A decade after it was first proposed, the long-awaited €160 million Kildare town by-pass opens this morning.
The familiar long queues and slow crawl through Kildare - described by the Department of the Environment as one of the State's worst bottlenecks - will become a memory. However, there will still be hold-ups a few miles down the road at Monasterevin until similar works are completed there
The by-pass to the south of Kildare will take up to 20,000 vehicles a day away from the town and result in savings of up to 30 minutes at peak times on the Dublin to Cork and Limerick routes.
The completion of the 13.2km road is a significant step in the upgrading of the whole route from Dublin to the regional cities. It means that there will now be a continuous motorway or high quality dual carriageway from Dundalk in Co Louth to Monasterevin in Co Kildare. Work on a by-pass of Monasterevin is underway and is due to open in late 2004 or early 2005, linking in with the Portlaoise by-pass and giving continuous motorway or high grade dual carriageway for more than 175km.
The current phase of work on the Kildare by-pass began early in 2000 with a deadline of April 2004 allowing Kildare County Council to point out that the road is opening four months ahead of schedule.
The route of the by-pass has been contentious since it was first proposed in 1993. Kildare County Council and the National Roads Authority initially received approval for the EU-funded project in 1996. But when it became evident that the proposed route cut through an area known as the Curragh Aquifer, part of the 550-acre Pollardstown Fen natural habitat, An Taisce made a complaint to the European Commission.
An Taisce said the proposed by-pass - particularly one 3.5km cutting - could result in the dewatering of the Pollardstown Fen. It gave rise to concern for a rare whorl snail, the angistora vertiego, whose home led to it being dubbed the Pollardstown snail.
The name became a by-word for criticism of infrastructural works which were delayed for environmental reasons.
But the snail won and to satisfy environmental concerns, a section of motorway was lined with an impermeable membrane. The feature added another €6.5 million to the overall cost of the project.
The project was given the green light by the then Minister for the Environment, Mr Dempsey, in 1999 with EU blessing and it was envisaged then as a €78 million scheme.
Today's opening by the Minister for Transport, Mr Brennan, is likely to be welcomed by the people of Kildare town as well as by motorists. The existing N7 cuts the town in half, with national schools to the south of the town and residential areas to the north. The new motorway will join the existing Curragh dual carriageway 3km east of Kildare town and will rejoin the existing N7 a little over 1km east of Monasterevin.