Senator wants measures to alleviate traffic gridlock in Limerick

SENATOR Paul Gavan has called on Government both locally and nationally to take urgent measures to tackle traffic congestion in the city suburbs.

He has described traffic across major routes in and out of the city as “chaos”, with “significant tailbacks” in the morning and evening peak.

“Each morning and evening the Mick Mackey roundabout has cars tailing well back on to the M7 motorway which creates a potentially hazardous situation. Meanwhile traffic queues at the Groody roundabout tail back in both directions at peak times. In addition parts of Dooradoyle and Corbally are in gridlock as a matter of course on a daily basis,” Mr Gavan said.

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He said the gridlock impacts both commuters and businesses.

“The worsening traffic chaos is impacting on commuters and businesses in a significant way. Workers are struggling to get to work on time and it’s leading to increasing levels of stress all round. As we head into the winter with dark mornings and wet weather this situation will only get worse,” he warned.

The Castleconnell man says the fault lies at the door of the government, and what he feels has been a lack of forward planning.

“This Government decided to drop the Northern Distributor road from its plans for Limerick - a route that is desperately needed. This road would alleviate traffic congestion in the city while providing a quick link between the northside and the University of Limerick, the National Technological Park and Annacotty Business Park. The decision to exclude this piece of infrastructure from the Limerick Shannon Metropolitan Area Transport Strategy has proven to be an unmitigated disaster,” he said.

Mr Gavan also criticised the proposed BusConnects model, which it’s hoped will lead to improvements to local bus services.