STRATEGIC, SOCIO-ECONOMIC-ENVIRONMENTAL AND LEGAL ASSESSMENT OF N2/A5 DUBLIN TO DERRY CROSS BORDER DUAL CARRIAGEWAY
- 1. WHAT ARE THE ISSUES?
The Irish Government and Northern Ireland Assembly is actively cooperating in the building of a jointly funded dual carriageway from Dublin to Derry. It has emerged as the single largest project resulting from the new cross border cooperation structures resulting from the implementation of the Belfast Agreement.
The question must be asked in a world where confronting climate change must be the overriding priority, whether an inter State dual carriageway is the most effective use of scarce investment resources or is justified on environmental impact? It has been well established since the development of the Inter State Highways Programme in the US in the 1950s and the major road programme initiated in the UK in the 1960s that large-scale new roads dramatically transform transport mobility and spatial development patterns. While the benefit of road programmes in reducing inter regional travel times is repeatedly argued, this is entirely undermined by the effect of new roads in generating increased congestion around urban centres and widening of the radius of car-based sprawl around urban areas and road corridors. Added to this is now the Greenhouse gas emission impact from road transport which must be radically reduced over the next decade. The building of dual carriageways results in an increase in vehicle speeds, travel distances and journeys and therefore emissions.
Both the Republic and Northern Ireland face enormous challenges in dealing with future climate change, increased flood risk and deficient investment in water quality and sewerage treatment. Both the Irish and UK Governments are facing significant legal actions from the European Court of Justice on breaches of EU water and waste water Directives. A massive investment programme is needed to forestall further legal actions and downstream fines from the European Commission.
At the same time, both the Republic and Northern Ireland are unsustainably dependent on imported coal and gas for electricity generation. Apart from the impact of Greenhouse gas emissions, there is huge unpredictability in the price and supply level of oil and gas; and an economic, as well as environmental imperative to reduce consumption and dependence. Both the Republic and Northern Ireland are now integrated with Britain in a single electricity grid so that a major cross border investment in energy conservation for renewable energy is required.
Apart from the environmental considerations, is the spending in excess of €1.5 billion/£1.3 billion on a dual carriageway the most appropriate means of addressing the common challenges faces by the Republic and Northern Ireland for the future? Will an investment of this scale disastrously divert resources from more urgently needed expenditure in water treatment and management, flood protection and renewable energy?
- 2. THE GESTATION OF THE N2/A5 DUAL CARRIAGEWAY PROJECT
Until the middle of the last decade it was never envisaged, by either of the road planning agencies in the Republic or Northern Ireland that the N2/A5 would be replaced by a new inter State dual carriageway.
2.1 Republic of Ireland
Road schemes in the Republic of Ireland are set out in the 6 year period National Development Plans with road programme phasing managed by the National Roads Authority, NRA, which would be subject to progressive review and published in its Annual Reports. The NRA has replaced the Dublin M50 to Ashbourne, Co Meath road, with a new 16 kilometre road of dual carriageway standard. However, all other schemes carried out in the 1990s and up to recently in the building of interlinked by-passes of Carrickmacross, Castleblayney, Clontibert and Monaghan have been to two lane standard with the 22 kilometre Castleblayney to Clontibert section, 2+1.
In the National Development Plan, 2007 – 2013, the redevelopment of the N2 to full dual carriageway standard was proposed. The most recently published NRA Report refers to their planning work for construction of 44km of new road to dual carriageway/dual carriageway standard from Ashbourne to Ardee, Co Louth; and Castleblayney to the Northern Ireland border. The 44km section of the Ashbourne to Ardee route is the subject of a current consent application. While described as a ‘Slane by-pass’, it is a 3.5km section of dual carriageway with a major Boyne bridge designed to dual carriageway standard.
