Status
|
Construction scheme
(partially completed) |
Where
|
To
extend Victoria Road north as far as the
B90 Upper Road |
Total
Length
|
0.7 km / 0.5 miles
(of which 0.4 km was built 2019-2023)
|
Dates
|
Proposed in Belfast
Metropolitan Area Plan - Nov 2004
250 metres south of
Red Fort Park was build from late 2019
and during 2020 to access a site.
180 metres further south was built
slowly from 2020-2023
|
Cost
|
Unknown - funded by
private developers. |
See
Also
|
General area
map
Carrickfergus
Spine Road & Sloefield Road
extensions - proposed schemes
|
Click here
to jump straight down to updates.
Carrickfergus is a large town, predominantly
acting as a dormitory town for Belfast. Due to
the gently sloping terrain, the town's suburbs
have developed as a grid with three east-west
arteries and several north-south arteries. One
of the north-south arteries is Victoria Road.
However, Victoria Road only extends half of the
way (from the A2 at the shore to Prince Andrew
Way). This scheme is intended to see Victoria
Road extended northwards to meet the B90 (known
locally as the Upper Road) as shown in red on
this map (blue shows existing parts of the
road). Of this section, 420 metres was built by
a private developer between 2019 and 2023 for
the Bashford Park development. At the time of
writing, June 2024, only the final 320 metres is
unbuilt.
The proposal is contained in the draft Belfast
Metropolitan Area Plan of 2004 (proposal CS
13/02) and is identified as a developer-led
scheme. This means that Roads Service will not
fund the scheme - it must instead be provided by
housing developers as a condition of planning
permission. About three quarters of the farmland
beside the proposed route is zoned for housing.
Updates
19 Jun 2024: I have not updated this page
in the 14 years since I created it and, truth be
told, I had forgotten I had created it. So this
update is to cover the changes that took place
since 2010. In 2019 a private developer began work
on the Bashford Park housing development. This
necessitated the construction of 250 metres of the
new road, south of Red Fort Park, to access the
site. The road was built over the course of a year
from 2019-20. The developer then built the houses
and the road was slowly extended further south
from 2020 until 2023 where it reached a new
temporary terminus after 180 further metres. This
leaves a 320 metre section of the site -
stretching from Bashford Park to Ulidia College -
unbuilt. This will not be built by the developer
as it was not a condition of planning approval and
it's not clear who WOULD fund it, as there are no
further plans to build houses along the route and
DFI policy is not to provide non-strategic roads
at public expense, as recently confirmed
by the Minister. So this may be where the story
ends for now!
Photos
You can see two
incomplete 'stubs' at each end of the proposed
road which have been provided by developers in
anticipation of its construction:
|