All roads lead to Roses as Tralee bypass opens

The Tralee bypass, one of the few major national roads projects to be undertaken since the economic downturn, and the biggest-ever roads project in Kerry, opened shortly after 2pm yesterday, to coincide with the annual Rose of Tralee festival.

Summer-frocked Roses in vintage cars were the first to travel on the Kingdom’s newest road, looking onto the Slieve Mish mountains.

Costing €97.3m, the 30km of N22/N69 road used up 225 acres of land involving 78 landowners.

It connects four of the five national routes — the N21, N22, N69, and N70 — which terminate in Tralee and will take a quarter of cars out of Tralee town, as well as cutting journey times.

A bypass/dual carriageway into Tralee has been sought for decades and hit an environmental wall in the late 1980s and early 1990s in the era of then-tánaiste Dick Spring, a local TD, when an attempt to bring it through Ballyseedy Wood was blocked at the European level by environmentalists.

The work stalled again in 2009 but was kick-started in early 2011 before the general election and allowed go ahead with the new Government.

The bypass will relieve chronic traffic congestion in and out of Tralee town. Around 4,000 of the 16,000 cars travelling in and out of Tralee each day will now be able to avoid the town.

Travel times between Tralee and Killarney will be reduced by about 10 minutes, it is thought, and there is a good road as far as Abbeyfeale in West Limerick.

Mayor of Kerry Seamus Cosaí Fitzgerald yesterday said that the new road network was significant not just for Tralee but for “the county as a whole” — especially “when we are travelling to Croke Park” he added, to cheers from the large crowd.

However, the mayor called on neighbouring county councils, Limerick County Council and Cork County Council, to do their part in ensuring access to Kerry by bypassing towns such as Newcastlewest in Limerick and Macroom in Cork.