2.2 Status of A5 within Northern Ireland
Up to 2006, it was never envisaged that the A5 from Craigavon bridge in Derry to Aughnacloy in Co Tyrone would be replaced with a dual carriageway. The longstanding planning policy was to relieve congestion in urban and village areas by by-passes and upgrade sections of the road. Since the 1980s, two sections of by-pass have been constructed around Strabane with a third section now ‘on hold’. The bottlenecked village of Newtownstewart was by-passed in 2003 and Omagh by-passed in two stages in the mid 1990s and 2006.
In circumstances that have not been properly explained, a decision has been made by the Northern Ireland administration to develop a new dual carriageway standard dual carriageway between Derry and the N2 in Co Monaghan.
2.3 The Irish Government £400 Million Contribution
In October 2006, senior Irish Government sources confirmed that the forthcoming National Development Plan for the years 2007-2013 would include plans to offer co funding for a series of road projects to Northern Ireland. This was accepted and in November, 2007, the Northern Ireland Department for Regional Development announced that a route selection study had begun to upgrade the entire 88 km A5 route to dual carriageway. Cost was estimated at £850 million, up from the original estimate of £560 million in 2007. It was subsequently announced that the Irish Government would contribute £400 million. This would be the longest and most expensive single road scheme ever undertaken in Northern Ireland.
2.4 Most Recent Update
In December, 2009, Northern Ireland Transport Minister, Conor Murphy, announced that three groups of contractors had been appointed for the £800 million, 86km dual carriageway from Derry via Strabane and Omagh, to the Co Monaghan border and the N2.
It also revealed that engineers from the NRA had met with their counterparts in the North to agree a timetable to complete the bridge at Lifford at the same time as the new dual carriageway through Strabane.
Major opposition is emerging from landowners affected by the new dual carriageway route in counties Tyrone and Derry. A prominent Northern Ireland solicitor, James McFarland, a partner in Lisburn firm, McFarland, Graham, McCoombe, is coordinating opposition to the scheme. In a statement (reported to The Irish News, 2nd January, 2010) Mr McFarland stated, ‘It is legally debatable, whether existing Northern Ireland Compulsory Purchase Acquisition legislation can be allowed to invest land for the benefit of an adjoining State’; and, ‘Hundreds of families will be disrupted, untold hardship will be caused.’
A section of the N2 Dublin-Monaghan dual carriageway is being proposed in the guise of a Slane by-pass. This is part of a longstanding tactic by the Department of Transport/NRA in Ireland to achieve dual carriageways by stealth in the name of by-passes. The proposal for a high level dual carriageway bridge to the east of Slane has been lodged by Meath County Council/NRA with the submission deadline of 17th February, 2010 to An Bord Pleanala. Already a number of parties have raised concern at the proximity of the by-pass and future dual carriageway route to the buffer area of the Boyne Neolithic passage tomb, World Heritage Site complex; and within sight of one of the main monuments, the Great Tumulus of Knowth.
While the argument is constantly made for the development of cross dual carriageway systems as engines of economic development, it is notable that the main impact of the M1 dual carriageway between Dublin and Newry/Belfast to date, has been to accelerate the exodus of shoppers from the Republic to Northern Ireland.
- 3. COMPLIANCE WITH EU LAW AND POLICY
3.1 COMPLIANCE WITH EUROPEAN STRATEGIC ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT DIRECTIVE (SEA) 2001/42/EC
Directive 2001/42/EC titled, ‘On the assessment of the effects of certain plans and programmes on the environment,’ was introduced as defined under Article 1, to ‘contribute the integration of environmental consideration into the preparation and adoption of plans and programmes with a view to promoting sustainable development, by ensuring that in accordance with this Directive, an environmental assessment is carried out of certain plans and programmes which are likely to have significant effects on the environment.’
Article 2(a) of the SEA Directive defines the plans and programmes which are required to be subject to Strategic Environmental Assessment as those ‘which are subject to preparation and /or adoption by an authority at national. regional or local level or which are prepared by an authority for adoption, through a legislative procedure by Parliament or Government and which are required by legislative, regulatory or administrative provisions.’
