Traffic chief’s exit causes roads chaos

THE city’s multi-million traffic control centre is now a rudderless ship following the departure of a top engineer to take up a new position in Cork . . . and the result is traffic chaos on the streets.
Since the departure of Urban Traffic Management Centre Head Engineer, Brian Burke, earlier this year, no replacement has been appointed to fill the key position in the day-to-day management of city traffic.
The issue was raised by former Mayor, Cllr. Michael Crowe at this week’s City Council meeting – he said the failure to fill the position was now resulting in traffic chaos on the streets of the city.
“We have invested a serious amount of money in putting in place a state-of-the-art traffic, computerised control system and now we find that we have no one to operate it – this situation cannot be allowed to go on,” said Cllr. Crowe.
He said that a while the ‘smart lights’ system was in operation, traffic management in the city required a specialist engineer to intervene with traffic flows at key junctions and bottlenecks.
“The stretch of road between Cemetery Cross and Flemings Garage [Tuam Road] has been an absolute traffic catastrophe for the past couple of months. “There has been traffic standstills here even during non-peak traffic times. This is a case in point where there is a need for one highly-qualified person in the Traffic Management Centre, to monitor flows and take corrective action,” Cllr. Crowe told the Galway City Tribune.
He said that ‘it wasn’t good enough’ for a management system to be place at the City Council where there was no cover or back-up available when a specialist person left a job, like the head of the Traffic Management Centre.
At this week’s City Council meeting, Cllr. Declan McDonnell also said that there was a ‘huge problem’ in the Traffic Management Centre and he said that some of the traffic lights in the city were not integrated into the smart lights network.
Another major traffic logjam on the edge of the city at Parkmore also needs urgent attention, according to Cllr. Niall McNelis, who said that at times there were delays of up to an hour and a half in this area.
For more on this story, see the Galway City Tribune.