A5 Road (Northern Ireland) - Recent Developments

Recent Developments

Despite being the major route from Dublin to the north west of the island, the A5 route does not contain any dual carriageway sections, and for many years the route brought drivers through a series of towns and villages which often provided cumbersome bottlenecks.

Since the 1980s, construction has taken place on two sections of bypass around the town of Strabane. The first section, constructed and opened in the early 1990s, relieved the outlying northern neighbourhoods and the town centre of traffic using the A5, and in 2003, an extension of the road diverted traffic through the Melmount area of Strabane. Both projects have seen traffic improvements in the town. A proposed third section is now "on hold" pending wider decisions on the future of the A5.

A further bottleneck was provided through the village of Newtownstewart. Previously, the A5 route had to navigate a narrow section before taking a sharp right at a T-junction with the B46 to Plumbridge. This was followed by a left turn a short distance later through the southern part of the village, before meeting a dangerous right-hand bend which carried a 25 mph speed limit. A bypass of the village, following the route of the former Derry-Portadown railway, was constructed and opened to traffic in 2003.

The 1990s also saw development on the A5 road to relieve traffic passing through Omagh, the county town of Tyrone. A bypass was constructed in three stages - the first, central, stage was completed in the mid-1990s and diverted the A5 route away from the town centre. A further relief road allowed traffic to avoid the increasingly built-up northern parts of the towns in the late 1990s, and in 2006, the final stage of the Omagh bypass was opened, taking traffic away from the many housing developments on the southern edge of the town and diverting traffic from a bridge over the Drumragh river, the site of a dangerous S-bend and accident black spot.