The M50 was designed as a bypass, but has ended up as a suburban distributor route for the capital. It now encapsulates all the mistakes made in relation to transport and planning in the State in the past three decades, writes Liam Reid, Environment Correspondent.
It is difficult to believe that one van could have caused so much chaos for so many people. Last Monday morning, a Transit-style van was driving slowly south along the M50, when it spluttered to a halt on a section of the road where there is no hard shoulder because of roadworks.
It was 7.50am, at the very height of the morning rush hour. It was raining.
Unfortunately, it also happened to be the first morning of the new ban on large trucks in Dublin city centre, which meant that hundreds of additional lorries were using the road that morning.
Within minutes a third of the 35km M50 motorway had been transformed again into the seventh circle of hell for commuters. The tailback that coagulated behind one broken-down van stretched 10km from near the airport to the Lucan exit, leading to delays of more than an hour.
Monday was not an isolated occurrence. The M50 is the most dysfunctional road in the country, teetering on a knife-edge between flow and gridlock during rush hour. All it takes is some rain, a breakdown or a crash to transform it into a car park.
It is also an issue of huge political sensitivity in the run-in to the general election, with potentially tens of thousands of voters looking to scapegoat somebody for the lost hours spent drumming their fingers on steering wheels.
The last 10 days have seen the M50 making headlines again. First was the announcement that barrier-free electronic tolling would be introduced from the middle of next year.
Then last Monday saw the introduction of the five-axle lorry ban, which, with the exception of its first day of operation, has yet to cause the horrific congestion predicted by some hauliers. The following day the Government announced a deal to buy out the operator of the West Link toll bridge for a staggering €600 million.The Government and Minister for Transport Martin Cullen hope that the buyout, combined with electronic tolling and a €1 billion upgrade that is already underway, will finally deliver a functioning, efficient ring road for the capital city.
Voters can expect to hear promises about a new outer ring road, arching from Drogheda to Naas, in the coming months as yet another element to the M50 solution. The National Roads Authority (NRA) and other official transport bodies also believe that once the first part of the upgrade is completed by mid-2008, people will begin to see some real improvement.
The M50 is often perceived as a Dublin obsession that is of little relevance to the rest of the country, who see it as mere distant places mentioned in daily traffic bulletins. However, the road and its story encapsulate all the mistakes made in relation to transport and planning in the State in the last three decades - mistakes that continue to be made. The fundamental problem is that the M50 is a road that was designed to cater for 45,000 cars a day, but actually caters for up to 100,000.
Many believe the problems of the M50 are a side effect of the boom that could not have been predicted.
"They are the unforeseen consequences of good intentions," says John Henry, head of the Dublin Transportation Office, the official think tank for transport policy in the capital.
Henry has had an association with the route since 1972, when it was first proposed as a bypass for Dublin. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s he worked on the project at various stages, as a council official and for a private firm involved in its construction.
The road was designed as a bypass, and has ended up a suburban distributor route for Dublin, he says. In addition, nobody could have foreseen the volume of traffic that now uses it.
"It was designed and proposed for a different purpose, for a different era," he says. "We knew exactly what we were doing."
One of the key criticisms of the road relates to the junctions. At the time it was being built, the State authorities had the option of building complicated free-flow "clover leaf" junctions, which would allow cars to travel on to and off the M50 without having to stop. But in order to save €60 million, in the late 1980s and early 1990s it was decided that roundabouts with traffic lights would be sufficient.
Henry recalls working on the construction of the most notorious of these roundabouts, the Red Cow. "I knew even then it was going to fail, but that was all [ the State] could afford at the time."
However, to attribute the failings of the M50 to the vagaries of an economic boom may well be letting State agencies and the Government off a rather large hook of serious policy failures in relation to transport and planning.
The first relates to public transport. The simple reason for the numbers of cars on the M50 is that, on any given day, 95 per cent of them are making local journeys within the Dublin area. These cars are forced on to the M50 because there is no public transport alternative.
Growing traffic congestion on the M50 and other roads in the capital has been a feature of this Government's term and the administration has been painfully slow in ensuring any new public transport services.
It took until 2005 for the Government to produce a comprehensive public transport plan, in the form of Transport 21. Much of it, such as Metro and Luas lines, is still between five and 10 years away.
The second major failing has been in terms of land use. The M50 corridor has been a zone of rampant development from when the first sod was turned 20 years ago. The huge level of development, from shopping centres and business parks to housing estates, has been the main contributor to traffic growth. The schemes have been built with little if any regard to the pressures they would place on the road, sometimes with the support of State agencies. Indeed some of the rezonings adjoining the route are now the subject of investigation by the planning tribunal.
Questionable planning decisions continue to be a problem. Furniture giant Ikea is planning its first store on a site at the edge of the M50 near Ballymun, which is owned by Dublin City Council through Ballymun Regeneration. It has the support of the council, which is the planning authority for the area, but the main objector to the scheme is the NRA, which believes it will add significantly to traffic levels on a road that can't take the existing volumes.
The role of National Toll Roads (NTR), which operates the current toll plaza on the M50, has also attracted much attention in recent years.
