The much needed upgrade of the A1 Belfast to Dublin road has been tortuously slow

For most of the history of Northern Ireland, we had better roads than the independent 26 counties, and what became the Republic.

NI was barely a decade old when in the 1930s it was planning its first motorway, based on Hitler’s pioneering autobahns (work began on that ‘motorway’ in 1936 but was delayed by the war and not completed until the 1950s, opening as the Sydenham bypass).

The Republic, in contrast, had barely any motorway until the 21st century. But rapidly its road infrastructure has caught up with the Province, and in terms of long distance routes overtaken it.

From the 1960s, the northern section of the Belfast to Dublin road was markedly better than the parts of the route that were south of the border. Dual carriageways were constructed for much of the distance between the M1 at Lisburn (which opened in 1968) and Newry.

However, from the 1990s the southern section of the intercity road has been upgraded in stages to motorway, and completed as such in 2007.

Suddenly the northern part of the road, the A1, was noticeably inferior. The route around Newry was a twisting single carriageway with a high fatality rate, and the dual carriageway sections had deadly gap junctions, in which cars have to cross the central reservation amid fast oncoming traffic to make a right turn.

Much of that basic dual carriageway remains in place today.

The infrastructure minister Nichola Mallon has approved an upgrade scheme that will replace most of the A1 gap junctions with flyovers. This is welcome, but it has been a tortuously slow process, with construction not even under way some 14 years after the southern motorway reached the border.

Part of the problem is that the Irish authorities used tolls to help fund their world-class motorways, whereas populist Stormont politicians are almost always reluctant to ask the public to help pay for services.

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