The N2/A5 dual carriageway proposal is a major transboundary project with large-scale environmental impacts. Communications have taken place between the Irish Government and NI Assembly which have resulted in a joint decision to proceed with a major transboundary project with large-scale environmental impact. No information is available as to whether any evaluation has been given on the requirement for the preparation of an SEA for this project.
All of the considerations set out in the SEA Directive for environmental assessment, transboundary consultation and public consultation have been subverted by the secrecy in which this project has been gestated and the circumstances of its development.
3.2 EU GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSION REDUCTION TARGETS
The EU is committed to a 20% reduction of emissions by 2020 and 30% if a successful UN agreement can be reached in Mexico this year.
- 4. COMPLIANCE WITH UK LAW AND POLICY
4.1 COMPLIANCE WITH UK CLIMATE CHANGE ACT (NOVEMBER, 2008)
The Climate Change Act 2008 established emission reduction targets and five yearly carbon budgets to reduce Greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80% by 2050. The level for the first three carbon budgets was announced in April, 2009, to provide for an increase over previous commitment in the Kyoto Agreement to reduce Greenhouse gas emissions by 12.5% by 2008, 2012 over 1990 levels. Allied to this is a range of commitments for fuel efficiency, a move towards more environmentally friendly forms of transport, emissions trading and reducing of carbon content in fuel. Building of further dual carriageways would entirely undermine these objectives in encouraging additional vehicle generation.
In July, 2009, the Department for Transport published Low Carbon Transport: A Greener Future – A Carbon reduction Strategy for Transport, July, 2009.
While it was stated on page 2 that, ‘The provision of trunk roads and dual carriageways in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales is devolved along with the management of their maintenance and improvement,’ Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales are bound by UK emissions targets.
The measure set out in the strategy project the saving of an additional 85 million tones of CO2 over the third carbon budget period from 2008-2022. Section 7.29, Conclusions, provides that ‘The Devolved Administrations are pursuing strategies and plans consistent with the aims of this strategy.’ Under Northern Ireland, it states in Section 7.44, ‘Road transport is the largest source of CO2 emissions in the North, accounting for 29% of total carbon emissions. Delivering reductions in Greenhouse gas emissions from road transport, while ensuring the provision of transport arrangement that meet economic and social needs, presents a significant challenge. Reconciling these potentially competing priorities is a key objective for Northern Ireland.’
4.2 NORTHERN IRELAND EXECUTIVE & ASSEMBLY OBJECTIVES UNDER UK LAW
Section 7.45 states, ‘The Programme for Government which sets out the Executive’s strategic priorities and keys plans for 2008-2011, in line with Sustainable Development Strategy published on 25th February,2008, has set an ambitious target for reduction in local emissions of Greenhouse gases. To contribute fully to the realisation of the programme from Government target, a substantial reduction is required on 2006 Greenhouse gas emissions from road transport by 2025.’
Section 7.47 refers to the Executive and Assembly’s current investment plans set out in Investment Strategy 2008 – 2014, envisaging a significant level of investment in public transport including the Belfast Rapt Transit Project. ‘Planned investment in buses, trains and facilities aims to promote increased utilization of public transport and reduce dependency on the private car, thereby contributing to climate change targets.’ The development of an A5 (London)Derry to Co Monaghan dual carriageway would entirely undermine these objectives.
4.4 CONFLICT WITH UK TRANSPORT POLICY - Smarter Choices-Changing The Way We Travel, 2005
This focuses on ‘high intensity’ and ‘low intensity’ scenarios for the following ten years. However, only the high intensity scenario measures are capable of dealing with the emission levels required. The main features of the ‘high intensity’ scenario are identified as
‘1 - a reduction in peak period urban traffic of about 21% (off peak 13%)
2 – a reduction of peak period non urban traffic of about 14% (off peak 7%)
3 – a nationwide reduction in all traffic of about 11%’
These measures are entirely incompatible with additional road building. The only further road building which can be justified are small scale by-passes, relief roads around urban and village centres to reduce traffic congestion and only in conjunction with current traffic measures.
