The town of Cullybackey, near Ballymena, had around 2400 residents in 2001. The structure of the narrow village main street makes it a significant bottleneck for traffic. A scheme to construct a throughpass to relieve the main street was considered for the current round of road improvements, but failed to meet the criteria. However, in 2008 a private developer agreed to construct the "central part" of the scheme as a condition of planning permission for a housing development in the town (although the planning application was later withdrawn). Previous information suggests this may represent 20% of the whole route. It seems that Roads Service have agreed to construct the sections at either end if this happens, and has apparently progressed a preliminary design. There is no indication of when work will commence, or indeed if it will at all, given the current economic climate.

Route

There is no comprehensive map of the route on the Internet. However, we do know that it will run east-west in the area of land to the north of Main Street but to the south of Kilmakevit Road/Tobar Park. Zoom in on the map linked above for an idea of where this is. A small portion of the route was visible on this property developer's web site at the time of writing in Feb 2009. This allows us to construct a speculative map of the proposed road, visible here. The dark red shows what we know is planned, while the light red is conjecture (and may be incorrect). If anyone can shed any more certainty on this, please get in touch.

Updates

22 June 2011: This scheme was raised in Stormont during the Minister's Question Time yesterday. It is worth quoting the Minister at length: "I can advise that an agreed housing layout, which includes the construction of the central portion of the throughpass, received planning approval in June 2007. A revised planning application was submitted in July 2008, which also included the throughpass element, and was being processed by the Planning Service but has now been withdrawn by the developer. However, the original approval remains live. To date, the developer has not started work on the housing development, and there is no indication of when it might progress. The completion of the throughpass is not included in any current major works programme. However, Roads Service has stated its commitment to the completion of the remainder of the route and has progressed preliminary design of the throughpass." The Minister then went on to confirm that the policy on construction has not changed since 2008, ie that if the developer builds the middle section, then Roads Service will follow that up by building the bits at either end. He said "Roads Service has considered how the scheme might be provided. It would probably be in two or more parts, following on from the section to be constructed by the developer."