FINE Gael councillor Tom Ruddle highlighted to Limerick Council the urgent need for traffic calming measures on the Boherbui Road in Newcastle West to help reduce excessive speed.
The Limerick Post joined Cllr Ruddle on the busy artery to see the issues firsthand. With a nursing home and secondary school, businesses and housing estates along the route, only one lane of traffic can pass at a pinch-point close to the town at peak times.
On Friday morning, this reporter witnessed cars and heavy vehicles mounting the footpath as they tried make their way through this bottleneck, due to parking on one side of the roadway. I suggest to Cllr Ruddle that this predicament surely helps slows traffic down, but he tells me that speed is still an issue, particularly in the evenings.
“The road is very narrow, and when it was built first, it was more for pony and cart and that type of traffic. This is an older part of the town and a lot of development has taken place further up with 200 houses built in the last 20-25 years. Now, it’s a main artery, and in recent times there has been a few accidents, with people coming down too fast,” the Newcastle West man explains.
Cllr Ruddle now wants to see raised platforms or ramps in the vicinity of the school and nursing home to slow traffic down in the interest of safety.
“It can be mad busy here in the morning and evening, mayhem, but look, it was never designed for this type of traffic. In saying that, it is what it is now, and we have to try and come up withe some kind of solution,” he sais.
He adds that “there’s no perfect solution to this, but something needs to be done”.
“Unfortunately, they haven’t come up with anything that would be palatable. There was talk of making this a one-way at one point, but all it would have done is cause an issue someplace else in the town.”
The Council said that the matter of ramps and raised platforms is being considered on the Boherbui Road but stakeholder engagement is required. They have proposed to meet onsite with representative councillors in the coming weeks.
– Local Democracy Reporting Scheme