Road rage over delays in setting up coffee stops

Promised M11 service station still lying idle

AS WE approach the bank holiday weekend no doubt we will start hearing the radio advert from the Road Safety Authority reminding us to pull over, sip a coffee, and rest while driving on our motorways. Sound advice, especially after the recent heatwave.

However the RSA might have a word with another Government quango, Transport Infrastructure Ireland, and ask it where are the ‘coffee stops’ on the 1,500km of motorway and dual carriageways it controls?

Because if you want an example of how public bodies can get mired in – and be outrun by – nimble private enterprise take a look at the 20-year saga that has seen the motorway between Dublin and Gorey left without a long-promised State-run service station, coffee stop and toilet facilities.

In 1999, Arklow, one of the country’s biggest traffic black spots, was bypassed by the opening of the M11 motorway.

Eventually, in 2008, TTI (then called the National Roads Authority), shelled out €1m to buy a field near Gorey to build the ‘super-station’.

Bizarrely when the motorway was being built it didn’t bother to factor in the need for motorists to ‘sip a coffee’ or use the bathroom, so TTI also had to spend over a year – and more euro millions – building a flyover, plus on- and off-ramps into the proposed station beyond Exit 21.

Work at the station, near Ballyellen, finished in 2015 – but it has never opened.

As the State-run body was tripping over itself into paralysis, Applegreen, one of the nimblest Irish companies, opened a state-of-the-art service area near Exit 14.

It did what savvy entrepreneurs like Pat McDonagh did with his Obama and Galway plazas – provided a great service at a fraction of the cost the State racks up.

The taxpayer meanwhile has shelled out more than €1.5m on security to keep people out of the vacant Ballyellen complex. TTI blamed legal issues for the delays – but these were sorted out more than a year ago.

The motorist has long been regarded as a tax piñata to be relentlessly beaten to fund bloated quangos. Not only does one third of the price of every new car go into Government coffers, 60% of every litre of petrol and diesel ends up in Government buildings. Add to that road tax and the unending road tolls – on our 11 toll roads – and you get what I mean.

The Wexford motorway is not the only stretch of road in the country where you will regularly see busloads of passengers stopped on the hard shoulder to use the grass as a urinal.

Long-promised service stations on the M9 at Kilcullen and the M6 near Moate frequently force others into the same situation.

This is just one example of how crazy things are for the family motorist at the moment. Another is that penal taxes will see more cars bought second hand from the UK by Irish motorists than are sold new in Irish garages in the very near future.

Yes, so do drive carefully next weekend but don’t think about the issues I have just mentioned – it’ll only send your blood pressure through the car roof! WRITE TO JOE AT: The Irish Mail on Sunday, Embassy House, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4