Long road ahead for rest areas

DISCOVERING IRELAND has become a whole lot easier for residents and tourists following the €8 billion inter-urban motorway building programme.

On Thursday last, the M9 – which links Dublin to Waterford – was finally opened to traffic. The motorways to Cork and Galway have already opened and, later this autumn, the M7 to Limerick will be completed so that, by year’s end, all the State’s five main cities will be linked.

Commenting on the programme, the Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey justified the cost (€1.2 billion for the new M9 alone) by saying that “these roads are built not just for now, not for the next 20 years, but for the next 100 years” and claimed “Ireland now has a fantastic motorway network we can be very, very proud of”.

But as anyone who has driven on European motorways will know – and surely to the consternation of tourists – Irish motorways differ in one crucial respect from those in other countries. They were built and opened with no rest areas or service facilities, meaning that motorists must leave the motorway to find food, petrol, toilets or simply to take one of those short breaks which the Garda and the AA so frequently recommend.

Now, following a policy U-turn, the National Roads Authority (NRA) is attempting to install services – after the event. Three service areas are being built – two on the M1 – at Castlebellingham, Co Louth and at Lusk, Co Dublin; and one on the M4 at Enfield, Co Kildare.

Each, according to the NRA, will operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week and will “provide facilities on either side of the motorway and at each location there will be a restaurant, convenience shop, toilet and shower facilities, fuel, and dedicated parking for HGVs. Additionally, there will be child play areas, picnic areas and tourism information.”

The NRA said that it hopes, eventually, to tender for further service areas on the rest of the motorway network. But, in the absence of government funding, investment is being sought from the private sector.

The three service areas under construction are being built and will be run by a public private partnership (PPP) operated by the Superstop Consortium which is made up of Applegreen (a retail operator), Top Oil (fuel) and Pierse Contracting (design and construction).

For the rest of the motorway network, motorists will continue to have to leave the road to access services.

Asked at the opening of the new M9 why the new motorway had been built without any services, Dempsey said he had asked the NRA to “prepare a report” which would “look at ways and means of doing that in a way that’s not going to cost the taxpayer anything”.

In the meantime, for users of the M9 – and other motorways – the NRA said it was implementing a new nationwide road signage plan which would “mitigate the lack of services on the network”.

A spokesman acknowledged that motorists would have to exit the motorway to access “off-line services” which would generally be available “under 2km away” and that “once you get off the motorway there’ll be signs so we won’t leave you in the lurch”.