Cork-Limerick route selection to be unveiled this month
Padraig Barrett, the Cork County Council’s director of roads, said the M20/N20 roads design team will make an online preferred route presentation that day to Cork and Limerick City and County councillors and after that it will go out for public consultation.
The optimum route selection for the upgrade of the main Cork-Limerick road will become known on March 30 with fears it will not be a full motorway link between the two cities.
Padraig Barrett, the Cork County Council’s director of roads, said the M20/N20 roads design team will make an online preferred route presentation that day to Cork and Limerick City and County councillors and after that it will go out for public consultation.
Some concerns have been raised in recent months that the final route selection will include a mixture of motorway and non-motorway sections.
Fianna Fáil councillor Gearoid Murphy told a meeting of Cork County Council’s Northern Division that anything else than a full motorway “would represent a failure in forward planning.”
He said there had been a number of fatal accidents on some stretches of the current road and this had to be addressed, along with economic growth in the region, by a full motorway link.
He claimed that there are very few, if any, countries in the developed world where their second and third cities are not connected by motorways.
Mr Murphy said the close proximity of the two cities meant they must be linked by motorway.
“We’re waiting with bated breath for the route selection,” Fianna Fáil councillor Ian Doyle added.
Fine Gael councillor Liam Madden said a lot of planning permissions had to be put on hold along a wide corridor because the actual route hadn’t been selected and at least when it is this will give people some certainty going forward.
He added that some communities south of Mallow are spilt by the existing main road and the major increase in traffic volumes on it was causing safety issues for them.
Meanwhile, Mr Barrett said he expects the council will be able to make a planning application for the Mallow Northern Relief Road to Bord Pleanála by the middle of next year.
Mr Barrett said that at present engineers are working through the environmental appraisal on the route selected for it. Labour councillor James Kennedy asked if there was any way the project could be speeded up as it is currently expected to be completed by 2027.
Mr Barrett said it was unlikely that this could be done. He said that Bord Pleanála is likely to conduct an oral hearing into the project and he expects it would take about a year before it will make a decision.
Meanwhile, he told councillors that the local authority has written to TII (Transport Infrastructure Ireland) seeking its approval for funding and to go to tender to upgrade one of the most dangerous junctions in the country.
Mr Barrett it will cost between €2m - €3m to make the junction safer at Ballymacquirke, near Kanturk.
“The public is constantly raising safety concerns there. We need to get the finance for it and a start date,” Fianna Fáil councillor Bernard Moynihan said.
Mr Barrett replied that all going well the earliest they could start there would be September.
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