motorways are fast approaching
their sell-by date
In today’s era of climate change, motorways are
fast approaching their sell-by date. It is encouraging
that there is still one political party - the Greens -
which will not acquiesce to the disastrous M3 planning
decision, which has been shown to be flawed on both
heritage and transport grounds.
Even Meath County Council now recognises in its draft
development plan that “the current trends in
transportation are unsustainable, in particular the
relentless increase in private car traffic”. It
says: “The council is strongly committed to the
promotion of sustainable means of travel
…”
Unfortunately, the council has also committed to putting
all its transport eggs into the M3 basket, with the
desperately needed rail on the long finger. This makes a
bit of a nonsense of the worthy aspirations in the draft
plan.
It also continues to leave the exhausted commuter with no
choice other than the private car or an inadequate bus
service. With the arrival of the M3 in years to come, the
commuter’s greatest gain will be to be able to zoom
up the new road, arriving sooner to join the ever-growing
Dublin traffic chaos.
Why do we continue to fool ourselves that road transport
is the way of the future? We persist in planning for an
era that is over. The earth is warming at such an
alarming rate that analysts now see the tipping point as
dangerously close. Transport is a major contributor to
climate change. Meanwhile, ‘peak oil’ is
almost upon us, after which demand will be greater than
supply, with obvious outcomes. Whether we like it or not,
fossil fuels are running out.
Ireland seems to consider itself immune from these
realities and is planning a massive motorway construction
programme. The point has been made that at least those
countries who have had motorways for decades have got
their money’s worth out of them. As for Ireland, we
will be lucky to get 10 or 20 years before large-scale
road transport becomes a thing of the past. We may get
very short dividend indeed for all the destruction of
irreplaceable heritage and good farmland.
The greatest challenge to our planners today is that,
with the bigger context changing so rapidly, we must
constantly reappraise what we are doing. We cannot afford
doggedly to persist with playing ‘catch-up’,
working with plans that may have seemed right seven or
eight years ago. The vast amounts of money destined for
motorway construction should instead go to improving
existing roads, building bypasses and to providing a
state-of-the-art public transport system.
We have to plan for transport systems that are
sustainable into the future we now face.
Claire Oakes,
Bellinter,
Navan,
Co. Meath.
© Irish Examiner, 6th. November 2006.
