindset. Perhaps this dose of recession is needed to display that villages in the back end of nowhere are NOT suitable places to develop big industry and hence will never deliver jobs and so people should consider a move to a city in Ireland, before having to move to a city in the United States!

Aidan1 · 06-01-2010 11:22AM

And to link Murphs post with the OP, amongst the problems we have with our road network is that we have a very dense road network in rural areas, which means that LAs spend a lot just maintaining the existing network, a lot of which is very seldom used, rather than upgrading the important links which are of economic importance. This road network is a legacy of a population explosion in the early 19th century, and was cemented (literally) by the land reforms of the late 19th century, and by the power of the newly landed peasantry in the 20th. The only purpose much of it serves is to soak up resources, and to give people access to new sites on which to build one off rural houses. On that basis, spending billions upgrading every rural road in this country would be an absolute waste of money, money that would be much better spent on modern infrastructure rather than propping up old stuff. The Finnish solution has lessons here - a lot of their rural roads are not metalled, they're just graded a couple of times a year.

This very much part of the same political culture of distributionism at all costs - 'everywhere has to get something, therefore nowhere gets enough for it to be actually effective'. This is categorically not a 'Dublin vs Everywhere else" - its an urban rural divide, which actively militates against the creation of well planned urban centred regions, which have a critical mass of population, services and infrastructure. Moreover, and without picking on anyone, even focusing development on the 5 cities in the State is probably two centres too many in a country of our size. On that basis, the NSS is best regarded as a fudge, earlier drafts of the document were better, but it got watered down substantially. However, it's the best Spatial Planning Strategy any Govt here ever adopted (because it's the only one); it'd be great if it were actually adhered to.

murphaph · 06-01-2010 12:13PM

The Australians and Americans also just grade many rural roads a couple of times a year. Metalling every boreen is a really stupid idea and as you say Aidan, just opens up more of rural Ireland for development (destruction by another name really). If boreens serving a few dozen trips a day were unmetalled, they'd be LOT less attractive to live along and no harm. In reality, why should urban dwellers subsidise this sort of lifestyle choice anyway....if people want to live in a one off house, they should pay the real costs associated with it and if they want their boreen metalled, then the local residents should pay for it. Urban dwellers pay over and above the real cost for their 'bit' of metalled road in front of their house, flat etc.

Aidan1 · 06-01-2010 12:27PM

Agree completely. Moreover, if the roads were graded regularly, they'd actually have a better surface than many poorly maintained tarmac roads.

And before the accusations of an anti rural bias begin to land, I should point out that I grew up down one such boreen, living in a one off rural house (well, actually at the end of a 1.8km linear string of bungalows) built in the 1970s outside a small village in Co Cork.

marmurr1916 · 06-01-2010 03:49PM

Great replies everybody! I'm glad that there seems to be a consensus that the pattern of development in Ireland is unsustainable.

IMO, we need to implement planning and taxation policies which favour development in the five largest urban centres (Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway, Waterford) within the state.

We also need to co-operate with Northern Ireland to try and ensure an all-Ireland approach to planning and development.

For starters, I would like to see the creation of a Greater Dublin Authority (GDA), incorporating Dublin City Council, Fingal Co. Council, South Dublin Co. Council, Dun Laoighaire-Rathdown Co. Council and adjacent built-up areas (eg. Bray, Clonee) in adjoining counties.

This would ensure that the entire built-up area (plus some existing semi-rural areas) of the greater Dublin conurbation would be under the control of one local authority.

The GDA could be sub-divided into boroughs (along the lines of London or New York) with responsibility for purely local issues.

We also need to extend the boundaries of most other city councils (possibly with the exception of Galway) so that the full built-up area, plus some surrounding land for future development, is under the control of one local authority.

For example, Cork City Council controls an area with a population of about 120,000 people.

However, there are many suburbs immediately adjacent to the city (eg: Douglas) or in very close proximity (eg: Ballincollig) which, although part of the city in reality, are still under the control of Cork County Council.

Areas such as this, and their equivalents in Galway, Limerick and Waterford, should be brought under the control of the relevant city council.

We could also do with expanding the boundaries of town councils: towns such as Ennis and Dundalk have grown rapidly over the past 15 years or so but their council boundaries haven't been expanded.

An integrated tax and planning regime which made it easier to get planning permission for developments within the five cities but harder in the rest of the country would be of great benefit.

We also need to ensure that each of these cities has excellent transport and other infrastructure (including very high-speed broadband) and that each city has at least one university to help attract employers.

Much of the infrastructure is already in place or will be soon.

