This massive project was announced on 13 December 2005 by the Northern Ireland Secretary of State Peter Hain as part of a larger investment package for the city of Derry. It will see a dual-carriageway bypass of Dungiven town and dualling of the existing A6 from there to the eastern periphery of Londonderry city. The level of funding is surprisingly high, and may even be sufficient to build a high quality road with fully grade separated junctions (ie flyovers). Plans announced in 2004 for a single-carriageway bypass of Dungiven at a cost of £11.1m have been subsumed by this much larger scheme, although the preliminary work done will still apply. As of 2007 the scheme was listed in Roads Service's "preparation pool", meaning construction was anticpated "within 5 years". However this would have required a fairly speedy planning process, and following the announcement of the A5 dualling scheme the Regional Development Minister revised the timescale of this project to be "within the period 2008-2018", potentially a much longer timeframe.

Route

In mid 2007 a route selection study examined a number of proposed routes (including one route south via Plumbridge and one north approaching Limavady), but in the end a road roughly following the existing road corridor was deemed most cost effective. So the route will be:

1. Starting at the eastern edge of Dungiven, a new 2.3km bypass to the south of the town
2. 22.4km of road closely following the current A6 as far as Drumahoe village
3. 5.3km of road going north round the eastern edge of L'Derry to meet the A2 near the Foyle Bridge. The precise point at which it will join is not yet determined.

In May 2008 Roads Service published the following maps showing the five route options, several of which actually stray outside the original route corridor, which has now been expanded. The blue rectangles show the locations of proposed grade separated junctions. There are unlikely to be any at-grade junctions, although there may be one or two LILOs (left-in, left-out junctions). The first map shows the western half of the scheme with Derry at the top, while the second shows the eastern half with Dungiven at the bottom.

Roads Service have put an enormous amount of information on their web site about this scheme (see link at top of page). It includes the 2004 report into the single-carriageway Dungiven Bypass then proposed. It also includes the 2007 report into dualling the entire A6 route from Castledawson to Derry. The current scheme is based on portions of both of these.

Updates

15 Jun 2008: According to this press release, the cost of the project has risen to £300m (up from £250m estimated in 2005). It also revealed that the preferred route is due to be announced in the summer of 2009 and that "over 100 people" are involved in the route development in one form or another. The press release has also said that Roads Service are now investigating how to provide a link from the A6 at Drumahoe to the A5 on the south side of the city. Such a link would almost certainly follow a new offline route. It is unclear if this link would be part of this scheme, or be a separate project.

24 May 2008: Roads Service are holding a series of public exhibitions between 20 and 28 May. They are using these to reveal the five chosen route corridors. Interestingly, some of these stray OUTSIDE the route corridor announced last year and thus there is now an "expanded" route corridor. At the Derry end it now looks almost certain that the road will tie in to the existing A2 between Caw and Maydown rather than the Crescent Link itself. At the Dungiven end two new routes for the bypass of the town are being considered, after complaints about the current route that will sever a GAA training ground. One of these passes further to the south, beyond the river, while the other passes to the north of the town. All the documents made available on the days are also online here, including more detailed versions of the above maps.

28 Apr 2008: The publication in April 2008 of the "Investment Delivery Plan for Roads" document has allayed fears that the  scheme will be delayed, since it includes this scheme in the "Preparation pool" which contains schemes anticipated to begin within 5 years, ie by 2013.

8 Mar 2008: According to Roads Service, ground surveys on the chosen route corridor are underway. This will inform the decision on a preferred route within this corridor. Roads Service still have the scheme in their "preparation pool" (construction anticipated within 5 years or so) but with the recent announcements by Conor Murphy (see previous updates) it's still unclear what the timescale is.

5 Feb 2008: Conor Murphy has again denied that there is any slippage in the timetable for the project. He said that "it is not correct to state that there has been slippage on the A6 Derry to Dungiven project. Indeed in July 2007 I announced the appointment of consultants to examine options to enable the selection of a preferred route by spring 2009". There is no doubt that this is true, but it only refers to the first element of the project. The "slippage" being noted is in the timescale for completion of the project as a whole. When first announced,Roads Service were saying that the scheme would be delivered within the timetable of the Regional Strategic Transport Plan which ran from 2005-2015. Now, they are saying that it's going to be delivered within the timetable of the Investment Strategy 2008-2018. While it's only a time period, it still has the potential to delay the project by up to three years.

