Maintaining our roads in Todays Environment

1. Maintaining our roads in Todays Environment Joe O’Neill, Galway City Council

2. The strategic objective • Funding represents an investment in an important state asset –the investment needs to be protected.

3. Why are roads an important asset? • Key factor in supporting economic activity, and in linking producers and consumers. • Primary facilitator of access to services and facilities for most of our citizens. • Facilitating connectivity within and between communities enhances social cohesion and social inclusion. • Importance of local and regional roads arises from the dispersed nature of our settlements, and the importance of tourism and agriculture in generating employment, and wealth.

4. Why is funding for roads such a topical issue?

5. Network is still growing • Motorways supplementing old routes. • Road network is over 96,000 Kms of road. • 32,816 kms of local secondary roads • 20,276 kms of local tertiary roads.

6. Costs are increasing • Material cost is the primary element of all expenditure on both surface dressing and strengthening and of this, bitumen cost if a very high proportion. • Additional costs of winter maintenance imposed by harsh winter conditions.Cumulative damage of the 2009 and 2010 winters almost certainly exceeded €200 Million nationally. • Fixing the damage, and the fact that many roads not scheduled for routine maintenance were damaged, meant that addressing the urgent is deferring the planned maintenance on roads already in distress. • Nature of the damage meant that smaller works schemes are necessary with less efficient unit rates. The necessity to spread the resources more thinly is a retarder to efficiency.

7. But funding is declining • Reduction in funding available to Government. • Reduction in funding available to the NRA. • Pressures on local government funding, through reduced general exchequer contribution and more importantly due to pressures on local income, will mean that the local contribution will decline rather than increase in coming years. • Virtually no capital funding available from development levies.

8. Funding is declining • 2013 is envisaged to be the worst year for funding for national roads - down from €640 million in 2012 to €270 Million in 2013. • Funding for non-national roads down from €376 million in 2012 to €346 million for 2013

9. Consequences: Safety • ‘Lives will be lost if we don’t undertake further road improvements but lives will also be lost if surface conditions are allowed to deteriorate on the majority of our roads’.

10. Consequences: deterioration • The basic principle is to sustain surface dressing and strengthening cycles (with strengthening being appropriate to urban areas): every 10 years for surface dressing and every 20 years for strengthening, along with sustaining a fair proportion of routine maintenance effort etc. Even in the best of times from a funding perspective in say 2006/2007 we were barely able to achieve these rotations and funding has significantly reduced since then.

11. Consequences: deterioration Regional and local roads: “2012:grant allocations allowed for 68% of minimum target for surface dressing and 43% of target for road strengthening work.” DOT

12. Consequences • From bad to worse: socially, politically and economically the consequences of lack of investment become dire over a limited timeframe and the costs of recovering a lack of investment over a few years become prohibitive.

13. Squaring the circle Discretionary spending fails to fill hole in road funding Monday March 18,2013 by Sean O’Riordan [Irish Examiner] The Transport minister’s decision to give power to Cork County Coujncil on discretionary spending of €15.5m to repair weather-beaten roads looked good on paper initially. Councillors welcomed Leo Varadkar’s decision to allow some autonomy in how they spend road repair money. However it quickly emerged, when the figures were analysed, that the exact spend will not fill in too many potholes, and that far more money will be needed to address the serious deterioration in the county’s roads. County manager Martin Riordan said approximately €11,000 had to be set aside for each of its 350 roads department staff, to balance payroll expenses. That means wages amounting to €3.85m will have to be immediately deducted from the €15.5m discretionary allocation.

14. Squaring the circle Mr. Riordan then said that criteria had been adopted by council officials which determined what each electoral area received. He said 60% was based on road length, 30% on population (excluding town council areas), 5% on road condition and 5% on a peripherality” factor to recognise higher costs in outlying areas, such as the islands. Councillors expressed concern that only 5% was being focused on road condition, and Mr.Riordan said he would agree to reconsider that. In the meantime, councillors will discuss with their area engineers which roads in each of the 10 electoral areas will get priority works. The Skibbereen (€2,293,000) and Bantry(€2,180,000) electoral areas have been given the biggest discretionary funds in the county. Councillors from other areas complained that they were getting less. But figures showed that, when it came to the length of roads in those particular areas, they were in fact the poor relations. Mizen peninsula- based councillor Dermot Sheehan(FG) pointed out that roads nearer to Cork City were getting the biggest allocation per kilometre and that peripheral areas, where most of the weather- related damage had occurred, were getting a raw deal.

15. What can be done? • Risk of pitching urban vs rural.Road network is not an end in itself –function is to serve citizens most of whom are concentrated in cities –which is why investment in mass transport is more efficient [less vehicles required, meaning less congestion and less pressure on roads].

16. What can be done? • Acknowledging that money is simply not available to Ireland we have to drive phenomenal efficiency in this area and also hope that contract costs continue to improve (albeit overall it would appear that we will be unable to get efficiency yields of anything greater than single figures in percentage terms).

17. What can be done? • Better pavement management systems • Secure reductions in public lighting costs through reformed procurement. • Reduce labour and other costs: – community involvement in roads scheme,CE,etc. • Greater control over statutory undertakers –we ultimately bear cost of poor reinstatement.

18. What can be done? • Funds from road-users- tolls, retain proceeds of motor tax. • Local contributions e.g. LIS,and CIS. • Does 15% local discretion on LPT hold out prospect of raising some funds locally?

19. WHAT CAN BE DONE? • Prohibit or place restrictions on heavy vehicles accessing minor roads • Abandon certain tertiary roads?

20. What can be done? • Planning context :settlement strategies and reducing dispersal.

21. THANK YOU