Editorial: The A1 road could have been a much better route if politicians had accepted tolls to help fund a motorway, as on the Republic of Ireland side

​Councillors in Newry, Mourne and Down District are pleading for safety measures to be introduced on the Belfast to Dublin road.

​The measures are simple but important ones – closing the gaps in the central reservation of the A1 dual carriageway that runs between Lisburn and the border, to make the route a so-called expressway, ie a road with a barrier in the middle.

Such a barrier makes a road far safer than any other type of road, by making it impossible for cars to turn right across a carriageway amidst oncoming traffic, one of the most dangerous manoeuvres. A barrier in the middle helps explain why expressways, including motorways, are the roads with the lowest fatality rates per mile travelled.

In fact public perceptions about road safety are often badly skewed – people might think that a quiet, twisting, single carriageway rural road is safe when in fact such roads are the most lethal, with cars overtaking other cars, and multiple dangerous side road entries and cross roads. People might also think that motorways the most dangerous because they fastest, when in fact lack of cross traffic slashes risks.

Much of the A1 was built in the 1970s and so it was not finalised to expressway standard. Thus the Northern Ireland sections of the cross-border route were once far better than the Republic sections, which for decades was all single carriageway, but are now much worse (the entirety of the southern stretch to Dublin is motorway or near-motorway standard).

The councillors are right to be dismayed that there is no funding to close these gaps, when there is funding for so many other things in the province including large amounts for contested cultural matters.

But there is another factor too: no politicians in NI supported tolls as a way of funding roads like the magnificent motorways they now have south of the border, that were partly funded by tolls.