30 Dec 2007: Conor Murphy responded to the media reports last week by assuring business leaders that the scheme has NOT been cancelled and will proceed. However, while reassuring, his statement does seem to be a disguised attempt to sneak a revised timescale through. When the scheme was first announced in 2005, it was stated that it would be built within the timescale of the Regional Strategic Transportation Network Transport Plan 2015, ie by 2015. However in this week's statement, Conor Murphy now says that it will be built within the timescale of the draft Investment Strategy 2008-2018, ie by 2018. This subtle change means that the project could potentially be delayed by up to three years. This would seem inevitable give the level of financial committment required for the A5 dualling scheme.

24 Dec 2007: As has been noted by the media, this scheme is mysteriously missing from the Draft Investment Strategy 2008-2018 which was published in October. This Strategy (admittedly a draft) outlines the targets of spending of £3bn on roads over the next ten years. Under its list of "key milestones" it lists the A4 dualling scheme (Dungannon to Ballygawley), completion of the A1 dualling, completion of the M1, M2 and Westlink upgrades, the recently announced A5 dualling scheme (Londonderry to Aughnacloy) and the A8 dualling scheme (to Larne). However there is no mention of the A6 dualling scheme. According to Derry Chamber of Commerce, the DRD has said that the A6 scheme may be put on hold or delayed. This is speculation, but it is worth noting that the shortfall required in order to undertake the A5 dualling scheme is £260m. This is almost the same amount as the cost of this scheme. So it is possible that the Regional Development Minister Conor Murphy has decided to take the money from this scheme and use it to fund the A5 scheme instead. If so, and it is only guesswork, then it is likely to prompt a lot of debate on the subject.

Background to Scheme

The Regional Strategic Transport Plan, published in 2004, explained why it was thought that further dualling of the 40km of the A6 beyond Castledawson could not go ahead before 2015:

B3.3.41 When the funding envisaged by RTS is extended to 2015, there would be £529.4m available for Strategic Road Improvements in the RSTN TP period. However, this is fully taken up by the high priority SRIs proposed across the RSTN, including the £171.9m envisaged for SRI schemes on routes serving the North-West. Therefore, within the funding assumptions of this Plan, it would not be realistic to expect that further dualling of the A6 could be undertaken within the Plan period (apart from the Randalstown to Castledawson section already proposed). B3.3.42 However, further dualling of the A6 will be required outside the RSTN Plan period, in order to develop and upgrade the link between Northern Ireland’s two largest cities by 2025. Therefore, during the Plan period it will be necessary to plan the route of a dual carriageway between Castledawson and Derry, by undertaking a route selection study. This will inform the decision regarding the acquisition of land and route protection lines, e.g. for the Dungiven Bypass.

This lack of funding was rectified suddenly and somewhat unexpectedly in December 2005 by the announcement of sufficient funding for the Dungiven to Derry section. Prophetically, the RSTN did comment that "It is... likely that future dualling in the 2015 to 2025 period will commence at the Londonderry end of the route." This is because traffic levels are highest at the Toome and Derry ends of the A6, and lowest at the Glenshane Pass and because of the difficult terrain crossing the Sperrins. Traffic figures collected in 2004 showed the following daily traffic at various points on the A6:

• Toome - 21160 vehicles
• Castledawson - 14880 vehicles
• Ranaghan (Glenshane Pass) - 10470 vehicles
• Western edge of Dungiven - 13820 vehicles
• Altnagelvin, Londonderry - 12930 vehicles
• Rossdowney, Londonderry - 26930 vehicles

Thanks to Diarmaid Elder for the traffic information on this page.

Photos

A typical view of the A6 road in its current form, here seen near Dungiven. [Photo by Wesley Johnston]

Dungiven town centre is the biggest bottleneck on the route, and will get a bypass. [Photo by Wesley Johnston]

Lots more photos of the road are available on the Roads Service web site - see link at the top of this page.