This article is from page 30 of the 2008-09-09 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 30 JPG
DRIVERS who treat roads in an east Clare estate “like Mondello race track”, have to be stopped, a local councillor has said.
Cars are tearing along a straight stretch of road in Westbury, endan- gering life and property, Cllr Cathal Crowe told a meeting of the Killa- loe committee of the Clare County SBE MWe.
“There one straight road that’s raced on like it’s Mondello Park at evenings and weekends’, he said.
Cllr Crowe was calling on the coun- cil’s road engineers and the develop- ers to put their heads together and
come up with traffic calming meas- ures for the estate, where there are a number of treacherous stretches, the councillor said.
“On two occasions, cars ploughed through hedges into the boundary of a house. There are a lot of green spaces where children play. This 1s “a ticking timebomb’”, the councillor said. Cllr Crowe was supported in his call by Cllr Pascal Fitzgerald who said there had been a third incident last week in which a car ploughed beers 0 8
“The traffic corps have come out but there’s little they can do. There are some very dangerous areas in this estate and the problem needs to
be addressed before there is a trag- edy.”
Councillors were told that the de- velopers have planned to put pinch points in to slow traffic in the estate but the local authority’s hands are tied until such time as the estate is finished and taken into Clare County Council’s charge, senior executive engineer, Sean Lenihan said.
He warned that the council “is not going to take it in charge if it’s not up to a standard we can live with”.
Mr Lenihan said that it had been hoped earlier this year that it would be taken in charge by Christmas but difficulties with the decommission- ing of the sewerage plant meant that
this now won’t happen’.
Councillors had earlier raised the issue of the traffic lights on the main road causing massive delays to com- muters trying to get out of Westbury, particularly in the morning rush telune
Cll Pascal Fitzgerald said that the timing of the lights meant “very long delays for people trying to get to work. I think the sequencing should be examined again. I have had nu- merous complaints”.
Cllr Cathal Crowe said that the population of Westbury “rivals that of a small town yet it has only one exit. We need a united voice on this. Another access road is needed.”