Infrastructure Minister Chris Hazzard has announced a £10million investment to improve the condition of rural roads.
Minister Hazzard has earmarked additional funding announced by the Finance Minister earlier this month for resurfacing work on 1,000 rural roads across the north.
The Minister said: “I am delighted to announce today that rural communities across the region will benefit from a £10million road improvement package to stop deterioration and repair severe defects on their local road network.
“The improvements will target around 1,000 rural roads, repairing many short lengths of road (20-50m) in particularly poor condition, together with a number of longer resurfacing schemes of around one kilometre.
“In this difficult financial period, it is of course necessary to prioritise resources, but for too long rural communities have dropped down the priority list. Today will go some way to addressing that imbalance and giving rural communities across the region roads that are fit for purpose and that will stand the test of time and weather.”
The Department is currently considering areas in greatest need and will draw up programmes to enable work to start as soon as possible.
There are 18,000km of rural roads that fall within the scope of this initiative – defined as B, C and U class roads outside local speed limits.
Allocations will be made using a range of weighted indicators based on numbers of defects, numbers of public liability claims, carriageway area together with road condition data from visual and machine surveys.
