Ballina traffic plan to be reviewed
Ballina traffic plan to be reviewed
Anna-Marie Flynn
BALLINA Town Council has confirmed it will review the newly-introduced Ballina traffic system in the coming days.
At the October meeting of Ballina Town Council held last Wednesday, up to thirty commercial business stakeholders were present for an hour-long discussion between councillors and the executive on the issue. Members agreed that standing orders be suspended to facilitate the lengthy debate.
The controversial system which came into operation on September 29 last on a trial basis, has caused concern throughout the town, not least among road users, pedestrians and traders.
Lengthy delays for drivers and issues with accessing the town centre for consumers prompted Cllr Peter Clarke to propose the entire phase two of the traffic management plan be rescinded. “Ratepayers are trying to earn a living and this traffic system has left them hurting. The fact is we have to work with what we have and creating a ringroad system like this is just not working with the type of roads we have to work with. People are afraid to come into town and instead they are doing their shopping in smaller outlying villages – the traders are Ballina are suffering as a result,” he said. The Independent councillor went on to say that he felt the authority ‘should have sought the opinion of the traders in the first instance’ before the plan was agreed on by the members.
While Cllr Clarke failed to secure a seconder to back his proposal, and subsequently withdrew it, Cllr Michelle Mulherin agreed with ‘rescinding large parts of the plan’. The Fine Gael councillor, who was the most vocal in voicing her concerns about the system, said she felt the ‘capacity on the access roads simply was not there to cope with all the vehicles now forced on these routes’. “I think the Engineer’s concept was very good, but it is not working in reality. What we have is a situation every day, which essentially we only have on Heritage Day in Ballina – the traffic is now constantly being diverted away from the town centre and that leads to total gridlock,” she said. Cllr Mulherin also asserted that ‘Ballina is not Dublin. Drivers don’t want to sit in traffic for forty minutes to get a few hundred yards.’
Responding to the comments, Town Engineer, Michael O’Grady, said he was ‘unaware standing orders would be suspended to discuss the matter’, but was happy to contribute to the debate. “At the start it was agreed this would be a trial and it still is a trial. Two to three days into this, the Council was under enormous pressure to abandon it completely and it took a lot to convince people that the issues – particularly at Market Road – would iron out. Those issues did iron out and the system has made the town centre a better place. We had a situation where hoards of cars were driving through the centre – they weren’t doing business or spending money in it but just driving through and now that has been eliminated. It is my duty to resolve the bottlenecks and we are making tweaks here and there to do so. There is huge clamour to abandon it, but I don’t think that is the answer,” he said.
Among the changes made to the system last week was the addition of a new lights controller at Dunnes Stores to improve transition timing and subsequently, a new one-way route from Newbrook Road onto Humbert Street.
Closing the debate, Mayor Frances McAndrew encouraged the members to ‘give the system another week’. Councillors requested that they be in attendance at a review meeting scheduled to happen later this week or early next week
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