EMERGENCY CITY TRAFFIC MEETING DESCENDS INTO FARCE

Date Published: 06-Sep-2011

No concrete solutions have been found to the city’s continuing traffic crisis.

Last night’s special meeting was a blame game which descended into farce at times.

The writing was on the wall from the outset when Mayor Hildegarde Naughton announced that the Gardai had pulled out of attending

Among themselves councillors spent large portions of the night engaged in petty bickering and loud attempts at political point scoring.

Director of Services Ciaran Hayes accused several councillors of proposing motions that lacked reality or research or funding

The motions centred on matters such as park n ride, three lane contra traffic flow on dual carriageways, night-time road works and implementing the smarter travel initiative

However Mr Hayes continues to state that the city’s traffic problems are due to the fact that it is not by-passed and that it needs an urban traffic management control centre.

For now, there are real fears of an escalation of the traffic crisis when work begins on removing the Lynch roundabout at Briarhill next week.

Cllr Padraig Conneely was told by the manager that his motion to defer the 8 week project was illegal because the contract has been awarded.