Up the Ra!!

MT

No, not that one.:eek: I’m thinking of the NRA and the possibility of it taking responsibility for all roads (not just national routes) and becoming simply the Roads Authority as a result. No need for a National prefix.

The reasoning for this is that although the signposting is poor across all roads in the Republic, it reaches the apotheosis of crap on secondary routes – those not covered by the NRA in other words. Wouldn’t it make much more sense from a whole number of angles, not least an improvement in R route signage, if the one national agency took responsibility for all roads? Just like the Roads Service in NI and the Highways Agency in England. I’m sure a similar format is followed in most other countries too.

In line with this change wouldn’t it also make sense to extend the Dept. of Transport to cover all road transport: Motorways, N routes, R routes and all minor roads below. It’s surely an anomalous situation in comparison to most country’s management of their road networks where the lions share of road mileage lies beyond the responsibility of the very department you’d imagine was created to oversee it. Instead it’s the Dept. of Environment, Heritage and whatever that’s in charge of most of the Republic’s road network.

Surely this is a recipe for duplication, wastage of funds and cross-departmental confusion if ever there was one.

[/rant over]

murphaph

Sadly MT, the roads currently under the NRA's charge have plenty of examples of poor signage, so the idea of a great saviour in the form of a national agency isn't realistic. The NRA and ALL the local authorities need to cop on and read the damn rule book that was written for them. Arrghhh.

Benster

MT wrote:

In line with this change wouldn’t it also make sense to extend the Dept. of Transport to cover all road transport: Motorways, N routes, R routes and all minor roads below. It’s surely an anomalous situation in comparison to most country’s management of their road networks where the lions share of road mileage lies beyond the responsibility of the very department you’d imagine was created to oversee it. Instead it’s the Dept. of Environment, Heritage and whatever that’s in charge of most of the Republic’s road network.

Surely this is a recipe for duplication, wastage of funds and cross-departmental confusion if ever there was one.

I never even knew this, I was under the impression that one department WAS responsible for the whole shooting match! So there was much more room for "Not our area, mate" than we had even thought. Unbelievable.

But yes, in response to the OP, it can only be a good idea that it's all amalgamated into one body.

Unbelievable.

MT

So there was much more room for "Not our area, mate" than we had even thought. Unbelievable.

Exactly. This thinking has effectively seen the DoT/NRA divest itself of the national road network where ever possible by detrunking major N routes when they’ve been bypassed by motorway. So important alternative transport corridors to toll motorways in particular are given minor R route designations in a rather bizarre piece of Irish governmental logic to ensure that their cost of maintenance passes to the DoE,H… In what other country does the Dept. of Transport get rid of roads to another government department to avoid its budget for vote grabbing prestige road projects being squeezed by the need to maintain older parts of the network. Madness!

Worse again is that once beyond the control of the NRA they can no longer veto development along these 'new' R routes and so there's nothing to stop local authorities dangerously cluttering up the roadside with ribbon development and access routes.

Of course, once in the hands of the DoE,H… ultimate control of these ‘minor’ roads would seem to lie with local authorities. Hence, the near glacial pace of converting their former N signage into the R versions to match the route numbers printed on maps. It really is the ultimate folly of disjointed, pass the buck government.

In a way I can understand the original logic behind placing only the major parts of the road network under the DoT’s control. There hadn’t been a transport department before as it wasn’t much of a priority in Irish politics until fairly recently. So when it was first created it was probably deemed the best approach to getting a major road building initiative underway to not needlessly burden the DoT with the entire network. But now with that building project well advanced surely for the sake of joined up government, never mind sanity, the entire network should be brought under the DoT’s and maybe an RA’s control.