M3, Co. Meath: Taxpayer to pay the Toll (again)

by Gordon Kingston, Heritage Action

 
I’ve just finished reading the latest news, on the unholy mess that is the M3. Just when you thought that the story couldn’t get any more farcical, something else pops up.

At least the good citizens of Meath can sleep safe in their homes. The road that they were apparently clamouring for, because they were sold those over-priced, over-zoned, under-serviced ‘country houses’ that, yes, you have to drive from, will definitely make a profit for Eurolink. It has been revealed that, if the number of road users falls below a ‘minimum traffic level’, then the taxpayer will have to step in and make good the difference.

Who, tell me, signed off on that one? Couldn’t they even flog a chunk of our national heritage, for scrap, without ending up paying someone to take it? The first time such a guarantee has been made and again, yes, you can also guarantee that someone is laughing all the way to what was once a bank.

You’d have to ask, at this stage, if anyone is actually going to use the cursed thing? That’s the situation that they seem to be contemplating. The high tolls and a new rail link, from Navan to the city, are going to bleed traffic away from the motorway. In fact, you’d be wondering why they built it at all. Except, of course, to keep the good citizens and voters, of Meath, safe in their ’goldmines’, singing the right tune come election time and the boys with big pockets and the land in the right places providing the chorus.

I know, I know. The damage is done anyway. There’s just something in me, maybe genetic, that thinks that if you stomp down the path killing every insect that happens to stray under your feet, you should, at a ‘minimum level‘, make sure that you’re going somewhere. At least let there be a point to it. It was never right, but this just makes it insane. What a waste.

http://www.tarawatch.org/taxpayerwill-have-to-foot-bill-for-m3-toll-shortfall-furure-over-motorway-tolls-bailout-for-eurolink