Editorial: The slow upgrade to the A1 road to the border has been a sorry saga
Morning View
News Letter editorial on Monday September 2 2024: The story of the upgrade of the A1 road, which forms a key part of the Belfast[1] to Dublin route, is a sorry saga which reflects infrastructure planning in Northern Ireland[2] in recent decades. The road has been dangerous for decades.
Indeed, the entire Belfast to Dublin journey was lethal for decades. In the 1970s the northern side of the intercity route was radically improved with the construction of dual carriageways. The southern side was appalling and backward – it was entirely single carriageway until the 1990s, when gradually a motorway was built in short sections to replace the N1 road.
Then early this century that emerging highway on the Republic of Ireland[3] side of the frontier was rapidly completed, partly funded by tolls. Now the NI side is a disgrace in comparison. Part of the problem is that we were ahead of the south, with our dual carriageways on the A1, but they were designed to a standard suited to traffic 50 years ago, with dangerous gap junctions in the central reservation.
Those junctions are now the main problem on the Belfast-Dublin route. We report today campaigners who want to be updated on plans to remove those gap junctions with flyovers. The story cites Nisra/Dept of Infrastructure figures that between 2002 and 2019, there were 661 collisions and 41 people killed on the A1.
But that is misleading because there were upgrades in that time to parts of the A1 in 2004, 05, 06, 07, 09 and 10. The toll would have been much worse without those. Stormont politicians are to blame for the bad provision.
They did not even debate tolling as a way to build motorways on three routes from Belfast: to Londonderry, to the border at Newry and past Ballygawley towards Enniskillen.
Irish motorists accepted tolls and have world-class, ultra safe motorways.
We have on one of our key routes an A1 that is substandard, dangerous and set to be so for years ahead.
References
- ^ Belfast (www.newsletter.co.uk)
- ^ Northern Ireland (www.newsletter.co.uk)
- ^ Republic of Ireland (www.newsletter.co.uk)