- 5. COMPLIANCE WITH IRISH LAW AND POLICY
5.1 LEGAL BASIS OF £400MILLION N.I CONTRIBUTION
The legal basis on which the Irish Government has negotiated and announced a £400 million contribution to the construction of a road project in Northern Ireland has not been addressed or resolved. The proposed £400 million allocation has not been subject to any budget vote by the Irish Oireachtas (Parliament). The legislative basis of this funding is unclear as the Irish Government would have no legal entitlement to be co parties to a contract for the construction of a road project within Northern Ireland.
5.2 IRISH GOVERNMENT TRANSPORT POLICY SMARTER TRAVEL– A Sustainable Transport Future: A New Transport Policy for Ireland 2009 – 2010?
This sets out a series of overriding policy objectives in Chapter 3, summarized as follows:
1 Future population employment growths will predominantly take place in sustainable compact forms which reduces the need to travel for employment and services;
2 500,000 more people will take alternative means to commute to work to the extent that the total share of car commuting will drop from 65% to 45%
3 Alternatives such as walking, cycling and public transport will be supported and provided to the extent that these will rise to 55% of total commuter journeys to work
4 The total kilometres travelled by the car fleet in 2020 will not increase significantly from current levels.
5 A reduction will be achieved on the 2005 figure for Greenhouse gas emissions from the transport sector.
How does this proposal address each of these objectives?
- 6. HOW DOES THIS PROPOSAL ADDRESS THE NEED TO DECARBONISE TRANSPORT IN IRELAND AND UK?
To date, the effect of the inter-regional dual carriageway dual carriageway in Ireland programme has been to accelerate dependence on the private motorcar and road vehicle goods distribution; reduce proportional travel mode by rail and bus, with rail freight being now a quarter in real tonnage of early 1990 levels; and increase land transport Greenhouse gases by 170% over 1990 levels. At the same time, the road programme is exacerbating urban sprawl, car based commuter one-off housing and commuter housing in towns and villages around the larger urban catchment areas.
This road proposal has been put forward without addressing the radical decarbonisation that is required both in the Irish transportation sector and internationally. It is based on assumption of increased vehicle numbers into the 2020s which is not tenable either on emissions grounds or on availability of affordable fossil fuel supply, even with the achievement of major improvement of vehicle fuel and emissions efficiency or electric vehicles. It is based on assumptions in growth of fossil fuel vehicles, with further disregard of global oil supply and future road transport costs. It disregards the fact that current patterns of car-based commuting, use of the private car for interregional transport, and use of road vehicles for inter-urban or interregional transport will no longer be environmentally sustainable or financially achievable in the future. It disregards the fact that interregional personal transport demand will have to be met by carbon neutral public transport, both rail and road, and bulk goods transported by rail, using the most efficient carbon neutral/renewable energy source.
How will carbon emissions on the N2/A5 Dublin Derry route be reduced?
Irish greenhouse gas emissions are among the highest in the world per capita, for example Ireland with a population of 4 million has higher emissions than Sweden which has a population of 9 million. The 13% Kyoto limit over 1990 levels is not being met with current levels at 26% over 1990 levels. Transport emissions in Ireland are 170% over 1990 levels.
While the current recession is resulting in a reduction in transport use, the overriding issue of fossil fuel road vehicle dependence is not being addressed.
The 2008 UK Climate Change Act 2001 provides for 80% reduction by 2050. The 2007 Irish Programme for Government has a commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 3% per annum.
- 7. WHAT PROFESSIONAL CODE OF PRACTICE IS BEING FOLLOWED BY PROFESSIONAL CONSULTANTS ASSESSING THE JUSTIFICATION FOR THIS SCHEME?
