The £15 million sterling (€25 million) improvements to the A1 north of Newry, announced last week by the Minister for Regional Development Mr Gregory Campbell, will add a further six miles of dual carriageway to the Belfast-Newry road and include a cycle and pedestrian facility for its entire length.
"This scheme will contribute to the improvement of the Regional Strategic Transport Network and major transport links within the UK and the Republic of Ireland," Mr Campbell said. "It will provide safe overtaking opportunities on a road which is now carrying more than 18,000 vehicles per day."
Mr Campbell said that he was committed to the goal of having a dual carriageway between Belfast and Newry and on towards the Border. But the spending on major projects, such as the upgrading of the A1, has been accompanied by growing criticism about the overall lack of investment in the roads system in Northern Ireland. A recent government report revealed that chronic lack of funding meant money was only being made available for improvements on major roads, even though these only made up 5 per cent of the total road network and carried 31 per cent of traffic, while minor roads in rural areas were being increasingly neglected.
The Northern Ireland Audit Report into the Structural Maintenance of Roads suggested that hundreds of miles of rural roads were to be abandoned, with farmers and rural communities forced to take on the responsibility of maintaining the roads themselves. Northern Ireland's roads were already considered to be the worst maintained and most dangerous in the UK, and according to the report, the Government was only spending half of what would be required to keep the local network in what it called a "satisfactory condition".
The report said lack of funding, ineffective maintenance, rising amounts of traffic and poor financial management were costing £3.5 million a year in public liability settlements. It revealed that the number of vehicles on Northern Ireland's roads had increased to almost 700,000 - twice that of 30 years ago. But it said that because the Roads Service had no projected estimates of what vehicle use in Northern Ireland would be in the years ahead, it could not implement a long-term planning and maintenance programme.
Motoring organisations were shocked by the revelations and described the lack of funding for maintenance as totally unacceptable. A spokesman for the Automobile Association said that other parts of the UK were trying to spend money on maintenance backlog, and that Northern Ireland was therefore badly out of step.
"Motorists are paying huge amounts in taxes for roads maintenance," he said, "but only £1 in every £5 raised by the government from motorists goes back into the roads system. There is plenty of money being raised from drivers to pay for essential maintenance." Around £150 million was spent on Northern Ireland's roads last year. Maintenance costs were £42.2 million, or 28 per cent of total expenditure.
It has been estimated that effective maintenance would actually require £75 million, including £8 million a year for five years to clear the backlog of repair work. Spending on maintenance has declined by 28 per cent over the last 25 years, despite rising traffic volumes, and if current funding levels are maintained, many unclassified roads will not be resurfaced for over a century.
The amounts spent on road maintenance are also significantly lower than elsewhere in the UK and Ireland. In England the figure is £25.23 (€42) per head, while in the Republic it is £55.92 (€71). That compares to £19.60 ((€32.64) per head in Northern Ireland. The £43 million spent by the Roads Service on structural maintenance in 1998-1999 was the lowest since 19831984, and the £80 million it says it needs to fund a structural maintenance programme does not include the estimated backlog of £100 million.
Mr Gregory Campbell's predecessor as regional development minister, Mr Peter Robinson, predicted that Northern Ireland would need £2 billion over the next 10 years if it wanted to maintain its present roads, develop a strategic roads network and have a modern public transport system.
He described the situation as "unacceptable" and said that the Audit Office report highlighted the dangers of long-term under-funding.
"We have this report by the NIAO showing that we are spending on structural maintenance of roads about 50 per cent of what is required," he said. "We simply cannot afford to continue in this fashion. Starving road maintenance of finance forces the Roads Service to adopt short-term practices which do not provide good value for money in the longer term. It means also increased road safety dangers and raises the possibility of having to abandon miles of rural roads." The director of the Confederation of British Industry in Northern Ireland, Mr Nigel Smyth, said that a toll system in heavily congested areas like Greater Belfast might have a role to play, and structural maintenance on trunk roads must be improved.
The report said the Roads Service should review its "road abandonment" policy, and examine how road risk assessment techniques and technology could reduce the cost of road inspections and survey work.
Among its other recommendations were that the Roads Service should develop projected traffic growth rates and publish an annual road condition survey for the Province.
Mr Robinson said that the report's findings meant Northern Ireland had some difficult choices to make.
"The Assembly, district councils, and other interested parties should now be in no doubt about the scale of the challenges which face us in relation to transport and that difficult choices will have to be made."
