Port Tunnel costing E550 for every household, but who's going to benefit? - Mitchell

Quays will be quieter, but rest of Dublin will suffer

Fine Gael Transport Spokeswoman Olivia Mitchell TD has said the Dublin Port Tunnel has become an expensive half-baked mess that will only benefit the city centre, spread traffic chaos into the suburbs, and cost every household in the State upwards of E550.

With the cost of the Port Tunnel continuing to rise and the opening date still a long way off, one key question is starting to emerge: just who is going to benefit?

The lack of any integrated plan in Dublin means the opening of the tunnel will coincide with the start of a ten year programme of road works on the M50. Meanwhile, large areas of Dublin will have to cope with a sudden increase in heavy trucks when the tunnel opens. This is precisely the sort of problem that the tunnel was supposed to solve.

Rather than directing all the traffic through the tunnel to the M50, the City Council is proposing to allow two routes to act as escape hatches for heavy vehicles. These escape hatches will reduce heavy traffic in most of the area inside the canals, but allow one exit to the north via Sean Moore Road and another to the south, east of Mespil Road.

The council proposes to funnel five-axle HGVs southbound onto the single permitted route out of the city to the south. This will protect the area inside the canal from large HGVs, but most of this heavy traffic will end up on the N11 (Stillorgan Road) heading for the M50 or to the suburban areas between the canal and the M50.

It is reasonable to assume that half of the 6,000 five-axle HGVs leaving and going to the Port each day will avoid the tunnel and head south to avoid the long circular trip around the M50 and the queue at the Westlink.

I appreciate that the City Council is in an invidious position. The Port Tunnel has become a grossly expensive piece of infrastructure, designed to bring traffic to a motorway which will be a construction site for the next ten years. The lowest estimate of the cost of the Port Tunnel currently stands at E752 million, representing a bill of E550 for each household in the country.

An integrated plan and some joined-up thinking would have ensured that the opening of the Port Tunnel would have coincided with the completion of the M50 upgrade. Instead, the M50 works are only now beginning. The Port Tunnel has been under construction for almost six years, during which time the M50 has become increasingly congested. Yet no-one in the Government thought to sound the alarm bells.

And now we learn that thousands of HGVs will still be allowed through the city centre for the next two years, while the heavier five-axle trucks not using the tunnel will be funnelled into the suburbs. This whole project is and expensive and ill-considered mess.