N4 Mullingar to Longford

Chris_533976

Heres an interesting one.

While digging, I found this document for Metro North.

http://www.rpa.ie/Documents/Metro%20North/Metro%20North%20RO%20Oral%20Hearing%20Evidence/MN%20RO%20Evidence%20090409/MN%20RO%20OH%20PofE%20Agronomy%20Con%20Curtin%20090409.pdf

Its a proof of evidence document on the RPA website for one of the people involved loosely in Metro North.

Thats not the point though, read this paragraph.

Since 1998 I have worked on Environmental Impact Assessments for the
following road schemes; N25 Waterford Bypass, N25 New Ross Bypass,
N7 Castletown to Nenagh, N6 Galway City Outer Bypass, N24 Cahir to
Clonmel, and N59 Moycullen Bypass. I am currently working on
Environmental Impact Assessments for N22 Macroom to Ballyvourney,
N14 Lifford to Manorcunningham, M4 Mullingar to Longford, M20
Patrickswell to Blarney and N15 Sligo to County Boundary. I have
completed route selection reports for the following road schemes; N25
Dungarvan Bypass, N22 Killarney to Farranfore, N77 Kilkenny to
Ballyraggett and N25 Glenmore to Slieverue road schemes.

Its a recent document, April 2009. But this is the first time I've heard of any possibly M4 extensions. Is there any need to extend the M4 all the way to Longford, or is that getting ridiculous??

Granted, it wont be built for a longlong time, but I never knew that there was a possibility of the M4 being extended. Perhaps thats why that little section was reclassified a motorway.

L1011

There is a plan for a DC from the end of the Mullingar BP to the start of the Dromod-Roosky BP. Constraints/preferred route/etc have been done:

http://www.wccprojectoffice.ie/new/scheme.asp?schemeId=12

I believe the intention is that it'll 'degrade' from HQDC to 2+2 by the end of it, matching the schemes its abutting. It won't be M4 unless they want an isolated section (there are petrol stations on the Mullingar BP and the DC between the M4 and Mullingar BP has median breaches, no alternate route and private accesses).

This won't be ready to go to CPO for another year or more at least which means it'll be behind all the PPP works. In the interim a cheap bypass of Edgeworthstown has already been done so the route is liveable for the next decade if need be.

Sponge Bob

By the time that road is actually built this will be the longest running thread EVER in this forum .

I am only getting in early , I will be in a feckin zimmer frame before this runs its course .

L1011

Its not even the realistic main priority on the N4 either - the Carrick Shannon-Dromod scheme which includes a replacement Carrick bypass is far, far more important.

westtip

MYOB wrote: »

Its not even the realistic main priority on the N4 either - the Carrick Shannon-Dromod scheme which includes a replacement Carrick bypass is far, far more important.

Agreed although the N4 on the whole is not a bad national route. For the North West, where the N4 "terminates" I think a greater priority is sorting out the N16 to Blacklion route -The NI Road authorities are planning an Enniskillen southern bypass and to eventually improve the A4 from Enniskillen to Ballygawley (which will be DC to Belfast from next year) IMO, the main east west route from Sligo to the North East is a bigger priority than more work on the N4 to Dublin , If there was a good route from Sligo to say Ballygawley, ie improve the N16, bypass Enniskillen, better road to Ballygawley, this would give an alternative route across the BMW region and down the N2 route and across the link road to the M1 at Ardee to get to areas such as Louth and north county Dublin (and indeed Dublin Aiport), and thus avoiding the M50 and alleviating some of the congestion in the Dublin N4/M50 area.

