Over £2.5m investment in roads

Speaking ahead of last Monday’s meeting between the Department for Regional Development (DRD) and Moyle District Council, Danny Kennedy said: “My Department has invested over £135million in structural maintenance, improving the many miles of road infrastructure across Northern Ireland in the last financial year.

“Despite ever increasing demands on budgets, DRD invested over £2.53million in delivering a comprehensive range of road schemes and maintenance work in the Moyle area.

“DRD is using its available resources highly effectively and continues to deliver quality public services in the Moyle area and across Northern Ireland.”

Highlighting resurfacing schemes, the Minister said: “Road users in the Moyle area have quickly realised the benefits of the investment by the Department with the completion of a number of significant lengths of carriageway resurfacing at a total cost of £1.4million, which included A2 Garron Road, B147 Ballinlea Road, B67 Moyarget Road, A2 Chapel Road and B146 Causeway Road.”

The Minister provided an update on the £65million A26 dualling between Glarryford and the A44 (Drones Road) Junction. He said: “Following my announcement to proceed and publication of the Statutory Orders in November 2013, my Department have been progressing with the procurement of the A26 dualling scheme. Following a successful tender award it is anticipated that construction could commence in the later part of this year.

“To enable the works to progress quickly following a successful tender award my Department has recently completed advanced site clearance works and the erection of a temporary fence along the site boundary. As well as these works, archaeological investigations are currently ongoing and will be completed later this month.”

To date a number of archaeological sites have been found. One of these sites is a man made underground passage adjacent to the Killagan Road junction, which dates approximately between 600 and 1000AD.

Speaking at the meeting Principal Engineer, Cathal Brown, outlined some of the other significant areas of work completed by the Division. These included traffic calming schemes at Glenaan Primary School, Cushendall and Armoy Primary School which consisted of new school warning signs along with red surfacing and ‘SLOW’ markings to provide better warning of the schools for approaching drivers.

To find out more about road improvements and the work of the Department for Regional Development visit: the DRD Websiteexternal link.