Currently all traffic arriving into Newry City from South Down on the A25 Rathfriland Road has to go almost to the city centre before it can make onward journeys to the west or south. This adds to congestion in Newry and discourages traffic that wishes to go to or from South Down. This scheme would provide a bypass of the city centre for South Down traffic by providing a new link around the urban area from the Rathfriland Road to the roundabout on the A28 Belfast Road (what was, until recently, the A1). The scheme was included in the "Banbridge, Newry and Mourne Area Plan 2015" which indicated that the primary purpose of the scheme would be to "enable east-west cross city traffic to avoid the city centre" and that its secondary purpose would be to "serve land zoned in the Plan and when complete [to] reduce the level of through traffic in adjacent residential areas". The plan indicates that the scheme is considered "strategic" meaning that it ought to attract at least some funding from the DRD with the remainder coming from private developers of nearby land. However, the scheme was notably absent from the DRD's own Sub-Regional Transportation Plan of 2007 (which set out their own plans for roughly the next decade), suggesting that the scheme is not on the DRD's radar for future schemes. Therefore it does not currently look likely to proceed in the near future, unless a private developer appears who really wants to develop the area.

The map below shows the proposed route in red.

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