Mayo community's concerns about traffic changes get double airing at meetings

THE Foxford community's concerns about plans to axe the right turn off Main Street onto the N26 Swinford road were aired at a public meeting last night and again today at municipal district level.

It is proposed to send vehicles down two local roads - Lower Main Street and Providence Road, where there are concerns for the safety of vulnerable road users given the area's older and also student populations.

Members of the public have until this Friday evening to make submissions about plans for the town centre pedestrian crossing and traffic management changes on online at consult.ie, and to date 46 observations have been sent in to Mayo County Council via the portal.

Local Councillor Neil Cruise told today's municipal meeting that around 100 people attended last night's public meeting in the town, called after the council declined holding an in-person public consultation event.

Under the proposed changes, traffic, instead of turning right off Main Street onto the national primary road, would be sent down past Hope House and the local secondary school, a route which also has a number of elderly residents and caters for traffic coming from the sports centre and two local football clubs. Students from the school cross between its campuses at nine different times of the day, in addition to pick-ups and drop-offs, and there is no pedestrian crossing.

Providence Road is barely fit for two-way traffic, he added.

The proposals, being developed by the roads design office, with the green light from TII, would, he said, endanger lives.

Councillor Cruise asked that the area engineers and municipal district office would put in a strong submission on the proposal.

They were just moving the problem, and where the existing pedestrian crossing is an accident waiting to happen, 'this is an accident waiting to happen by 10', he warned.

District head Padraig Flanagan said he had never seen a situation where they would make a submission to themselves. The area engineer is at the table and is consulted as part of the process.

The submissions that have gone in would be given serious consideration, he added.

TII is a separate body, Councillor Cruise stressed, and if there wasn't a strong submission from the district they would be 'missing a trick'.

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