NTR was established in the early 1980s by the late Tom Roche, a businessman who had already made a fortune through the building materials giant CRH, to build and operate the East Link bridge in Dublin's Docklands. In 1987 he signed an agreement with the State for NTR to finance and build a 3.3km stretch of motorway and a bridge across the Liffey as part of the first phase of the M50 between Blanchardstown and Tallaght.
In return for NTR's right to collect a toll on the bridge for 30 years, the Government was to receive a share, which would increase with the volume of traffic using the route.
The deal has been one of the most profitable ever signed between a private company and the State. Tom Roche and NTR's initial investment, which cost less than €100 million, will have generated profits of more than €900 million by the time the firm is fully bought out by the State.
There are many who defend the original deal on the basis that nobody could have foreseen the unprecedented economic boom and the consequent traffic volumes on the M50.
According to Conor Faughnan of motorist lobby group AA Ireland, many believed Tom Roche was foolhardy to invest that amount of money in a piece of road that at the time was leading nowhere.
"Back in 1990 when the West Link bridge was opened, Joe Duffy did a broadcast from the empty bridge for the Gay Byrne radio show, and there was a great laugh about what a ridiculous white elephant it was. Hindsight is a wonderful thing." Many, however, still question the deal, especially given the fact that NTR was building just a fraction of the motorway.
In recent years, NTR and the West Link toll bridge have been convenient whipping boys. The Government has been quite happy to let the firm take the flak for the congestion and problems on the route. There are few in the country who would rush to the defence of NTR, but to portray them as the sole villains of the piece is somewhat misleading.
The Government has been slow to highlight the fact that it has also been coining money from the M50 in the last decade. In 2005, DKM consultants, in a report commissioned by NTR, estimated that to the end of 2004 the State had taken €172 million in its share of the toll and the taxes it collected from NTR in the form of rates, VAT and corporation tax.
While the Government finally swallowed hard last Tuesday and decided to buy out NTR, it has always had the option of doing so, but had until last year ruled it out as being too expensive. In fact, it would have cost much less than €600 million had it decided to do so seven years ago, when traffic volumes were much lower. Instead it decided to renegotiate the contract with NTR in return for the firm widening the bridge.
The Government may have bought out NTR, but it has no intention of removing or reducing the toll. Instead the revenue will be used to pay NTR and to help pay for the €1 billion upgrade.
The upgrade will replace the notorious junctions with new free-flow roads, removing those bottlenecks. The road is also being widened to three lanes in each direction. The first phase, dealing with the two worst congestion points, on the N4 and Red Cow interchanges, will be completed by the middle of next year.
According to Hugh Cregan, a senior official with the NRA, which is overseeing the upgrade, the whole project will be completed by the end of 2010. "Are we confident it will be done? Yes we are," he says.
The authority has now awarded the contract for the €113 million barrier-free tolling system, which will replace the West Link barriers from mid-2008.
Tolls are an integral part of the Government's motorway system, yet ministers seem to be hugely sensitive to the issue. In the run-up to the 2002 general election, the State secretly held off on a planned increase in the West Link toll.
And last Wednesday, Martin Cullen was at great pains to stress that the new system would be at a single point, rather than tolling along the length of the road on a charge-per-mile basis.
The idea of tolling the entire 35km stretch, known as "whole road tolling", was rejected by the Government last year, and again last week. Under this road-pricing system, cars would pay proportionately, depending on the length of the road they drive.
What Cullen failed to say was that the new system will have the capacity to do exactly this. Although a single charge will be made in the initial years of the new system, multiple tolling powers are being built in from day one and are seen as an inevitable future move. In addition, a demand management study on the road to be completed later this year is expected to advise that tolling the length of the upgraded road is going to be necessary at some stage in the future if it is not to become clogged up again.
John Henry sees the tolling of the whole M50 as inevitable, but not until there are sufficient public transport alternatives available.
In fact, Henry believes it is likely that, in the long term, tolling will be extended to all roads in the country, where people will pay a road-use bill, with road use being tracked by a chip in everybody's car. Similar proposals are being examined by the British government at present.
All agencies are keen to stress that they have learned their lessons well from their experience of the M50. Conor Faughnan, however, believes the two key mistakes made in relation to the M50 are being repeated, but on an even greater scale in some cases.
He points to the huge housing developments going up on greenfield sites in commuter towns around the country, mostly along motorway corridors. Again, the homes are miles away from where jobs are in cities, and where there is no public transport, leading to a "tidal surge of cars" every morning and evening.
"It's like blackthorn hedge, spreading very quickly and with no control at all."
The M50 Numbers of the beast
1972:The year the road was first proposed.
2005:The year the road was eventually completed.
35km:The total length of the road.
80:The number of minutes it took to travel a 10km stretch of the road last Monday during rush hour.
50 million:The amount National Toll Roads (NTR) is to be paid annually by the Government for the next 12 years, which comes to a grand total of 600 million.
6.8 million:The cost per kilometre to construct the first phase of the M50 motorway in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
60 million:The cost per kilometre to construct the final phase of the motorway between Dundrum and the N11.
300 million:the amount paid to landowners to buy the land for the last stretch of the route.
45,000:The number of vehicles the M50 is designed to carry every day.
90,000:The number of vehicles it actually carries.
38 million:the initial cost to NTR of constructing the original bridge.
916 million:The Government's estimated share of toll revenue over the next 15 years.