SARA News

Editor Pat Naismith
Vol.1 No.4 Date. 10/11/00

What the Papers Say

Roads and Luas works will cause super bottleneck

By Tim O'Brien
Regional Development Correspondent
The Iirish Times 2/11/00

Planners raise transport issue

The Iirish Times 2/11/00

The "mother of all bottlenecks" is about to be created in the heart of south County Dublin, according to planners and politicians.  The fears centre on the Leopardstown/Sandyford area where massive office and industrial developments are to get under way at the same time as a network of local, regional and national roads, including building of the Luas light rail.

Just one example of the inter linked nature of the developments is the proposed Luas bridge at the Taney Road junction which is designed to have its "feet" firmly where the existing road junction is placed.

This junction is to be redesigned, but only as part of the overall Dundrum by-pass scheme.  Plans for the scheme are currently back with the Minister for the Environment because the cost is racing ahead of estimates currently at about £45 million.

This will have to proceed, however, if the Luas scheme is to be put in place over the next three years.  But proceeding with the Dundrum by-pass means that the Ballinteer road bridge, at Dundrum Castle, will be closed.  Which means that the Wyckham by-pass will be the only east/west access for traffic between Sandyford and Windy Arbour.  Work on the Wyckham by-pass is listed to continue until next spring.

Work also underway on the realignment of the Ballinteer Road, is not due to finish until the middle of next year.

This will lead to a lot of delays in the Sandyford area.  At the same time, work is progressing on the road-widening scheme at Central Park, the former Legionaries of Christ lands at Leopardstown.  This will add to the delays between now and March next when work is due to be completed.

But in March the widening of Brewery Road is to commence.  At the same time, work will be well advanced on the Ballinteer interchange and between March and the summer of next year the roads will be ready to receive the M50 ring road traffic which currently terminates at the Tallaght interchange.

In conjunction with the arrival of this traffic, about summer next year, work will be just started on the Sandyford interchange, possibly the State's most complex junction.  The interchange will occupy a square mile between Leopardstown and Ballinteer.  Over the following year work will be taking place on opening the M50 to Leopardstown, while the work on the South Eastern Motorway, taking the M50 off through Foxrock/Carrickmines towards Shankill, will get underway.

While these roads are already heavily trafficked, the arrival of regional and national traffic will undoubtedly worsen the situation.  However, the current building boom in the area -- the full complement of people working in Central Park, the adjacent Green Property development and the existing Sandyford/Stillorgan industrial estate is about 30,000 people -- will almost certainly bring the entire area to a standstill.

In a progressive move, Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council planners have made many proposed developments conditional on the provision of public transport.

A number of these conditions relate to the provision of land for the extension of the Luas line from the Sandyford Industrial Estate through Central Park to Carrickmines.

While it may be several years before the line is activated, the planners also conditioned the developments to provide feeder buses to take staff to the DART line and into the Quality Bus Corridor network.

According to the Fine Gael spokeswoman on traffic, Ms Olivia Mitchell TD, however, the moves, while welcome, will not prevent a chaotic situation developing.  Ms Mitchell, who is also a member of the planning authority, said the problem was that "everything was allowed to happen together".

Ms Mitchell, who has persistently called for work to begin on the Dundrum by-pass in advance of the other schemes, told The Irish Times "there is now no way to avoid the nightmare".

"We have known for years that foot-dragging would lead to this situation.  Now, all of a sudden, all the road schemes are due to start at the same time.  I predict about five years of hell, the mother of all bottlenecks, before it gets better."

Ms Mitchell said the local authority was looking at "little things", which might ease the situation somewhat, "but in reality these are just drops in the ocean".

Ms Mitchell also said the costs of the schemes had risen considerably because of their getting underway at once.  The Government and the local authority were, in effect, competing with themselves in seeking to build so many roads at the same time.
"There just isn't the capacity out there for it.  If you are working flat out on one contract you are unlikely to be able to even tender for another at the same time.  There is the labour shortage to consider," she said.