The economic and social infrastructure operational programme contains the following performance indicators for the national roads development programme: two output indicators – the extent of completion of the main inter-urban routes and the extent of completion of the greater Dublin area projects; and two results indicators – travel time savings achieved on the five major inter- urban routes and the level of service achieved on other national primary routes.
As part of its regular progress reports to the monitoring committee of the economic and social infrastructure OP, the NRA reports on these indicators. Data on the level of service on the national primary network is provided on a less regular basis as the analysis and modelling work necessary to provide this data is only now being undertaken on a regular annual basis.
The position on the time savings expected to be achieved by end 2003 on the major inter-urban routes is as follows: M1 – approximately 23 minutes; N7 – approximately 12 minutes; and N8 – approximately ten minutes.
In addition the relief roads provided at Enfield and Kinnegad on the N4-N6 have achieved journey time savings on these routes. The NRA is confident of achieving the travel time savings identified for each major inter-urban upon completion of the entire inter-urban route. The difficulty that exists in the meantime is that as traffic growth increases, end to end journey times are also rising. While new schemes will serve to reduce travel times, the full benefits, in terms of achieving projected time savings, may not be realised until the entire corridor is upgraded or at least until all major bottlenecks are removed from each corridor.
Question No. 144 answered with Question No. 141.
Question No. 145 answered with Question No. 116.