The international scientific consensus is that current proposed targets are too low and that a significant reduction in current total levels is required. This means that any proposal which increases road vehicle transport generation and therefore emissions is no longer tenable. There is both a legal and moral responsibility on all engineering, environmental and other consultants to advise political and public administrative decision makers of this. There is a further code of practice requirement on members of the engineering, planning and other professions to refuse to endorse or recommend schemes which increase emissions.
The approach which is being used by members of professional planning and engineering bodies of isolating the greenhouse gas generation of each individual scheme and presenting a false choice between the proposed road scheme and the “do nothing scenario” of not proceeding with the development and treating traffic growth levels in recent years as a given fact and to be tolerated into the future, is no longer tenable.
Any transportation infrastructure proposal must be linked to a transportation management strategy of reducing current levels of road vehicle use and consequently of emissions. This means that in general the only road schemes tenable are small-scale urban bypasses and relief roads, but not inter-urban or inter-regional roads. In relation to bypasses or relief roads any proposal must be linked to an integrated transportation strategy for the urban area as a whole, including reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.
Any transport investment proposal must provide a calculation of and mitigation of greenhouse gas generation of the scheme.
- 8. FAILURE TO JUSTIFY NEED FOR PROPOSAL
The promoters of this schemes must be asked :
How are you addressing the following sustainable transport requirements?
How do you intend to ensure that a general strategy of reducing emissions, traffic levels and car parking demand is achieved by the following integrated means?
The Irish Government and NI Executive and Assembly have failed to justify either the need for this road proposal, or its strategic justification as an investment priority.
The proposal is based on a failed international development model which does not address the issues or needs of the next generation. It involves a massive cost in scarce investment capacity. It would exacerbate car dependence and consequent energy consumption emission generation and unsustainable land use
The current period of development slowdown provides an opportunity ensure that planning, investment and infrastructural priorities for the next generation are appropriately directed.
Road investment in Ireland north and south has led to an unsustainable level of car based development with the generation of US type car based sprawl and urban fringe development in increasingly wide catchments around all of the urban centres. The building of new roads has simply widened the catchment area for car based sprawl housing.
At the same time Ireland will become more exposed to climatic instability, and unpredictable international economic factors with are going to result in major cost increase for fossil fuel, and uncertainty over the price and supply rate of major food and other commodities. Ireland is one of highest per capita polluters in the industrialized world in accelerating climate change, and needs to achieve massive reductions in emissions, so that continuing to build over scaled new roads is untenable.
Further road investment is not the appropriate response either to a continuation of the growth of the last two decades or the current slump. Ireland is one of the worst international examples of the impact of road investment fuelling car-based sprawl. The term ‘sprawl’ for scattered car-based development was coined by American journalist William Whyte in 1958, who noted in Fortune magazine, two years after the US Highways Act of 2006, the excessive development of car-based development mobility over wider catchment areas where ‘development has been left almost entirely in the hands of the speculative builder’.
- 9. THE ALTERNATIVE TO THIS SCHEME
1 A restoration of the redundant rail connection between Dublin, Monaghan, Omagh and Derry;
2 A significant increase in modal share split is of cycling and public transport reduced use of private passenger vehicles;
3 Achieving a decrease in transport emissions in the development catchment area;
4 Provision of enhanced public transport, so that most long distance and commuter journeys would be by bus;
5 Promotion of a significant change of transport mode from car to cycling, particularly for short journeys;
6 The advice in the DoEHLG’s Change Campaign to reduce travel speeds to 80km/ph; to reduce climate emissions;
7 Reduction of car-based commuting into London(Derry) and other town centres through
curtailment of sites and parking spaces used by all day commuters;
8 Adjustment of parking tariffs to discourage all day commuting;
9 Charging of all car parking spaces, both inner urban and urban fringe, including retail and other service provision locations;
10 Control of car-based urban fringe and other sprawl development which would undermine functional status of town centres;
11 Limitation of new road construction to small road by passes;
12 Better train timetable and connection between Dublin/Belfast and Derry to encourage train as prime transport mode between Dublin and Derry with feeder buses to Letterkenny.
