The Dublin Port Tunnel, Ireland's largest infrastructural project, has been a long time coming. It was meant to be finished in 1999, but was delayed by protracted opposition from local residents and will not now be open until the end of 2004.
Designed primarily to provide a "fast-track" route to and from Dublin Port, the twin tunnels carrying four lanes of traffic should result in the removal of 9,000 juggernauts a day from the city's streets, bringing much-needed relief to the Liffey quays.
Mr Owen Keegan, Dublin Corporation's director of traffic, said yesterday he was confident truck- drivers would use it. However, just in case there is any reluctance on their part, the tunnel will be supplemented by truck bans throughout the city centre.
Much of the controversy surrounding the project centred on the likely use of the New Austrian Tunnelling Method, which was implicated in a tunnel collapse in 1994 during construction of the express rail link serving London's Heathrow Airport.
Mr Seβn Wynne, the corporation's project engineer, emphasised yesterday that a more conventional tunnelling method using 12-metre diameter boring machines was being used instead. The two machines are now under construction in Germany.
One of these machines has been designed to bore through limestone rock some 22 metres below houses in Marino while the other will bore through softer boulder clay along the route. The northern and southern ends of the tunnels are to be "cut-and-cover".
The Government-sponsored Dublin Transportation Initiative, in its final report in 1994, recommended a single two-lane tunnel, but the then Fianna Fβil-Labour coalition decided to double its capacity to four lanes, necessitating construction of two tunnels.
This was done at the instigation of the present Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, who was Minister for Finance at the time, with the aim of relieving traffic in Drumcondra and also to preserve the option of extending the route into a full-blown Eastern Bypass of the city.
It was argued that the additional cost would be marginal and that the entire port tunnel project could be procured for £125 million. This turned out to be an under-estimate as the current fixed price contract with the NMI consortium is £353 million.
Traffic disruption during the construction phase was always a price that would have to be paid to secure the promised benefits. But then, as Mr Keegan noted yesterday, the much-feared "chaos" over the construction of Luas has not materialised.
Referring to the delays motorists will suffer over the next two years, he said: "We're pretty confident that the adverse impact will be localised rather than city-wide and that it can be managed. It's by no means the end of the world".
Further information about the traffic management plan is available from the Dublin Port Tunnel Office at 01-245 9999, by e-mail at dpt@iol.ie or via Dublin Corporation's website www.dublincorp.ie