It was the year of transport, with multi-million euro road projects and Dublin's Luas light rail lines opening for business, writes Frank McDonald, Environment Editor.
It seemed as if a Minister was cutting the red ribbon for a new stretch of roadway every month during 2004. Suddenly, the biggest road construction programme in the history of the State was producing results - many of them conveniently evident in advance of the European and local elections in June.
Four major schemes were opened before the elections - parts of the N4 and N5, phase one of Limerick's Southern Ring Road and the N7 "parkway". Other projects completed include the Ballincollig, Cashel and Monasterevin bypasses, the M50 Wyatville interchange and the N26 between Ballina and Bohola.
For the sake of balance, it helped that the Luas light rail lines in Dublin came on stream. And despite all the grief caused during construction, Dubliners flocked in droves to travel on the sleek new trams - easily exceeding the pre-opening projections made by the Railway Procurement Agency (RPA).
On the Sandyford line, which opened in June, the average daily number of passengers reached 21,653 by early November - more than 3,200 above the forecast. And on the dog-legged Tallaght line, even at 10-minute frequencies, the equivalent figure was 24,991 - nearly 1,400 ahead of expectations. The RPA was expecting that the total number of passengers carried so far would exceed six million by Friday.
So where are they coming from? Dublin Bus claims that it has lost 10,000 trips per day since Luas finally got going. RPA surveys also suggest that up to 50 per cent of passengers on Luas have come from bus and the remainder from other modes of transport and the "new trips" its arrival has generated.
The latest survey of morning peak traffic crossing the city's "inner cordon" (formed by the two canals) is expected to show reductions on the routes served by Luas. But Owen Keegan, Dublin City Council's director of traffic, points out that the number of cars coming into town has been decreasing for five years.
With the RPA estimating that between 15,000 and 25,000 car trips per day have transferred on to Luas, the Minister for Transport, Martin Cullen, has made a priority of connecting the two lines in the city centre - something that would have been done anyway if the Government hadn't scrapped this link in 1998.
However, there is not universal agreement that the original plan to run down Dawson Street and through College Green is the right way to go. Another possibility would be to route Luas east as far as Fitzwilliam Street and then north to connect with the Tallaght line via a long-delayed road bridge in Docklands.
This dramatic cable-stayed swivel bridge, designed in 1999 by Santiago Calatrava, who was also responsible for the Joyce Bridge at Blackhall Place, already makes provision for two Luas tracks. Estimated to cost up to €50 million, it will go to tender shortly, having been subjected to a number-crunching exercise.
Meanwhile, the airport metro looks like a dead duck, even though the RPA says the need for it "has not disappeared". Though much-trumpeted by former transport minister Séamus Brennan, his successor may give priority to a €1.3 billion underground rail link between Heuston Station and Spencer Dock.
OVERALL, HOWEVER, THE Government's investment programme remains biased towards roads by a ratio of four to one. Talk of re-opening the Western Rail Corridor between Ennis and Sligo remains just talk. And a plan to reopen the old railway between Clonsilla and Navan seems to have been shelved.
Instead, we are offered an M3 running through one of the most sensitive archaeological landscapes in Ireland, around the Hill of Tara. Estimated at €800 million, this motorway could become the National Roads Authority's Twyford Down - the place where anti-road campaigners in England made their stand.
"When the NRA decides to build a new road, everything it does is, and must be, characterised by balance," according to its recent newspaper advertisements in defence of the M3. Yet in this case, there is overwhelming evidence that it spurned the advice of archaeologists to avoid the most sensitive areas.
Taking a more easterly route would "sever an existing and expanding residential community" around Skryne village and "place dozens of homes within 25 metres of the centre line of that proposed motorway," the NRA said.
In Sligo, dozens of homes have been left cheek-by-jowl with the N4 "Inner Relief Road".
More revealing is the proposed €405 million M7/M8 interchange in Co Laois, which An Bord Pleanála was urged to reject by the planning inspector who dealt with it - largely on the basis that, as designed, it would cater for Dublin-Limerick and Dublin-Cork traffic and would be useless for Cork-Limerick traffic.
The inspector's report said this would "militate against the achievement of some of the objectives of the National Spatial Strategy . . . to support a better balance of activity and development". He might have added that it also graphically illustrated the Dublin-centred nature of the motorway programme.
Given that this programme has been justified by the NRA and Government on the basis that it's essential for "balanced regional development", it is astonishing that such a major scheme would go through the whole process of consideration, design and approval before anyone said: "Hang on a minute!".
But the appeals board felt it would "not be appropriate to refuse to approve the proposed road development as this would entail disproportionate delay in this critical element of the national road network . . .". It suggested meekly that "provision could be made in the future for all traffic movements".
AN BORD PLEANÁLA has faithfully approved all 14 of the major road schemes that have come before it since January 2003. How could it have done otherwise? The proposal to establish a National Infrastructure Board to "fast-track" major public projects had hung over it like a Sword of Damocles.
The Minister for the Environment, Dick Roche, recently decided to withdraw the Critical Infrastructure Bill, which provided for the new board, pending further consideration; it had been implacably opposed by the Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, over the inclusion of waste incinerators, including one planned for his own constituency.
With An Bord Pleanála doing such a good job of shepherding the Government's road plans, there's hardly any need for legislation to set up "An Bord Stampála"; it already exists, at least for giving the seal of independent approval to motorways and incinerators.
The NRA is pursuing plans to upgrade the M50, even though the cost has soared from €316 million when it was mooted in October 2003 to €580 million (including upgrades of the N2 and N3 interchanges) to the €807 million now being quoted. And even after spending all that money, it will still be congested.
More road space means more cars; the NRA's environmental impact statement predicts that traffic levels on the M50 will soar following its upgrade from 80,000 vehicles a day now to between 194,100 and 203,700 a day on two sections of the route - above the congestion threshold.
Eamon Ryan TD, the Green Party's transport spokesman, says it is "not too late for the Government and the NRA to admit that they have got it wrong and to switch investment to the myriad of public transport projects that are awaiting funding". But that's very unlikely to happen under the current regime.