At an all Ireland level future investment policies must be:
- education and re skilling in sustainable resource consumption
- water supply and waste water standard management
- flood protection and management
- food security
- reduction of greenhouse gases from food production, transport and energy
- consolidation of existing Urban, village and rural communities with reduction in green house gas generation at local level
For more information visit: http://www.savenewgrange.org/
The Irish Times - Wednesday, April 14, 2010
FRANK McDONALD Environment Editor
AN TAISCE has made a formal complaint to the European Commission that plans for a highway between Dublin and Derry involve a “transboundary breach” of the EU’s directive requiring strategic environmental assessment (SEA) of major projects.
It also claims that the directive is being breached by the National Roads Authority (NRA) in pursuing plans for more motorways and dual-carriageways and seeks “compliance action” on an alleged breach of the Habitats Directive by the planned New Ross bypass in Co Wexford.
Describing this bypass as “the largest single intervention in an area of sensitive ecology and landscape”, the complaint notes that it would include a high-level bridge 4km south of New Ross in place of an original, more modest route immediately adjacent to the town.
The bridge “cuts through the hill at Camlin on the Co Wexford side and passes over the river Barrow, candidate Special Area of Conservation (SAC), to the Pink Rock in Co Kilkenny within sight of the area around the President John F Kennedy family farmstead at Dunganstown”.
It notes that a legal challenge to An Bord Pleanála’s approval of this scheme failed in the High Court on March 2nd and says the judgment of Mr Justice Hedigan failed to have regard to the review terms of the EU directive on environmental impact assessment.
An Taisce claims the NRA “has been given virtually autonomous legal status by the Irish Government to plan, seek consents for and funding for motorway/dual-carriageway schemes, both contained in the National Development Plan and even not”.
These included the Atlantic motorway/dual-carriageway from Letterkenny, Co Donegal, running via Sligo, Knock airport, Tuam, Ennis, Limerick, Mallow, Cork and Waterford, connecting with the New Ross bypass, with a new N30 link to the N11 bypassing Clonroche, Co Wexford.
Further sections of the N11 and N2 were to be upgraded to motorway standard. “As in the case of New Ross, a genuinely needed bypass is being used as the pretext for constructing massive inter-regional motorways or dual-carriageways”, An Taisce says.
In a letter to EU environment commissioner Janez Potocnik, it notes that Co Meath alone would have four motorways running through it.
“The Irish Government is also already committed to making extensive contribution to a new dual-carriageway running through Northern Ireland from the Monaghan border to Derry and the upgrading of the Belfast-Larne link,” An Taisce writes.
“The NRA is at advanced contract negotiation for the 80km Tuam to Crusheen sections of the Atlantic Corridor, and the New Ross bypass” it says, adding that plans for the M20 Limerick-Mallow-Cork section had been lodged with Bord Pleanála along with the Cork to Killarney N21.
Rather than scaling down schemes to reflect the lack of exchequer funding, the NRA and Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey were “actively working on a mechanism to subvert Government borrowing limits in finding a means to proceed with the road programme”.
This was to be achieved through either public-private partnerships (PPPs), “the plundering of the National Pension Reserve Fund or some sort of special dispensation from the European Central Bank through the European Investment Bank . . . The energy and resources being devoted to proceeding and securing funding for these road schemes and the secrecy with which it is being conducted and the lack of media or public awareness of the issues is astonishing”, it says.
Proceeding would “create a debt mountain for the next generation on top of that already incurred through the Irish banking and property collapse . . . at a time when the decarbonisation of power generation and transport ought to be the greatest priority”.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2010/0414/1224268309220.html