Private funds for new roads

THE NATIONAL Roads Authority is to advertise within weeks for tenders to build two major road schemes, under a new public-private partnership (PPP) model designed to alleviate cuts in Government funding.

The rebuilding of the Newlands Cross junction in south Dublin as a multi-level interchange, and the replacement of a 16km (10 mile) stretch of the N11 in Co Wicklow had been scheduled to start, as separate schemes, a number of times in recent years.

However, after the most recent start date of 2009 was announced the deterioration in Government finances and the impact on roads funding caused both schemes to be postponed indefinitely.

Now the roads authority has told the chairman of Wicklow County Council, Derek Mitchell, that a PPP would help get around the lack of available funding.

The authority said the new roads would not be tolled and it is expected construction will get under way late next year. Payments would be made by the authority over 20 years.

In a letter to the council seen by The Irish Times, the authority said “the recent deterioration in public finances and the consequential impact on funding available to the NRA means that it is not possible to proceed” with a wholly public scheme. To achieve a sufficient scale of interest for a private partner, the authority included the maintenance of an additional 25km of the N11 and the construction and maintenance of the Newlands Cross junction.

The Newlands Cross interchange, which is to be completely free-flowing, will lift traffic on the R113 Fonthill/Belgard Road at Newlands Cross up and over the N7. It will also allow for free-flowing movements between the R113 and the N7. Newlands Cross is the only junction controlled by traffic lights on the N7/M7 between the M50 and Portlaoise, Co Laois. From next year it will be the only such junction between the M50 and north Cork.

This will be the third time the Wicklow road has gone to tender in recent years. The single carriageway road connects the Arklow bypass with the Rathnew bypass. In the decade to 2007, 22 people were killed on the stretch of road. Among them was Senator Michael Enright, from Wexford, who was killed with three other people in a crash in 1997, and five people who died when a lorry and a school bus crashed in 1998.