Julianstown

Deja Vu in Clonard. History repeats itself with the opening of the new M4 complete with toll. The locals in small "bypassed" villages are scratching their heads as they watche HGVs thunder through their communities. A massive raod development fails to deliver quality of life to people living on the old route.

This is the second national route toll opened after Drogheda; and it is clear that no lessons have been learnt 2 and a half years on. Here's how it will go:

1/ Local reps will make noises about "banning" HGVs from towns, but having been seen to do the right thing will do nothing when it transpires that this is beyond their powers and against instructions from party headquarters. Remember provinding an "alternative" route is national policy even if it is at the expense of local communities.

2/ NRA and national politicians will say it's not their problem. N route gets reclasified as an R route, over to the local authority (forward pass)

3/ Local authority: no mon no fun. Nothing we can do. Can't ban trucks. Speed? that's the guards problem. (note there are traffic regulations which the local authority must refer to and includes calculations for traffic lights and guidelines for safety considerations in road design.)

4/ Guards will mount the odd speed check especially at the start. Frequency will dwindle, maybe more checks if there is a major accident. Gardai are massively under resourced and road safety is not top of the agenda since the police see it as generating negative sentiment towards them.

[As time goes by......]

5/ Situation will deteriorate. Truckers will do a deal with NRA to reduce tolls, but still massive truck volumes.

6/ Development continues, accelerated by new motorway, traffic volumes increase

7/ Local residents will organise and start campaigning. After about ten years things will be worse than ever and maybe there will be an election and something will be done.

Read more at www.clonard.org/