Roads needed to bypass bypasses, says planning boss

BAD planning by local authorities means towns will soon need new roads to bypass their bypasses, one of the country’s leading planning officials has warned.

Chairman of An Bord Pleanála, John O’Connor, said billions of euro worth of new roads, built in recent years, were being ruined because retail parks, industrial estates, housing developments and hotels were let spring up all along them.

Major developments were particularly evident at important junctions on bypasses, and developers were deliberating targeting parcels of land near roundabout, citing this as a selling feature of their site.

He rebuked local authorities for facilitating the trend and said the result was roads meant to make journeys between towns and cities shorter and safer were clogging up with local traffic.

“We can almost see this around the country already, where we moved the road to avoid the town, now we are moving the town onto the road, and we will have to move the road again,” said Mr O’Connor.

Allowing major development along bypasses deprives town centres of investment and runs contrary to the policy of urban renewal. “If planning is about anything, it is about preventing ... the potential massive waste of resources and tearing the heart out of the town,” he said.

An Bord Pleanála could do nothing about most of these developments, as there were no appeals against them but two that were appealed, outside Dundalk and Balbriggan, had permission overturned by the Bord.

Any others that were appealed “will have a high hurdle to ove rcome” in getting the Bord’s backing, Mr O’Connor warned.

He also criticised local authorities for charging development levies that made a nonsense of planning policy.

“It can cost you much more in development contributions to build a small apartment than a larger house. Sometimes it costs more to build an extension to a house than build a new house, and underground car parking is charged at a big levy and overground parking is not.”

Limerick city was a particular example, where charges favoured houses over apartments.

“This has to be looked at in terms of the planning consequences. If we ... favour houses over apartments in cities, then you are creating an incentive for urban sprawl.”