OPINION: ‘The time for delays and excuses is over. It is now time for delivery here on both road and rail’

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The recent statement that Infrastructure Minister John O'Dowd is due to give the go-ahead for work on the A5 road will be welcome news to many across this region. The A5 is a poorly designed road that has claimed a needlessly large number of lives in recent years. The argument that it needs to be made safer was won a long time ago - and whilst it remains to be seen exactly what work (and where) the Minister will confirm, it appears that the two decade wait for the A5 to be improved may be approaching its final phase.

At the same time that Minister O'Dowd was making positive sounds about the A5, however, he also quietly relegated another long-delayed infrastructure project that is essential for our region. In 2004 civil servants took advantage of a five year suspension of the NI Assembly to propose that the Derry-Belfast railway line should close west of Ballymena. That was because the track was approaching the end of its life - and rather than pay to upgrade it, civil servants preferred scrapping it altogether.

Campaign group 'Into The West' was formed to fight that decision, and when the Stormont Executive returned in 2007 it agreed to save the line. This meant that the track had to be replaced, and work to do that was scheduled for 2013. When Derry [2] won the City of Culture title for 2013, however, it was decided to minimise disruption by splitting the work into three parts instead.

Phase 1 was completed by March 2013. Phase 2 happened in 2017, and enabled an hourly rail service to be introduced from Derry for the first time (with a huge increase in passengers). The third and final phase of the work was scheduled to take place in 2021, but has been delayed repeatedly ever since - with multiple speed restrictions and increased journey times on the line as a result (plus a trebling in the cost).

When Infrastructure Minister John O'Dowd assumed office in February of this year, Phase 3 was scheduled to start in Summer 2025 and complete by late 2026 or early 2027. That start date has since been pushed back twice - with work now not even scheduled to begin until 2027. This is a strange decision for a Minster to take - particularly in infrastructure, where the timescale for major projects is usually long.

Here was a piece of work that was set to both start and complete within John O'Dowd's term in office, which he and his party could therefore have claimed full credit for. And he would have been cutting the ribbon on the finished project in early 2027 - just a few short months before the council and Assembly elections due that year. Yet he has instead chosen to kick the project into the long grass.

Steve Bradley said Derry should not be made to choose between rail and road upgrades,

It is now scheduled to only begin in February 2027, with further delays possible - so it may not even start before he leaves office that year.

Gone therefore is the opportunity to claim credit for a major piece of infrastructure that should have been completed under his watch. It is curious indeed for a politician to turn their back on bagging such an obvious political win. So what has happened to change the Minister's mind here?

Surprisingly an explanation has yet to be provided - so in the absence of one we can only speculate. Perhaps the decision to delay this rail upgrade may be linked to the news about the A5? The total cost for rebuilding the road will be approximately GBP1.7bn.

That funding is not currently in-place, and we're frequently told that Stormont is short of money. Has long-standing work to upgrade the last remaining railway line west of the Bann been sacrificed to help fund the A5 instead? This question is far from unreasonable.

When Derry's railway was under threat in 2004, for example, council staff here were told by civil servants that they could keep the line open or improve the A6 road - but they couldn't do both. The North-west appears to be the only part of this island that is required to choose between infrastructure modes that every other region has had for years and takes for granted. Even significantly smaller cities like Lisburn, Galway, Waterford and Kilkenny have BOTH motorways AND good rail lines.

For too long Derry has been expected to choose just one or the other - and this latest delay in modernising our railway line appears to be another chapter in that saga. What is most corrosive is that this scenario creates an unhelpful sense of competition locally, with some people believing they must support one or other transport mode exclusively if they want to see their preferred option happen. Divide and rule at its best (and worst).

It is long past time that the A5 was developed to make it a safer road that is fit for purpose. It is also long past time to complete the modest job of ensuring that the only remaining rail line in the west of NI is fit for purpose. Both those things are true at the same time, and there should be no false choice or forced competition between them forced upon the people of Derry.

Decades of discrimination and Belfast-centricism have left us with neither decent roads nor decent rail here. Resolving both will require significant sums of money - but that is the price Stormont must now pay for its decades of neglect. Had it acted sooner, the bill for doing so would not be so high now.

And the longer they continue to delay - as the Minister is now doing with Phase 3 rail - the further the costs will rise. The provision of decent road AND decent rail for the north-west must therefore be made a priority when the NI Executive finally publishes its long-awaited Programme for Government. The time for delays and excuses is over.

It is now time for delivery here on both road and rail. *Steve Bradley is a Derry-based urbanist and commentator. He can be followed on Twitter/X at @Bradley_Steve

The Department for Infrastructure declined to comment.

References

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