Council confident bypass work will finish on time

Despite the current section of works on the Athlone bypass being delayed by a week, Westmeath County Council is confident that the entire project will finish at the end of the 40-week deadline. "We're not happy there has been a slippage of a week but we think it's been resolved... We know now that stage three will wrap up on April 8, and stage four will begin then and will end in three weeks' time," said Michael Kelly, project engineer with Westmeath County Council. He said that the council met with the contractor Wills Bros Ltd to discuss the reasons for the delay and said it was unlikely that it will happen again on other sections. Mr Kelly said that the council tried to communicate to the public rough estimates of how long each stage of works would take, based on estimates from the contractor, however these deadlines were always meant to be flexible. Now, the council is focusing on having the contractor complete the entire body of works by the end of the agreed 40-week contract. "We will give more generic timeframes going forward for stages four, five and six... We're hoping to only have two diversions/closures on at the one time," he said. "We have weekly review meetings and have changed things, we've put up electronic boards and the website is there and we have been on radio." In response to complaints from the public and businesses over traffic congestion in the town, Mr Kelly pointed out that around 30,000 cars use the Athlone bypass on a daily basis and now that it is down to one lane in a certain section and one exit/one entry is closed, there are bound to be delays. "We never expected there would be no delays... We never tried to hide the fact there would be delays," he said, acknowledging that the public have been contacting the council to complain about the delays. He stressed that the recent road traffic accidents along the bypass were completely unrelated to the roadworks but that these accidents had a "big impact" on the job and added to traffic chaos on the days they occurred. "But that was outside of our control," he added. "The traffic management in place is in accordance with the guidelines and more." He said that although detours have been provided, it takes time for motorists to use them. "People try out different routes but these things balance themselves out. We have set out a detour and all we can do is put up signs for the detour."