Commentary: We've gone roads-mad, asserts FrankMcDonald, but we've still very little idea where we're going. It is time to adopt a more measured approach
In Ben Elton's hilarious 1991 novel, Gridlock, there's a demented Thatcher-era Minister for Transport character called Digby Parkhurst, who throws caution to the wind at a Tory party conference in a desperate attempt to ingratiate himself with his frustrated, car-driving audience.
"I shall tell you what we are going to do . . . We are going to build roads! We are going to build roads, roads and then more roads! We are going to build roads to tunnel under roads, roads to fly over roads, roads to fly over roads flying over roads. Roads, roads, roads, roads, roads!"
We in Ireland may not have gone quite that far, apart from the triple-decker interchange/bottleneck where the M50 meets the N3, northwest of Dublin.
But there can be no doubt that we're roads-mad and seem prepared to spend hundreds of millions of euro indulging this communal insanity.
To the motoring public, every bit of it is justified if the new or upgraded roads help to relieve maddening levels of congestion. But what if they become the arteries for unrestricted housing development in the countryside? Won't the traffic simply expand over time to fill the road space available? That seems to be the motor that drives the National Roads Authority (NRA) too.
In proposing new roads with a capacity far in excess even of its own projections, the NRA seems to have adopted the perverse old motto, "Live horse and you'll get grass", with Irish and European taxpayers footing the bill.
The evidence of over-spending is everywhere. Take Nenagh, for example. According to Father Séan McDonagh, a native of the North Tipperary town, all of the bridges over its first bypass - opened in 1999 by another native, Michael Smith TD - will have to be demolished and rebuilt when it is turned into a dual-carriageway.
We have already witnessed the partial destruction of the Glen of the Downs to widen a short stretch of the N11, to the grief of the eco-warriors who tried to save it.
And in this case, the principal beneficiaries will be residents of north Wicklow's expanding commuter belt rather than strictly national traffic.
In Co Cork, only a vigorous local campaign prevented the Lee Valley from being carved up for a completely new four-lane dual-carriageway between Ballincollig and Macroom.
How could anyone have imagined that such a road, with a capacity to carry some 50,000 vehicles per day, was required in this neck of the woods?
Detailed design is a matter for the NRA and its army of consultant engineers. But it was the Government's National Development Plan 2000-2006, that telescoped implementation of the NRA's 1999 Road Needs Study from 20 years to just six. And that, in turn, was driven by the perceived availability of unlimited funds.
Even if we could afford it all, this frenetic road-building programme is far too scatter-gun in its approach.
Few could argue with the need to improve road links between the main cities, with bypasses bringing relief to long-suffering towns along the way.
But to run roads in every direction is not in line with sustainable development.
Road transport is the fastest-growing contributor to the greenhouse gas emissions blamed for causing potentially catastrophic climate change. And on a per-capita basis, Ireland's emissions are outstripped only by those of the US, Canada and Australia, yet we are doing very little to implement our commitment under the Kyoto protocol.
That new roads will promote yet more car use is inevitable, especially when the railways outside Dublin are getting barely more than what's needed to make them safe. And all of this investment in road infrastructure is taking place in the absence of a National Spatial Strategy to promote more balanced regional growth. Looked at soberly, it is clear that we have no idea where we are going.
Without firm decisions on where growth is to be directed, how can anyone say whether a motorway or dual-carriageway is really required between one place and another? And such decisions are too political to be made this side of the imminent general election.
Ireland is not the Netherlands. We do not have large, dense urban centres dotted around a compact area like the Randstaat. All we have is Dublin and everywhere else.
And because we have failed to control the sprawl of Dublin, or direct growth to much smaller cities or towns, no other centre has developed a critical mass.
Within the capital, Luas will make a difference, but only if the two lines now being built are supplemented by others to create a network, like the tramways in Amsterdam or Zurich.
The much-vaunted metro, with significant stretches running underground, may not happen at all now that the Exchequer is no longer bulging.
The €450 million Dublin Port Tunnel should take most of the heavy goods traffic off the Liffey quays when it finally opens in late-2005 - five years beyond its original target completion date - and, consequently, cost over-runs have become commonplace in major transport infrastructure projects, whether road or rail.
We also need to cut our cloth more to our measure, bearing in mind the scale of this State and its distribution of population, both existing and projected.
That is one of the main reasons why the Celtic Tiger-inspired Sports Campus Ireland plan for Abbotstown is such a nonsense, particularly when other priorities are more pressing.
Grandiose infrastructure projects of whatever stripe must be subjected to rigorous cost-benefit analysis instead of being shepherded through the system with the right questions neither asked nor answered.
Only when projects can be thoroughly justified on that basis will we have some idea whether we are getting value for money.
Frank McDonald is Environment Editor of The Irish Times