Under Transport 21, the Government's 10-year national transport programme, motorists are promised significant savings on inter-city journey times. They are also told to look forward to reduced congestion in Dublin, with a wider M50 and upgraded public transport system that should tempt more commuters out of their cars.
However, Transport 21 fails to say that it is the motorist who will be footing a hefty chunk of the bill for this ambitious project.
Motorists already pay €4.6 billion per annum in motor-related taxes such as Vehicle Registration Tax, fuel excise and road fund licence. If the government was to ring-fence these taxes, it could pay for the entire €34 billion Transport 21 project in just over seven years - three years less than the current 10-year completion date.
To put the amount that motorists currently pay in motor-related taxes into perspective, the Minister for Transport announced with pride at the launch of Transport 21 that between 1997 and 2005 - a period of eight years - the total investment in regional and local roads amounted to €4.5 billion. That is less than the Government collects in taxes in just a single year from motorists.
Also, €33 million is already collected annually by the Government from road tolls - a figure that is set to rise massively as the promised new tolled inter-urban dual-carriageways are brought on-line over the next 10 years.
At the launch of Transport 21, the Minister for Finance, Brian Cowen, confirmed that just under 25 per cent - or €8 billion - of the programme will be funded through Public Private Partnerships, of which €2 billion will be toll-based road investment. In other words, in addition to the €4.6 billion that motorists already pay in taxes each year - a figure that rose by 15 per cent last year - road users will be paying an additional €2 billion in road tolls within a decade.
In addition to Dublin's two toll bridges and the Dundalk Western Bypass, motorists will soon be paying tolls on the N4 at Kilcock and the N8 Fermoy bypass, and within five years for using the Limerick Tunnel, the N25 Waterford bypass, the N3 Clonee bypass, the N6 between Galway and Ballinasloe, and the N7/N8 Portlaoise/Cullahil/ Castletown Motorway.
The exact tolls have yet to be set by the NRA for many of these new roads, although it is expected that car drivers will be paying anything between 85c and €2.40 to use these new roads.This means that the €2 billion invested by private investors in the PPPs road building projects will be repaid by motorists over the next three decades.
But discussing Transport 21, the Minister for Transport, Martin Cullen, said that motorists must remember that by 2010 journey times between Dublin and Ireland's other major cities will be cut by as much as 56 minutes. "What we are presenting today is no wish list of individual projects," said the Minister.
However, he neglected to say that 90 per cent of the new roads contained in Transport 21 had already been announced, and that the new inter-urban roads were already agreed under the 2004 National Roads Authority's €10 billion road-building project, and even earlier in the National Development Plan, which was launched in 1999 and due to be completed next year.
As Fine Gael Finance spokesman Richard Bruton, pointed out: "The NDP was to be delivered on target in 2006, and only half of the projects will be completed, at three times the cost."
The only major new road announcement contained in Transport 21 is the so-called Atlantic Corridor, which will connect Letterkenny, Sligo, Galway, Limerick, Cork and eventually Waterford mainly via a 2+1 road. Such 2+1 roads are cheap alternatives to dual-carriageways, and provide short overtaking lanes that are alternately staggered along the length of the road. Hardly the main artery the west needs.
The promise of this western seaboard road is further dampened by the fact that the Minister cannot provide a timeframe for its completion, how much it will cost to build and his department would not deny that it will eventually be tolled.
The building of the major link roads between the capital and the outlying cities will continue as planned, albeit in a longer timeframe, under the NDP. These inter-urban dual-carriageways will now be completed, promises the Minister, by 2010. As will the M50 upgrade works, which will see the Dublin C-ring motorway widened to three lanes each way.
Although the announcement that Dublin is to get a new Transport Authority should mean a more cohesive integrated building programme, the capital's motorists and the tens of thousands of commuters will still have to contend with five years of traffic chaos on the M50, as well as severe disruption around St Stephen's Green and the works along the extensions of the LUAS lines and the new Metro lines.
And it now appears that their reward for putting up with years of traffic chaos will be a new congestion charge.
In a dramatic shift in policy, the Minister for Transport has for the first time confirmed he is now considering introducing a controversial congestion charge for the capital when the Transport 21 programme is complete in 2015.
"Transport 21 will make a substantial impact on congestion," said the Minister. "When substantial progress has been made on the implementation of the major programme of improvements in the greater Dublin area, then and only then will congestion charges be considered."