How much will Sligo's N4 cost in the end? Several historic buildings, 52 houses and probably more than €70 million, writes Frank McDonald.
Something is happening in Sligo that probably isn't happening anywhere else in Europe - a major national route, the N4, is being driven through the middle of the town. And the severance it has caused will be irreparable for a century or more.
No fewer than 52 houses - most still lived in until they were compulsorily acquired and blocked up by Sligo Borough Council - were demolished to make room for this four-lane highway. Historic buildings, such as the Harper Collins warehouse, were also pulled down because they were in the way.
As minister for the environment in 1993, Michael Smith was so concerned about the destructive impact of Sligo's "Inner Relief Road" that he called for an independent assessment of it. But consultant engineers McCarthy and Partners endorsed the scheme, subject to minor modifications.
Despite the opposition of borough councillors, who favoured proceeding with a bypass instead, the plan was approved in August 2000 by Noel Dempsey, then minister for the environment. At the time, it was estimated to cost £18 million (€23 million), but the final bill is now likely to exceed €70 million.
The road, first proposed in 1983 and currently under construction, will run for a distance of two miles from the Carrowroe roundabout on the existing N4 to Hughes Bridge, where it will join the N15 Bundoran Road. It has been designed as a dual-carriageway as far as Summerhill College.
From a new roundabout outside the college, the road will continue as a four-lane without a central median. According to the Sligo and Environs Development Plan (2004-10), "this section of the route will be an urban street" with four signal-controlled junctions where it crosses existing streets.
The notion that it will be an "urban street" is a fantasy. Houses facing onto the highway and those backing onto it are all being fronted by reinforced concrete walls, which are to be clad in limestone. Along much of its length, there simply isn't room for new buildings to provide proper street frontages.
There's also a historical precedent suggesting that this gash in the urban fabric will be long-lasting; Pearse Road, the main route into Sligo from the south, was cut through part of its townscape as the "Albert Line" some 150 years ago and there are still houses backing onto it near the courthouse.
"The N4 is not ideal," Hubert Kearns, the Sligo county and borough manager, freely concedes. "The difficulty we always had was looking at alternatives that might have been more environmentally damaging and wouldn't deal with the traffic volumes. There was no soft option in this."
Traffic in Sligo, even with its circular one-way system, is commonly described as a living nightmare and the Inner Relief Road is seen as a way out. "It will facilitate good access to the town centre," Mr Kearns says. "What fronts it is an issue and we have to do the best we can to avoid a tunnel effect."
Seán Martin, Sligo Borough Council's senior architect, also believes the N4 should be "giving something back to the fabric of the town", though he is at a loss to say how this might be done. However, it will allow for pedestrianising three shopping streets (Castle, Grattan and O'Connell).
A new "civic space" is also proposed in the development plan, to be laid out facing the gable end of Plunkett Station, as a "key focal point" marking one of the main entrances to the town centre. The road will also feed a multi-storey car-park proposed as part of the Wine Street redevelopment.
The National Roads Authority maintains that the road is needed because "Sligo is a destination town in its own right", with only 15 per cent of all traffic seeking to get through it. "One of its advantages will be that someone in the middle of town could get out in just five minutes," a spokesman said.
Sligo's next priority is a Western Distributor Road, which would open up a largely undeveloped area in the south-western sector of the borough. Route options for a "realignment" of the N15 are also being examined, but there is an extraordinary density of archaeological sites along every one of them.
Noting that only 17 per cent of people travelling to the town centre use public transport, the development plan endorses two locally-generated proposals for a rail commuter service serving Ballysadare, Ballymote and Collooney, or a tramway fuelled by hydro-electric power from the Garavogue River.
But Sligo would need to boost its population base to achieve the "critical mass" required to make either of these schemes viable. In the meantime, more frequent bus services are seen as the best option for increasing the use of public transport. Provision is also being made for cycle routes.
Series - edited by Kevin O'Sullivan - concluded