| Ballyclare Western Relief Road | ||||||||||||||
Current area plans have marked Ballyclare as a town for significant growth to accommodate some of Northern Ireland's fast growing population. However the town is severly limited by the fact that the only way to get from the north of the town to the south, and hence to Belfast, is via the congested main street. This proposal will not necessarily diminish the traffic on the main street, but it should allow continued housing development in the town without increasing congestion at that location. It will see a new two-lane road link running round the north west of the town connecting the A57 Templepatrick Road to the west of Ballyclare to the B94 Rashee Road north of Ballyclare via the B95 Doagh Road. This will include a second bridge over the Six Mile Water. The approximate route is shown below (scroll further down for an alternative map).
The proposal has been on the cards for at least 20 years, and was most recently included in the Belfast Metropolitan Area Plan 2015 (first published 2004). Construction of the road was always planned to be carried out by private developers, but it was not until August 2009 that a developer - KPL Group - secured sufficient land to announce its construction which the Ballyclare Gazette described as "the largest and most expensive privately funded road proposal ever brought forward in Northern Ireland". The road is needed in order to begin work on a major housing development which will take up to 20 years to complete and include around 2000 homes when completed. A pair of planning applications for the road have already been submitted, with part 1 being the short section from Templepatrick Road to Doagh Road, and part 2 being the longer section from there to Rashee Road. It is still not certain whether the entire road will be constructed at once, or just part 1 initially. Route Assuming that the maps released to the public in August 2009 don't change, the route appears to be a single-carriageway made up as follows:
Note that this route differs slightly from that proposed in the Belfast Metropolitan Area Plan in that the northern section runs further out from the town than envisaged in that document. The sketched Google Maps overlay below shows the approximate route proposed. Photos
The view west along Doagh Road, Ballyclare. The new road will cross this road
Looking south, towards Ballyclare, along Rashee Road from the Cogry Road junction. The new road will terminate near where the car is parked. Taken in 2003. [Wesley Johnston]
Artist's impression of how the new road and associated housing development |
