The NRA has now placed the Dublin Eastern Bypass Feasibility Study Report onto its website for Public Information
Eastern Bypass Feasibility Study Report
The Authority was charged by the Government with the task of carrying out a Feasibility Study in respect of a possible Eastern Bypass of Dublin.
The attached document, issued in 2007, provides an examination of the feasibility of the project from a policy, economic, engineering and environmental perspective. It concludes that the scheme is technical feasible, strategically beneficial and economically viable, with the economic benefits of the project conservatively estimated at twice the cost.
The report does, however, identify that this is an expensive scheme and the significance of this scale of investment in the current economic climate is fully recognised. As a consequence, the NRA recommended to Government that it would be premature at this stage to make a decision to proceed to construction.
The NRA did recommend that development planning in Dublin does need to integrate the potential possibility of this scheme fully into that planning process. Significant proposals are emerging in the North Port area, the Poolbeg/Ringsend area and the Sandyford area, all of which need to have integrated transport and land use planning at the heart of their consideration. Not to integrate transport and land use planning fully in such processes risks repeating many of the planning errors of previous decades.
While the NRA fully supports the view that public transport needs to be the primary transport mode for these development areas with diminished reliance upon car transport, it is nevertheless the case that a significant element of road provision will always be required for both public and private transport, and that the Eastern Bypass proposal appears to offer the appropriate means, and perhaps the only means, to service that need in these developing areas.
The NRA proposed that the scheme should be further developed to the stage that all necessary investigative work (ground investigations, ecological assessments, archaeological assessments) have been completed and a final detailed proposal developed, inclusive of full public consultation on the proposals.
Out of that work, which would take about three years, would emerge a completed design of a fully functioning route addressing all of the substantial engineering and ecological challenges. At that stage a fully informed decision could be made on whether or not to proceed with the scheme.
Irrespective of the decision ultimately made, the key benefit of this approach is that an accurate and exact provision for the scheme could be integrated into the planning work of all agencies along the route. This would ensure that the scheme would remain protected and would be ready and available for implementation at any stage in the future, if required. In addition, it would prevent that new constraints from emerging that would render the project unavailable, or significantly increase its costs, in the future..
Ancillary to the above key benefit is that fact that moving the project forward to the next stage now will ensure that the delivery timeline for the project would be reduced by three years if a decision is made to proceed with the construction of the scheme at a future point.
Finally, it should be noted that the costs quoted in the report are based on price and cost levels in 2007. Since then land and construction costs have reduced and while this does not undermine any of the report’s analysis and conclusions, it does mean that the costs of the scheme are likely to be significantly lower and the benefit to cost ratio is likely to be further enhanced.
(Please click on the document title below to access it in PDF.)