Carrick-on-Shannon bypass plan back on drawing board

A PROPOSED bypass of Carrick-on-Shannon, Co Leitrim, for which a “preferred route” was announced in 2002, is to go back to the drawing board.

The northerly bypass of Leitrim town has been bundled with another proposed road linking Carrick-on-Shannon to the new Dromod/Roosky bypass.

While the new, combined scheme is about 12km longer, its status in the NRA Roads Programme has dropped back to “constraints study”, as a new overall corridor from Dromod to the Roscommon side of the Shannon is drawn up.

According to Leitrim County Council, the existing route corridor selected around Carrick-on-Shannon will remain in place “until the new overall route corridor is decided upon”.

The move means that motorists to and from north Roscommon and Sligo, who face delays crossing the Shannon at Carrick, will have to wait a few years for the new bypass to be built. For financial reasons, it is now highly unlikely to be approved before 2011 at the earliest. The first round of public consultation on route options for the bypass took place in July 2001.

The new route will now involve an 18km dual carriageway crossing of the Shannon.

Leitrim County Council said it was in the process of appointing new engineering consultants for the design of this new scheme.

The amalgamation of schemes on the N4 follows the deferring of the N5 bypass of Longford town. It also follows the amalgamation of the Gort to Oranmore, Co Galway, section of the N18 with the Galway to Tuam public-private partnership (PPP) project. The effect of this move was that the Gort to Oranmore section, which was to have begun construction this year, will not get under way until the Galway to Tuam section is ready – in 2011 at the earliest.

Despite the economic downturn, the NRA said design work on non-intercity motorways will continue with a number of projects moving forward to the compulsory purchase order stage this year.