I agree that the choice in sections is politically motivated.

The motivation is to ensure that the Rep of Ire government comes up with their share of the funding sooner rather than later. This funding has been promised under the St Andrews agreement and significant pressure will remain on the southern government until the entire A5 is complete.

Personally I am delighted that the A5 upgrade will commence and I think the missing sections will start as soon as these two sections finish.

I think this section will be used as a commuter route... lots of Strabane people work and shop in the city. It's a terrible road and for such a short stretch it regularly took around 30mins to drive.

This section will help all Donegal Innishowen traffic who need to drive through Derry to get to Dublin. AFAIK they have a Sinn Fein TD!

I have a feeling funding will be found for the missing sections sooner rather than later!

Wesley,

Clever "political" thinking perhaps.

However, as you say, if you could do two of the six sections and save yourself £600m or so by leaving it at that (while enjoying most of the benefits), it is frankly irresponsible to do anything different.

With City of Culture 2013 and the new North Coast Golf Resort, it is madness to de-prioritise the A6 and A26.

Whatever about clever political thinking your point I have highlighted is complete madness.

What works could reasonably be completed to improve either the A6 or A26 before the end of 2013 to coincide with the City of Culture, which is in itself a farce.

Likewise, the additional traffic added to either the A6 or A26 by the mutalation of the Giants Causeway by developers will be minimal at best.

I agree that the A6 would not be complete for City of Culture year and major roadworks would not be appropriate during 2013. The Golf resort is still some years off and it may yet be possible to upgrade the A26 in time for its grand opening.

The two parts of the A5 that have been selected make sense in strategic economic terms. They connect Strabane with the major urban centre in the north-west and connect Omagh to the Motorway/HQDC network and on to the airports, ports and economy of eastern Northern Ireland. This would be most appealing to potential investors.

Sometimes inevitably points made in writing seem harsher than they are meant to be, so apologies in advance.

However, what would really be a farce would be for Derry to hold the "City of Culture" designation in 2013 and then forget about it again for evermore as of 1 January 2014.

On the contrary, most of the benefit should be accrued well after 2013 (cf Glasgow 1990).

Thus, it is urgent that people can get there as quickly as possible as soon as possible after 2013.

Ian P.

Ian,

Glasgow was the European City of Culture and much like Liverpool has benefited greatly from the scheme. Derry is UK City of Culture and will not benefit to any where near the same extent if at all.

oakleaf

That's a slightly separate argument.

My point is that if you were serious about using the City of Culture designation to the benefit of the city, most of that benefit would be experienced afterwards (you rightly point to Liverpool as another example). So it is not as silly as has been made out to suggest you would be announcing a road upgrade in 2012 even if you knew it wouldn't be complete until, say, 2015.

I honestly have no idea what the real benefit of UK City of Culture is in practice.

Given that, as I understand it, the nearest competitor was Norwich, is it only for cities with no fully linked dual carriageways...?!

Ian P.

If Norwich had won it, would their version be called "Wich/Norwich City of Culture"?
"Ham/Birmingham"
"Field/Sheffield"
You get my point.

You better run Fast/Belfast

First flight out and a safe house in Slow/Hounslow

Personally I think that they would have better off using the money to reopen the following railway lines:

Phase 1: Portadown - Armagh

Phase 2: Portadown, Omagh, Strabane, (London)derry

Phase 3: Armagh - Monaghan - Clones - Cavan - Mullingar - Clara

Phase 4: Omagh - Enniskillen - Sligo.

The [edit] UTA closures were far more brutal than those of Beeching.

NIR only closed York Road North-York Road, Great Victoria Street (new station)-Great Victoria Street (old station), a few goods yards and Ballymacarrett Junction-Queen's Quay - since 1968 they have opened more railways than they closed, due to Central Junction-Ballymacarrett Junction, Blythefield Curve and Lagan Junction-York Road North Junction NIR actually carries more passengers on the truncated network than the UTA did before 1963.

My priority list: rebuild and resignal Coleraine-Derry, relay Lisburn-Moira, get decent rolling stock for the Enterprise, resignal Portrush, redouble Monkstown-Ballymena, reopen Antrim-Lisburn, and then reopen Portadown-Armagh.

Posted on Donegal Radio station 'Highland Radio' re public enquiry
http://www.highlandradio.com/2012/07/11/inquiry-gives-the-green-light-to-the-a5-upgrade-despite-2000-objections/

It's on the BBC too.

If they really are going to recommend not going ahead with the short Ballygawley-Aughnacloy section, then I'm very glad:
1. Traffic levels are ridiculously low here (around 5k per day). A HQDC cannot be justified on traffic grounds.
2. You could just about argue that a HQDC is justified to provide a consistent road standard, except that...
3. The N2 on the Monaghan side of the border is S2 and will likely remain so for the foreseeable future.

Going ahead with this stretch would be a farcical waste of money and cause totally unnecessary disruption to the rural area around Aughnacloy.

http://www.a5wtc.com/Press_Releases.aspx

Rubber stamped with a likely early October start date.

As per the Bele Tele

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/ ... 91983.html

"Work to build dual carriageways between Derry and Strabane and Omagh and Ballygawley, Co Tyrone, will begin in the autumn and take two-and-a-half years to complete."

Opposition from the environmentalists who would obviously rather have these collisions on badly designed roads

"Friends of the Earth Northern Ireland director James Orr said: "To build vast stretches of new road when our existing transport network is struggling to cope is to tarmac our way straight down a dead-end street.

"Perversely, the proposed scheme will likely make congestion worse, as motorists converge on the bottlenecks at the ends of each stretch of new road." "

Wouldn't expect anything else but complete nonsense and lies from Friends of the Earth.

Folks like FoE haven't really grasped the purpose of the scheme. They seem to think its all about knocking a few minutes off the journey.

Glad the Aughnacloy stretch has been postponed. A bit of common sense.

Glad the decision has finally been taken and work can commence. This will improve journey safety greatly, not only for people travelling along the A5, but also onto other destinations very far from any decent road, such as Irvinestown and Kesh, Castlederg, etc, areas often neglected in the past.

Hopefully there shouldn't be much of a bottleneck at the new ballygawley roundabout!

Maybe we could get FoE to campaign for a quick phase 2 go-ahead if they are concerned about the bottlenecks!