Valued at over £20Bn, our 25,000km road network is Northern Ireland’s most valuable public asset. It is the primary means for transporting people, goods and services; 100 per cent of freight goes by road and almost everyone uses roads and footways each and every day, whether by foot, cycle, bus, lorry or car. Uniquely within the UK and Ireland, the entire network is managed by an integrated road authority - Roads Service - a position that is envied by many. There is a clear consensus that Northern Ireland’s road network is vital for our social and economic well-being. The 60s and 70s brought high levels of capital investment in motorways and trunk roads – the strategic network. But the 80s and 90s saw relatively little funding, as Government had other priorities. The outcome is a network that was once seen as the class leader, but which in recent years has been eclipsed by sustained investment in neighbouring countries, not least the Republic of Ireland where improvements are largely funded by user tolls. Many of our dual carriageways, initially welcomed as an excellent improvement, were designed 40 or so years ago and design standards have moved on considerably in the meantime.

A renaissance started in 1998 with the Chancellors Initiative – a package of measures to revive the NI economy which funded schemes such as the Toome Bypass, Limavady Bypass, Newtownstewart Bypass and the A8 Larne Road dualling. But the key turning point came in 2002 with the unanimous endorsement by the NI Assembly of the Regional Transportation Strategy (RTS), which envisaged a 66 per cent real increase in funding until 2012 across a range of transportation modes - bus, rail and road.

Although ambitious, this was the funding the Assembly saw as being necessary in successive budget rounds to provide a modern, sustainable and safe transport system. The RTS set out a costed strategy; we have now built on that and published Transport Plans for the Strategic Network and the Belfast Metropolitan Area. These live within the RTS-envisaged funding envelope, but extrapolate it until 2015 to give a reasonable forward planning period. The Assembly did not favour user tolls, so these do not form part of the current plans, although Northern Ireland is keeping abreast of plans for road user charging in the rest of the UK. In December, Government announced the Investment Strategy for Northern Ireland, which envisages an additional £650M for strategic road schemes up to 2015.

This has allowed us to plan a series of Strategic Road Improvements (SRIs) amounting to just under £1,375M for the period until 2015. These are divided into:

Construction Programme: schemes on site;

Preparation Pool: schemes being taken through the statutory procedures of environmental assessment, planning and land vesting, with a view to being started within the next five years or so;

Forward Planning Schedule: schemes planned for the five to ten year period.

M1 / Westlink and M2 Widening

This £124M package will be undertaken as a PPP. The Design, Build, Finance and Operate contract has just been signed with the Highway Management consortium. Work on the the major part of the package, the £104M M1/Westlink Upgrade just started. It will see the M1 and Westlink widened to three lanes in each direction between Stockman’s Lane and Divis Street, and the provision of underpasses at the severe bottlenecks of Broadway and Grosvenor Road. Also, the M2 will be widened to three lanes between Sandyknowes and Fortwilliam to match the standard on the uphill section. Careful planning is being undertaken to keep alternative routes free from major roadworks, and to improve bottlenecks where possible; but there will be inevitable disruption during the three year construction period. We will be monitoring journey times in real time and informing road users of abnormal delays so they can plan their route.

A1 from Belfast to Border and on to Dublin A £24M scheme is already on site to extend the dual from Loughbrickland to Beechill, north of Newry. We are then planning a £102M scheme from Beechill, largely offline to Cloghogue south of Newry; this scheme is currently going through the statutory procedures and we hope to have it on site in 2007, as part of our PPP programme. The final link in the chain is the Newry to Dundalk Scheme which started in May 2005; this £84M project (£33M in NI) is scheduled for completion in autumn 2007. It is a joint project with the Republic of Ireland authorities with a single contractor working to a single joint client.

All of the new sections of dual will be to a modern standard, but the sections from Beechill to the border and on to Dundalk will be to motorway standard, with flyover-type junctions, full hard shoulder, no private accesses and no gaps in the central reserve. The only reason it is not called a motorway is that in some places, because of the constraints of the land form, it subsumes the existing road, and there is no alternative for non-motorway traffic. This will contrast with the lower standard dual from Hillsborough to Loughbrickland designed some 40 years ago to a lower standard. So we are planning to upgrade this section by providing an additional four flyover-type junctions (in addition to the two recently provided at Banbridge and Dromore) and to provide central reserve safety fence along the length, closing up as many gaps as possible.

All of this work will see the completion of a high standard expressway from Belfast to the border and on to Dublin by 2009.

A6 Belfast to Londonderry Road

The Toome Bypass provided significant relief for traffic on the North West corridor, giving peak journey time savings of over 20 minutes. A scheme costing over £40M to dual either side of the Bypass, from the end of the motorway at Randalstown to the Castledawson Bypass is being taken through the statutory procedures. When this is completed in 2008/09 it will mean that just under half of the Derry to Belfast route is to motorway or dual carriageway standard.

Roads Service has already commissioned consultants to study the route of any further dualling. And in December 2006 the Secretary of State announced that a scheme would be progressed to provide a dual carriageway from the outskirts of Derry to south of Dungiven at a cost of £250M, with the expected timing in the latter part of the ten year planning period.

A4 Dungannon to Ballygawley Dualling

This is a £102M scheme to provide 20.5km of high standard dual carriageway with no central reserve crossings and includes six flyover type junctions. It is currently going through the statutory procedures with a planned start date of spring 2007.

In planning and building these major projects we must pay respect both to the environment, and to the landowners. We undertake extensive environmental impact assessments in advance of the work, and a significant part of the scheme cost is environmental mitigation measures. For example, we have established agreements with adjacent landowners to provide feeding grounds for whooper swans that were affected by the Toome Bypass, and we have funded extensive archaeological investigations when a Neolithic cemetery was discovered on the line of the Loughbrickland scheme. No-one wants to lose land to a road scheme, and we undertake extensive consultation during the route selection process to keep landowners advised of the proposals and how it may affect them. To help us, we use the latest computer animation techniques to show the public how the road will appear when it is built. All of these processes take time, and almost always mean public inquiries at the statutory procedures stage.

In delivering this programme, Roads Service aims to employ best procurement and supply chain practice, partnership working, and competitive tendering in the EU context. For example:

We have been designated a Centre of Procurement Excellence, and our use of Target Cost contracting for the Toome and Limavady Bypasses was recently commended in a Northern Ireland Audit Office report. We enjoy an excellent relationship with our colleagues in the RoI National Roads Authority. Together, we are procuring the Newry – Dundalk dual carriageway as a single scheme, with one contractor working for a joint client. A cost sharing arrangement ensures that each authority pays for the work in their own jurisdiction. This is much more efficient than having two separate contracts.

Traditionally, most major works have been undertaken by Northern Ireland contractors, who have an excellent reputation in this regard. But recent tenders for some of the larger schemes have seen interest from European contractors with local partners, such as Ferrovial on the Newry to Dundalk scheme and Bilfinger Berger as part of the consortium selected for the M1 / Westlink scheme.

Planning and delivering these major schemes is not without difficulty - and the schemes are expensive. But the goal of improving our strategic road network is well worthwhile, given the advantages the programme will deliver for a competitive Northern Ireland.

David Orr is Director of Network Services with Roads Service, Northern Ireland’s public road authority. He is also a national Vice-President of the Institution of Civil Engineers.