11.14.05

Tolls

Posted in Feminism at 1:31 pm by Sarah

Sigh. I actually wrote this post already but due to server issues lost it! Apologies if you have been trying to view the site – I think all is stable now.

But on to the real business of the day. The new M4 motorway is to open in a few weeks (well, the bit bewteen Kilcock and Kinnegad). You’ll be able to see my house from it! Driving west past the Marriott Johnstown House you’ll drive under a major interchange bridge – the one for Enfield. Just after everyone has merged, look to the left! Mine is the Fr. Ted style house. You’ll see the upstairs. I’ll put candles in the windows at Christmas.

Anyway, they are working flat out – even on Saturdays. It is rumoured locally (and Enfield rumours are always accurate ) that Bertie has given orders its to be open before christmas so everyone will be impressed when they head home and perhaps believe his Transport 21 plan.

It will be tolled and I think my most esteemed father gets it right on the FRONT page of this week’s Meath Chronicle. Forgive my indulgence in repbulishing the article in full. Sub reqd. to original.

E2.40 car journey likely to become E2.50 by the new year

John Donohoe

MOTORISTS using the new M4 motorway, due to open next month, will be paying the highest tolls in the country.

The toll fee for an ordinary car travelling on the motorway, which will bypass Enfield, Kilcock and Kinnegad, and which is due to open early in December, will be E2.40, prompting Enfield councillor William Carey to predict that people won’t use it.

And the toll fee looks set to rise even further early in 2006 when the National Roads Authority (NRA) carries out a review of toll charges across the country. This is due to a provision which allows toll prices to be increased in line with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and is due to take effect in January.

While the NRA insists that the prices to be introduced on the opening of the motorway in December are 2005 charges, it has not denied that tolls will rise again under the review.

The planned tolls for the M4 are: motorcycles, E1.30; cars, E2.40; goods vehicles, buses and coaches, E3.70; and larger goods vehicles, E4.90 and E6.00.

For somebody commuting to work in Dublin, this would see a cost of E25 a week on top of already exorbitant fuel prices, parking charges in Dublin, and, if travelling to north Dublin, the M50 West Link toll fee, Colr Carey pointed out.

“People might only use it on a Friday to avoid the bottlenecks in Enfield or Clonard,” Colr Carey added. “But it won’t fulfil its aim to take everyday traffic out of places like Enfield,” he claimed.

Colr Carey opposed the tolls at the oral hearings into the motorway four and a half years ago, as did the business community of Enfield. The hope was, he said, that it would leave Enfield, the N4 and the ring road with at least half the volume of traffic that is currently travelling on it, but this won’t happen with a E2.50 charge per car.

His initial predictions at the time of the oral hearing was that the fee would be IR£1.50.

“People weren’t vocal enough in their opposition that time,” he said. “They were asked what’s better – sitting an hour in traffic or paying a pound to go on the motorway. Of course, at the time, they thought it would never happen. But it has, and it’ll be dear on their pockets,” the Fine Gael county councillor pointed out.

It will be particularly hard-hitting on those with mortgages, he says. “But they will soon realise that, while the motorway may get them into Dublin quicker, it is just to the M50 and another bottleneck,” he went on.

“There has been no planning done regarding traffic management in the city. Park and ride stations along the M50 for those coming from the M2, M3 and M4 should be in place to accommodate all the commuters.”

In the week that the Government launched its Transport 21 initiative, Colr Carey said there was no long-term planning on transport and that it was another example of ‘rip-off republic’.

The NRA was particularly aggressive and its attitude left a lot to be desired at the oral hearings. “Objectors were seen more as a nuisance – they already had their minds made up on the route and tolls,” he claimed. “The oral hearings were a total sham.”

The E330 million Kinnegad to Kilcock motorway is the final link in the dual carriageway from Dublin to Mullingar, and was the first of the NRA’s Public Private Partnership projects. Earlier this year, it won the ‘Infrastructure Deal of the Year for Europe, Middle East and Africa’ from the trade magazine ‘Project Finance International’.

The concessionaire company, Eurolink Motorway Operation Ltd, comprises the Ferrovial/Cintra Group from Spain and SIAC Construction Ltd from Ireland. The con

struction contractor, Westroute Joint Venture, consists of Spanish company Ferrovial Agroman and SIAC, which employs its own designers.

The multi-national team is well ahead of schedule on the M4 motorway work and hopes to open it in mid-December, almost a year before the October 2006 target date.

The contract provides a toll scheme concession to operate and maintain the motorway until March 2033. Tolls will be collected from motorists at the specially constructed toll plazas with a single toll payable for each journey. Of the 30-year concession period, 43 months were allowed for design and construction of the motorway

The NRA recently confirmed that the Eurolink consortium is the potential contractor for the M3 motorway project, having advised Eurolink that the company has been identified as the tenderer with the most economically advantageous tender. The consortium will be expected to fund the building of the roadway and maintain and operate it for 45 years. It will receive tolls on the road as well as a State subsidy.

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