Cuts of up to 40 per cent in the allocations for non-national roads this year are likely to result in even worse road conditions for communities whose roads are used as "rat-runs" by heavy goods vehicles (HGV). By Brian Byrne.
Traffic, including convoys of lorries, use a warren of small back roads, particularly in the Co Kildare area, to avoid traffic congestion on the main routes.
And the situation is likely to get much more difficult until the national roads system is brought up to the standard it should be, according to Jimmy Quinn, president of the Irish Road Hauliers Association. Filling the needs of road freight with the current infrastructure is "like trying to fit a quart into a pint pot," he says
The reason there are lorries on smaller roads, Quinn points out, is more to do with their need to deliver from point to point than anything else. "A farmer needs a delivery of building materials, for instance . . . but a lot of truckers also take back roads to avoid congestion on the main roads.
"You have to ask the question: why would they bother going on a twisty back road instead of a wide and safe main road, if such a main road was available and clear?"
Most "back" roads are of a poor standard in many cases, and the drop in funding which applied this year to 16 out of 24 county councils is likely to make some of them virtually impassable for ordinary motorists or pedestrians.
Some 94 per cent of the Irish roads system - more than 87,000 kilometres - is "non-national", with 83 per cent of the total classed as "local", which are the ones most vulnerable to the depredations of HGV traffic.
Of the 10 billion kilometres a year travelled on the non-national roads, 5 per cent are HGVs, compared to 9 per cent of the 12 billion kilometres travelled on the national roads.
Relative damage done to roads by lorriers compared to cars is substantially greater, according to figures published by the British Transport and Road Research Laboratory. In its Design and Performance of Road Pavements report, it is shown that an axle bearing 1,800 lbs will require 5,000 passes over the same piece of road before it does equivalent damage as would a load on an 18,000 lb axle, which is ddescribed as a "standard axle" for lorries.
Doubling that load again increases the damage by a further factor of 15.
In all, there are approximately 10,000 HGVs registered in Ireland. The vast bulk of them operate in the peripheral counties around the major cities, particularly in the heavily-developing Kildare, Meath, Louth and Wicklow around Dublin.
"Which roads they use is up to individual drivers," says Quinn. "There have been attempts to impose bans in some places, but they don't work, because deliveries have to be made to places inside the areas concerned. As for the "rat run" situation, we simply need proper roads."
He denies that plans for toll roads will result in many opting for back roads to avoid the tolls, despite his membership's reservations about tolling.
"The truth is, using poor roads is already shaking our lorries to bits," he says.
"Because of poor maintenance of roads in this country, maintenance costs in Ireland are double those which our colleagues in other European countries have to pay."
Many continental European countries have specific bans on lorries going into towns and villages. These bans are rigidly enforced, to the point that a lorry-driver breaking them can have his vehicle confiscated and face heavy fines.
"But these bans are only in place where properly viable alternatives are available," says Quinn. "We don't have these, and they will have to be provided. That's another question of money - and where that money is going to come from I don't know.
"Meantime, though, as people who pay a lot of money to the state every time we fill up our tanks or pay our annual road tax, I believe we're paying for the right to drive where we have been directed to by our customers."
Fine Gael transport spokesman, Denis Naughten, has sympathy for truckers, saying that they are indeed suffering from a lack of proper roads investment. But he says a reversal of the Irish Rail policy aimed at shedding its rail freight business is also needed, and points to Britain where grants are given for the provision of rail sidings into industrial complexes.
He also suggests that ports like Dublin could do much more to facilitate haulage operators to load and travel at night, when traffic is lighter and they wouldn't feel it necessary to use back roads.