Having said all that,the Dromod Roosky DC bypass has made a big difference to the N4, and queues and delays through Carrick on Shannon tend to be at the usual bad times of Friday evening (going west) and Sunday night (going east), they do need sorting but not sure the spend of future limited resources will allow it, no doubt the Longford camp would prefer to see the concentration of effort on the N4 to be at their end of the road, and I wouldn't blame them, the road from the Longford bypass to Edgeworths town is pretty ropy and prone to bad overtaking and accidents and north of longford the road is a similar standard - not bad but prone to some dodgy overtaking spots - Newtownforbes needs bypassing as well - an Edgeworthstown type relief road would probably do the job, but again in the current climate unlikely to happen. The last few miles of the N4 north of Castlebaldwin is also on the agenda to be upgraded but again can't see this happening in a long time - I would say on the N4 priorities are:

1) Carrick on Shannon bypass
2)Ballinalack and Ballinafad to be sorted out
3)Edgeworthstown to Longford - if not DC then properly upgraded to a safer standard
4)Newtownforbes. - bypassed
5)north of Castlebaldwin - if not DC then properly upgraded to a safer standard

When will it all be done.....in current climate any of these projects is a long way off; for the North West though I would argue the priorities should be focussed on the alternate cross country route to Ballygawley and links to the M1 and also the Southern access to Galway along the N17, N18, and N20 to Cork - the atlantic road corridor is critical for the west of ireland; these woudl give Sligo better connectivithy to the entire country and not just focus on the usual radial routes from Dublin.

L1011

There is a plan for a mostly offline DC from south of Castlebaldwin to join the existing DC out of Sligo (http://www.nra.ie/RoadSchemeActivity/SligoCountyCouncil/N4CollooneyCastlebaldwin/SchemeName,16443,en.html).

This plus the Carrick bypass would leave about 30km of WS2 / S2 with climbing lanes which could cheaply be overlaid with poor 2+2 if we wanted to dual the lot.

I cannot see the NRA budging from its DC plan for Mullingar-Longford which would cover 2/3/4 on your list. Theres little point stringing cheap bypasses of the three of them when they'll all be done at once. That said, there is a possibility they could do parts of the Mullingar-Longford plan to sort these out - I'll need to take a look at the route corridor when I'm back home.

westtip

MYOB wrote: »

There is a plan for a mostly offline DC from south of Castlebaldwin to join the existing DC out of Sligo (http://www.nra.ie/RoadSchemeActivity/SligoCountyCouncil/N4CollooneyCastlebaldwin/SchemeName,16443,en.html).

This plus the Carrick bypass would leave about 30km of WS2 / S2 with climbing lanes which could cheaply be overlaid with poor 2+2 if we wanted to dual the lot.

I cannot see the NRA budging from its DC plan for Mullingar-Longford which would cover 2/3/4 on your list. Theres little point stringing cheap bypasses of the three of them when they'll all be done at once. That said, there is a possibility they could do parts of the Mullingar-Longford plan to sort these out - I'll need to take a look at the route corridor when I'm back home.

I guess I meant with the points 2 3 4 that it would effectively be a seamless dual, I do agree a string of bypasses would be less cost effective than doing the whole job properly - but as we all know all of this highly unlikely in current climate, mind you seamless DC from Sligo to M50 would be great - I still feel the argument to team up with NI roads service and really focus on the east west northern route is as important as any further work on the N4 for the northwest.

Victor

I imagine its either hype or a typo.

westtip

OP just looking at the map on my wall last night - would it not make sense to argue to link the N4 and N5 further north than Longford, probably with a link road developed from just north of Frenchpark to Carrick on Shannon, following the line of the existing Regional road (R201 I think) - linking in with a new Carrick bypass - this would save on the need to upgrade the N5 around Longford and the stretch of the N5 from Frenchpark to Scramoge; there are major archaeology issues around Tulsk, so choosing this route to develop as the new N5 - N4 link road would avoid that problem, in addition thinking like this would have avoided the need for the purchase of more expensive land around Longford to create the N5 N4 liink road there as it would not be needed developing both the N4 and N5 running parallel with each other through Roscommon county has always to me anyway seemed a bit stupid. It is one of the inherent problems of the national roads development policy that all we seem to have done is look at the old existing radial pattern from Dublin and sought to replicate it and not given any thought to how we can best achieve the objective of a good integrated road system. But there you go.