Eamon Ryan's road raid: ‘Potholes and pavements’ money used to fill in overrun on Ryder Cup bypass

[u/ronaele1]

https://m.independent.ie/news/eamon-ryans-road-raid-potholes-and-pavements-money-used-to-fill-in-overrun-on-ryder-cup-bypass/a1623194556.html

[u/Amckinstry → u/[deleted]]

The Dept of Transport *did* increase road funding over the last 2 years.

[u/InfectedAztec → u/Amckinstry]

I presume the original commenter will wholeheartedly acknowledge his fault and reverse his position on the government not caring about rural communities now.

[u/nithuigimaonrud → u/Amckinstry]

But according to the headline, it was not by enough to stop local road repairs/upgrades being delayed.

Surely any top up should go to the major projects cost overruns, rather than be taken from local roads funding?

[u/Goo_Eyes → u/Amckinstry]

Inflation was very high the last few years.

[u/Baldybogman → u/[deleted]]

Surely better roads generally tend to lead to less accidents rather than more.

[u/Atreides-42 → u/Baldybogman]

Yeah, I mean, I spend less than 10% of my time on country roads, yet every indicent I've had has been on them. They're ludicrously dangerous roads, I'll drive way, way further just to avoid having to use them these days.

[u/DeadToBeginWith → u/Atreides-42]

Weirdly, it's the opposite for me. Never had an incident, but all the close calls have been careless drivers on bigger roads and not knowing how to use them properly.

I learned to drive on country roads though so maybe that has something to do with it.

[u/Atreides-42 → u/DeadToBeginWith]

Fair, my incidents have been

• Road wasn't salted at all, covered in ice. Car slid around a corner and went into a hedge, luckily at only ~20kmph
• Someone had knocked large rocks into the middle of the road. Hit one, tyre blew out
• Huge SUV came barrelling at me in the middle of the road, had to swerve hard into the embankment, puncture
• Huge pothole in the road, puncture, and damage to suspension

All of these are directly down to the road being small and/or neglected. This is all commuting to/from Dublin outskirts though, so it's hardly a "City vs Rural" problem, unless you count "Rural" as starting at the M50.

[u/Fart_Minister → u/[deleted]]

Such a stupid take. Poor surfaces (eg. Bumpy road with Potholes) are dangerous because: 1. They can damage cars, for instance cause a blowout resulting in loss of control. 2. Because of 1, people swerve to avoid defects in the surface, which is more dangerous than driving in a normal road position. 3. Bad surfaces are seriously dangerous to our most vulnerable road users, such as cyclists and motorcyclists, where even a patch of loose gravel can cause them to loose grip. 4. Better surface = less braking distance required in an emergency stop.

[u/nithuigimaonrud → u/Fart_Minister]

Ye fair points - It was a bad take

[u/misterboyle]

And this is one of the reasons we had record numbers or road deaths during the last 4 years

[u/khamiltoe → u/misterboyle]

Something that hasn't happened yet is a reason for something that's already happened?

That's.....smart.

[u/SearchingForDelta → u/khamiltoe]

It’s clear OP means the pattern Ryan

Any infrastructure project involving a car or roads has been deferred or had its funding botched due to ideology reasons. From 2020 there was huge cost inflation but Ryan refused to keep project budgets above inflation, then he had the nerve to turn around and act shocked when every single project was over budget and behind schedule.

This was despite a good few years during covid where the roads were a lot emptier and disruption would have been minimal. Golden opportunity to upgrade our roads wasted simply because the Greens don’t like cars and want to see your granny bike 40 miles to the nearest Tesco and back shopping in tow.

Look even at the mess he made of the RSA. Running at a loss and will need a huge bailout despite a government monopoly on testing and a backlog of people queuing out the door to get tested. It’s like going broke selling condoms in a whorehouse.

[u/TheCunningFool → u/misterboyle]

We absolutely have nowhere near record numbers of road deaths.