Roads are the Government's only transport priority as public transporttakes a back seat, writes Frank McDonald, Environment Editor
There was a smile on the face of everyone from the National Roads Authority (NRA) as they waited for Seamus Brennan to confirm what they already knew - the authority was getting a guaranteed €8 billion for national roads over the next five years.
The Railway Procurement Agency would be dancing in the streets if it got such a deal. But there is no public transport equivalent of the multi-annual funding package for roads which Mr Brennan has agreed with the Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy.
Though the Minister for Transport told The Irish Times that a five-year funding package for public transport would be worth €2.5 billion - not much more than 30 per cent of what roads are getting - he had to admit that Mr McCreevy has not yet signed up for it.
So the vast bulk of the money available for transport will go to roads, despite all the political guff about "sustainable development" and the reservations expressed by the ESRI, among others, that the motorway programme is massively over-scaled.
Needless to say, Mr Brennan does not go along with the ESRI's view that a more modest roads programme would fit the bill better.
Yet neither he nor the NRA have produced any cost-benefit analysis to justify building at least five motorways feeding into the M50.
The M1 has already been substantially completed. The M3, between Clonee and Kells, was approved last year by An Bord Pleanála at an estimated cost of €680 million. And in between these two, in close proximity, the NRA plans yet another motorway on the N2.
There has been no review or analysis of the roads programme, other than a determination to accelerate it. As the Green Party spokesman on transport, Mr Eamon Ryan TD, observed yesterday, "they've pushed aside all criticism because they just want to pour concrete".
Mr Ryan complained in particular about the NRA's plans to proceed with upgrades of the M50 interchanges, saying that these were low down the list of transport priorities for Dublin and were only meant to be carried out after major improvements to public transport. "These M50 upgrades are proceeding without any cost-benefit analysis, even though they will cost between €500 million and €650 million. Yet at the same time, we're going through this tortuous analysis of the metro, including the production of business plans. Where is the M50 business plan?"
Spending four times as much money on roads as on public transport is totally unsustainable. And if the new roads end up as elongated commuter arteries fanning out from Dublin, as they will with planning controls becoming more and more lax, all they will do is to spread traffic congestion further.
No wonder the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, sat impassively at a symposium in Dublin Castle on Monday last as Ton Sleddens, a European expert on transport, made a compelling argument that the Irish roads programme failed every single one of 27 indicators of good transport policy.
Schemes to start this year include the Sligo "Inner Relief Road", which will involve driving the N4 through the middle of the town.
Asked if he could identify any town in Europe where a similar scheme was planned, the NRA's chairman, Mr Peter Malone, shrugged his shoulders and smiled.