The completion of the Atlantic Corridor roads, the upgrading of Waterford IT to a university, the devlopment of very high-speed broadband networks and the development of better rail links between these cities would almost finish the infrastructural work needed.

After that, it's a question of introducing the tax and planning regime to incentivise development in these cities and to discourage development outside of them.

Unfortunately, as has been pointed out, Ireland's political system mitigates against the adoption of a sensible national development strategy along these lines.

The competition amongst TDs to get a slice of the pie for their constituency means that every community, no matter how small, demands a level of public infrastructure and public service provision which is unsustainable in the long-term and which means that resources are spread too thinly.

The National Spatial Strategy, with its multiplicity of 'hubs' and 'gateways' is an example of what our political system leads to.

The replacement of our current system of PR with a regional (or better, a national) list system would reduce the level of clientelism in the Irish political system and allow more coherent, truly national, development strategies to be implemented.

This type of strategy is going to become necessary as the century progresses, since Ireland will inevitably be drawn into legally-binding commitments on CO2 reduction and other environmental measures.

We won't be able to meet these legally-binding commitments without a fundamental change to our culture, political and otherwise, and a recognition that the type of scattered development (exemplified by the 1.8 km stretch of 'rural' housing as mentioned by Aidan1 above) we currently practice is unsustainable.

Without the necessary changes, Ireland's environment will become increasingly damaged and its economy will never perform optimally.

These changes will require commitments from all the major political parties and, for the change to a list system of PR, a referendum in which Irish voters recognise that our political system is no longer adequate.

In the meantime, we need to develop a proper national planning and development strategy and we need to ditch the current flawed National Spatial Strategy.

The revised national strategy should include a national landscape strategy which provides a similar degree of protection (with consequent planning and development restrictions) for much of our rural landscape as that provided by the UK's national parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONBs):

The Irish model of national parks is similar to the US model: national parks are reserves which have no permanent inhabitants.

However, the UK model of national parks is more flexible and their national parks have permanent inhabitants, even incorporating towns and villages.

There are strigent planning and development controls within national parks (and AONBs) which discourage much development.

The flexibility of allowing national parks to incorporate permanently inhabited areas, combined with strigent planning and development controls, is a model which allows for national parks to be much bigger in area while offering a very high degree of protection to the existing landscape.

It would be great if Ireland could adopt the UK model for national parks and AONBs (we could use different terminonology) with large areas of the country being offered this high degree of protection.

Finally, the NRA should certainly be developed along the lines of Northern Ireland's Road Service.

The NRA has only been in operation for 15 years but in that relatively short space of time it has greatly improved the national primary route network, albeit after a good few mistakes.

Giving the NRA control over all public roads would save money and ensure a level of consistency for non-national road standards that is sorely lacking at present.

invincibleirish · 06-01-2010 09:44PM

marmurr1916 wrote: »

IMO, we need to implement planning and taxation policies which favour development in the five largest urban centres (Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway, Waterford) within the state.

We also need to co-operate with Northern Ireland to try and ensure an all-Ireland approach to planning and development.

There is 5.5 million people on the island, surely the idea of developing economies of scale should focus on the primary corridor on the island which is the Belfast-Dublin corridor?. When you say development do you mean physical infrastructure and tax breaks? if you do then surely these can only be effective where applied in a few areas, will this country ever get the kind of FDI for 5 urban areas + NI?.

marmurr1916 wrote: »

We also need to extend the boundaries of most other city councils (possibly with the exception of Galway) so that the full built-up area, plus some surrounding land for future development, is under the control of one local authority.

For example, Cork City Council controls an area with a population of about 120,000 people.

However, there are many suburbs immediately adjacent to the city (eg: Douglas) or in very close proximity (eg: Ballincollig) which, although part of the city in reality, are still under the control of Cork County Council.

Areas such as this, and their equivalents in Galway, Limerick and Waterford, should be brought under the control of the relevant city council

Agreed, but of course the problem is the political will just isn't there. Limerick & Waterford have both had minor boundary extensions which bought about lots of local furore, supported by local pols protective of their personal fiefdoms of course, they don't act alone of course, local media, GAA county mentality and all that still has a strong influence over much of the country.

In the course of my college work i've had chance to question a few councillors in my area (Cork), a few of the city Cllrs i asked about the boundary extension were supportive of the idea but warned of the county Cllrs not being receptive. When i asked two county Cllrs about a possible extension into the county or a reorganisation of local authority boundaries along the CASP boundaries they both vehemently opposed it to say the least! both cited the loss to the county of area's like ringaskiddy and the southern city suburbs, both of which provide income to the county council.

