Roads, not rail, must be the West's priority

Anyone who has not travelled on the N17 north of Ireland West Airport would hardly imagine the state of it. The ‘national primary road’ from the airport to Collooney has to be driven on to be believed. This road, the main north/south route on the Atlantic corridor, is meant to be the spine of a dynamic economic area, dedicated to achieving balanced regional development. There are parts not fit for driving cattle, never mind cars.

With much-discussed plans already designed to improve it, there has been a lot of debate of late about when this particular stretch might be upgraded and exactly how that might be done. We can expect further such debate, but the issue is fundamentally the much wider one of what infrastructure most matters to this region and how can we go about getting it. With elections coming up at local, national and European level, it would be good if we could have some sort of focus on priorities.

The big picture is simple. If our region wants to generate the economic dynamism to raise living standards, it needs to link and connect existing population centres more effectively. Cork, Limerick, Galway, Sligo and – in an All Ireland context – Derry have the potential, if properly linked up, to provide some western balance to our eastern capital city. Mayo and the West sit in the middle of that if it is joined up properly. To move up the value chain, you have to be able to move from A to B that much quicker as well as hit critical mass – whether for people or access to services – to make it work.

What is the best way to do that? Yes, internet connectivity is vital, but roads and particularly motorways are crucial. If we are serious about balanced regional development in Ireland, we need a motorway from Cork to Derry. Not bits and pieces. Not little improvements. A motorway, north to south, with no significant town along the route more than an hour from the motorway – be that Ballina or Westport or Roscommon Town. It should be strategic priority number one to complete that orbital motorway route around the perimeter of the country.

Why? Look at the existing motorway map of the country and you see the spokes of a wheel, most emanating from Dublin, with little bits and pieces elsewhere. That is one reason why so much of the country’s strategic industrial base is located somewhere off the M50 around Dublin, or close to the motorway around Cork. Businesses need access to great people and services to be successful, but a motorway network is also an important part of the story. If you want to know why there is such a difference in income per person between East and West, you will find much of the explanation there.

There is no margin in moaning about that. In economic terms, no one serious suggests that the way to generate balanced regional development is to reduce the capacity of Dublin. In a globalised world, we need a major urban centre like Dublin to generate and sustain the business – and the tax revenues – that sustain so much in this country, west and east of the Shannon. There can be margin in figuring out what it is about how to replicate the bits that would bring success to us, and getting to places fast and flexibly matters if you want to grow your share of the national cake. And it is about growing the cake, not trying to get a bigger chunk.

If you listen to much of what passes for public debate in Ireland, you would think we make money by giving out about the government and waiting for them to pay out. We actually make our money from trade, and we will grow the national cake through more trade, which needs – above all – good roads. If you want to improve living standards or income levels in Mayo compared to Dublin, you can only do so by generating the economic environment that can raise those levels. If you want to attract the kind of businesses that can sustain that, we need to be able to get to the major urban centres around the whole region much quicker than we can currently. And the best way to do that is with great roads linking to motorways. That is all true for the world of business or tax but also in terms of providing vital social and health services. It is not feasible to expect places of low population density to have the same services as areas of much higher density, but then people need to be facilitated to get to those services quickly.

Ask anyone from our part of the world about the impact of the M17 motorway – short and all as it is – or the difference in accessing Limerick now since the M18 was built, and you can get a taste of the economic and social potential of such vital investments.

Roads and motorways should therefore be top of the agenda in the upcoming elections, should they not? Let’s see if that comes to pass. There is of course a lot of talk about trains in our region. There are many arguments, environmental and economic, which can be made in their favour. There are signs that more firms now want to move the movement of their goods onto rail freight. All these things are good and should be supported. But if you ask me which is more important – road or rail from Galway to Sligo – I know which answer seems obvious to me, and not just because I drove the N17 lately. Perhaps we can have both, and if we can, more power to both of them. But if we have to prioritise, it seems to me that road should come first, not least because roads are more flexible than rail when trying to facilitate trade.

The environmental argument against further road expansion is an important one – and it has been a factor in the on/off debate around that stretch of the N17 from the Airport to Collooney. But the primary environmental problem with roads is the fuel used to power vehicles on them, not the existence of the roads. In time – and that day needs to be sooner – we will electrify the entire car and truck fleet. And that will deal with that problem. And yes, roads take away from natural habitats, but that is a manageable process if it is done thoughtfully. There has been bad planning of all these things over decades, but the learning is that we should have good planning, not that we should stop building things that are absolutely critical.

The safety of our roads has rightly taken a lot of attention lately. There is much to be done to improve that situation. Well-designed and high-quality motorways would, one hopes, help.

And maybe all this is a partial view, and the counter-argument can be made and sustained. It would be good if these matters were tested in debates during our elections.