Removal of Shopping Centre roundabout starts next month

Construction work on converting a fourth city roundabout to a signalised junction will commence in June, Galway City Council has confirmed.

The Galway Transportation Unit has confirmed that the tenders for the job of converting Bodkin Roundabout (at the Galway Shopping Centre) to a traffic lights junction are all in.

The successful contractor will be announced in the coming weeks and workers are expected ‘on the ground’ in June.

Initially, workers will be involved in preliminary works ‘around’ the roundabout, which is not expected to cause much disruption.

The major part of the work, removing the actual roundabout, will commence in mid-August and, given that it is the busiest junction in the city, motorists can expect traffic chaos for several weeks in late August and September, when the schools return.

The contract will stipulate, however, that the conversion must be completed by the end of November or the first week of December at the latest, according to Fianna Fáil City Councillor Mike Crowe.

Cllr Crowe, who has supported the controversial M6 Multi-Modal Corridor Improvement Scheme since it was conceived a few years back, said the removal of Bodkin roundabout will bring even more improvements to motorists once it is complete.

“This is the fourth roundabout to be removed, and in my opinion it is the one that will have the most positive difference to the traffic congestion. The other three roundabouts that were removed at Briarhill, Ballybane and the Tuam Road have all resulted in improvements in congestion.

“Anecdotally you can see it but also there are figures at City Hall that show the improvements in waiting times at the junctions and that’s with more throughput of traffic because people are not rat-running as much through estates now that the new junctions are in place.

“The backlogs are just not there anymore, and certainly not like what they used to be when the roundabouts are there. I think the Bodkin roundabout, while it will be difficult for a period during the construction stage, will bring huge improvements for people west of the city in the morning and evening,” said Cllr Crowe.