Now apply this across the country. Any re-organisation of of local authority boundaries will i fear go down like a bomb with rural Ireland in particular.

marmurr1916 wrote: »

We could also do with expanding the boundaries of town councils: towns such as Ennis and Dundalk have grown rapidly over the past 15 years or so but their council boundaries haven't been expanded.

I think town councils are an anachronism and need to be abolished. A re-organisation of local authorities into larger organisations with increased efficiencies, perhaps then the towns you mention could be where these larger LAs could located but we don't need additional layers of Bureaucracy.

marmurr1916 wrote: »

An integrated tax and planning regime which made it easier to get planning permission for developments within the five cities but harder in the rest of the country would be of great benefit.

Agreed again, but you try telling the good people of Tipperary that the plans for a huge arena development by the M8 shouldn't go ahead, or that the folk of Offaly that a midlands international airport shouldn't go ahead.

marmurr1916 wrote: »

We also need to ensure that each of these cities has excellent transport and other infrastructure (including very high-speed broadband) and that each city has at least one university to help attract employers.

Much of the infrastructure is already in place or will be soon.

The completion of the Atlantic Corridor roads, the upgrading of Waterford IT to a university, the devlopment of very high-speed broadband networks and the development of better rail links between these cities would almost finish the infrastructural work needed.

After that, it's a question of introducing the tax and planning regime to incentivise development in these cities and to discourage development outside of them.

We should merge all our educational institutes into larger entities and give them loads more money, not create yet another Uni for our tiny island duplicating what is being taught elsewhere.

Transport spending should be spent where its needed and not aspirational spending where its deemed to be opening up the regions in the name of balanced development at the expense of more worthy projects. The Atlantic Corridor is just a fancy name for Celtic Tiger largesse, logically the first step in the AC would be to link the 2 largest urban areas along it, not in Ireland however!.

Agreed on the Broadband access however.

marmurr1916 wrote: »

Unfortunately, as has been pointed out, Ireland's political system mitigates against the adoption of a sensible national development strategy along these lines.

The competition amongst TDs to get a slice of the pie for their constituency means that every community, no matter how small, demands a level of public infrastructure and public service provision which is unsustainable in the long-term and which means that resources are spread too thinly.

The National Spatial Strategy, with its multiplicity of 'hubs' and 'gateways' is an example of what our political system leads to.

The replacement of our current system of PR with a regional (or better, a national) list system would reduce the level of clientelism in the Irish political system and allow more coherent, truly national, development strategies to be implemented.

I think instead of tinkering with our electoral system i think it be far wiser to devolve decision making in certain areas to a regional level. To do this would mean reorganising our local gov. structures and taking the parish pump out of national politics.

Let me quote myself from another thread to make my point:

invincibleirish wrote: »

You'd be reducing it. As it stands we have a rather large public service bureaucracy employed at county level and below in UDCs/town councils, Udaras no Gaeltachta etc, as well as Gov. agencies like Shannon development & Limerick regeneration programmes. There is largescale duplication of services offered which could be merged and streamlined*. We are seriously over represented by councillors in this country.

If you merge local councils* together into organisations with critical mass you can then decentralise central Gov functions and Quangos into areas currently administered through central gov.

Examples of what you could devolve would include resource allocation currently administered through the Dep. of Local Gov/environment, Schools mgmt, agriculture, transport etc.

Essentially you'd be moving local/regional issues currently addressed at national level to a regional level. With this you'd be streamlining Central Government (and the number of TDs), abolishing local gov. as we know it and creating a single two tier structure of national governance to replace the top heavy multi layered one we currently have now.

*(Reforming local Gov., and in particular abolishing/merging local authorities, would be met with enormous resistance from vested interests i'd say. Primarily the trade unions because of the changes to work practices on one side, and gombeen ireland scared to consider the redrawing of local authority lines which might not reflect GAA boundaries on the other. On top of that the loss of power to the TDs would mean resistance from them as well i'd say, as would incumbent Cllrs. What i propose isn't a new concept, and neither is the sentiment that would defeat it.)

marmurr1916 wrote: »

These changes will require commitments from all the major political parties and, for the change to a list system of PR, a referendum in which Irish voters recognise that our political system is no longer adequate.

As mentioned, moving from PR-STV to a list system, FPTP or any kind of hybrid will lead to people and parties electing the same kind of people. Chancers like Cullen, Healy Rae and the like belong at local or regional level and not national level.

marmurr1916 wrote: »

In the meantime, we need to develop a proper national planning and development strategy and we need to ditch the current flawed National Spatial Strategy.

Yup, but who misses out?

Think the national parks thing is also a great idea but can imagine rural Ireland won't look on it as kindly.

Over €100 billion in road improvements needed. Can we do it by 2050?

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