THE €36 million cut in funding to maintain local and regional roads announced last week has been condemned by PlanBetter, which described it as “the other side of the coin of excessive motorway construction”.
This joint initiative by An Taisce, Friends of the Earth, Friends of the Irish Environment and Feasta noted that the cut represented nearly one-third of an estimated €105 million needed this year to service borrowings on “unnecessary” motorways.
“The recent announcement maintained a 14 per cent cut in the low-cost safety improvement programme, which is used to remove accident blackspots on dangerous roads all around the country and stands at a paltry €6 million a year.” PlanBetter said Ireland had 2½ times more motorway per person than Britain. “Yet plans by the National Roads Authority to build another 800km of motorway have still not been officially shelved,” it said.
“Traffic is 20 to 30 per cent below the level projected by the NRA on some new motorways, including the M3 via Tara.
On top of loan repayments, taxpayers are also paying penalty fees to make up for less-than-expected revenue at the M3 toll booths, the group said.
“Over the next three years more than €275 million will have to be found to make further motorway repayments, even as traffic on them falls, and this burden will result in further cuts in budgets to fill potholes and resurface local and regional roads.”
PlanBetter noted that half of the Republic’s road network scored the lowest possible safety rating by the European Road Assessment Programme, compared to only 5 per cent of Northern Ireland’s network and just 2 per cent of roads in Britain.
It said removing accident blackspots saved far more lives, per euro invested, than motorway building. “The Department of Transport and the NRA are perfectly well aware of this, but seem engaged in delusion while the wrongful allocation of taxpayer funds persists.” Fred Barry, the road authority’s chief executive, recently told the Oireachtas Committee on Transport that many existing roads do “not come close to meeting current design and construction standards” while others “were never properly designed in the first place”.
Yet PlanBetter said over €1.7 million was “misspent” planning a 28km dual carriageway in Co Wexford between Oilgate and Rosslare. “More than 20 accident blackspots across the country could have been eliminated with this money,” it claimed. Instead of planning new motorways, which then “turn into subsidised toll roads”, it said a new approach was needed by the next government.
“Dedicated bypasses with selected enhancements along existing routes are what’s required. The outgoing government used the four-year plan to falsely claim that every Transport 21 project was still viable. The incoming government needs to be honest, and openly acknowledge that long sections of motorway are as unnecessary as they are unaffordable.”
