Traffic gridlock grips locally as road works bite

A combination of road works, lane closures and diversions caused traffic gridlock in Athlone early this week. And while the congestion is expected to ease off later this week, it's been confirmed that one lane of the Athlone bypass will remain closed until the end of the month. The westbound carriageway of the bypass is closed at the Coosan interchange so that essential repairs can be carried out on an expansion joint of the main bridge. This has resulted in all Dublin-Galway traffic diverting off the Coosan slip-road and back onto the bypass. This means that local access to Coosan and also to the bypass has been affected, causing rush-hour delays of up to an hour to cross town and also long tailbacks on the Ballymahon Road. However, according to Athlone Town Council, the road will re-open on Saturday November 7, if not earlier. Roscommon County Council carried out works near Ganly's roundabout on Monday which added to the disruption for the day. Continued from Page 1 Coupled with the bridge closure is the fact that one lane on the eastbound side of the Athlone bypass is also currently closed for maintenance and hedge-cutting works, slowing up the heavy volumes of daily traffic. This "moving restriction" means that the lane closure will continue as far as the Kilmartin's interchange and will then begin on the westbound section of the road heading back to the Roscommon exit. This work will continue until the end of November. And as the extra congestion causes headaches for locals, a town councillor has called for more public consultation on traffic management plans for Athlone. However the works have caused one angry local to contact several members of Athlone and Westmeath County Council executive, as well as local councillors and Oireachtas members, to complain about the lack of prior information about the closures and diversions and to suggest alternative measures. Dáibhid Ó Cluaid, who works in Ericsson, has been delayed by around 20 minutes on Monday and Tuesday morning because of the backlogs. "My issues are not so much the road closure, if it needs doing then do it... The problem I have is the lack of notice and information given to people. No one at work knew about what is going on, my family did not know what is going on. So if the council is putting the information out they need to do a better job," said Dáibhid. "They (the council) completely forgot about the people who live north of the bypass in the Coosan area. How do they get out? I have lived in Rindoon and been trapped when they blocked Junction 11 before, if no one is on duty at the Ballymahon road you are trapped in there." The traffic chaos comes as Cllr Alan Shaw put down a motion at this month's town council meeting, calling on the council to design and implement a new Traffic Management plan for the town as the current one is six years old. In response the council said that the 2003 plan, coupled with the implementation of the Railway Field link road, is the "optimum solution" to the general traffic problems in Athlone currently. "The general issue of the traffic management plan that is in place is that it's not up to date," said Cllr Shaw. "We should have a new plan put in place and the reason why is because any traffic management plan needs to have the support of the public and council... We need a more open approach." He said that the current diversions and closures in place around Coosan were not advertised well enough and that there are daily backlogs to Cornamaddy on the Ballymahon Road in the mornings so far this week. Meanwhile, the town clerk said that no further road works will be carried out in the town in the run-up to Christmas in a bid to help make the shopping season as problem-free as possible for traders and shoppers. John Walsh added that the work around the Castle will be finished up before the Christmas period. "We don't want to have any works that will cause disruption in the lead up to Christmas," he said.