The interurban roads plan needs to be scaled back, the M50 upgrade put on hold - and then there's the Red Cow mess . . . Eamon Ryan puts his case
Take advice, Mr Brennan. The experts say we need to scale back the National Roads Programme and that the upgrade of the M50 will have to wait until the major public transport projects planned for Dublin are in place.
If the Minister for Transport ignores that advice - and at the moment it looks as if he will - he will turn Dublin forever into the strung-out "doughnut" city of our worst nightmares, served from other cities by partly redundant superhighways which strip the rest of the country of cash.
The Government's National Roads Plan was born at the height of the boom. The National Roads Authority (NRA) itself was only looking for the upgrade of existing primary roads, but the Government ignored that advice.
Instead it committed itself to the far more ambitious project of building five new interurban motorways from Dublin to Belfast, Cork, Galway, Limerick and Waterford by 2006 at an overall cost of €6.8 billion. Half way through the programme, the budget has risen to a massive €16 billion and the timetable has stretched into the next decade.
Indecon consultants were commissioned to help with the mid-term evaluation of the National Development Plan and last month they presented their as yet confidential report to the Government. Their conclusions are perfectly clear: the Government should revisit the National Roads Programme and reduce costs by "reviewing decisions on road type standards on a case by case basis on lower traffic volumes sections of the major interurban routes".
A further finding of real concern was that the NRA could not provide the consultants at Indecon with details of time savings on the main interurban journeys. These time savings were to be one of only two key indicators to show whether the €4 billion budget allocation of the last four years had been spent well.
The lack of such information was particularly worrying given that the NRA is one of the least accountable organisations within the State.
To date, the NRA has concentrated on the busiest sections of the road network. The motorway from Dublin to Belfast is almost complete and the major sections south from Dublin to Portlaoise and west to Kinnegad will be completed in the next three years.
The real question is whether we need to provide the same capacity on the roads beyond these points where traffic levels will be only a fraction of the design capacity being provided. As transport economist Dr Seán Barrett said, the plans are akin to "social welfare" for engineers.
Even ignoring the huge environmental concerns, such an investment policy has to be questioned on the basis that funding for desperately needed roads, such as the Ennis bypass, are now being sacrificed to keep the five Dublin motorways on track.
In mid-September, Mr Brennan promised a review of the plan and a kick-start to discussions on possible reform of the NRA. Unfortunately, it now appears this review has taken the form of the NRA appointing its own consultants, PricewaterhouseCoopers, to look at its own delivery arrangements and statutory powers. It is hard to believe that this arrangement will lead to a proper independent evaluation of our national transport needs.
The Government insists the new roads will promote regional development but international experience shows that roads leading to the capital will inevitably suck life toward the centre. The NRA has certainly been anticipating such an outcome as it has been frantically designing for the widening of the M50 orbital motorway and massive new spaghetti intersections for locations such as the Red Cow roundabout.
Meanwhile, the Minister's gaze has been turning to the same roundabout and in particular at the way the Luas will affect it.
"It is a mess, a huge mistake," he said on RTÉ's Prime Time programme. He announced he was going to set matters right by raising the Luas on to stilts so it would not interfere with traffic.
The truth is that in the years when Mary O'Rourke dithered over the project, her rail engineers were able to come up with a design to ensure that trams would not delay general traffic at the Red Cow. The Minster's officials were left with the tricky task of explaining that his Prime Time proposal was both unnecessary and prohibitively expensive.
Not missing a trick, the NRA rode to the Minister's rescue with a scaled-down version of its own Red Cow and M50 plan which it could now sell as a solution to the supposed Luas problem. Mr Brennan returned to the Dáil with the happy news that he now had another possible solution (as well as the stilts) and that he expected to make a decision approving one or the other within weeks.
No doubt many motorists would welcome the upgrade, but they should keep in mind that the widening will eventually bring 40,000 extra cars on to the motorway which will have to exit at some point, to add to the traffic gridlock in Dublin city.
The NRA spokesman amazed members of a Dáil transport committee earlier this month when he said about the M50 widening: "We hope that people will continue buying more cars and that traffic will grow."
The Dublin Transport Office was adamant in its presentations of "Platform for Change 2000-2016" plan for Dublin, which has been approved by the Government, that any funding for an upgrade of the M50 should only be provided when all the other public transport projects in its plan had been introduced.
To do otherwise, it said, would ensure that the city would continue to develop along the M50 and it would be almost impossible to retrofit public transport into a classic "doughnut-style" city.
The NRA has described the road-widening as "the last roll of the dice" and if people don't start switching out of their cars "we will have to then look at public transport or road-pricing".
The Minister should take the dice back into his own hand before any more of our quality of life is gambled away. Mr Brennan, please admit there is no conflict with the Luas at the Red Cow roundabout, that the upgrade of the M50 should only be considered following the introduction of key public transport projects and that changed budgetary circumstances require the interurban roads plan to be scaled back.
Eamon Ryan TD is Green Party spokesman on transport